Decoding The Going For An Unraced 2yo

Betting on 2yo horses in a profitable manner is a tough proposition even for the most experienced horse player. The odds are stacked against getting a good percentage of winners concentrating on this age group.  Unraced 2yo’s are difficult to assess. We should look at some of the problems and the solutions we can use to gain the information required. 

We need to know if an unraced 2yo can handle the ground. We can make an educated guess by looking at a number of factors. 

The trainer has entered the horse in the race with a rough idea of what the going is likely to be at a particular racecourse when taking in to account the current weather patterns. He will have made an assessment of the horses running style and her physical make up.  If the trainer has left the animal in the race, we can assume he thinks she will get the going, but this should not be relied on.  

When we watch the horse move to the start of the race, we can assess how she moves. If her knees are coming up high and she is leaving space between the surface and her hooves when she moves there is a fair chance that she will prefer soft ground.  If the stride is more straight legged with a daisy cutting action you are watching a horse that is likely to get good ground. Check out the size of the hooves as big hooves make it easier to deal with soft ground. 

We can have a look at the horse's mother also known as the dam.  The first step is to investigate if she ever won on the going as this attribute is likely to have been inherited by her offspring, especially if the sire also won on that type of ground. It's worth checking the quality of the race she won and making sure, if possible, it was not a fluke.  

We can assess her offspring to see if any of them have been putting in good performances on the ground type.  There is a chance we can also watch them run in order to get an idea of how the 2yo we are assessing is going to look if we have not seen her before.  The most useful comparison is with brothers or sisters with the same sire. It is worth remembering though that in the same way that human brothers and sisters are likely to have different sporting prowess it is the same for the horses. Now it’s time to have a look at the sire’s progeny that have the same sire as the dam did.  There will often be a reasonably easy to identify trend towards performing well on certain surfaces. 

The next job is to examine the sire of the 2yo. We need to know if he ever won on the ground and what the quality of the races were.  This gives a really good indication of how the 2yo will run but there are even more tools at our disposal.  As the sire has more progeny than the dam there is likely to be a good deal of information available to the horse player regarding the performance of the offspring.  We can review the number of runners compared to winners % on the surface type albeit turf or dirt. We can also take a look at the wins vs runs % for further guidance.  We can also review the going stats for the sire’s progeny and see the same thing for the going type. .   

There is another horse we need to examine in much the same vein as the others we have looked at so far. This is the 2yo’s grandsire on the dam's side.  Taking a good look at this horse is really important especially if the dam was unraced as it gives an indication of the attributes the mare is likely to pass on to the 2yo. We need to look at the same information as we did for the sire regarding the surface types.  

The market can also be a guide as it is likely that a 2yo who is unsuited by the ground type will start to drift out.  It is worth remembering there could be reasons unrelated to the going type that are causing the drift especially is the horse is sweating up going down to the start or there is a tv hot pot in the race.  Very few people actually have an idea of the horse's attributes at this stage apart from the connections.