Could Ryan Moore's tactical brilliance hold the key to the Coral-Eclipse? Matt Brocklebank looks ahead to Saturday's big race and pores over the clues.
What’s your angle? I get asked that quite frequently and I don’t really know what to suggest.
‘All the angles…?’ would be an embarrassingly grand and self-important reply, but horse racing is complex – wonderfully so in my view – and ignoring certain factors completely would be doing yourself a disservice as a punter and fan. Which is why I wouldn’t be too far from the Mark Johnston camp when it comes to opposing the ‘dumbing down’ of our sport for future generations, but that’s arguably a discussion for another day.
Going, track, trip, pace, trainer form, jockey, price, historical evidence – there are sub-groups within those groups too, plus plenty more besides, and I want them all in the pot if chance to help provide the clearest possible picture of any given race.
I was going racing from pushchair age, when clearly not that well informed, and only really started to get into the finer details properly a good bit later with time to kill between seminars and the Student Union while at university.
It’s at that same time I also became a bit obsessed with cryptic crosswords. Containers, deletions, reversals, substitutions, anagrams, homophones, puns, Spoonerisms - there are dozens of ways a crossword can attempt to outfox the puzzler, and trying to get into the head of a setter felt to me not only far more absorbing than reading for an English degree, but a lot like cracking the outcome of a horse race.
The larger cryptics tend to have a general theme running through a high proportion of the clues. These are often broad subjects such as the military, money, horticulture, or love, and they can help put you on the right track, but without knowing the difference between the basic types of clues and how they are constructed leaves you with a lot of guesswork.
Having an educated stab before seeing if the rest of the clue can merely confirm that initial hypothesis is no doubt how some people end up solving a lot of them, and I’m not ashamed to admit I take a sick sort of satisfaction in back-fitting answers once the solutions become known.
I suppose it's how you go about learning anything and that’s presumably why I was also among those rushing to the trade paper on the wall after failing to find the winner of a big race I’d just watched in a betting shop (uni days again). It was all too little too late, of course, but I wanted to know where I’d gone wrong and if others had successfully worked it out.
In the 2007 Coral-Eclipse at Sandown – shortly after I’d graduated incidentally – we witnessed a contest that hammered home the significance of something that I’d largely been overlooking throughout those formative years: big-race tactics.
It’s a part of the game I’m always reminded of in the build-up to this weekend and whether or not there’s an element of me back-fitting again to some extent, it does feel like flashes of tactical virtuosity have been the deciding factor in several editions of the Coral-Eclipse since Ryan Moore’s unforgettable solo on Notnowcato 18 years ago.
Moore, reigning champion jockey at the time but having his first ever ride in the Eclipse, enjoyed a four-timer that afternoon and managed to get the better of Derby winner Authorized and the brilliant George Washington aboard Sir Michael Stoute’s 7/1 chance in the main race thanks to an inspired bit of course-walking and execution.
Moore’s famous ‘lonely furrow’ manoeuvre ultimately resulted in quite a cosy length and a half success, but it’s fascinating to note that Timeform felt it was the timing of his run rather than the cross-course move itself that proved decisive.
The report reads “…into the straight Notnowcato was the first to act, that arguably more crucial than the fact he came over on his own against the stand rail, at that time the 'big two' still waited with on the far side, the pair emerging on top there.”
Rarely a large field and often slowly run, the Eclipse has so often been won and lost in a few strides somewhere between the two-pole and the final furlong. Timeform’s database uses Early Position Figure (EPF) measurements (on a scale of 1-5, 1 being front-runners and 5 held-up in rear) to show that in the past 16 years, since Sea The Stars in 2009, the most successful category is perhaps unsurprisingly EPF2. The stalk-and-pounce position, to you and I.
The number of winners from that category reads 7 and on top of that it’s the only group to produce a level-stakes profit, compared to the solitary EPF5 winner (-8.25 PL) in the same period.
Looking ahead to Saturday’s feature, it’s hard not to consider who might be ‘first to act’ this time around too. Moore, who had to wait 14 years for his second Eclipse winner but has now ridden three of the past four, is – barring accident – going to be onboard Camille Pissarro or Delacroix for Aidan O’Brien, who also has Expanded in the race at this stage.
That strongly suggests we could be looking at another highly tactical affair, especially as the two market leaders, Ombudsman and Sosie, both left it late to get on top in their respective Group 1s last time out.
O’Brien was the first to admit they got it all wrong when inadvertently teeing things up for Ombudsman in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes last month and it wouldn’t be the first time Ballydoyle gain redemption at Sandown less than a month on, the trainer having blamed himself for So You Think’s memorable Ascot defeat to Rewilding before the same horse came and sank Workforce in the 2011 Eclipse.
So what’s my angle?
Well, we don’t have all those covered at this stage with the final field, the draw and the state of the ground among the key factors yet to be nailed down, but the theme is seemingly set, the form clues there for all to see. And while it might not be particularly cryptic or well hidden by now, my idea of the winner is a certain Danish-French Impressionist painter (7,8).
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