'The Commonwealth Cup for slow-burners' - Keith Melrose analyses York's big sprint

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Reading anything into the age or starting prices of winners as part of trends analysis is a bit like preparing a puffer fish. If you're going to try it, you had better be sure that you know what you're doing.

Even so, many don't bother because what lessons you can draw will almost always be indirect. York's Macmillan Sprint Handicap falls into that category. There is no magic spell cast on this race that means the winner will always be a short price. But that there have been so many well-fancied winners tells us something about the race.

This is a sprint handicap for three-year-olds which in the last ten iterations has averaged 19 runners. That is a recipe for chaos. Yet in that period the median winner has come from the top four in the betting. A large number of York's other sprint handicaps show a lot more noise.