Rowleyfile Preview: Duke of Edinburgh Stakes

One of the enduring puzzles of Ascot as a racecourse is the apparent existence of draw biases where you would not necessarily expect them. Such as in larger-field 12f handicaps. 

Despite there being a run of nearly 4f to the first right-handed bend, the evidence is that there is an advantage to being drawn, not low and near the rail, but high and furthest from it. It can only be imagined that runners out wide tend to avoid the scrimmaging that afflicts others.

The evidence for this may be gathered from both the Duke of Edinburgh Handicap – the focus of this preview on Friday’s card – and the King George V Handicap, the latest edition of which will have taken place the day before.

There have been no winners from 20 races from the inside four stalls and lots of winners coming from stalls 9 and higher. More importantly, that analysis is backed up, if not quite so starkly, by the superior % of rivals beaten measure.

There are a few interesting take-homes from the other 10-Year Trends (for just the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes) in the above.

Four-year-olds have slightly outperformed five-year-olds and both have outperformed older horses by some way. Horses high up on Timeform weight-adjusted ratings have fared well, as have last-time winners (both should be expected to a degree), while a medium-length layoff has been better than a short or a long one overall.

It should also be pointed out that the bottom three of the 22 declared runners for the Duke of Edinburgh are reserves and unlikely to get in: stall numbers will shuffle across accordingly. The Joseph O’Brien-trained Ming would be an interesting contender on the off chance that he made it.

We can also consider “trainer form”, which some do not believe in as a concept. As judged by % of rivals beaten in handicaps in recent weeks, assuming a reasonable representation and a runner in Friday’s race, Roger Varian (Fujaira Prince) is easily best on 71.6%, followed by John Gosden (Ben Vrackie) on 59.9%.

The market has Baghdad and Fujaira Prince disputing favouritism in the early exchanges, and it is easy to see why.

The former won the King George V Handicap for three-year-olds at this course and distance 12 months ago from Corgi (another with a solid chance on Friday) and did well to get up at Newmarket last time in a steadily-run race that did not play to his strengths at all.

Baghdad is up a further 4 lb in the handicap (14 higher than this time last year) but should get the solid pace that suits him here.

Fujaira Prince is still going places after just five runs, and ran a fine race when a neck second to First Eleven at York last time (Corgi was in third) on his only go at this sort of distance.

Striding figures for Fujaira Prince at Doncaster the time before, courtesy of TPD and ATR, confirm he is a long and slow strider (2.10 to 2.26 strides/second), likely to be suited by this trip or even a bit further. That York race was not a thorough test of stamina (107% finishing speed) and there could be more to come from Fujaira Prince now.

On balance, I favour siding with Fujaira Prince in what is a tough contest. He does not tick all of the boxes in terms of trends but he does have a compelling profile in other respects and gets a bit of weight from the majority of his rivals to boot.

The race shape – of 19 runners and a handicap – makes it an appealing race for an each-way bet mathematically, with the win book at best early odds at 126% and the per-place book at just 103% Fujaira Prince has not finished out of the first two in five runs. More of the same will do nicely.

Recommendation: 1 pt e/w Fujaira Prince at 7/1, a quarter the odds first four places