Rowleyfile Preview: Royal Hunt Cup 2016

In the endless battle between bookmaker and punter, races like the Royal Hunt Cup – with 30 closely-matched runners on a straight mile – tend to place the advantage with the former over the latter.

The race is tough enough to figure out without uncertainty regarding the state of the ground, the effect of the draw and exactly which horses will run. But doing your homework (or getting someone else to do it for you) can still reap dividends.

It is also the case that some bookmakers make an each-way bet in the race more appealing than they might. While the early-price win book comes in at around 146% – meaning that you would have to stake a total of £146 proportionately on every runner to guarantee a return of only £100 whatever the outcome – the same figure for a place is just £101, providing five places are secured.

Therefore, what follows will try to identify an each-way bet, or bets, on those terms and leave the win-only market to those with the hubris to try to overcome such unfavourable odds.

First, let us look at some of the “trends” in the race over the last 10 years.

Results have been favourable for those drawn highest of all, with five of the last 10 winners coming from stalls 25 to 30 and healthy figures by all other measures.

However, the last Royal Hunt Cup run on ground softer than good, according to Timeform, came in 1998. So, it is worth looking also at the results for large-field 7f and 8f handicaps on the course run on ground softer than good (the second table).

The over-performance by highly-drawn horses has not disappeared (providing you do not judge it by wins alone), but it has lessened, and lowly-drawn horses have done quite well also.

Five-year-olds have been the best age-group in the last decade, if not by much, while there is surprisingly little in it with regards to last-time position (you would usually expect last-time winners to fare a good deal better). A short or a long absence since a horse’s previous race can be considered a small negative.

One other feature of this year’s Royal Hunt Cup which may differ from most past ones is that there is less obvious pace on than usual. Indeed, only really Algaith – who is difficult to fancy – could be described as a habitual front-runner. The pace map for the race is at the foot of this piece.

There is a fair bit of information, some of it contradictory, to consider there. But, to cut to the chase, my two main each-way fancies, at what are longer odds, are Librisa Breeze and Master The World, and here is why.

Librisa Breeze is an able if rather quirky individual who did notably well to win at Wolverhampton in April on his only run for the in-form Dean Ivory, a performance which means he is the only horse in this race to get a sectional flag (a feature which has been doing particularly well since I left Timeform!)

He had won at Lingfield and Kempton in 2015 but is by no means “just” an all-weather performer, as his excellent second on soft ground at York on his final outing of that year showed. He sneaks into the Royal Hunt Cup off bottom weight (if none of the reserves run) and should really be a few pounds higher.

His high draw should be no problem, and it could even prove an advantage given the proximity of some of the little available early speed. I priced him at 14/1 and he can be backed at 25/1.

The latter price is also the one at which Master The World can be backed early on. Some of the five-year-old’s best efforts earlier in his career came on ground softer than good, but he has encountered such conditions only sparingly since.

Master The World did, however, finish third of 20 in the Balmoral Handicap at this course and distance on good to soft towards the end of last season and has run two creditable races this term when things have not entirely gone his way. He is undoubtedly capable of getting placed off a mark of 104 if things go right for him.

Librisa Breeze looks the more over-priced of the pair, and that is reflected in the suggested stakes.

Recommendations: 1 pt each way LIBRISA BREEZE, 0.5 pt each way MASTER THE WORLD, both ¼ the odds first 5 places