The Portland Handicap

I'd really have liked to concentrate on the St Leger today but it's a viciously competitive renewal and you could make a good case for any one of half a dozen of them to be honest. For what it's worth, I think Excess Knowledge is a reasonable favourite and a reasonable price at 7/2 generally, Galileo Rock has strong claims if he takes his chance and of the rest I think Cap O' Rushes offers a chunk of value at 20/1

With that out of the way, let's look instead in a little more detail at the big handicap of the day, the Portland Handicap at 2.40pm. At first glance this looks far more difficult to work out than the St leger - an almost impossible puzzle. However, I think we can fairly easily reduce the field to the more likely contenders and we are getting some juicy prices to take our chance here.

Portland Handicap 14-09-13

There are some strong trends in the race.

All of the last 10 winners were rated 100 or below. On that basis we can get rid of:

DEFINIGHTLY, BOGART, MAGICAL MACEY and STEPS.

9 of the last 10 winners had their last run within 28 days or less. This allows us to exclude:

ELUSIVITY, AJJAADD and BURWAAZ

All of the last 10 winners had previously won a race with 14+ runners. So let's get rid of:

INXILE, RACY, and ANGELS WILL FALL

None of the last 9 winners (only 9 of the last 10 were run at Doncaster) were drawn 7 to 12 and only 2 of those 9 were drawn 1 to 6. I'm happy to stick with those drawn 13 and above. This allows us to exclude:

CONFESSIONAL, ZERO MONEY, EL VIENTO, PRODIGALITY, ANCIENT CROSS, ADDICTIVE DREAM, OUR JONATHON and MONSIEUR CHEVALIER

We are now reduced to a shortlist of 4:

DOC HAY, SECRET WITNESS, DOCTOR PARKES, BARNET FAIR.

To be honest, I'm not inclined to drill down any further than that. They are all big enough prices to turn a decent profit if any of them win (or a couple of them place) and  I will be having small each way interests on all 4 - with a slight preference for Barnet Fair who looks to have plenty in his favour.

Have a great weekend and be lucky whatever you are backing!

Kieran