Angus McNae's Racing UK Blog
	Thursday 9th January 2014

The Carnival is all about analysis

The Dubai World Cup Carnival returns today and I am chomping at the bit to get stuck into the Meydan action once again.

There are plenty of you who do not share my enthusiasm and that is fine, but for those who are prepared to embrace the whole thing there are bountiful rewards both in terms of pure enjoyment of the sport and also from a punting perspective.

On   this season James Willoughby and I analyse comprehensively the action. We will look at past performances in terms of what horses have actually achieved by analysing the sectional times. We will look at the pace of races through the revealing prism of par figures for sections of races, and we will look at how horses achieved what they did by looking at ground-loss figures courtesy of Trakus, the American data firm.

We will also produce speed figures for every performance, which will neatly sum up what horses have actually achieved.

All of this will be done in the context of traditional form analysis along with plenty of video watching. Not only will all of this be interesting, it will be fun and hopefully will provide us with a few tasty wagers along the way.

Before it all gets underway on Thursday here are a few preliminary thoughts.

First up the Tapeta surface is a fair surface. Rarely is it prepared in such a way that a bias exists. As such there are no excuses for jockeys. They need to be on their game as far as pace judgement is concerned. Pace is king in any race, but on this sharp track it is vital that jockeys have a full understanding of it.

With this in mind if you are going to have a decent wager, make sure your selection is to be ridden by a jockey with tried and tested ability at the track.

I would name Christophe Soumillon as the stand out jockey at the Carnival, but would also watch out for Silvestre De Sousa who is becoming Godolphin's number one. Dane O Neill has already been riding winners at Meydan during the pre-Carnival fare and he is very solid.

Kieren Fallon is not the force of old, but he is still very effective on synthetic surfaces on which he has a statistically better record than on turf.

James Doyle is obviously a good jockey, but we still do not know how he will adapt to riding on the Tapeta, all will be revealed at this Carnival. I expect Soumillon and De Sousa to dominate proceedings and they are the guys to have on your side.

There is always and lot of talk about whether the Tapeta at Meydan suits hold up horses or those ridden close to the pace. The answer is that it suits all types, and each individual race when subjected to proper pace analysis will reveal what happened. Backing either pacesetters or hold-up horses blind is not the way to go.

I have written before about the domination at previous Carnivals of the Mike De Kock and Godolphin teams. When I saw the international entries for this year’s event I was hopeful that they would not have such an easy ride this time around. That being said my feelings as we are on the eve of the Carnival are that the international challenge is stronger, but that De Kock and Godolphin are likely to have stronger hands to play. Certainly in the big races they are the guys to be with.

As for day one of the Carnival, it should come with a punting wealth warning. We need to let things settle down before we launch into the thing heads down. That said there is one horse I am quite keen on who runs in the Longines Dolce Vita, a seven-furlong handicap at 4.15pm.

The six-year-old is My Freedom, trained by Saeed Bin Suroor of Godolphin. This horse is two out of three on a synthetic surface. His latest win was a cosy success at Wolverhampton off a mark of 98. He races off 102, which should be fine as he is open to no end of improvement on the surface. De Sousa is on board and stall two is the perfect draw for this stalk-and-quicken type.

Make sure you join us, it is going to be fantastic.

4.15 Meydan: My Freedom