Pardon me but at times I think you are too RPR obsessed. Trust what you see with your own eyes. The horse has been keeping company slightly too rich for him but still running good races.
Keep Busy is the only 3yo in the race and the WFA makes him the favourite. 3yo's won this four times on the spin in the noughties but have drawn a blank since 2010. It would take an extraordinary effort for a 3yo to beat these seasoned campaigners but best of luck.
I narrowed it down to two and picked the wrong one. Dakota Gold was a drifter but he stayed on strongest to win it. I don't think any of his earlier season efforts would have given him a chance today but clearly stated that his latest effort was a return to form. I am not sure why you would need to take issue with my method of selecting horses. Surely it is each to their own. You have a big following here and get plenty of winners. Not sure why you just can't be happy with that but hey ho.
Trends sometimes pay off but sometimes they don't. I have always felt that trends are the lazy man's way of eliminating runners without adequately studying the form. In its own it is ridiculous to think a horse cannot win based on its age, when others of the same age have won in the past.
I am not a RPR obsessed person by any means. I have fiercely criticised them many times on this forum and I think some of their figures are ridiculous. The thing they have going for them is that they at least offer a figure of some sort to judge a race by when the official Handicapper is unwilling to put a rating forward.
In short, you put your view forward today and were proven to have picked the correct horse. I assessed the race and narrowed it down to two but preferred the filly because she had been finishing nearer to the fore in her races this season. I gave Dakota Gold every chance and hardly detracted from you putting him up. It's a ****ty forum if people cannot have a different viewpoint.
Watching today's race, I felt Keep Busy was just about going to come through and win it after running on quite well for pressure. In the end her run just flattened out as Dakota Gold kept on that bit stronger and Keep Busy dropped to 3rd. Sometimes in this game you study and get paid, sometimes you study, get a good fist of it and don't get paid, Mine were 3rd and 1st in that order and I expressed a concern that Major Jumbo was only a place player and not a win prospect. He was the disappointing one in the end. Most of my analysis was done without RPR's and they are only there as an extra guide to what sort of ballpark the contenders have been running to in recent times.
Winning is everything in the end with punting but I believe it is worth studying horses and not just deciding that they will win but also ascertain WHY they will win. I read the race afterwards win or lose to see how my expectation of how the race would shape actually compared to what transpired. It is my belief that if you can visualise a race before it happens and then see it working out roughly as you felt it would, then you can separate out when you collected by judgement and when perhaps you picked a winner but not for the reasons you had truly envisaged.
I am happy with the way I assessed the 3.30 Beverley today and would approach another race using the same methodology.
Well done with Dakota Gold, as I said, he was back to something like his best at Ripon.
