Saturday 7 November 2009

Kevin Ryan

Kevin Ryan’s stable is a big one of over 100 horses. It is not the easiest stable to find winners but increasingly the stable stars are sprinters and there are angles that can be used to over come the low strike rate.

2009 has been a slightly inconsistent one for the stable. The most obvious trend is a decline in fortunes as the year has progressed. 34 sprint wins were recorded by me from January to June and then only 9 wins over the next 4+ months. These results reflect the fortunes of the stable as a whole and it seems as if the stable performs better on the all-weather and before the bigger stables get going in the turf season.

Kevin Ryan seems happy to drop his horses into low grade races to gain success. Watch out for horses like Mutamared, Harry Up and Grimes Faith who have gained 13 wins between them on the all-weather (4,5 and 4 respectively). On the other hand, be wary of his handicappers when they are raised in class. In particular most of his forays south seem to be disappointing and his strike rates at the premier courses Ascot, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket and Sandown are all less than 7%. A rare exception of a win in the south was achieved by Advanced in the Totesport.com Handicap at Ascot on 26th September. Not surprisingly, considering the stable’s lack of success down south, Advanced was allowed to start at the lucrative price of 33-1.

As far as courses are concerned Ryan seems to have winners fairly evenly spread round the all-weather tracks and does the best on the turf at the lower prestige meetings in the North.

In spite of achieving 21 out of the 43 wins so far this year on the all-weather, Ryan has still managed to achieve 2 spectacular trebles of sprint wins on one day on 27th June and 26th September. These two days seemed to come out of the blue, so further multiple successes on the same day are not probably a phenomena that we can rely on happening too often. Numerically, January (8) and June (7) were the two months with most winners.

Sprint wins on the all-weather this year are evenly spread between Southwell (7 wins), Wolverhampton (6 wins) and Lingfield (7 wins). Kempton has been the least successful of the four all-weather courses over the last five years. Historically, Southwell has had most winners during the same time and Lingfield has had the best strike rate.

With regard to jockeys pay most attention in sprints to Neil Callan (14 wins), Jamie Spencer (8 wins) and the trainer’s daughter Amy (10 wins) who changed from amateur to apprentice status at the beginning of the year. Jamie was the jockey to follow for the stable in January (5 wins) and Neil from 1st February to 30th June (13 wins). 19-year-old Amy still claims 5 lbs but is becoming a stronger jockey with experience. At the beginning of the year other jockeys were winning on horses and then Amy was losing on them when she took over. This has not been the case since June though and in fact as the winners have seemed to dry up for the stable her strike rate has started to improve. She has picked up 3 of the 9 sprint wins to date in the second half of the year, including the big win of Advanced at Ascot.

So, what of the near future? Well, Kevin looks as if he could do well on the all-weather this Winter.

In Arganil he has a top all-weather performer with 5 wins out of 5 on the all-weather to date. Opportunities may be restricted now due to his prohibitive handicap mark but wherever he appears on an artificial surface he should be supported. It would be no surprise to see Arganil targetted abroad, perhaps in America or Dubai.

Others to look out for are Peak District, Le Toreador and Green Manalishi. All three have now done well on the all-weather.

Peak District’s form figures on the all-weather are now 3,2,1 and the latter was a particularly impressive win at Lingfield over the minimum distance. He has only had 5 runs on turf this Summer so will be relatively fresh for the Autumn/Winter.

Le Toreador has done tremendously well for the stable this Summer winning 4 times, the latest success being at Wolverhampton making his record on sand as 2 wins from 3.

Finally, the 8-year-old Green Manalishi has been a decent handicapper for the stable for several years now. He gained his second success on the Lingfield polytrack at the beginning of this month and like Arganil is very much an above average performer on this surface.

As mentioned above Ryan has plenty of firepower, albeit some of it quite moderate. Having said this the trainer has shown a special knack to get the most out of certain animals dropped into claimers and sellers, so I will be keeping a close eye on those that are, over the next few months.

No comments:

Post a Comment