Rowleyfile Preview: Becher Handicap Chase 2016

The fences on the Grand National Course at Aintree may be not quite what they once were – a good thing in my book – but any race over them still represents a unique and demanding test. One such race is the Becher Handicap Chase, which takes place on Saturday, and for which 24 runners have been declared.

We can look at trends over the last 10 years, and we can consider the specific credentials of each of the contestants, but one of the abiding themes is this: you should expect the unexpected.

The average price of horses in the first four in the last three years has been about 16/1, with no winner at shorter than 14/1. You might easily have done as well by sticking a pin in.

Horses with a Timeform “squiggle” on their rating – indicating unreliability – have done quite well in the race. Highland Lodge and Dare To Endeavour finished first and second in 2015 with that symbol by their pre-race ratings and are back again 12 months on.

One other important theme to identify up front is specific to this year’s contest: there is an inordinate number of front-runners and pace-forcers in Saturday’s field. No less than 14 of those declared have Timeform Early Position Figures of 2.2 or less. Timeform predict the pace will be “very strongly contested”, a description seen rarely.

There are reasons why front-runners have tended to do well on the Grand National Course – they get a clearer view of their fences and have less carnage to pick their way through than those coming from the back – but such a run style will not be advantageous if the pace is cut-throat, as it could well be.

Nonetheless, let us look at some of those trends, with the effect in each category measured by wins, first-four places, impact values (performance compared to chance) for both of those and % of rivals beaten.

Nine-year-olds have over-performed and ten-year-olds under-performed from decent sample sizes, though it would be wrong to think that the effects were major. There appears to be little in weight carried (or its near cousin BHA mark, which is not shown).

A more interesting finding is that horses making their reappearances have done notably well – winning nearly three times as often, and placing nearly one and a half times as often, as chance – though the sample size is not large.

Last-time winners have not done all that well, which seems to underline the “expect the unexpected” message above.

At the end of the day, it still comes down to value, to whether or not you believe a horse’s odds are bigger than they should be (and at how good you are at judging such things). After trawling through the two dozen contenders I will be siding with two.

First off, Vieux Lion Rouge makes appeal as a well-treated individual who has experience over the fences despite being only seven, having failed to last out the marathon distance when seventh in the Grand National itself in April.

He has not been seen since – meaning that he is one of a handful of reappearers in a race in which such horses have fared well – and his EPF of 3.4 means he can be expected to be out of any dogfight for the lead that ensues. I was hoping for odds a bit bigger than the early 12/1 quoted, but I still think that represents a bet.

Ziga Boy is less obvious (though that didn’t stop one bookmaker hacking him from 28/1 to 20/1 just before this blog was filed), but there are sound reasons for thinking he will outrun his odds on this occasion.

The Alan King-trained gelding can be made well-treated on the winning form he was showing around the turn of the year, and heavy ground was probably against him when he finished a well-held fifth at Bangor after a break last month.

Ziga Boy nonetheless shaped that day as if retaining all his ability, improving promisingly into second before fading. I would be confident that he can make an impact off Saturday’s mark of 137, though how he copes with the demands of Aintree remains to be seen. Ziga Boy tends to race close up, but usually without leading.

This is not a race to get heavily involved in, and the terms are not so favourable to each-way betting as is sometimes the case, so a couple of win bets looks to be the way to go.

Recommendations: 1 pt win VIEUX LION ROUGE at 12/1, 1 pt win ZIGA BOY at 20/1.