not so good brandy, 6's with koral and 7's with laddies, it did cross my mind that it was too big on here. thanks for the update though. cheers.

Yes, the bairn, noone is talking about her because connections have stated she wont come over, but she was left in at the latest stage and has slowly shortened on here. I doubt she would run myself, but stranger things have happened!

Cambridge ruled out.

Ed Dunlop runs two, Island Remede and Amazing Maria.

Tafasha is going to run according to Twitter.

Dermot Weld on Tarfasha: "If the going was good to yielding, I think we'd run, but if it was softer than that I think we'd wait for either Royal Ascot or the Irish Oaks. She's a very balanced filly but a good mover and I don't think she'd want soft ground. At the moment, Sheikh Hamdan is happy for us to run both (ie her and Taghrooda) but that's subject to the ground being suitable."

20 runners in at 6 day stage, 4 supplemented.

A Fascinating field for the Oaks, I cant think of any mid-distance 3yo filly missing, they are all there, loads of improvers and now Marvellous is a standout on form, from her classic win.

Like every 12F classic, it pays to look at middle-distance breeding to point the way in the last stamina sapping 2F, and to have the stayers on your side.  Look forward to dissecting the form and breeding this week, to see if my 25/1 bet on Taghrooda and saver on Marvellous at 7/1 are the full play or not.

how many horses have won a classic after being supplemented, can't think of any myself. cheers.

Kris Kin was an original Derby entry, was withdrawn and then later re-entered/supplemented, if I remember correctly.

thanks lads, not many though. cheers.

Amazing Maria  has to stay the trip but loads of sheer ability from the video evidence

Snow Fairy was supplemented before winning the Oaks if I remember rightly...

Is a low draw not normally an advantage?

Can't see it being a disadvantage for Madame Chiang. She will surely be dropped out the back and held up wherever she is drawn. It's obviously a risky strategy but there should hopefully be a decent pace on with at least Volume and Dazzling in the field and then she will need luck. If she is beaten it won't be because of the draw. It might be more of an issue for Marvellous.

^ and I would imagine Madame Chiang will take the same approach as Talent did.

I posted this table on the horseracing forum and was asked to replicate it here, basically it shows number of winners from each stall position over Epsoms 1m4f trip in double figure fields since the turn of the century.  I posted it to highlight the poor draw that Marvellous has been given:-

stall	expected	actual	runs
1	6.7	0	90
2	6.5	2	90
3	6.8	9	90
4	7.0	7	90
5	7.0	6	90
6	7.7	9	90
7	6.9	9	90
8	8.2	7	90
9	6.8	9	90
10	7.4	11	90
11	5.1	5	74
12	4.8	3	62
13	3.5	3	44
14	2.4	5	36
15	1.2	2	23
16	0.6	1	15
17	0.3	1	9
18	0.3	0	8
19	0.3	1	6
20	0.2	0	6
21	0.1	0	3
22	0.1	0	3
23	0.0	0	2
24	0.0	0	1

None from stall 1 is quite significant I would say and only 2 from stall 2.

There have been a few hard luck stories down the years, most recently The Fugue who was in stall 2 and got chopped up in-running. That's the difficulty.

This is from Ralph Beckett's blog after he won the Oaks last season.


A fortnight ago I wrote that I hoped this article would 'write itself', and in many ways it does, but where to start? As some of you know, we won The Oaks last Friday with Talent,but we also trained the second, the better fancied Secret Gesture.

Going into the race I was certain that we would win with Secret Gesture. She was thriving at home, and had been easily the most impressive trial winner. Of her rivals at the head of the market, Moth had been campaigned as though Ballydoyle had thought she was a miler,Liber Nauticus looked one paced in the Musidora, and the unexposed Banoffee had shown signs of temperament in the first quarter of her easy Cheshire Oaks win.

Our problem was that Secret Gesture drew stall one. Normally you wouldn't think that would be a problem in a twelve furlong race, However the statistics say that in 162 races run over course and distance since 2000 ,only two winners were drawn one! Furthermore the last Oaks winner drawn one was Bireme, 33 years previously.

This presented a tactical problem, should Jim Crowley ride her positively from the stalls and get into a good position...or should he drop her out and ride her for luck? We walked the course Beforehand, and decided to be positive. In the race itself it went partly to plan, she sat just in behind the pace,except that Jim didn't want to be on the rail, but she travelled really well and when the gap came over two furlongs out he pushed her through. At this point I thought we would win, but she had used up a deal of energy getting into position , and it told, though I was flabbergasted to see Talent flying down the outside and pull away to win easily. Whenever we have had two runners in a race I have found it impossible to watch both , so I had stopped watching Talent when she got into a barging match at the back of the field, at the top of the hill!

Do you think Secret Gesture was beaten by her draw last year?

I'm pretty sure Talent could have been drawn anywhere and won last year's renewal.

I can understand why the figures put people off but people say the same thing about Chester every year.

Track position is vital at Chester, as it is at Epsom, and it is easier to get a good position from a lower draw. However that doesn't necessarily mean a horse from a higher stall can't get good track position and win.

expected is how many winners you'd expect when you add up the s.p. percentages which are normalised to 100% for each race

Grendel, do you know what the statistics would be for 'percentage of horses beaten' rather than just win?