Rowleyfile Preview: Bunbury Cup and John Smith’s Cup

Hardly a weekend seems to go by these days without a “Super Saturday”, “Super Sunday”, or both.

In horseracing, this coming Saturday could easily be described as “Super” two or three times over. Or perhaps it would be fairer to describe it as “Saturated”, with so little room between competing classy contests that bettors end up punch drunk.

My brief was to “preview either the Bunbury Cup at Newmarket or the John Smith’s Cup at York [both historic handicaps, less than an hour apart and with a Group 1 sprint sandwiched between them]”. Instead, I will enter into the spirit of saturation and preview both, if in slightly shorter form than usual.

Nonetheless, we should still look at the evidence, with measures, as usual, including impact values (wins/places compared to chance) and % of rivals beaten. Higher figures are better in both cases.

These are the most salient figures for the bet365-sponsored Bunbury Cup.

Horses drawn in the centre have had an advantage over those drawn on the flanks over the last 10 years, though not greatly so. Four-year-olds have been the best age-group (there are no three-year-olds in this year’s race, and, besides, four-year-olds have outperformed them). And the more runs in the current season the better judged on the last decade’s results.

Other useful things to know (not shown) are that last-time-unplaced horses have a perfectly good record, only just worse than last-time winners, and that a run in the previous month can be considered a minor advantage.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this year’s Bunbury Cup, however, is that there are relatively few pace-forcers in it: it should not be assumed that those near the front early will come back.

In the end, it all comes down to price, and a couple of horses stand out to me as being too big in the early betting. They are Mutawathea and Growl.

Mutawathea promises to be better suited by this race than he was by the shorter Wokingham Stakes at Royal Ascot last time, and a decent case can be made for him on what he was doing immediately prior to that effort. He nearly always runs creditably, for all that he may not be the easiest to win with, and an each-way bet looks worth the risk.

Growl should really be a single-figure price for this race, in my opinion, having won his last two races in style, but one enterprising bookmaker is going as big as 14s early doors. There is a doubt about his staying an extra furlong here – if not an especially big doubt – and a win-only bet looks a better option with him.

Between Mutawathea and Growl there should be every chance of getting a good shout in a race which is not as competitive as it often is.

The John Smith’s Cup is also a 20-runner contest but looks somewhat hotter, and that is reflected in early prices that go 8/1 the field. Some of the pertinent trends for the race look as follows.

Some people will tell you that a high draw is the kiss of death in this race, while others will point out that six of the last 10 winners have come from double-figured stalls (after recoding for non-runners).

The latter is true, but somewhat misleading, while the former would be overstating things. Nonetheless, a low draw has been clearly better than a high draw by the more meaningful measures of place impact values and % of rivals beaten.

Four-year-olds have done best (no three-year-old has run since 2010), a close-up finish without winning can be viewed as a positive, and a lengthy absence has not been favourable over the years. 

Despite that negative last-time-win information, I came round to the conclusion that Tawdeea is actually overpriced despite being marginal favourite in the early exchanges.

He has much of the right profile otherwise and recorded a notably good time when winning at Haydock on his last run, for which he picks up just a 5 lb penalty. That was at a mile and a half, but Tawdeea showed no shortage of speed previously, even winning at a mile as recently as May.

He has an inside stall and has gone from strength to strength so much of late that further improvement cannot be ruled out. Each-way terms for the John Smith’s Cup are not especially enticing at the time of writing, so win only is the way to go with him.

Recommendations:

1 pt each-way MUTAWATHEA in the Bunbury Cup

1 pt win GROWL in the Bunbury Cup

2 pts win TAWDEEA in the John Smith's Cup