A Japanese Arc Winner?

There’s been a lot of debate this week in the office about the social network Twitter. The racing fraternity have a large and growing presence and I find it’s a great way to interact with other punters, trainers, bookmakers, jockeys etc. It’s different from other social networks like Facebook in that it’s mainly people you don’t know face to face. I’ve had some great debates on there and learned some interesting information. This week, it even led me to a big bet!

On Christmas Day, a horse called Orfevre won his sixth race in a row in Nakayama in Japan beating a superstar field including Buena Vista and Victoire Pisa (this after winning the Japanese triple crown as a three year old in 2011). As such, connections have been talking about the Arc and I have been desperate to find a price as I often think runners from shores afar can be overpriced.

Sadly, it’s too early for anyone to have priced up an ante-post Arc market up but, luckily, I’d been tweeting an Aussie on Twitter who alerted me to a special that Coral had priced up: “A Japanese Trained Horse to win the 2012 Prix De L’Arc De Triomphe” at 10/1. This was gold dust as I reckon if the bookmakers priced the race up today, Orfevre would be a maximum of 6/1 given the lack of older horses staying in training this year who would be good enough to win the Arc.

I immediately got onto James Knight of Coral (Head of Racing Trading) who’s on Twitter and asked him if they were prepared to lay a decent bet at this 10/1. He said they would so I got Luke to drive me to Coral to oblige myself of some of the 10/1 that the Arc heads to the Land of the Rising Sun this year. So thanks to Scott Ferguson (https://twitter.com/#!/borisranting) and James Knight (https://twitter.com/#!/jamesaknight) for helping me find and get a bet on that I’d never have found and placed without Twitter! You can follow me at https://twitter.com/#!/DavidHaddrell

Happy New Year to you all or, as they say, in Japan Akemashite omedetou.