The Victoria Cup is the feature on the Ascot race card and is one of the many big field handicaps throughout the turf season.

With an average 20+ horses taking part, this race presents a very difficult puzzle for punters to unravel.

The Victoria Cup is contested over 7 furlongs on a straight track and with no bends or turns for the horses to contend with, in our opinion any race bias is determined by how the pace in the race unfolds.

 

Pace: Previous Renewals of the Victoria Cup

Before we dissect the pace in this year’s race, we can gather additional context by utilising our horse racing software to see how the different running styles “Led”, “Prominent” and “Held” have performed in previous Victoria Cup’s at Ascot.

Since 1997 there have been 15 renewals (no race in 1998 and 2001).

The table above summarises the performance of each running style so for example, 180 runners raced “Held Up” and from this population, 10 horses won.  

The Actual/Expected (A/E) column, is an index of the actual number of winners compared to the number of winners expected based on their odds.

A figure below 1.00 indicates runners are winning fewer times than the odds imply, whereas above 1.00 is indicative of runners winning more regularly than expected.

So the A/E index of 1.32 for horses that were held up in the Victoria Cup (the tortoises) perform above normal or put simply, 32% above market expectation.

Let’s now take a look at this year’s race using the Pace Map from the Proform Race Guide

Victoria Cup Pace Map

Within the Proform database, based on the post-race in-running comments, pace abbreviations for each horse in the race is created, they can be either:

• L for Led
• P for Prominent
• H for Held Up

Then to calculate a pace rating for an upcoming race we allocate points based on the pace abbreviation as follows:

• 4pts for Led
• 2pts for Prominent and no pts for a Held Up running style

Formed using data from our horse racing software, the running styles for each horse in the race is plotted under columns H (held up), M (d mid field), P (prominent) and L (led).

Draw and Pace Prediction

Because of the number of runners, there is good possibility that the field will split into two (or more) groups. There are no out and out front runners in the race but Lincoln from stall 25 should get an uncontested lead. Drawn on the extremes, Lunar Deity and Buckstay will need to drop in to get cover in the race

With the Proform pace prediction indicating only a marginal pace advantage for the horses drawn high in our opinion the race will be decided by the horse best suited to the race conditions.

As you can see, using simple but intuitive graphics our visual pace map provides a handy aid when trying to anticipate how the running of the race will unfold without the need for you to maintain a record of the running styles for each horse or spend time figuring out which horses are the tortoises that like to race at the back or the hares that like to led when the gates open..

 

Do you want to see more? 

Every day on our web site we provide a FREE stats and Race Guide.

As well as providing detailed horse racing statistics with profit pointers, our race cards contain horse ratings for each contestant, unique pace information for every runner plus other time saving features to make pre-race analysis easy.

To download today’s Proform Race Guide for the Victoria Cup, click on the link here