The Oaks looks the more exciting of the two classics especially as it looks so open to the naked eye but I’ve selected these contenders who have produced trends & a current level of performance that sits within the required zones; Betterbetterbetter, Colima, Coquet, Kissed, Shirocco Star, The Fuge, Twirl, Was and Vow.
There's really no point me writing up on who I think the winner will be as the results later will tell you the obvious but I'd like to go in on a little bit of value for The Oaks which tends to be a profitable avenue for me in recent years and this years contender is.
BETTERBETTERBETTER
Individual performance
With regards to Speed Ratings Aidan O’Brien’s filly improved 2.87% from first to second run then improved another 12.57% from second to third run accumulating an average of 7.72% which in relation to the profile of the average first, second and third runs of previous winners in relation to their speed ratings she’s -7.07% below in her first run, -7.31% below in her second run but +1.21% in her third run resulting in an obscene improvement.
The typical improvement before the Oaks is 6.08%, with a Speed Rating last time out of 93.27 a 6.07 increase would bring her up to 98.94 that’s 4.84% greater than the average winning Oaks rating of 94.36 and just 1.37% short of the upper bound.
The rate of improvement per race at each conceivable stage she’s 5.51% above average after her first run and just over 1 and ¼ times greater than the average for her second run at around 128%. When using the Standard Deviation of overall improvement of 3.71 we get a range of (4.01 & 11.43) previous Oaks winners who went into the race within this range last time out and pick up on Snow Fairy, Look Here and Ouija Board
Overall profile
The average Speed Rating for Betterbetterbetter is 84.68 which remains -4.90% below the average winning Speed Rating of 89.04, we know that there is around 3.71% improvement throughout the period towards the oaks so we can put her on 87.82.
The average Improvement for Betterbetterbetter is 7.72% which is 46.09% greater than the average Improvement shown by Oaks winning fillies in their profile. When using the STDV of 3.71 to get the average profile range she’s 1.96% below the upper bound.
Conclusion
We can conclude that Betterbetterbetter is improving at a slower rate than previous Oaks winners indicating a slight issue in regards to her maturation rate and potential class on the clock although the velocity of her improvement is outstanding ensuring that she's on the potential brink of exploding into something excellent and finds herself significantly related with the fastest winners of The Oaks in Look Here (101.42) & Ouija Board (100.12) which suggests that tomorrow could yield a new and improved horse.
Putting all the numbers to one side I mentioned how impressed with Betterbetterbetter on here when she run on debut at Leopardstown having seemingly never come out of first gear it was a perfect introduction for me and knew it was going to be a matter of time before the Oaks quotes started flooding in.
In the mean time I think she'd done what she's had to with wins at Dundalk and a narrow margin defeat at Chester although the ground and jockey could be attributed to that quite easily but it was pleasing to see her go around such a sharp track comfortably.
There's a piece on her breeding I've wrote on here so it might be worth fetching although on that side from memory I'm sure it's as illustrious as they come.
THE OAKS CONCLUSION
Having worked on finding a little bit of value at 33/1 it’s time to get down to analyzing the real stuff so let’s get started.
My first calculation is taking the latest Speed Rating to date and adjusting for 6.08% improvement in line with the average improvement of previous Oaks winners before running in the Oaks. The second calculation is taking the average Speed Rating on the horse’s profile and adjusting that figure for the percentage of natural improvement in the horses build up for the race and finally the third calculations involve taking the most recent level of improvement before finding the 6.08% average improvement of this figure and adding the resulting outcome onto the latest figure before using that new percentage to calculate from their average speed rating and combining the resulting figures in producing a potential rating.
These steps have been combined together to produce
98.17 The Fuge
96.98 Kissed
95.87 Betterbetterbetter
94.57 Maybe
94.32 Kaliani
93.19 Vow
92.19 Shirocco Star
91.41 Twirl
90.89 Devotion
90.53 Coquet
90.25 Was
87.85 Colima
86.35 Nayara
79.27 Toptempo
And beaten distances
WINNER The Fuge
1.8 Kissed
3.5 Betterbetterbetter
5.4 Maybe
5.8 Kaliani
7.5 Vow
9.0 Shirocco Star
10.1 Twirl
10.9 Devotion
11.5 Coquet
11.9 Was
15.5 Colima
17.7 Nayara
28.4 Toptempo
£975 Win - The Fuge (3/1 BET365)
£225 Each Way - BetterBetterBetter (20/1 BET365)
£50 Any Order Forecast (The Fuge, Betterbetterbetter, Maybe)
£50 Any Order Trifecta (The Fuge, Betterbetterbetter, Kissed, Maybe)
