Beefy, do you call it passed-posting, after-timing or hindsight?
If you go back to Christmas Eve 2014, Ladbrokes were going 14/1 Gleneagles and he was behind Faydhan, Ol’ Man River and Ivawood in the 2000 Guineas betting. Well done anybody who took those odds. Territories was 33/1 then. On 15th March, Gleneagles was down to 9/1 favourite.
On the 31st March he was down to 100/30. On the 18th April he was down to 11/4 and Territories was more than 50/1 (not quoted on Oddschecker). On 19th April, Gleneagles was down to 2/1 and that only went out to 9/4 on 25th April when Territories was re-introduced at 9/1. On Friday night it was 3/1. All of those ante post prices were worse than the starting price and had the risk of losing your money if he did not show up. Congratulations to anyone who got the 9/2 on the day a few minutes before the off or who left it to the SP of 4/1.
According to the official ratings, going into the stalls of Saturday Gleneagles was rated 116, behind Ivawood (117), equal to Estidhkaar, three pounds better than Territories (114) and four pounds better than Kool Kompany and Cappella Sansevero (113). Gleneagles skinny ante post odds on 28th April were nothing to do with form and everything to do with weight of money.
I still do not think that Hamdan Al Maktoum would have made a decision to run more than one in the race by looking on Oddschecker to see what the punters were betting on but on the known form of the potential runners. On paper it was a wide open race.