Beware the herd mentality
All last week, in the lead-up to Sunday’s Tied Cottage Chase at Punchestown, the bookmakers created something of a surprise with the manner in which they bet the Grade 2 contest.
Essentially what they offered was 4-5 Big Zeb and 5-4 Sizing Europe and those odds made no sense, at least to me. Indeed, Paddy Power were even so bold as to go 11-8 Sizing Europe.
Pricing any race is shaped largely by opinion, but when you have everyone basically singing off the exact same hymn sheet then you just know the herd mentality has kicked in big-time.
Someone, somewhere amongst these organisations took a strong view on the race and the rest, apparently, slavishly and lazily decided to follow. We heard it through the week that Big Zeb would handle the testing conditions better than Sizing Europe and then the press began to buy into the notion as well.
And so it snowballed and everywhere you went you were informed that it was hard to choose between the pair, but the ground was the deciding factor and, on that basis, it had to be Big Zeb.
It was, of course, rubbish of the highest order, but the trick now was to say nothing, at least until we knew for sure both horses were going to arrive for the race and then to act accordingly.
Any serious look through the form book revealed there was little evidence that Big Zeb would handle the surface any better than Sizing Europe. We all knew Sizing Europe had twice come alive at the Cheltenham Festival on decent ground, but a soft or heavy surface has rarely been a big problem for him.
He is now a mature ten-year-old, seasoned and experienced and a testing surface was never going to be a major worry.
There were two other factors which also had to be taken into consideration and they were the fact he is a year younger than Big Zeb and also came into Sunday’s race with far superior form so far this season.
He produced a great effort against Quite De La Roque at Down Royal, only the last hundred yards of that three miles found him out, and his eight lengths demolition of Kauto Stone at Sandown, in the Tingle Creek, was an outstanding display.
There have been occasions in the past when Sizing Europe appeared to be a horse going nowhere, fast, but this campaign has been different in that he has looked in the best shape of his life.
Last season he was all out of sorts and how Henry de Bromhead managed to get him to win the two-mile Champion Chase at Cheltenham defied logic and was an extraordinary training performance.
His dismal third in last year’s Tied Cottage, behind Golden Silver and Big Zeb, saw him travel to Cheltenham more in hope than confidence and a returned prize of 10-1 told its own story.
Perhaps, it was that which played on the minds of the odds-compilers, but to allow it to exert too much influence was a mistake, with a lot of water having flown under the mythical bridge in the meantime.
Basically, what it all came down to was that, even if you had no definite view as to the likely outcome, you would certainly take odds of 11-8 and 5-4 all day on the toss of a coin.
This week the off-course layers are asking punters to come out to play Sizing Europe at between 5-4 and evens for the Champion Chase in over four weeks’ time.
What a laugh. They are the worst prices he can be on the day and, while Sizing Europe is now far and away the most likely winner, the tough lads and lassies who stand on the boxes at Cheltenham will know that here is a horse, like any other, who will be just one error away from disaster.
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OKAY then, who was leading the charge laying Willie Mullins’ The Bosses Cousin at Fairyhouse last Saturday?
A horse which has clearly had problems, the seven-year-old won a modest bumper at Leopardstown at Christmas in smooth style, which at least showed he was now on rather good terms with himself.
He was a solid order through the morning and seemed sure to go off an odds-on chance, in what had all the appearances of a bad maiden hurdle.
But the closer we got to the contest the more he drifted, driven, of course, by Betfair. It really was surprising, even accepting there was money for other horses.
Ruby Wash told us in his column on Saturday morning that the horse was well able to jump and Patrick Mullins was quoted in the Racing Post saying the same thing and that The Bosses Cousin was his best ride of the day.
As it turned out he made one serious error, otherwise his technique was excellent, and won without turning a hair. Puzzling or what?
