"Who Beats the Favourite If It Doesn't Run to Its Best?"

Recorded October 2025 for 2025 The Everest Tips & Best Bets. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

When there is a short favourite in a race, the question I keep coming back to is simple. If he was to fail, who can beat him? To answer that I go through every horse in the field and write down how they have performed in genuinely high pressure races. Not how they looked winning soft. How they handled a fast tempo. That gives me a set of ratings, and those ratings get adjusted before I use them. The list that comes out the other side is what tells me where the danger sits.

Why I take points off for travel

Ka Ying Rising came out on one zero nine on my raw figures. I took two points off for the travel, so he sat on one zero seven. That is not a knock on the horse. It is an acknowledgement that shifting a horse out of its own environment and into another one costs something, and I would rather build that into the number than pretend it does not exist. If a horse still rates on top after the adjustment, then I know the margin is real rather than a product of me being generous.

Once he is adjusted down to one zero seven, the gap to the rest of them shrinks. That is the point of the exercise. I am not trying to prove the favourite wins. I am trying to see how close the next ones get when I am honest about every runner.

The next two on my list and what has to go right

Jimmy Star came out next best on one zero four. He loves a fast pace, which is exactly what my tempo read says this race will be. The query is the barrier. Can Jimmy win from eleven? I think Ethan Brown is going to have to drop back from there. We saw how far back he got last time, and I expect the same again. From there it becomes a herculean effort to come down the middle of the track and get over the top of Ka Ying Rising.

Jolly Star was next on one zero two. I love the barrier and I love the jockey. Barrier five, James McDonald. The question with him is where he ends up. My predicted position based purely on the data is fourteenth in the race, and I do not want him back there. There is not a lot of pace drawn inside him, so there is no reason he has to go back. Sit a bit more forward, sixth or seventh, even get on Ka Ying Rising's back and give him windburn in the straight. From five, I do not think he can afford to give the favourite too big a start.

What the reshuffled list actually tells you

The ratings on their own do not pick the winner. What they do is rank the field by how each horse handles the pressure I expect, then the adjustments and the likely map tell me which of those horses can actually get into the race. A horse can rate well and still be in trouble from the wrong gate. Another can rate a length under and be perfectly placed to pounce.

So go and do the same thing with your own races. Rate them on their high pressure runs, adjust for travel and anything else that matters, then ask where each one ends up in the run. You will know who is live if the favourite does not fire.

Every race on the card, rated, with Kingsley's selections and the speed maps behind them. Your first day is free, no card needed.

More from Kingsley

• Why Overseas Horses Run Poorly at Home and Win Out Here
• How a Professional Punter Runs Form Analysis Queries
• How I Weigh Up Positive and Negative Form Factors

From the full video: 2025 The Everest Tips & Best Bets

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