We’re back to trends again – start of the flat season, wouldn’t you know it – and, at first glance, four-year-olds have a really impressive record in the Lincoln. Three of the last four renewals, and six of the last nine, have been won by four-year-olds.
It makes sense that four-year-olds should do well in the Lincoln. They are last year’s three-year-olds, they are probably fairly lightly-raced and they have more potential than their elder rivals to progress during the winter, away from the gaze of the handicapper. Most of them are starting this season on the mark on which they ended last season, but they may have matured during the winter, they may be stronger and more able now than they were when they last appeared in public, yet they still get to compete off last season’s mark.
So, following the logic above, if you back every four-year-old in the race, there is a probability of 0.75 (three out of four) or 0.66 (six out of nine) that you will back the winner. That’s a 1/3 shot or a 1/2 shot.
There are only three four-year-olds set to line up in today’s race, Cocozza, Fury and Askaud, priced up, at best prices, at 10/1, 8/1 and 50/1 respectively. That means that, if you split stakes proportionately, you can back all three at combined odds of around 7/2. Back a 1/3 or 1/2 shot at 7/2? Every day of the week sir.
But not so fast there grasshopper. For starters, four-year-olds have been very well-represented in the Lincoln in recent years. Unsurprisingly, more four-year-olds than any other single age group have run in the race in the last 10 years. Also, they are often over-bet. Of the six four-year-olds to have won the race in the last 10 years, three of them were sent off as favourite, and four of them were sent off at 5/1 or less. If you had had €1 win on every four-year-old who ran in the race in the last 10 years, you would be showing a net loss of over €20, despite the fact that you would have collected after six of the 10 races.
Fury and Cocozza in particular are obviously very interesting contenders. Fury was a sneaky outsider for last year’s Guineas, sent off at as short as 12/1 in the race on the day, before running creditably to finish fifth. He didn’t win in four attempts after that, all of them eminently winnable heats, but he is obviously talented, first-time-out could be the time to catch him, and he has dropped to a mark of 98 from a mark of 106, which makes him really interesting. But best odds of 8/1 about him are no better than fair.
Cocozza is at least as interesting. He was highly thought-of last season when he was with John Oxx, but things didn’t go smoothly for him, he had to be withdrawn at the start of Leopardstown’s Guineas Trial and he was a bit of a talking horse thereafter. But he didn’t win in three attempts, and he has now left John Oxx. Marco Botti is a good trainer, but they don’t often improve for leaving Oxx’s, unless they go to Paul Nicholls or Noel Meade, and he is also short enough at 10/1.
Eton Forever is much more solid, and he is a more attractive betting proposition now that he has drifted out to 7/1. Roger Varian’s horse is five, but he has raced just eight times in his life, and he still has huge scope for progression. The Spring Mile that he won over the Lincoln course and distance on this day last year has worked out really well, and he wasn’t at all disgraced in his three subsequent runs. He goes well fresh, and Varian has probably had this race in mind for him at least since the end of last season.
That said, best odds of 7/1 about him are no better than fair. He was a little weaker in the finish of the Hunt Cup at Ascot last year than you would have expected, and that is a little bit of a worry in the context of the Lincoln, another fast-run, big-field, straight-track one-mile handicap.
Actually, he doesn’t have much in hand of Start Right on their Hunt Cup running, and Start Right had to race further away from the favoured stands rail than Eton Forever did. Since then, the ex-Luca Cumani-trained gelding was unlucky not to win a good Sandown handicap, and you know that he is fit because he has run three times at Meydan this spring since joining Godolphin, running well without winning, when there have been excuses. He has been threatening to win a decent handicap like this for a while now, and he has apparently been working well in a visor, which he wears for the first time in a race tomorrow. 12/1 about him looks like better value than 7/1 about Eton Forever.
Don’t Call Me and Stevie Thunder and Smarty Socks are others who look overpriced, all at around 25 on Betdaq, but it is a wide open handicap, as is usually the case for the flat season’s openting gambit, so tread warily.
Did you know that as well as checking the realtime prices on BETDAQ below – you can also log into your account and place your bets directly into BETDAQ from BETDAQ TIPS.
