Some people through no fault of their own rarely seem to catch a break. Conversely, you get others who can’t seem to ‘put a foot wrong’, they’re born lucky. They take part in an office sweepstake and come out on top, buy a scratch card and win big, win a jackpot with a free spin, pick a 50-1 outsider due to its ‘silly name’ and ‘what well do you know’ it romps home in first place. There’s no rhyme or reason to these things really, and it’s best to chalk it down to life’s rich tapestry, but it can be quite something to witness when you see an unbelievable winning or losing run, whether it spans hours, days, weeks, or more!

It’s something that’s common to see in casinos. There is always so much thrilling action going on, that any comically bad run, or midas touch string of wins stands out. I’ve seen first hand the ‘it’s got to be red this time hasn’t it’ mentality on roulette where an individual convinces himself that after x number of red numbers coming up, the next spin simply has to be black.

The same can apply to horse racing. A combination of luck and skills can transform lives. I’ve highlighted some mind boggling accumulator bets over the years, where a small stake of a couple of pounds or so can turn into staggering wins of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Life changing sums of money, sometimes as result of strategy, but other times due to a simple decision that results in a string of wins. This was true of Frankie Dettori’s Magnificent 7, where several punters bet on all seven horses Dettori was set to ride that day at Ascot, only to see them all romp home.

Of course, the same principle applies to individual bets of incredible odds – Oh to have been one of the faithful betting on Leicester to win the 2015/16 Premier league at odds of 5000-1! Even some of those bailing out early won hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Stay lucky!!

then just watch this nutty Japanese horse racing animation and forget about it!

In the MPM Flooring Handicap (7.00) at Windsor on Monday evening, Midnight Meeting didn’t see a racecourse until June but, after finishing a never-dangerous fifth of eight, beaten 8¾ lengths, over an extended mile at Nottingham on his debut, has quickly compensated for lost time. The son of Dubawi was the comfortable winner of a novice stakes races over the same course and distance a fortnight later and was similarly untroubled when stepped up to a mile and a quarter, under today’s jockey, Hayley Turner, at Salisbury 16 days ago.

The Salisbury contest lacked any strength in depth, but Midnight Meeting quickened away in the closing stages, under hands-and-heels riding, to beat his only serious market rival, Respectable, by 2½ lengths. Respectable let the form down when beaten again, in a lowly novice median auction stakes race at Lingfield, last Saturday, but that shouldn’t be held against Midnight Meeting, who is improving race-by-race. Indeed, he’s entered in the Great Voltigeur at York later this month and the St. Leger at Doncaster in September and, if those entries are realistic, you’d really expect him to win a race of this nature with something in hand.

Saeed bin Suroor remains in excellent form, with 9-21 (43%) strike rate in the last 14 days, while Hayley Turner, who doesn’t ride many for the Newmarket trainer, has a 2-5 (40%) strike rate for the yard this season. Historically, Saeed bin Suroor has also done well with his three-year-olds at Windsor, where he has a 9-23 (39%) strike rate with that age group over the last five seasons.

Selection: Windsor 7.00 Midnight Meeting to win

Conventional wisdom dictates that putting more weight on a horse will eventually slow it down. In fact, this is the essence of handicapping, which attempts to equalise differences in ability between horses by allocating a weight to each according to its ability.

One of the reasons jockeys ride as they do, crouched over the ridge between the shoulder blades of the horse, known as the withers, is to avoid the horse having to accelerate the weight of the jockey during each stride. However, if the weight of the jockey and tack – that is, saddle and stirrups – is less than the weight allotted to the horse in a race, the difference is made up weight pads in a saddle cloth.

This additional weight is so-called “dead weight” – as, indeed, is the weight of the tack – so, according to Newton’s Second Law of Motion, which states that the acceleration of an object is inversely proportional to the mass of the object, putting more weight on a horse must ultimately affects the speed at which it can gallop. In fact, one American study even went as far as quantifying the effects of putting more weight on a horse and concluded that horses running in two consecutive, but identical, races required a weight rise of just 3lb to worsen their performance by one length.

However, despite all the evidence to the contrary, there is still a school of thought that insists that putting more weight on a horse has no effect, whatsoever, on its performance. Proponents of this “weight doesn’t matter” theory argue that weight rises of 6lb or 7lb – which are typical of those imposed by the BHA handicapper – cannot possibly influence the performance of a thoroughbred weighing in excess of 1,000lb.

The waters are muddied still further by the fact that horses carrying more weight tend to fare better, in subsequent races, than those carrying less weight. Over a third of all handicap races in Britain are won by one of the top three in the weights, with the topweight winning most often and so on down the ratings. What this appears to suggest though, is that high-class horses – that is, those at the top of the handicap – are insufficiently penalised in Britain and consequently win more than their fair share of races.