The Ebor Festival starts at York tomorrow, and before we get to the racing there are 2 things worth telling you about.
The first is that our NAP competition is completely free to enter, for everybody. There is no membership needed and nothing to pay. Win the York Ebor Festival competition and you get our Professional ratings free for 5 weeks, and there is plenty more besides.
The second is that we have a batch of new features going live today, timed deliberately for this week. They are all listed on our What’s New page. If you have not looked at the ratings for a while, this is the week to look again.
Now to tomorrow. The first race is free for everyone to read, as always.
1:50 Hong Kong Jockey Club World Pool Handicap: 2 we like in a cavalry charge
The 1:50 is a 5f sprint handicap with 22 of them lining up, so the pace will be ferocious and where you are drawn and where you end up will matter enormously.
The first we want is Toca Madera (David O'Meara, Daniel Tudhope), who is already on our tracker from the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood. He finished fifth there at 25/1, and the run was a good deal better than the finishing position. He was down the near side, never got a clear run when he needed one, and once daylight finally appeared he finished like a train in a 27 runner cavalry charge.
The detail that matters is the mark. He ran off 96 at Goodwood and he runs off 96 here, so the handicapper has not touched him for that effort. He drops back to 5f from 6f, and if they go hell for leather again, which in a field this size they will, that suits him perfectly.
And look at the draw column on that grid. He was berthed 26 of 27 at Goodwood, in a stall our draw figure rated at 0.00%, and he still finished fifth. Tomorrow he comes out of stall 4, where the figure is 8.89%. Same mark, far kinder draw, and a strong pace to aim at.
The second is The Man (Richard Spencer, David Egan), and this one looks planned. He ran in this exact race last year, over this exact trip, and was beaten a head into second at 15/2. He was rated 92 that day. He runs off 89 tomorrow.
His form since has been quiet, and that is precisely how a horse comes to run off 3lb less than the mark he was second off. He also won over 5f at York in May of last year, so the track holds no fears.
He is drawn 3, where our draw figure reads 16.28%, and he wears a tongue strap and cheek pieces for the second time. A horse that goes that close in a race, then turns up 12 months later on a lower mark with a kind draw, has usually had the date circled for a while.