I wish I could avoid all races with more than a dozen starters.The recent Doncaster was a case in point. Nineteen of the beasts and probably fourteen arguable chances. The favourite got buried early and that was that for him.The way I see it, there are are only two or three types of runners that can even be considered in large fields. The rest present us with too many question marks.If I am tempted to explore a large field, I want to identify:1. the on-pace runners.2. the runners with very high

I wish I could avoid all races with more than a dozen starters.

The recent Doncaster was a case in point. Nineteen of the beasts and probably fourteen arguable chances. The favourite got buried early and that was that for him.

The way I see it, there are are only two or three types of runners that can even be considered in large fields. The rest present us with too many question marks.

If I am tempted to explore a large field, I want to identify:

1. the on-pace runners.

2. the runners with very high win strike rates.

3. the runners being ridden by the very top and in-form jockeys.

If I can get all three, I get interested. I wish I could say with hand on heart that it's always that way, but I STILL get lured in by really attractive prices about some horses that are a risk (backmarkers, for example). After all my years, I can at least say to you that you must learn by my long experience. A big race field is a minefield.

They're all a bookie's dream.

The line you sometimes hear peddled by a few of the "experts" is "the bigger the field, the bigger the certainty".

That is total nonsense! The bigger the field, the more dangers there are, and not just the other horses. I repeat, big fields are minefields.

Why those three demands I listed above? Well, on-pacers tend to get into less trouble. You know where they'll be, and whatever happens in the ruck won't affect them. If they have very high win strike rates (say 50%) at least we are with a winner. On stats alone it can repeat.

And I do like top riders who are in form. Look at Jim Cassidy at the moment. Trainers are beating a path to his door. Amazing man, never ridden better. When he arrived as a kid to ride Kiwi in the Cup, we'd never heard of him. He and Brian Mayfield-Smith knocked Tom Smith off the top of the NSW premiership after Tommy had been The Man for about four thousand years.

A high performing on-pacer with a top in-form jock will do me. Otherwise leave me right out of those big fields.