Racing: Peering perilously into a four-legged future

TV PUNDITS will speak in hushed tones from the paddock rails and Newmarket touts will be wheeled out from their hiding places to frighten pigeon fanciers with tales from the gallops. This is the big week of Classic trials.

While not yet the time when the talking has to stop, it is the time when most punters on the Classics first take notice. Despite a welter of market moves in a build-up that can take 12 months, the majority of ante-post bets on the Guineas will be placed in the final four weeks.

The total varies from year to year but the industry-wide ante-post book on the 2,000 Guineas (which dwarfs that for the 1,000) will probably be more than pounds 1m. Perhaps a third of that sum was staked during the two-year- old season, and another 10 per cent has followed since the wraps came off on the training grounds in February.

The main two-year-old betting often centres on the first appearance in public of some creature that has been burning up the gallops, or the day when two or more of the top juveniles come face to face.

In the former category, chief arsonist of 1998 was Killer Instinct, a 25-1 to 8-1 Guineas gamble in the run-up to his debut on 24 July. Just how much money was required to induce this price change is a better guarded secret than the Warren Place opinion of Killer Instinct ever was, but the legacy is that Killer Instinct is the biggest industry loser. What might have happened if Killer Instinct had actually won that race?

Killer Instinct has made the same move in the betting again, only rather more stealthily, over the last two months. Other winter changes include a halving in price for another Henry Cecil charge, Ballet Master.

Ladbrokes' spokesman, Ed Nicholson, also reports: "We've been laying Commander Collins not just for the Guineas, not just for the Derby, but for the double as well." Having taken a pounds 2,000 bet at 33-1 for the Manton colt before his debut, the firm has added its largest single bet on the Guineas last month, pounds 10,000 at 12-1.

Although the bookmakers always try to balance their books, Rob Hartnett of the Tote says: "We are happy if we can get to the day of the race and have three or four horses in the book that are losers. That is a very good ante-post book, in fact it is an exceptionally good one."

Before marvelling at their risk-taking, bear in mind that the entire ante-post market amounts to the equivalent of, at most, 10 per cent of the bets placed on raceday itself.

It is a service which punters clamour for but, above all, ante-post betting is a massive promotional tool for the bookies and the sport. "It is difficult to put a value on what that means for racing," Hartnett says, "but it would be a fool that would underestimate it. We need to keep people's passion alive in horseracing, to keep them interested, and there's no greater spur to maintaining an interest than having an investment."

The bookmakers' on-course PR men enjoy an investment themselves, apparently. It would be a temptation, one suspects, given that they aim to know which are the cream of the two-year-olds in the major yards before they have run.

"You will always lay them at a big price prior to their debuts," David Hood, of William Hill, says. "You might only lay eight or 10 horses a year to proper money, but you can bet your bottom dollar they'll turn out to be the top two-year-olds with the Classic credentials."

The Killer Instinct gamble may have spread to the high street before he ever set off in the horsebox for Ascot, but there is no pretending that the ante-post market on lightly raced two-year-olds is responsive to money alone.

"We know our customers very well," Simon Clare, of Coral, says. "We know which customers are well connected with which yards. So when you see the money come from certain sources, you shorten it. You react to the quality of the money as much as the amounts.

"What happens away from the track is often more significant than what happens on the racecourse, which is unfortunate because it means that you don't lay many runners, you simply lay the ones inspired by those people in the know.

"Anybody can happen to back the right horse, but you have to be a fairly shrewd operator with access to information to view ante-post betting as a profit-making enterprise."

For the rest of us, this is where the wait for value to turn into profit can be like waiting for Godot. Clare's advice to the mass of punters is to "take 8-1 after a trial rather than 25-1 before it".

For David Hood: "The more successful punters ante-post are the more informed punters. For the man in the street, speculating on the evidence of a performance he's seen in a trial, it's going to be difficult to stay in front."

More informed or otherwise, punters would miss their quest to secure 33-1 about the next Nijinsky. Or even to secure more than 33-1. On 2 October, 1998, the Tote struck their first bet on the 2,000 Derby - pounds 10 each-way at 150-1 about the record-priced foal by Caerleon out of Doff The Derby, now called Padua's Pride. The previous May, less than two months after she was born, they laid a pounds 15 bet at 1,500-1 against a filly (since named Hanoi), by Deploy out of A Nymph Too Far, to win the Oaks.

2,000 Guineas: Bookmakers' biggest losers at 1 April this year:

Ladbrokes: 1. Commander Collins. 2. Killer Instinct. 3. Stravinsky

Coral: 1. Stravinsky. 2. Enrique. 3. Killer Instinct

William Hill: 1. Killer Instinct. 2. Enrique. 3. Stravinsky

Tote: 1. Killer Instinct. 2. Stravinsky. 3. Enrique

FIRST BETTING ON 2,000 GUINEAS

Table shows first bet recorded followed by first pounds 1,000 bet (as of 1 April)

Coral William Hill Tote

Mujahid pounds 20 at 40-1 (6/8/98) pounds 5ew at 33-1 (10/7/98) pounds 60ew at 33-1 (8/7/98)

pounds 1,000 at 8-1 (18/2/99) no pounds 1,000 bet pounds 20,000-pounds 2,800 (26/3/99)

Iftitah pounds 100 at 25-1 (16/10/98) 16-1 in pounds 30 treble (22/11/98) pounds 100 at 50-1 (10/10/98)

pounds 1,200 at 20-1 (27/2/99) no pounds 1,000 bet pounds 1,000 at 10-1 (26/3/99)

Killer Instinct pounds 25ew at 50-1 (1/5/98) pounds 50 at 25-1 (3/7/98) pounds 50ew at 50-1 (2/5/98)

pounds 1,000 at 10-1 (26/7/98) pounds 2,000 at 25-1 (4/7/98) pounds 40,000-pounds 1,200 (2/7/98)

Commander pounds 100 at 33-1 (8/7/98) pounds 1,000 at 40-1 (8/7/98) pounds 1,500 at 40- 1 (8/7/98)

Collins pounds 2,000 at 10-1 (29/3/99) ditto ditto

Enrique pounds 10 at 20-1 (30/7/98) pounds 200 at 50-1 (17/7/98) pounds 20ew at 25-1 (10/7/98)

pounds 1,000 at 11-2 (2/10/98) pounds 4,000 at 7-1 (2/10/98) pounds 50,000-pounds 3,500 (2/10/98)

Stravinsky pounds 50 at 40-1 (18/7/98) pounds 100 at 100-1(16/5/98) pounds 50 at 40-1 (16/7/98)

pounds 1,000 at 6-1 (21/8/98) pounds 1,000 at 33-1 (17/7/98) pounds 50,000-pounds 4,000 (20/8/98