Pandemic-era change to system for compiling starting prices looks to be costing those who bet on favourites
Calandagan’s impressive defeat of Ombudsman in the Champion Stakes at Ascot may well turn out to have been the best race anywhere on the planet this year when the final ratings are totted up in January, but it was not the reason why Champions Day made a brief but welcome appearance on the BBC’s main evening news bulletin on Saturday evening.
Instead, it was the 200-1 success of Powerful Glory in the Champions Sprint earlier on the card which caught the sports editor’s eye, and understandably so. In the same way that, even now, Leicester’s Premier League title success in 2015-16 is rarely mentioned without reference to the 5,000-1 on offer at the start of the season, it was a case of a starting price being worth a thousand words.
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