TOP 100 SPORT SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| New era for Cotton Bowl A new era for the Cotton Bowl begins Jan. 2 when Mississippi plays Oklahoma State at the $1.2 billion Dallas Cowboys Stadium.... hosted.ap.org |
Tiger Woods' Australian visit brought millions to locals Tiger Woods' $3 million appearance fee for playing in the Australian Masters in November has paid dividends for the Victorian state economy. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Steve Davis and Phil Hughes leave Burnley Burnley's acting management team of Steve Davis and Phil Hughes have left the club. feeds.timesonline.co.uk |
Nastia Liukin's new meet to partner with Supergirl Nastia Liukin and Supergirl are teaming up.... hosted.ap.org |
Narrowing The Field Ben Aitken, £16.99,High StakesIrish trainer Jim Bolger is not known for flights of fancy so when the man who nurtured Tony McCoy and Aidan O'Brien and bred top-class horses such as Derby winner New Approach in recent years said last week that "this could be the most significant development in the history of the thoroughbred" the racing world needs to sit up and take notice.Bolger was referring to the discovery by the Irish scientist Emmeline Hill of a gene that the pair claim can predict what distance a horse will be most effective over – in layman's terms whether the runner will be a sprinter, stayer or middle-distance campaigner.Previously, the only way of determining the optimum distance of a particular horse was either guesswork by reference to its parents or by an arcane numbers analysis known as "the dosage method". The latter has been an aid for punters rather than breeders.There are many ways to skin a cat and backers have used a myriad of methods over the years in order to find a winner. Punters, in recent times, have increasingly looked to ways other than traditional form study to give themselves an angle and in addition to using speed figures based on race times and racing trends analysis, the use of the dosage method has become more popular.Traditional breeding and pedigree analysis experts here were dismissive of the dosage method, adapted to the racing scene by the American scientist Steven Roman in the 1980s from work completed in the early 20th century by a French researcher. The method involves giving ratings to horses based on the probable speed and stamina capabilities of their sires.If Bolger's ideas were to work on a large scale the dosage method is unlikely to lose its popularity as it is much more specific and awards points to individual horses whereas the work by Hill is more general in predicting a horse's preference for a particular distance.Ben Aitken has written the first book aimed at helping punters use the dosage method in finding winners of jump races. The publication introduces punters to the basic theories of dosage but the bulk of the tome involves a race-by-race analysis of all the important National Hunt races in the calendar and the usefulness of dosage in finding the winners of those particular contests.There is plenty here of interest to dosage followers and while the traditionalists may scoff, if this book is of use in giving readers an edge in their battle to beat the bookmakers then it has certainly served its purpose.Horse racingTony Paleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |