The Lincoln Handicap is a flat handicap open to horses aged four years or older and over a distance of 1 mile at Doncaster in late March or early April.

This race is traditionally the feature event on the first Saturday of Britain’s turf flat racing season.

Using our horse racing software, every day we analyse every race to find the key pointers for our subscribers and in this post we highlight a couple of punting angles for today’s feature event on the racecard at Doncaster.

 

Punting Angle 1: Subsequent Runs

Back in the day, there was a system floating around whose rules where to back all horses finishing in the first 6 or 7 places in the Lincoln on their subsequent runs throughout the turf season.

The rational for the system is that the Lincoln brings together the best 8 furlong handicappers in the country and therefore the race can act as a “key” to future winners when placed horses in the Lincoln run against inferior opposition.

Using this awesome feature in Proform which shows you how the subsequent runs in a race worked out, last year’s race has turned out to be well above the mark in respect to subsequent form.

From the participants that ran 115 times since, in total they have won 14 races, an actual verses expected (A/E) value of 1.31, or 31% which is significantly above what you expect under normal circumstances.

Note also that three winners were able to land prizes at a higher grade (Class+), so when the stalls open in the Lincoln this year, get your video recording device and pen and paper ready to note potential winners in waiting. 

 

Punting Angle 2: Draw and Pace

The other significant factor unique to this race is the draw and pace bias.

In additional to unique information that will save you time during your selection process, the Proform Race Guides also offer the best in visualised Draw and Pace information.

Formed using data from our racing software, using impact values (IV’s) the historical draw bias for each stall is shown (green = good, red = poor) along with the running styles for each horse in the race which is plotted under columns H (held up), M (d mid field), P (prominent) and L (led).

Discussed at length prior to the race, the market (and jockeys) usually overreact to the result of the race prior to the Lincoln, The Spring Mile a consolidation race for horses balloted out of the Lincoln.

On a straight course we are of the view that the draw bias is a factor of pace and given the end to end gallop over the race distance, it’s extremely difficult (unless aided by a track bias) for one horse to make the running from starting stall to finish line.

Similar to the peloton in cycling racing, if a cluster of horses share the pace burden, as a group they are more effective. Typically the winner emerging from this group is the horse that has distributed their energy efficiently throughout the race.

In last year’s Lincoln, the race unfolded up the middle of the track, with Ocean Tempest prominent throughout the race. 

In summary all Ocean Tempest did last year was assume a running style that matched the majority of previous winners.

If we look at the pace stats from prior renewals of the Lincoln Handicap, the table below shows that from a population of 167 runners, 11 winners of the race ran prominently (P)

Based on their odds at the off, this performance is 44% above what you expect normally. 

To add weight to our earlier comment, only 1 horse from a population of 38 horses with a pace style of L (Led) has won, 23% below normal.

Based on our draw and pace prediction map in this year’s Lincoln, overall horses drawn low have the marginal advantage in respect to the pace in this race with the following horses likely to be at the head of affairs:

Hillbilly Boy, Ocean Tempest, Emell, Fire Ship, Lincoln, Bronze Angel, Boom And Bust

But this prediction could be rendered irrelevant because of the jockey’s perceived bias from the outcome of the Spring Mile prior to the Lincoln.

 

Do you want to see more?

Every day on our web site we provide a FREE race guide.

As well as providing unique pace information for every race, our race card contains horse racing statistics and horse ratings for each contestant plus other time saving features to make your pre-race analysis easier.

To download today’s Proform Race Guide for the Lincoln Handicap, click on the link here