Golly. I leave the Generic Ratings for one week and all of a sudden I have an extra fifty horses to add to the list because one week became two! While I was typing their names in I thought I might as well add the twenty odd I haven't rated at all that are likely to contest this weekends racing on Caulfield Guineas day. Time will beat me to rate them all by the weekend but there is every chance I will have most of the open company fields covered for the week after, Caulfield Cup day, if I get stu

Golly. I leave the Generic Ratings for one week and all of a sudden I have an extra fifty horses to add to the list because one week became two! While I was typing their names in I thought I might as well add the twenty odd I haven't rated at all that are likely to contest this weekends racing on Caulfield Guineas day. Time will beat me to rate them all by the weekend but there is every chance I will have most of the open company fields covered for the week after, Caulfield Cup day, if I get stuck into them right away.

The most fascinating part of assessing the ratings is deciding how much notice to take of poor runs of the better fancied horses. Consequently, when the better rated runners do not fire extra horses you might not have considered too deeply suddenly win or finish up close and all of a sudden there they are: ready for rating. After watching the replay several times I am confident Road To Rock struggled in the going and could not accelerate with the same tenacity as when he won the George Main Stakes. Given a dry track he certainly could have won comfortably but then again Rock Kingdom was not known as a wet tracker prior to the Epsom win and he too could have won comfortably.
What about Rangirangdoo? It was mooted over the weekend by one of the racing people that he needs blinkers as he seems to have ranged alongside horses recently but has not gone past them. Would he have won with the blinkers on? Questions, questions.

At this stage there is absolutely no pressure on me to worry as I am not betting on the ratings but just forming the list however there will come a time when I will need to lay the dollars down. Hopefully by that time I will have made sure I rate horses like All Silent over a distance that caused me to not rate him on Saturday. I have given each horse a distance range and have only rated them in that range, naturally, but after the carnival I need to sit down and have a look at just how lax I was. How many did I miss that I should have rated? As always, in any ratings system, there will be glaring errors after a race but isn't that the same after many races we bet in via doing the form normally. The gift of hindsight is a much sought after gift in the real world and even more at the racetrack.

Well, you know my modus operandi by now and shortly I will really have a good look at the weights for Caulfield and Perth, tick the main chances, have a look at any issues relevant to runs from a spell or distance and basically have an idea of the top few horses I will make my A selection from. It is this sort of extra attention to detail that helps save a punter from backing an odds on favourite like Dante's Volonte in Perth last week. As I mentioned in my podcast I was worried he had never raced first up over 1200m and perhaps I was being over cautious but at those odds why bother backing a horse you have doubts about. Just the same I did not back the winner, London, an improving lightly raced runner, but backed Tarzi instead at 48/1 on Betfair. At the 200m mark when Tarzi started his run my heart started to flutter and thoughts of buying a house somewhere crossed my mind but alas it was not to be. So, I lost but at least I only lost a smaller amount than I might have backing Dante's Volonte.

See you all soon