How Racing Post Ratings warn us to be wary of Benvenuto Cellini in the Futurity
The Racing Post's two-year-olds handicapper Ainsley Turner assesses the final Group 1 of Britain's Flat season

It's hard to disagree it's been a disappointing year for the juvenile division. Racing Post Ratings in Pattern races will back that up, with the happy exception of the Group 1s.
The average winning RPR of the four top-level juvenile races this season has been 117. That is ahead of City Of Troy’s year at this stage, and only 1lb behind the ten-year average. So far, so good.
A sticking point comes when looking at the field for the Futurity Trophy. The ten-year average pre-race RPR for a Futurity winner is 111. This year, only one piece of form is up to that level: Oxagon’s fifth in the Dewhurst. Of course, they're all open to improvement, but the trends suggest it's unlikely to be a vintage race.
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