by Bren O'Brien
It's winter, it's three months until the Spring Carnival and you've got a wad of cash filling up your wallet. Of all the punting maxims, the two that stick fat, for want of a pointless sporting cliche, are 'odds on look on' and 'never back on a wet track'.
Our good friends at Betfair have fixed us up with the first one. Now we can pray on the gullible who like to back at odds on, by taking their bets and reaping the rewards. But as powerful as the world's biggest betting exchange is, they can't stop the rain. And at this time of year, you can't avoid the heavy and slow tracks.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the theory that wet tracks are bad for punting is a bit of a furphy. There are some days where the track is so chopped up that you have no idea where the winner will come from. In that case, keep your money in your wallet. But a day where a track is evenly soft can prove a boon for punters.
There is no exact science as to why some horses handle the wet and others don't. But over time, it is apparent that breeding plays a major part. There is even evidence to suggest horse colour makes a difference with grey horses seemingly having an edge on affected tracks.
That may have something to do with the breeding background, given every grey horse must have a parent which is grey, or carries grey characteristics. All grey thoroughbreds hark back to one ancestor, Alcock's Arabian. Statistically, greys do perform better on wet tracks, but only marginally. A study a couple of years back revealed grey horses win just over 10 per cent of races on wet tracks, and a litter under 10 per cent of tracks rated dead or better.
Looking at breeding, most of the top ten performing sires on wet tracks only have a few runners. Of those who have had over 100 starters on wet tracks, only three, Revoque, Giants Causeway and Choisir have better than 17 per cent strike rates. Horses by Revoque have over a 20 per cent success rate on wet tracks, compared to 12.6 per cent overall, Giant's Causeway-bred horses have an 18.5 per cent record on wet tracks, compared to 13.7 overall, while Choisir compares well at 17.7 to 12.6 overall.
Those punters in Victoria will remember Jugah, Toy Pindarri and Archway as three of the best wet track producers of the last decade. But the proficiency of their progeny on wet tacks is a bit of a myth. Horses by those three sires have only a slightly better (around one percent) success rate on wet tracks than they do overall.
Of course, all this concentration on sires is only half the story. The breeding on the dam's side may also be important, as Abbott and Costello, and later Kramer from Seinfeld put it, if 'His mother was a mudder'. Of course, breeding can sometimes count for very little in racing (remember Spikes, the full brother to Lonhro and Niello).
Wet tracks also tend to be tougher on a horse, so look for horses which are fit, and have won, or performed well at distance ranges beyond the one they are taking on. Of course, jockeys and trainers are important as well as barriers where there is track bias.
As with everything, it comes down to the ability of the individual horse to handle the conditions put in front of it. Established form is everything and backing untried horses on wet tracks is fraught with danger. A (w) in the form guide means a horse has had success on a wet surface, and that's the most important marker.