Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 27 October 2025

Now this is going back a few years, but there is never a day in our industry when this doesn’t apply.

Back in the 70s when I was a student I used to frequent a betting shop in the Whitgift Centre in Croydon, where I had my first flat. The shop was managed by someone related to Epsom trainer Ron Smyth and a regular there was ‘Jock’ Hardie, a dour stoutly built Scotsman who was employed as Templegate of The Sun.

As someone aspiring to become a racing journalist I was initially in awe of him, but it quickly became apparent that he was not the most gifted of judges. He avidly followed the market, passing his fiver … a fair bet back then … over the counter with the words ‘that’s the one they want.’

I tried to engage him in conversation, keen to learn more, but he had little to share and only once did I see him at the track, where his demeanour was unchanged.

Yet that phrase has stayed with me. Who are ‘they’?

I am sure that ‘they’ have encompassed a wide variety of sources over the years … owners, trainers, well-placed punters, stable contacts, good judges, office money … but there are still occasions when the market has an uncanny prescience of what is about to unfold.

For one example, and I could call upon hundreds, on Saturday I thought that Wobwobwob had a reasonable chance in the closing 7f handicap at Doncaster. Yet in the minutes before the off he drifted from 7/1 to 14/1, with Betfair leading the move and touching 24 or thereabouts. It was as if someone was actively laying the horse.

In more recent times the late John McCririck, who behind the TV bravado had a very shrewd insight to the workings of the betting ring, used to bellow out ‘This horse cannot win’ when the price of a horse from a certain yard drifted.

We had a situation last week, when the early market on the Ballydoyle representatives in the Group 1 Futurity took a few twists and turns. Without going into the timing, on seeing the substantial drift in price on Benvenuto Cellini and shortening on Hawk Mountain I assumed that the former was not going to travel over, possibly due to the forecast of soft ground.

In the examples given … Wobwobwob, McCririck and the Futurity … it would be interesting to know who the movers and shakers were, and their conduits and lines to the bookmakers. Obviously they change over time.

Also, it may not be the amount bet but the source.

I know of a case when the rails operators were quick to shorten a horse on the rare occasion when the trainer’s wife approached with her fiver.

There were respected ‘faces’, but they are probably now concealed in the ether of online betting rather than evident on the track.

Perhaps there are still a few trainers who need to try to balance the books with a bet … I mentioned Calypso Breeze a fortnight ago … but they are few and far between these days, in part due to the bookmakers’ restrictions.

It’s all changed, of course, with the exchanges and black market activities. However there is still an edge to be found for those who try to read the markets.

‘They’ are still around.

Bye for now

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