Back in the February edition of Practical Punting Monthly, regular readers may have read my discourse entitled “The Rules for Slipper Success” and in it I had attempted to outline some fairly precise tenets which you could use to divine the winner of the Golden Slipper.
A number of people still believe that the Golden Slipper is nothing but a lottery but I really don’t feel that way at all. I’m quite certain that there are a definite set of imperatives that all the Slipper winners of the past had in their possession when taking out the big race. Looking at the vast history, Slipper losers can help to support up these ideas still further.
It was always my intention to go back over the information laid out in the article to make sure that readers would understand if they had gone wrong at any point during the analysis of the race while using these rules.
Fortunately, the result did verify much that was stated in the article and in this review article we shall pick over the bones of the race to see how that Slipper field was whittled down to a final few possibles. I shall start by laying down the full field from the beginning and apply each of the six rules in turn so that we can see who gets to stay and who gets chucked out at each stage.
Here’s the full field again with their barrier positions included:
GROUP 1 GOLDEN SLIPPER (1200M)
| Runner | Barrier | Jockey |
|---|
| 1. Murtajill | 14 | J Cassidy |
| 2. Meurice | 4 | H Bowman |
| 3. Shaft | 12 | D Beadman |
| 4. Deferential | 3 | R Quinn |
| 5. Zizou | 6 | C Williams |
| 6. Husson Lightning | 13 | T Clark |
| 7. Incumbent | 16 | M Rodd |
| 8. Cecconi | 10 | C Brown |
| 9. Press The Button | 2 | G Boss |
| 10. Downhill Racer | 9 | Z Purton |
| 11. Chinchilla Rose | 11 | S Katsidis |
| 12. Sleek Chassis | 16 | D Dunn |
| 13. Hurried Choice | 5 | B Pengelly |
| 14. Rose Ceremony | 7 | S King |
| 15. Vecchia Roma | 8 | J Ford |
| 16. Forensics | 1& | D Oliver |
RULE 1 - RACE TIMES
In the February PPM I had laid out an explicit list of race times that a Slipper contender must have achieved if they were to win the Slipper. The race times were set out for 1000m, 1100m and 1200m and came with a couple of extra stipulations.
These times needed to have been achieved when coming 1st or 2nd in a race, and that race will have needed to have been anything except a maiden race. Both of these stipulations probably struck you as fairly obvious standards being met and indeed they are. They are based on factual observation as I see it and are drawn from the long list of losers of the Golden Slipper.
It would seem that producing a quality time when finishing 3rd or worse might amount to one of two things – a flattered finishing position or very fast ground. I like this rule most of all as it is built on some hard-nosed empirical data. Its application seems to be very effective.
I’d stated that applying the race time rule would whittle the field down by a sizeable percentage and 2007s field was no exception. Quite a few horses failed the race time test leaving these horses remaining:
| Runner | Barrier | Jockey |
|---|
| 1. Murtajill | 14 | J Cassidy |
| 3. Shaft | 12 | D Beadman |
| 5. Zizou | 6 | C Williams |
| 6. Husson Lightning | 13 | T Clark |
| 12. Sleek Chassis | 16 | D Dunn |
| 16. Forensics | 1 | D Oliver |
As you can see, the race time rule can have a dramatic effect in isolating the real contenders in the Slipper.
RULE 2 – CONTESTING MAIDEN RACES AFTER JANUARY 1ST
This is an immensely useful rule for chucking out quite a few unlikely candidates. My feeling is that it can also act as a very good barometer measurement concerning the class of the field. Generally speaking, I find that the more contenders there are (that had contested post-January 1st maidens), then the weaker the field seems to be. However, this rule had very little bearing on this year’s race.
Only Rose Ceremony would have fallen foul here but she had been excluded already by Rule 1. Rule 2 became rather redundant this year but this probably reveals the strength in depth of this year’s race. Still, the objective of the article was to offer up something that can be used year in and year out so Rule 2 still remains important to exercise every year. As Rule 2 failed to weed out any particular horse, the field remained the same:
| Runner | Barrier | Jockey |
|---|
| 1. Murtajill | 14 | J Cassidy |
| 3. Shaft | 12 | D Beadman |
| 5. Zizou | 6 | C Williams |
| 6. Husson Lightning | 13 | T Clark |
| 12. Sleek Chassis | 16 | D Dunn |
| 16. Forensics | 1 | D Oliver |
RULE 3 – LAST START PERFORMANCE
A number of sub-rules were applied to the last start performance of the contenders and most of these sub-rules revolved around a contender’s achievements at pattern level. The Golden Slipper is probably the most competitive race in the calendar so the last start performance cannot afford to be sub-standard in any way at all. The last start performance of any contender in the Slipper is vital to scrutinise, as history shows that any horse that runs below the minimum standard is likely to flounder.
Once again this rule, when applied to the remaining horses in our line-up, failed to remove any horses from the field but, as with Rule 2, don’t be deceived by this rule’s importance either. As I’d mentioned in the February article, quite a few people in years gone by had chosen to overlook the last start performances of Assertive Lad and Secret Land, the respective favourites of the 2000 and 2004 Golden Slippers, even though Assertive Lad had lost his Group 3 lead-up race and when Secret Land had only ever won at Listed level. Keep an eye out for these sorts of impostors as they can appear fairly regularly.
RULE 4 – CAREER PERFORMANCE
Evaluating the career performance of Slipper contenders is, of course, simply form study by another name. My ideas of a sound career performance for a Slipper contender probably struck no one as being particularly insightful and no doubt these sub-rules came across as being nothing more than common sense.
Still, don’t forget that they were gleaned simply from analysis of the past and contained a number of important little conditions that need to be ticked off the checklist. Once again, a contender should have:
- Succeeded in winning a race in pattern company (i.e. Group 1, 2, 3 or Listed races).
- Succeeded in winning a race (other than a maiden) at a distance of 1100m or more.
- Succeeded in coming 1st or 2nd in one of it’s last two starts.
- Succeeded in winning a race that contained 10 runners or more.
- Raced within the last 28 days.
A contender should not:
- Be a maiden.
- Have come last at any point its career.
- Have contested handicap company in March or April.
Naturally enough, it should have struck most punters as a pretty desirable thing that a true Slipper contender should have won a pattern race but that it’s possibly not so obvious that a contender should have shown a modicum of stamina before taking on the Slipper.
The Golden Slipper does contain quite a sizeable stamina requirement brought about the size of the field. Sixteen runners over 1200m is quite an ask for a young horse and anyone who may have read my three-part series on stamina in last year’s PPMs, will know how I feel on the subject of the field size and how it figures in the stamina condition of a race. How does a Slipper contender reveal it’s stamina capacity?
Well history shows that each and every Slipper winner has managed a win at 1100m or more and managed to win a race that contains 10 runners or more. Winning a 10-plus runner race doesn’t just help to educate the young horse in coping with the ultra-competitive jostling that takes place in a Slipper but it also reveals whether the animal can cope with the quick and even tempo that the Slipper’s double-figure field will produce.
Did these rules manage to chip away at our short-list of contenders? Yes – Zizou. Zizou had not achieved a win in a double-figure field in his career leading into the Golden Slipper so he had to be ejected. The field then looked like this:
| Runner | Barrier | Jockey |
|---|
| 1. Murtajill | 14 | J Cassidy |
| 3. Shaft | 12 | D Beadman |
| 5. Deferential | 3 | R Quinn |
| 6. Husson Lightning | 13 | T Clark |
| 12. Sleek Chassis | 16 | D Dunn |
| 16. Forensics | 1 | D Oliver |
RULE 5 – BARRIERSGetting a decent barrier is pretty vital in the Slipper and the circus surrounding the barrier draw is an event in itself. There are always a few long faces after the draw if someone gets a wide berth and I would feel the same way too, given the long list of horrid stats that go with them. In a nutshell, it would seem that the barrier should be summed up in this little statement – get a wide draw and you’re stuffed.
Mind you, I don’t completely subscribe to this view but drawing wide is definitely tough to overcome. More specifically, if a horse starts in draws 12-16 then his or her chance is significantly dimmed. Barriers 13 and 16 have not yielded a winner yet in the race. The reasons why wide barriers don’t work are pretty obvious but I shall go into them nonetheless.
Most Slipper winners are young sprinters who know little about the subtleties of racing. They usually know of only one method of racing and that’s to break quickly, get to the front and stay there. Those with this racing style that get drawn low, get the critical and easy advantage to nab the front pozzies that those drawn wide do not.
Looking back at our short-list we can see that poor Murtajill was given a very tough task from barrier 14. It was not decided by connections at the time as to how he would be raced but it seemed that he was all but cooked. Shame really, as I’d fancied his chances in the Slipper straight after I’d seen him in his first ever career start at Flemington.
Still, he had to be chucked from the short-list. Shaft immediately became shafted after his wide barrier became known. His wide draw, coupled with his racetrack inexperience, meant that he had to be dropped. Husson Lightning, according to his trainer, was going to make a beeline straight for the front and the application of his first-time blinkers was going to make damn sure this would happen. Sadly, because of his wide barrier, this meant his chances vanished in a puff of smoke, too.
Sleek Chassis was a different scenario though and I felt that her chance hadn’t necessarily gone as she still had the fillies’ weight advantage that can be helpful enough for a good, strong filly to make a winning bid.
Yet, when her barrier was made clear, the market made quite an over-reaction to her plight with a significant drift to $11. I’d stated in the PPM article that you would need a very good reason for picking a horse drawn in 12 to 16 but I’d felt that I’d still had one with Sleek Chassis. The short-list then looked like this:
| Runner | Barrier | Jockey |
|---|
| 5. Deferential | 3 | R Quinn |
| 12. Sleek Chassis | 16 | D Dunn |
| 16. Forensics | 1 | D Oliver |
RULE 6 – BREEDINGIn my Golden Slipper article I had stated that a real Slipper contender needed to have the right kind of dosage profile to score in the Slipper. What this essentially boiled down to was looking at the inherited speed within a pedigree.
Dosage offers a bit of insight here because all the Slipper winners of the past had set two very clear standards. Firstly, they all had a Dosage Index of 1.40 or higher and, secondly, they all had a minimum of four “speed” points in their dosage profile. I’ll grant you that it’s a pretty small amount of pedigree information but it can still prove crucial.
These dosage “speed” points ensure that there is sufficient inherited speed to begin with but it also helps in getting the animal to mature earlier too – a vital necessity for a two year old trying to win the world’s richest juvenile horse race. As it turns out Deferential failed the dosage test. His dosage index was 1.25, which was, of course, lower than the 1.40 minimum set by Rule 6. This left:
| Runner | Barrier | Jockey |
|---|
| 12. Sleek Chassis | 16 | D Dunn |
| 16. Forensics | 1 | D Oliver |
CONCLUSIONMy deductions for the Golden Slipper of 2007 left me with Sleek Chassis and Forensics and it was these two that I backed, in separate singles bets, and put them both into a quinella. It is at this juncture that I feel more than a pang of guilt because I was about to back a John Hawkes’ horse that did not have Darren Beadman aboard. In February’s article I had stated explicitly that backing a Hawkes’ horse that Beadman rejected was the sort of thing that one shouldn’t do.
No doubt many of you will have stuck rigidly to my words and found themselves backing either a loser or maybe nothing at all. If you’d followed my advice to the letter and given Forensics a miss then you will no doubt feel disappointed. Nevertheless, Beadman’s judgment is still first-rate and his rejections will still need close scrutiny in the years to come.
However, I’d personally decided that including Forensics in my final field was required due to other reasons flowing out of the recesses of my racing knowledge. First, the booking of Damien Oliver for a Hawkes’ horse was highly unusual and one felt that this was not the normal move for a Hawkes’ second string.
Blake Shinn, Rod Quinn or perhaps an apprentice normally rides Hawkes’ second-string horses but Oliver’s form over the season in Melbourne had been terrific and he was an eye-catching booking. Still, this was not the most significant reason for keeping Forensics on the short-list and I had another line of enquiry that drew my attention.
I am prone to lining up the Slipper field with each competitor’s yearling price that it made at auction. As it turned out, Forensics was the most expensive purchase in the Golden Slipper line-up at $900,000. This fact in itself, had reminded me just how much the Ingham family had been spending at the big sales events in recent years.
When I was watching a re-run of the barrier draw I also noticed how Gai Waterhouse had gushed about John Hawkes’ two-year-olds. Mrs Waterhouse was asked for her reaction to the Slipper draw so she took to the podium.
I couldn’t help but notice how she spoke at length about not just her horses but her rivals’ horses, too. After she uttered the words“ . . . and John Hawkes has some beautiful horses”, from those hypnotic lips of hers, it reinforced my view that Forensics could not be dismissed from calculations at all. As a consequence, Forensics remained a selection and I breathed one hell of a sigh of relief as she past the post. After the race was run, I confess that my win did little to elevate me.
While I knew that I had won, I felt certain that there would be readers of PPM out there who would not necessarily have done so. If you were one of those punters then I hope that time, the great healer, will come to your aid. Do not let this episode stand in the way of what is a successful method of deducing the winner of the Golden Slipper.
By Julian Mould
PRACTICAL PUNTING – JUNE 2007