Some more stats:

Win/Place strike rates for top 2 rated runners

Top rated:
Wins: 34%
2nds: 18%
3rds: 8%
Total: 60%

2nd rated:
Wins: 20%
2nds: 17%
3rds: 15%
Total: 52%

Very interesting stats there.

Quite incredible the difference! The top rated runner (as you would hope) has significantly more wins than 2nds, and significantly more 2nds than 3rds. On the other hand, there is very little difference between the number of wins, 2nds and 3rds for the 2nd rated runner. And interesting that the 2nd rated runner finishes 3rd almost twice as often as the top rated runner.

Another thing to look at is that the top rated runner finished either 1st or 2nd more than half the time. That sounds pretty encouraging for multiple punters.

I also found out that in races where there were 2 clear selections (no equal 2nd raters), at least one of those 2 top rated horses finished either first or second 73% of the time.

By the way, the stats for the 2nd rated runners is after deleting those 14 runners I mentioned in the previous post. They didn't make a huge difference to the overall place strike though, only lifting it from 51% to 52%.