Last week I discussed some early-season punting angles for two-year-olds on the Flat, covering foaling dates, trainers, owners and sires, and I’m now going to turn my attention to the three-year-olds…
Three-year-old newcomers
Since the beginning of 2021, blindly backing three-year-old newcomers on turf in Britain and Ireland at SP would have seen us lose 38.61% of our total stake…
…but that decreases to 12.83% at Betfair SP after 2% commission and this group of runners performed marginally better than the market expected, with a WAX (winners against expected) score of 6.78 and an actual over expected figure (A/E) of 1.03 (anything over 1.0 is good).
Splitting these runners by sex (c = colt, f = filly, g = gelding) reveals a small profit at Betfair SP for the colts…
Geldings return a big loss at SP and a Betfair SP but there are a handful of trainers that have a good record with gelded three-year-old newcomers (the results for 2016 onwards are shown below)…
…Tom Clover’s 12 such runners produced four winners (40-1, 18-1, 15-2 and 11-2), a 20-1 second, three third places (17-2, 15-2 and 13-2) as well as a 28-1 fourth. The fourth place came from Rogue Rocket in last year’s Wood Ditton. He fared second best of those to race down the near side from what turned out to be a disadvantageous high draw, with the one who beat him on his flank – Charlie Appleby’s State Secret, later rated 111. Clover saddles SHOWYOUTHEROPES in the same race at Newmarket tomorrow (April 16) and the son of Showcasing was available at 33-1 at the time of writing.
Second time out three-year-olds
Three-year-old geldings who make a winning racecourse debut in maiden/novice often make good bets when bidding to follow up in novice company, whether on turf or the all-weather, landing 53 of their 121 starts since the beginning of 2019 for a profit of £38.50 to a £1 level stake at SP (+£74.69 at Betfair SP after comm)…
…Richard Hughes is four from four on this angle (10-1, 7-1, 5-4 and 4-5), as is William Haggas (13-8, 6-4, 5-6 and 1-4).
Some trainers have the knack of scoring with second time out three-year-olds in the early months of the peak Flat season (April and May), with Brian Meehan achieving the following results since 2010…
…a profit of £89.58 to a £1 level stake at SP. He has two qualifiers today (April 15) at Newmarket – Saguraro Blossom (125-1) in the 3.35 and Mahogany Bay (25-1) in the 4.45.
Since 2019, ED Walker, Ralph Beckett, Roger Varian and Fozzy Stack have also fared well on this angle…
Sires
Progeny of the sire Al Kazeem usually struggle at two but often improve markedly in their three-year-old season. The following table show the sire’s record with Flat turf runners in Britain/Ireland split by age…
The juveniles were just eight from 68 for a loss of £37.98 to a £1 level stake at SP, but healthy profits were returned by the older horses. Grouping those aged three and older together gives the following results…
…there is one qualifier at Newmarket today – Model Yuko in the 4.45 – and another tomorrow – Moby Quick in the 5.07 at Beverley.
Flat turf progeny of Golden Horn also have a superior strike-rate at three…
…we’d make a loss by backing them blind but splitting the three-year-old runs by month makes interesting reading…
…with a profit in April and May.
Summary
As a general rule, three-year-old gelded newcomers make bad bets, but some trainers have a good record with such types (e.g. Charlie Appleby and Tom Clover).
Those select few three-year-old geldings who win on their debut in maiden/novice company have a great record when bidding to follow up in novice company.
Consider backing second time out three-year-olds in April/May who were trained by Brian Meehan, Ralph Beckett, Ed Walker, Roger Varian and Fozzy Stack.
Expect improvement from three-year-old turf progeny of Al Kazeem and Golden Horn.