South Sea Pearl Lillie Langtry Analysis

With South Sea Pearl mentioned on the Daily Thread I thought I would assess her and Goodwood race she is entered for.

South Sea Pearl is entered in the Lillie Langtry, which is a Group 2 but it looks a poor renewal and at 14F it's for slowcoach ladies anyway. The list of previous winners is hardly a who's who of racing with Henry Cecil's Wild Coco one of the better ones in my eyes as a dual winner of the race who went on to finish runner up to Treve in the Group 1 Prix Vermeille, a traditional trial race for the Arc De Triomphe.

So what of South Sea Pearl's chance this year?

Late to make her appearance on the racecourse in May of this year, she had two tame efforts in maidens rated in the 60's on RPR before getting off the mark next time with a better effort of 84. Perhaps fast tracking her to a Group 3 race next time was unwise but the official handicapper had been more bullish with a rating of 92 and perhaps they felt the step up in trip might help. Not disgraced in 4th she earned a new figure of 97 from the Racing Post and of 98 from the Official Handicapper. Next time out she dropped to Listed class and won cosily by 3 lengths. It was only a marginal improvement to 101 on RPR and 99 on OR and we need to be thinking how much more she can improve next time.

An awful lot is going to hinge on whether Star Catcher turns up. She is 2/1 Favourite for the race and although it was probably a very weak renewal she is the Irish Oaks winner and rated 112 she has the guts of a stone in hand of South Sea Pearl on official figures. I don't see the Lillie Langtry as a good race for Star Catcher though and I would imagine another Group 1 is where they go next with her. Her absence would leave older fillies, and old rivals, Enbihaar and Dramatic Queen as the leading lights in the betting and on ratings.

John Gosden's Enbihaar and William Haggas's Dramatic Queen have met each other the last twice they ran. Gosden's filly has had the better of it but only by a length and then a neck. Enbihaar looks all stamina and may prefer the return to 14F more than Dramatic Queen will but she has a 3 lbs penalty to concede and that is why the market is favouring Haggas' filly.

Others in the betting include forum darling Sea Of Faith but she was beaten at odds-on from a mark of 95 in a handicap recently and I was surprised the Racing Post managed to raise her rating by 5 lbs after that run. Surely that seems to be counter-intuitive and if the Official Handicapper had put her up 5 lbs for being third off 95 in a handicap I am sure Haggas would have been writing to Boris Johnston in protest. Hard for me to fancy Sea Of Faith at 8/1 with Hills and is Haggas going to send her to a Group 2 having seen her beaten in Handicap company?

Another filly prominent in the market is Delphinia and this O'Brien filly is half the odds of her stablemate South Sea Pearl. With a very similar profile of slowly coming along before two really decent efforts on the ratings I feel that Delphinia lacks the scope of her stable companion, having made her debut last August. I also feel that her higher rating may be questionable given that it came when she was 5th in the Oaks as a 66/1 shot and the Oaks has not worked out that well since. Delphinia also has to prove she will stay against proven 14F fillies here, so she looks bad value at 6/1.

I was on Enbihaar last time she ran and she really toughed it out that day. She does look one paced though and has to concede a 3 lbs penalty. Star Catcher will be more likely to go for the Yorkshire Oaks I would think. Gosden mentioned that one as a possibility but made no reference to the Lillie Langtry. She would have 2F extra to face here AND a 5 lb penalty as well. It looks the wrong option so soon after the Irish Oaks.

I like South Sea Pearl here. Her win last time was decisive and she has not been on the racecourse for very long, Proven at the trip and open to the most improvement of Aidan's, she will get a full stone from John Gosden's Enbihaar who carries 9st 9lb with her penalty. Carrying 14 lbs more over 14 F will help level the gap in ratings and at 12/1 to 4/1 we get treble the odds of the Gosden 4YO.

I'll go in, not to the tune of a 100 Grand mind you.

South Sea Pearl 12/1 in the expectation of Star Catcher giving it a swerve.

 

Well part one has gone to plan. Star Catcher was not declared for the race, so the original favourite is out of the equation. O'Brien also took Delphinia out of the race so her odds were indeed poor value. Peach Tree is in there with Flowering Peach but I am hoping that they will be there for tactical reasons and that South Sea Pearl is the main one. As ever O'Brien leaves the jockey information to the last minutes.

South Sea Pearl is generally 8/1 now, with Paddy Power only 6/1. I am looking for jockey bookings to perhaps see her shorten further. With rain forecast it may be that the whole plan gets washed away in the mud but the early movement has been in the expected direction so fingers crossed that for once we might see an idea come to fruition.

 

12/1 looking very nice now

 

Still 10/1 bet 365 at the moment

 

Only 7 left in the race now and Ryan Moore is confirmed as the jockey on South Sea Pearl, so I am surprised there is still 10/1 available on her. Aidan has 3 of the 7 runners with Andrea Atzeni on Peach Tree and Sean Levy on Flowering Peach.

I will be discouraged if South Sea Pearl does not go off about 5/1 because 10/1 would be ominously weak in this contest. Maybe she will move on the day of the race. Manuela De Vega looks short at 4/1. She was 4th in the Oaks but she has not won this season and does not look to be obviously shouting out for this extra distance.

Well, it's gone to plan so far, the expected horses have dropped out and Ryan Moore is in the saddle. We need to money to come now to suggest that the filly is actually fancied but so far so good.

 

South Sea Pearl has a mountain to climb with Dramatic Queen and Enbihaar on form, shed be about 16s/20s if it wasnt Obrien and Moore, needs to step up big time and running 9 days after going 1m6 looks like an afterthought rather than a plan.

 

More concerned about the Jockey booking, well out of form is putting it politely

 

This really puts me off it. And without this so called 'info' from my friend I wouldn't be touching it

 

Dramatic Queen and Enbihaar are the obvious two, that's why they are as short as they are. At 5/2 and in the knowledge that it is tight and they can't both win I didn't think there was any value.

At the weights South Sea Pearl needs to find 10 lbs to be competitive. Maybe that's a big ask but she didn't see a racecourse until the 10th of May. There always has to be questions to answer when backing 12/1 shots, they would not be that price otherwise.

Threat was the only one the wanted to be with in the Richmond today but I felt Golden Horde was better value each-way 4 places and he pipped the hotpot. Hermosa was supposed to be the second coming going into today but she was pretty much useless so it doesn't pay to go in heavy all the time on the "Good things"

 

Golden Horde only had a couple of pounds to find and had only run 3 times himself so there was a more obvious case to be made for him than I can see here. Ive said all season that I thought Hermosa was overrated, her and Phoenix of Spain were both massively flattered by making all on a conveyor belt and both have been well beaten since, I except the same fate to await Sovereign as well. That said, Hermosa was obviously amiss yesterday so who knows how she would have got on had she run her race.

 

At 9/1 I wouldn't say there was an obvious case for Golden Horde. It was one of those times that when considering the relative odds after the race it became clear that Threat was way short.

Anyway, getting back to the Lillie Langtry and South Sea Pearl she has been supported now. The best odds are now 13/2 and her average across the boards is 11/2. My objective was to look for some value against the leading pair in the betting and if South Sea Pearl goes off at 6/1 and I am sitting with 12/1 then I will be happy with that. It's still long odds-on that she won't win but if she does it will be a decent return for a smaller stake risked. What you don't want to be doing in this game is firing big stakes at poor value favourites because even when they do win the odds of reward don't buy you much respite from the inevitable bad patches that strike.

Regarding Hermosa yesterday, Aidan O'Brien could offer no explanation for her poor run and the Vet said that post race examinations revealed no abnormalities. You have to wonder about the value of these post race interviews, with Jim Crowley reporting that Maqsad "Ran flat". Yes Mr Crowley, we all noticed that.

 

He was 3rd in the betting and was only 1.5L behind Threat in the Coventry, pretty obvious case for his e/w claims.

 

Were you on then? You have this terrible habit of being Mr Pedantic to the death. A real discussion killer.

 

I was on Threat at 5/2, dont back single figures e/w.

How is it being pedantic? why would the 3rd favourite not be an obvious e/w choice? especially given its close form with the favourite. Id imagine were Threat not in the race Golden Horde would have been clear or joint fav based on his Coventry form being the strongest in the race, only reason he was as big a price was due to there being no obvious reason why he should turn the form around with Threat.

The Coventry was a far stronger race than the Windsor Castle as shown by the multiple Group winners who have come from it already.

Id be very strong on Threat reversing the form with Golden Horde if they meet again, worked up pre race and quite keen from a wide draw, I think he will be seen to much better effect when held up. I think he would be unbeaten this season with a top jockey on.

 

I'm a little clueless with stuff like this but if the 'info' my friend was given was true how much would we expect £100k to effect the price. Was around 12s into around 5s now but a fair few horses been withdrawn since it was 12s which will have had big effect on the price too.

 

well the money has come , but the stable are having an awful meeting , and the jockey the same , will this be the one to buck the trend ?

 

If they’d had anything near 100k on it’d be a lot shorter. To put into context now, 2k has been traded since the market opened today on the horse on Betfair.

That said, it doesn’t mean they won’t be going in big tomorrow!

 

Cheers

 

You could still get 10/1 when the field was reduced to 7 runners, so to see the same firm now going 4/1 means that it has nothing to do with the smaller field because no more have come out since 10/1 was available.

4/1 is the best price available now and that has to be encouraging. She may not win and it's still well odds-on that she will not because 4/1 represents only a 20% chance of winning the race. However, if you can be sitting with 12/1 on a 4/1 shot in every race, you will have enhanced your chances of making long term profit because you are sitting with a horse deemed to have a 20% chance, when it was considered to have less than an 8% chance originally.

 

If you continually sit on horses that you have at three times the sp you don’t make long term profit, you get banned. I know!