SELECTIONS - 3 August 2006

Track Race-TAB Horse [Live Selections/Win Strike Rate %/ Profit %]

Coffs Harbour 2-1 Jenks [27/40.7%/34%]
Coffs Harbour 6-1 Afleeting Liaison [88/35.2%/52%]

Non-POOMA selections:

Ipswich 1-3

It's bad luck for the Coffs Harbour race club that their three day carnival has been wetter than a rice paddy in monsoon season. Today is Cup day and there are a couple of POOMAs that are going to attempt to wade over the mile course carrying our money, both as topweights. I'd declare Jenks an absolute moral except for the fact that trainer Tas Morton has engaged apprentice M Knight. I may not know his first name but I do know that he's better placed on the merry-go-round at the local sideshow. My records (TAB meetings only) show that since making his debut on 27/7/03 he has had 190 rides for just 6 wins. That's just 3.2% and includes, wait for it, a double at Taree last May, which was also the last winner he rode. Ominously, he's had 13 goes on slow or heavy ground and is yet to run a place. You should make a note of that. People think that because apprentices give a horse weight relief that they're advantaged in wet ground but, in fact, most apprentices more than compensate for the weight relief by not understanding how to ride in the wet. Over to race 6 and we have another POOMA selection in the form of Afleeting Affair. She's coming off an easy last start Class 1 win at Ballina, which followed a 2nd in Class 2 company at Grafton. She's adept on wet ground, has last start winning jockey, Lorna Cook, on board and comes from gate 9, which might be a pretty good place to start from today.

In race 7, the Coffs Harbour Gold Cup, I'd stay away from the topweight. He's by Spinning World, a poor sire of wet trackers, as Havana Wind's record also shows. Kilcornan looks the goods to me. In form, will handle the trip and the wet and Mitchell Bell has a good record on him. He'll be $6 or $7 and that's good value.

Is it ever not wet at Mornington?? Since 1/1/2000 my database shows 431 races on good tracks, 142 on dead, 156 on slow and 372 on heavy. There are more heavy races than dead and slow combined and 670 wet tracks vs 431 good ones. Looking for some value, I'll go 1-2, 2-7, 3-13, 4-1, 5-3, 6-1, 7-4 & 8-6.

As always at Ipswich you want to look out for the Alan Bailey horses. He has a great record there.