do last years winners give clues to todays race?

Hi, I am a biased fan of FAIRWAY so I notice his name quickly in articles. In recent weeks racing jurno's have been compare this years race field or cups contenders to last years to find clues to likely winners.

Take yesterdays Turnball Stakes. Sunline was the fav again, but can she winner.(she did). Recent history has the AJC Derby winner as the race winner. Sky Hights in 1999 and last year Fairway.

The leadup reports this year recalled last years head to head sprint from about 800 meters out between Sunline and Fairway. Fairway held the lead all the way to win in one of the great races of the season. Sadly it was to be his last win.

This year the jurno's were pointing to Universal Prince being the winner, simple because he won the AJC Derby. As it turned out, He came from miles back to take second to Sunline.

Last year Fairway was regularly written off by most jurno's as being inconsistent, even unpredictable. (which proves they don't do research, check out his win % and black type wins). Then those same jurno's a year later write up Fairway in glowing terms to make it look like they know something.

Did I rate universal Prince as a winner? No, he is inconsistent, even unpredictable as a betting proposition. I feel he is set for a specific race and does a number of lead up races to get fitness and tactics sorted out. Check out his lead up runs to the AJC derby, they were like chalk and cheese. I'm still not sure if the Caulfield cup or Melbourne cup is his main target.

In conclusion I do not place much importance on last years winner to provide pearls of wisdom in selecting this years winner. Basically top line horses consistently win black type races, but which one wins on the day has more to do with current form and improvment trends than historical star gazing.

I still like Northerly for the Cox Plate and Native Jazz for the Caulfield Cup. Damn it, I do like the look of Universal Prince for the Melbourne Cup.

Good Punting, Horse Cents

[Mr. Logic]

Hi,
Last year's winners are pretty much irrelevant. It just makes racing journalists sound knowledgeable. Many are failed punters. Many continue to fail as punters.
They also waffle on about what other horses did after horse X beat them or was beaten by horse X. As if that has any relevance to the run by horse X.
Most are too incompetent to actually be able to identify how good a particular run of an individual horse was. They have no idea how to adequately compare one horse with another taking into account relevant form factors like rating figures from the last run, fitness of horses, changes in barriers, jockeys, distances, track conditions and so on.
That's why many rely on what trainers tell them. It creates again an image of inside knowledge. The average punter doesn't speak to trainers. But really, do you think trainers are going to give any inside information to racing journalists so they can strut around like peacocks and publicise it across the country.
Just look at the way they give their tips ---all racing journalists do is point out what each horse has done in a recent run. Anyone with access, as they have, to detailed video comments can do that. The most incompetent racing journalists regularly point out what the horse that beat it has since done, or what horses it has beaten have since done.

They are not able to point out why the horse they pick as their top selection has better winning chances than the horse they pick as their second selection. That means they cannot rate horses.
Most punters would be far better off ignoring racing journalists and their losing tips.