Equinties - deep liquidity in Asia

Gm Equinauts

I’m normally in bed early af (I prefer getting up early) but the last few nights we’ve been doing hard slogs through the night to test, test and test again BGP Capital.

I’ll tweet when you can register your interest.

Now, let’s dive in.

Headline Roundup

Racing League Week 6 REVIEW

Yesterday, the Racing League signed off their 2022 campaign with Jamie Osborne’s Wales & The West leapfrogging Matt Chapman’s London & The South to win the competition in an emphatic style as Jamie’s daughter, Saffie bang home a treble on the night. Seriously, she did.

Tight finishes, the whole league turning on Chappers, and that completely miraculous treble from Saffie Osborne, a jockey who overtook Sean Levey (stood down by the BHA yesterday, we will get to this) to win the Racing League jockeys championship, certainly provided good entertainment for a Thursday evening.

The 6,539/1 Saffie treble began with TREGONY, a now three-time winner in this year’s Racing League, as he traveled all over the field and kicked on well to win easily – these victories, plus three second places, handed Wales & The West with a mountain of points to secure the league comfortably.

Winning team manager, Jamie Osborne, told ITV Racing: "It's been about seven weeks of trainers – the ultimate selfish animals – coming together as a team to try and beat Matt Chapman and we've done it!

"It's great it went down to the final night and could've gone either way - we saved our best cards to play on the last night.”

Team Ireland collected the wooden spoon after securing just 52 points at Newcastle – fair play, Kevin Blake, some achievement. HE DOESN’T CARE.

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Sean to join Ghiani on the stupid step?

So why was London & The South’s leading rider stood down from his book of rides at Newcastle yesterday?

According to reports, Sean Levey tested positive for a prohibited substance earlier in the week and was removed from his future rides by the BHA on medical grounds.

Having first been made aware of the issue on Wednesday before he completed his only ride at Sandown, Levey will also miss his rides at Newbury today while the BHA gathers further information.

Sash Righton, Levey’s agent, said that he did not know why the five-time Group 1-winning jockey had been put on the sidelines, though he didn’t believe the issue was injury related.

These are worrying times for the 34-year-old, especially after the recent drug-related news coming from Marco Ghiani – as we said for his case, it will be interesting to see how much information the BHA will reveal to the public in weeks to come.

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Quickfire news

The money's in the betting

Honk Kong Racing on Twitter revealed just how much Silvestre de Sousa has earned since moving over to their jurisdiction earlier this year – the difference compared to British Racing is staggering.

From just 14 rides in Hong Kong, de Sousa has collected £351k so far, nearly half as much as he had previously earned for the whole of 2022 back in the UK – victory in a £58,000 Class 4 event on his first ride at Happy Valley just shows the difference in prize money between our mediocre races and theirs.

Why or how is this happening? It’s their market size.

Don’t think of it as ‘just Hong Kong’, it’s China. China is a fucking lot bigger than the UK and their population have an insatiable appetite for gambling. It’s illegal to gamble in China so they all fuck off the mainland and head to jurisdictions like Macau and Hong Kong where they can fill their boots. Think Vegas for the States 10 years ago (the US is now opening to sports betting). The gambling money knocking around in Hong Kong is insane and a lot goes back into the racing.

Hong Kong has about 1300 horses racing in one or two big meetings a week, held at two big tracks (Sha Tin and Happy Valley) for hundreds of thousands of Dollars. Most of the betting money goes through their Tote too and the volumes are unimaginable.

This newsletter is not and will never be affiliated to a bookmaker, but the Tote World Pool is slowly allowing UK punters access to the Asian market liquidity, and everyone should be learning more about it. Yes, the Tote, like all bookmakers in the UK now have to implement affordability checks – I think this is a good thing anyway but once you’re through that, but big players now can move serious size. (Why I think affordability checks are good? I’ll get on to that another time).

Now, the one thing punters might sniff at is not knowing the price you’re getting, but tbf the Tote+ Win price beat the SP 70% of the time on World Pool days last year. Punters would be stupid not to look into how it could work in their favour long term.

More mares off to the sales

Following the news that we shared in the newsletter a few weeks ago, the two-time Gr1 winner SAFFRON BEACH will join ALCOHOL FREE at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale.

Jane Chapple-Hyam’s NEW BAY filly started her 2022 well by winning the Gr2 Duke Of Cambridge Stakes on her UK seasonal debut at Royal Ascot – this victory propelled her on to collect the Gr1 Prix Rothschild at Deauville in August.

The pair of high-class mares will be joined by Desert Crown’s dam, DESERT BERRY, in the sale which begins in late November.

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CYRNAME IS BACK (kind of)

And finally, Paul Nicholls’ 2019 Ascot Chase hero, CYRNAME, was pictured back with a saddle on his back yesterday as the 12-year-old was a part of the Retraining of Racehorses dressage demonstration at Blenheim House.

The NICKNAME gelding ran 20 times for the Champion Trainer across six seasons, collecting prestigious races like the Gr2 Wayward Lad Novices’ Chase, Gr2 Pendil Novices’ Chase, and the 1965 Chase when beating the then unbeaten Altior in November 2019.

It’s good to see the old boy back out in public – some lad!

Risk on

13.07 AJJAJ

40/1 here so nothing to go mad on but Hannon has targeted this race before and a good lad I know has sat on him and likes him. Sire is DARK ANGEL, nothing wrong with that at all and his dam sire is FRANKEL, who, as a dam sire is responsible for the likes of EYDON, NOBLE STYLE and QUEEN ME. so worth a speccy each way play, against a fav taking too much of the market. 40/1 small ew.

13.43 PASPALEY

A lot of unknowns in this race but I think this lad could be the best on track today. Full bet at 5/2.

15.28 HIGHBANK & CLASSIC

Small forecast here pays evens. Been told CLASSIC could turn over the fave but I’m not sure so sure sure so will go with the straight fc in a 4-horse race. 1/1 fc small.

16.03 SALEYMM

I’ve been with SACRED all year as I know she’s fucking good, but she seems to be keeping some for herself and doesn’t look the most honest filly. I'll probably have two small plays on the Crisford’s horse (yard can do wrong atm) – small win bet at 5’s and bet without SACRED at 2’s. He SHOULD hold JUMBY (a horse I love) on form through weight differentials when racing DUBAI POET. Small size win bet and bet w/o 5’s and 2’s.

17.05 VEE SIGHT

Best horse in race and if he doesn’t hang, should be winning today. Half bet at 9/4.

Note: several Equinauts have got in touch as they’re heading to Ayr and want my thoughts. I like KERINDA as an ew to nothing in the 14.35, GALE FORCE MAYA in the 15.10 and ECLIPSE DE LUNAR in the last. ECLIPSE DE LUNAR could be chucked in and won the race last year, he’s 8’s. The fave (Trackening horse, SHIMMERING SANDS) looks well handicapped and could just be tough to beat so if I was up at Ayr for the day, I’d probs put lunch money on the speccy rev fc paying 22’s and 26’s either way.