Trends analysis

Lightly raced runners aren’t necessarily the way to go here, and we can rule out those with less than eight career starts to their name

There has been the odd exception to this – the unbeaten Forgotten Voice had just three starts under his belt before winning this in 2009, but otherwise recent history shows we should be looking for horses who have run between ten and 20 times.

While we don’t need to be looking for lightly raced runners, recent runnings suggest we should be concentrating on youth with the last four winners all aged four. Indeed they’ve won nine of the last 12 and are the age group to focus on from that perspective.

The draw is another big factor in a field of this size. History suggests we should look more at the high numbers, with six winners drawn higher than 20, including last year’s victor Settle For Bay.

Verdict

Plenty with chances on the trends, but the two who come out strongest are Petrus and Beringer. The former was rated as high as 101 as a juvenile and is in much better form than he was 12 months ago. At four, he’s the right age for this.