Wizard Daily Report Friday, 13 December 2024

• Insights to be gained from the Wizard Leaderboard
• Daily Wizard Freebie - Wizard Quick Form for Moonee Valley
• Wizard Ratings and Raceday Results, Thursday, December 12

Insights to be gained from the Wizard Leaderboard

Yesterday we added a new report to the suite of Wizard reports that are currently available to subscribers, the Leaderboards.

There is much to be gained from a careful perusal of the Wizard Leaderboards, and not just in terms of the meeting under review.

Below are are few take-aways from two of today's Leaderboards.

First, looking at the Jockey Leaderboard for Canterbury.

You will note that James Macdonald is not in the top 10 list. That is because he is not riding at this meeting. The leading jockeys who are riding at Canterbury are Nash Rawiller and Jason Collett, both on 66 wins over the past 12 months in the metropolitan area.

Looking at the jockey form at Canterbury over the past 2 years, the performance Chad Schofield when riding a horse "in-the-market" (<=5.90) is noteworthy at 43%. Also, with a strike rate of 31%, Kerrin McEvoy does better at Canterbury than at metropolitan tracks overall.

Tim Clark is interesting. He rides very well but does not seem to have the public profile or following that other top jockeys enjoy, and some of his well rated runners tend to start at longer odds than might be expected. His 29% strike rate in the 6.00-9.90 odds range is indicative of this fact. I seem to recall him riding a number of Waterhouse/Bott Wizard top rated winners in this odds range.

The lack of winners for these top 10 jockeys when riding horses that start at $10.00 or longer, illustrates clearly the difficulty of picking single-horse selections in this odds range. Backing two or more in a race you can support these runners as part of a "bet package" but as single-runner selections they can be "confidence crushers".

Returning to Tim Clarke. Looking across his dataline you will see a number of strong figures. Tim is a good example of what might be called a "good value jockey".

Tomorrow, I will discuss a Trainer Leaderboard in similar detail. In the meantime, I have highlighted some intersting figures from tonight's Moonee Valley meeting Trainer Leaderboard.

What stands out in this Leaderboard is the very good overall performance of the Michael Hickmott stable. Something worth noting. Also, the 2-years record of Anthony and Sam Freedman at Moonee Valley indicates that the 3 months lack of a winner here is not a negative in itself.

Wizard Freebie - Wizard Quick Form for Moonee Valley

Each day The Wizard will publish on this page one of its Wizard reports or special features, either completely or a part thereof. Today the Wizard Freebie is the Wizard Quick Form for Moonee Valley. The full and abridged Wizard reports for all meetings for today are available now for subscribers.

Wizard Ratings Results for Thursday, December 12

The following table shows where the winner of each race run yesterday was rated by Wrat, Wmod, Whcp, and Wexpk and was the qualifier in the Wizard Raceday Report. (Note: The Wrat [W] winner results report on both the top rated and top-two rated winners.) The Raceday Report winners under the Top Rated column are from those races where there was only one Raceday qualifier, and under the Top 2 Rated on the rare occasions where there were two qualifiers in a race.

Header: WMHER =  Wrat (W), Wmod (M), Whcp (H), Wexpk (E), Raceday (R).

For a full explanation of the table click: How to read the Wizard Ratings Results

The full day-by-day results so far this week.