It goes against the grain to back any horse odds-on.  After all, the prospect of losing more than you stand to gain seems to go against the whole allure of betting in the first place.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that every odds-on shot is bad value, though in horseracing there is always room for error.

Odds-on shots in 3 mile chases can give punters good cause for an early coronary, but a fine colt so forward as Frankel over 7 furlongs at Newmarket?  He’s not exactly got far to travel to the course either – what can go wrong between Warren Place and there?  Well, plenty, of course.  And in the run up to the race.  We’ve all seen it, it’s not exactly like betting on the tide coming in.  What are the dangers?  Well, there are some.  On speed figures and racecourse achievements, it’s Dream Ahead.  But Frankel can probably take him – you’d think he had more scope to look at him.  Does that matter?  As the up and down runs of Workforce showed us this season, the best horse in the race can often get beat when it’s not his day.  They’re not machines and all that.  And the last couple of runnings of this race have gone to rank outsiders.

So much for the caveats.  Frankel is currently 1.78 on Betfair.  He looks an extremely progressive and forward colt, and the figures and gallop stories back that up.  There’s horrible uncertainty about any bet due to none of the competitors being exposed, but that’s just the nature of betting on a Group 1 2 year old race.  With all the talk of Frankel being completely overhyped, it’s just possible that punters may be searching for value that doesn’t exist elsewhere, and this could be one of those occasions when an odds-on shot is good value.  The benefit of hindsight will tell us even more.