Trials play an important part of preparing a horse for race day and similarly they are another vital piece when it comes to form analysis.
Unlike race day, there are no prizes for winning trials and as such trainers will head to the trials with differing objectives for their horses. Younger horses will trial for education and to simulate the race experience as best as possible while those with more racing behind them will often trail for fitness as they prepare for a race in the coming days/weeks.
Below are some of the factors to look for when analysing trials to attempt to find horses that may be worth following on race day.
Times
The majority of trial programs are run over a minimal number of distances. Most of the time there may be one or two middle distance trials (e.g. 1400m) with the remainder run over a sprint of between 700m-900m depending on the venue.
Trials over the same distance on the same day provide an easy benchmark to compare the quality of the performance particularly when factoring the standard (e.g. maiden, class 2, open) of the trial.
The Devonport trial program on 14 January held four trials. Open class, two-year-old’s, three/four-year-old’s and a maiden/class 2.
The fastest time of the session was the three and four-year-old trial (trial 3) won by Cabarrus. At the time Cabarrus had two starts to his credit for one win, so the effort for him to record a faster winning time than other more experienced and better performed horses was a strong indicator that he would run well first-up.
He went to a class 1 race a week after the trial and won as a $2.70 favourite.
Quality of opposition
Similar to race day, trials will often match horses with little or no race experience against others who have a form reference through their efforts on race day.
The performances of horses who have faced the judge under race conditions provide a strong guide to line-up the efforts of those with significantly less racing.
Promising three-year-old Galenus recorded the fastest time of the day for the trial session on 11 February. He had a dominant maiden win next to his name (as $1.50 favourite) and had run credibly against Still A Star and Deroche on debut.
Finishing second in this trial, and with a big margin back to third was Magic Khan who had finished worse than midfield at her only career start.
While it’s highly unlikely that both horses were performing to their maximum in the trial, the effort of Magic Khan to finish as close as she did to Galenus in a good time for the day boded well for her next race start.
She raced three weeks after that trial, and while the market didn’t like her drifting from $3.00 to $7.00, she was a soft winner by just over a length.
Tactics
Finishing positions are often misleading and some may even classify them as irrelevant when it comes to trials. As mentioned earlier, horses will have different objectives for heading to the trials and the tactics employed in the trial can provide a good guide as to whether the finishing position in the trial can be dismissed come race day.
Two horses ridden in completely different ways in this trial were the second horse Society Bill and Stefanidi who finished fourth.
Society Bill was bustled from the gates with an intent to lead and was asked for further effort by the rider Ismail Toker in the home straight.
Conversely, Stefanidi jumped better than anything from the barriers but was restrained back to last by Brandon Louis with the intent seemingly to have the last part of the trial be the filly’s best. While she finished fourth and 3.6 lengths from the winner, she did what was needed in the trial and was unlucky not to win her maiden 11 days later when sent out a $6 chance.
Fighting Phoenix finished fourth in this trial but was rarely asked for effort at any stage. Daniel Ganderton allowed the mare to settle at the tail of the field throughout and only niggled her slightly in the home straight. Despite winning four of her eight career races, she’s only won one of her seven trials and shows significantly less intent then race day.
She stepped out in a class 3 a couple of weeks after this trial winning by half a length with Ganderton again in the saddle.
Conclusion
Dissecting trials is far from an exact science but one thing that is important to keep in mind is that the performance is often far more important than the finishing position.
Trials can now be located in the FORMLUS guide within previous form with a link to watch the replay.