There isn’t a great deal of AW racing in the next couple of weeks so I have been thinking of ways to keep the site even more vibrant. One thing I would like to do is write an occasional bit of editorial about things that are relevant to racing on sand. I used to do this as a sort of a ‘review’ when I was writing as King Of The Sand in the RFO and my first thought was to add it to the Hotlist on here. However, on second thoughts the ideal place to do it would be in the Blog, so here goes.

For those who are already subscribers they will be used to a little section called Sandform Snippets which appears at the end of the Selections page. These are things such as any Hotlist horses that have been declared to run at the meetings previewed on that day, and also the top Impact Values per distance at the track. For anyone unsure of how invaluable these Impact Values can be, have a look at Chelmsford’s meeting last Saturday (July 4th). The Snippets section said that the Impact value for Front-Runners over 7f was 2.3, in other words in the past year Front-Runners had won 2.3 times as often as they should on pure chance alone. This is what happened with regards to the running styles of five winners over that trip on the night.

5.10 Final Voyage ‘made all’ won 9-1

5.40 Cesifire ‘made all’ won 10-1

6.10 Afraid Of Nothing ‘soon led’ won 17-2

6.40 Miss Celestial ‘made all’ won 7-2

7.10 Full Intention ‘led until headed and chased leaders over 6f out’ won 3-1

This sort of information could have been especially valuable to in-running players!

Sometimes looking just that little bit deeper can reap dividends.