A busy week ended on a relative high with the good performance of the well backed Lake Forest who finished 3rd in the Breeders Cup Turf landing some nice place returns on the 20/1 Ante Post investment and another 180,000 dollars to take his total prize money to over $6million.
We suggested that the 16 runners on Friday and Saturday were all best watched, which was sound advice as they were all defeated, although they mostly ran to form.
After the glut of runners last week as we move into November there is a real sense of winter in the air and a move towards a small team of horses keeping things ticking over for Somerville Lodge until next Spring. There will be very few runners this week.
This year there are no Aussie bound runners and apart from a possible tilt at the two Lingfield AW listed races for fillies and mares in the middle of November the last 2 months of the year will be mostly focused on any 2yo’s running on the turf in early November and then on the AW.
From 63 races contested by 48 individual Somerville Lodge 2yo’s in November and December over the last two seasons, 15 races have been won. It is though, more about future betting opportunities than backing them in the current year.
I suspect there maybe a few more this year. Included in the list of 48 from 2024 and 2025 were seven that went on to be prolific high quality multiple winners including Merchant, Binhareer, Thunder Call, Saber Strike, Hoseki, Silver Lake and Extremely Zain.
Of the remainder, 10 of the 48 never ran during the Turf season as 3yo’s. As well as the 7 high class winners another 23 of the others all went onto win in the following year providing an excellent strike rate of 30 from 38.
Together with the list of 2yo’s that ran in October it provides us with a great starting point of around 30 Somerville Lodge 3yo’s to follow in 2027. Although probably around 30% will be removed either through not racing or running poorly during the winter months.
Significantly the horses that run in January and February on the AW generally fail to progress. In the last two years from a total of 19 only Power Fizz has progressed and improved during their 3yo season on the Turf.
I will provide a list of these horses once the turf season ends that will evolve as the AW winter runners get going.
There are no runners on Monday.
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