Sound advice Topsy,

By restricting yourself to the top echelon of horse flesh, at least you guarantee that class is always on your side.

As these class horses get older, they do tend to get unreliable, so if you can stick like glue, chances are you'll snag a winner at tasty odds. Maybe put a ceiling on age at say 7 or 8 years old?

Do you keep stats on the age of your longshot victories Topsy?

I like what you said about taking the emotion out of it. We punters tend to forget that we're backing horses and often hold personal vendettas against individual nags for one bad run when we had a stack on (case in point for me Almohad) or lost a race in a photo.

What I do like about quality horses is that they do tend to be reliable, now as for jockeys...........

Two shoes