Why the Value Is Never in the Obvious Horse

Recorded September 2025 for Why Group 1 Favourites Fail + How to Reverse Engineer Big Market Moves. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

A horse that wins impressively first up is usually the wrong horse to follow. The obvious horse is already priced as the obvious horse. The value sits with the ones that just got beaten, because the reason they were favourite in the first place has not gone anywhere. Eight favourites can get rolled on the one day and none of them suddenly became bad horses overnight. They were favourite because they rate highly, and those ratings are still sitting there waiting for the setup that suits them.

Do not sack a beaten favourite

When a short one gets beaten, the instinct is to cross it off and move on. That is the mistake. These are very good horses with high ratings. They get beaten first up. They get beaten second up. You get surprise results early in a preparation and it feels like nothing is going to plan. Then the form finds itself. The horses reach their right distances, the setup finally lines up, and they come back and win races. The value is in them next start, not in the horse that just beat them.

Every horse has a grand final

The harder part, and the part that is difficult to put your finger on with data, is working out what each horse's grand final actually is. A horse like Lady Shenandoah is a good example. First up, second up, then down the Valley off barrier 10. That is not a horse peaking. That is a horse being set for something bigger, most likely the Everest, and it will be at its peak on that day. Same idea with a horse like Vauban. A pretty good first up run, then a failure second up. You do not sack a horse like that. It is a very good horse being aimed at the Melbourne Cup. The runs you are watching now are steps towards the day that matters to the connections, not the day that matters to you.

They are not Black Caviar and Winx

We remember the champions that just kept winning and winning. Those horses are once in a generation. The horses on a list of eight beaten favourites are not those horses. They run in and they run out. That is normal. Expecting a good group horse to win every single start is expecting something that almost never happens, and it is the reason people sack horses too early and then watch them win at a better price a few weeks later. Bookmakers get results through this patch. That does not last. In a couple of weeks a lot of those favourites start winning again, because the good things are reaching the distances and the races they have been set for.

So when a favourite gets beaten, put it on a list rather than in the bin. Work out what its target race looks like and when the setup will actually suit. The job is picking the day it peaks, because on that day it is often very short, and the day before that is where you get paid.

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

• "How Do You Actually Get the Top Price?"
• How to Tell When Smart Money Has Hit a Horse
• "Why Isn't Backing More Winners Making Me Money?"

From the full video: Why Group 1 Favourites Fail + How to Reverse Engineer Big Market Moves

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