Missing the FINOO bus

Just missing the bus: Still from a traffic camera [pic credit: www.sptimes.com/]

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Although I have made it clear that there is not a single horse from the FINOO (Follow-In-Next-Outing-Only) list on the Saturday (April 25) card, strictly speaking, that is not true. There is one horse running on Saturday, who has missed getting onto the FINOO list by a proverbial whisker, like a horse losing the race in a photo finish. 

When does a horse miss the FINOO bus? There are two stages that a horse needs to qualify to finally get onto the FINOO list. Both stages have their own rules, and unfortunately, they are ironclad, almost written in stone. Because a check on past performances shows that if you slacken the rules even a little bit, your strike rate, which is the most important factor for long term profit with this list, may go for a toss. 

The first is a qualifier stage. A horse can pass it in two ways. It can either register a peculiar type of track (on outer sand), or display a peculiar pace move during an actual race. When it does so, it passes the first test, and gets onto the WATCH list. 

The horse is then watched for maximum two more runs (or 45 days, whichever is earlier) to see if it produces at least ONE of the THREE peculiar running patterns (identified by us) between 1000 and 400 meter markers. If not, it is dropped from the watch list. If it does, then it is upgraded to the FINOO list. 

Once the horse gets onto the FINOO list, it’s then monitored ONLY, as the name suggests, for the NEXT run. There are three conditions (that have already been explained last weekend) that the horse must satisfy to qualify as a bet. One of my students has nicknamed this as an LGHMDH bet.   

It’s an acronym for a famous dialogue from a popular Hindi film, Sholay, in which, in one of the scenes, actor Sanjeev Kumar, playing a handless Thakur, tells Jai (Amitabh) and Veeru (Dharmendra): “Loha garam hai; maar do hathoda!” (The iron is hot; hammer it hard!) 

The qualifying rules for the second stage are so ironclad, some horses fulfill them almost, but not quite. For example, if a horse makes a particular one of the three qualifying moves between 1000 & 400m, then we don’t want it to be overtaken at the post by another horse coming form behind. Only then, it will figure on the FINOO list. But sometimes, for some extraneous reason (not a horse’s fault), the horse misses the FINOO bus because the rules, for the long term benefit, have to be kept absolutely uncompromising and ironclad. 

One such horse, who missed the FINOO bus is running on tomorrow’s card. She did everything right to get on the FINOO list, but missed it because her jockey wasted precious time trying to force passage on the inner rails before taking her out in the last furlong, but lost crucial momentum to allow another horse come from behind and overtake her to get the second place. 

Her name is Forest Native, and tomorrow she is running in the 7^th race.

Don’t tell me Musical Rhythm who finished ahead of her is now going out with a better rider, or that Shodaan who ran a good race in higher class is now running on demotion. I would not have cared if Forest Native had been on my list.

Because if Forest Native had qualified for the FINOO list, we would have not even looked at the competition! That's the most interesting part of the FINOO list that you just don't handicap the rivals once you have a list horse going into the race as an LGHMDH bet.