Peter
You might be a trifle unfair to Noel Harris. Over the years he has won a number of races by coming with the last run . . . a situation which compounds itself as trainers with horses which lack early speed tend to seek him out (I'd have loved to have seen Harris on Gee I Jane yesterday). He probably rides a higher proportion of this type of horse than any other jockey. A generation ago (maybe more now that I think of it), Bill Skelton got the nickname "Bustling Bill" because of his liking for taking the lead early. He also had a pretty busy style of riding. Any trainer with a front runner, or a horse they thought should be tried as one, wanted to put Bill on. And there was a South Island jockey, Arthur Eastwood I think, who was known as "the fullback" because he'd wait at the rear, a la Harris. I've only had one quick look at Saturday's fields, but I see Rokocoko is in and I expect Harris to have this horse in the first half dozen throughout. My take on positioning a horse is that it should be dictated by the tempo of the race. The idea is to arrive at the home turn in the best position to mount and sustain a challenge in the run to the post. In a slowly run race, out in front is best; in an evenly run race, camped on the leader is best; in a rapidly run race, out the back and getting into the clear is best. Unfortunately, not every horse is going to have the race run to suit its own preferred tempo . . . but that's racing. Gil ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Harrop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 10:07 AM Subject: Re: [racebase] Virtual Super 12 > > Hi Muz, > Gee, you have a long memory. > The biggest single factor in determining the winner is luck in the > running. > As a punter it is therefore advantageous to make luck as small a factor as > possible. I like Hayden because more often than not he has his horses > handy > on the turn and in a challenging position to win. This is opposed to > someone > like Noel Harris, who generally rides back and therefore sometimes his > horses don't win even though they may be by far the best horse in the > race. > There is more luck involved with backing horses ridden by Noel Harris. > People also laughed when I suggested a couple of years ago that the stats > of > Allan Peard suggested he was a good jockey. > Peter. > Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/racebase/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
