LEGAL EAGLE NEW J&B MET FAV

Garrick wrote: Slow down, boys! All this debate about the favourites. The Met has a long history of being won by lesser fancied runners so beware horses which are displaying suspect form in their prep races.

A bookmaker once advised me to pass on punting in big races altogether for the following reasons;

Favourites average about 5/2 in major races. Hardly a gift when you consider that a Grade 1 is one of the few occasions where you are taking on a field which is 100% alive with all runners genuinely out to try and win. You can get the same price most weeks in a maiden plate where only a handful of runners are likely to bother the fancied runner/s for a number of reasons; ranging from the horse actually being useless to inexperience etc. Better proposition!

The Met became a conditions race in 1973 although the selfsame conditions have been tampered with in recent years. You might also like to take out the superstar multiple winners from that period such as Politician & Pocket Power. But for evaluation purposes I list hereunder the real 'roughie' results since that date:

1973 - Gold Flame
1981 - Queen's Elect
1985 - Charles Fortune
1989 - Fearless Streaker
1994 - Pas De Quoi
1998 - Imperious Sue
2001 - Bunter Barlow
2005 - Alastor
2010 - River Jetez
2011 - Past Master
2013 - Martial Eagle

To the best of my memory all of the above, with the possible exception of Past Master (who delivered a poor Queens Plate before winning the Met), started at odds of 10/1 or longer. So statistically you have a 1 in 4 chance of being rolled by a roughie if you back the favourite in this race.

Makes a mockery of the odds on offer about Futura & Legal Eagle right now.

Magi wrote: @Naresh...from memory.... and I may get shot down... I reckon Yataghan had Bertie Hayden in the saddle there... and for the Sledgehammer one... I get confusing stuff in my kop {reaches for another double) Fred Rickaby springs to mind ... but also Michael Roberts.... aishhh {downs a quick shot.... thinks 'fark this'} {meanders off
to find a SYT}

chicken n chips wrote: Looking at the records Sunshine Man was another rank outsider to win the Met in 1980.