$200k bet on Betfair for Cox Plate winner Sir Dragonete
 

Did anyone watch the Cox Plate over the weekend? Sir Dragonet was crunched 15 minutes out from the race when a $200k bet was matched on Betfair halving the quote of the horse from $14's into $7's. It was an amazing betting spectacle as the horse duly saluted. I have two questions:

1) What in the form guide caused this horse to be backed so heavily? The horse had been beaten by 1.5 lengths two starts prior at Curragh by Buckhurst. Buckhurt also raced in the Cox Plate, but unbelievably SP'ed at $30 (double the quote of Sir Dragonet).
2) Who placed this bet? There was some suggestion that it was a UK syndicate. Other players who would be capable of having a bet of this size in Australia include Zeljko and Dr Nick.

A discussion of the Cox Plate and betting can be found here

And it looks like these 3 stooges (and probably many others) are still scratching their heads trying to figure out why an obviously well-intentioned horse won that race. And it’s not like anyone was trying to conceal their beliefs either by betting that kind of money at 15 minutes to post. There was plenty of time for any rational individual who witnessed this type of betting to jump on board!

The sad thing is how handicappers continually underestimate the value of money. They get so caught up in their own personal interpretations of the past performances that they can’t see the forest for the trees. Someday it might occur to them that the insiders have far more valuable information about the horses in their care than anything found in the past performance data.

The loss to Buckhurst was on good going in a 3 horse field in a race that was run at a crawl that it only got a 3 truespeed rating as per Racingpost. Has good formlines back to Magical on wet turf, racingpost ratings were just as good if not better then Russian Camelot.

I wonder what the early prices were on the horse wit the UK bookies vs the Aussie bookies, maybe the Aussies just didn't respect the horse since we wasn't racing in flashy group 1 types races in the uk

Are racing posts ratings reliable? Sir Dragonete opened at $14 here in Australia and Armory opened at $6.

betting coup
 

looks like someone made a strong bet.

I didn't handicap, or see the odds. (If someone would like to post the odds, that would be nice, or I could 'Google' if interested enough.)

This sounds like a nice race. I'm interested in big races, and global racing. Feel that the same fundamentals apply everywhere.

First 'guess' = someone had a strong positive opinion of a contender, and a negative opinion of the favorite. (how did the expected favorite perform??).

I'll eventually get around to watching what looks like a nice Podcast/ Youtube presentation video on the betting coup. Thanks for sharing.:ThmbUp::ThmbUp: Good Stuff!

Sir Dragonete wheels back for the Cup on Monday night, along with some others from the Cox Plate. Him and Russian Camelot from the Plate fits a system profile play I've been working on lately, have the best ratings, but the ??? is if they can produce it over 2 miles, will override the play probably. Don't like the O'Brien horses at all, don't seem fast enough, people probably not wanting to get caught like they did in the Cox Plate on the Euros. I had Ashrun :18: in the Lexus, like him again Monday (The Lexus, like the Cox Plate, was run at a face pace). Looking at :4: :7: 23 24 as well.