LAST weekend was a quiet one with just a single workaday card at Navan and this relative lull offers an opportunity to look at events away from the track, notably the July Sales at Tattersalls.

For a lot of bigger trainers and owners, this sale allows for a stock clear out, though it was good to see some smaller yards and connections doing well with their offerings.

Michael O’Meara has had a good run at the races lately with a recent double at Dundalk and his Awtaad gelding Ethical Diamond sold very well for 320,000gns to Willie Mullins and Harold Kirk.

A progressive sort in three starts, he won on slow ground at Limerick last month, form boosted by the runner-up winning well at Killarney on Monday, and it will be interesting to see how soon he has his first start for Mullins, the champion trainer often favouring a break with his new arrivals.

Whiskey On The Hill was one of the most progressive three-year-old handicappers around in the first half the flat season, running seven times and winning his last three, rising from a mark of 59 to 83 in that period and his owner Alex Zevenbergen made 135,000gns on his sale.

A lot of his form worked out through the likes of Picture Of A City and Pinot Gris and his run style of doing little in front means he may not be done with yet.

Ado McGuinness will be disappointed to lose him if indeed that is what is happening, but Shamrock Thoroughbreds made their by now typical forays into the experienced handicapper market and added more firepower to the yard.

Their three buys were Apache Outlaw (65,000gns from Joseph O’Brien), Migdam (60,000 gns from Michael Stoute) and Volatile Analyst (55,000gns from the retiring Keith Dalgleish), the last-named one that has dropped in the weights in the last year or so from 105 down to 92.

It will be interesting to see how those three get on as we come into McGuinness’ time of the year.

The record of various trainers with stable switchers was covered here a few weeks back and Johnny Murtagh was someone that came out well, his record with horses arriving to his yard from other yards in Ireland and Britain is six winners from 33 runners on their first start for him.

Murtagh made just one buy at the sales, Blanc De Noir for 40,000gns from Jessica Harrington, and while that one has not fully delivered on the promise of his juvenile runs, he looked well-suited by a strongly run straight track handicap when winning at the Curragh three starts back.

His new trainer is fond of winners at flat HQ and this one may prove suited by seven furlongs at that track, the form of his last run at Naas working out quite well where he seemed to find the six furlongs on the sharp side.

At the lower end of the scale, Awesome Spirit (10,000gns from Michael O’Callaghan) was an eye-catching buy for The Horse Watchers.

They have done well with horses bought out of Irish yards in the past, notably Big Country and Warrior Brave going back a bit, along with Painters Palette and Westernesse this season, and their new acquisition could be one that is suited by going down in trip.

IN general, I don’t like rules about betting. The game is too complicated and changes too quickly for guidelines on how to approach it to have lasting value. However, one approach that might work just at this moment is to avoid betting horses after they have moved in price and instead try to be patient.

This isn’t easy, the pull of FOMO (fear of missing out) being strong, but in many cases those prices will drift back out due to the current volatility of the markets.

Horse racing markets are erratic by nature, much more so than those in most other sports, and that is especially the case with early prices and early can mean as late as half an hour before post time.

Even at this apparent late stage, there may not be much volume traded on the exchanges, yet those markets influence the bookmaker prices which are open to manipulation. It can be hard to determine the real punches from the shadow boxing.

As punters, perhaps we should try to lean into this volatility. If we fancy a horse but miss the price, chasing it down might not be the way to go as we could find ourselves on a bad value bet if and when a drift comes.

Take the final race at Leopardstown on Thursday last, the Belfield Q.R. race, as an example. Jesse Evans opened up at around 9/4 the evening before and took some support the following morning into sub-2/1 but in the few hours after the meeting had started drifted out to as big as 4/1 on the exchanges half an hour before the race.

Then came strong support on the show from an opening price of 9/4 into an SP 13/8, the strength of that final return backed up by a Betfair Starting Price of 2.65 when the other 13/8 joint favourite returned a BSP of 3.06, much weaker overall.

The late market on the exchanges, particularly the closing price, are largely controlled by betting syndicates and while those exchanges may not have the liquidity they once had, data shows that the final price is still as good a reflection of true odds as is available publicly.

My point is that, fadó, fadó, I suspect this late drift on Jesse Evans was much less likely to happen, and punters who backed him earlier in the day may well have been questioning their judgement when they saw his exchange price drift to double the odds of their initial bet.

When the syndicates had their say however, it became apparent that any bet at 2/1 or bigger was a good one and while the horse may have been slightly fortunate to win, many decent bets were had earlier in the day, especially by those who were patient in the hours before the race and took advantage of the volatile drift out to 4/1 or so.

WE are already at the third classic weekend of the season at the Curragh and, as so often in the past, Aidan O’Brien was the story of the last one, winning six races over Derby weekend, including a 1-2-3-4 in the feature and launching the career of City Of Troy.

Johnny Murtagh’s three winners over those three days might have been more under the radar however and two of his winners then came in handicaps. Since 2020, no trainer has had more handicap winners at the Curragh than his 22 successes; Joseph O’Brien and Jessica Harrington the only others to break double figures.

His overall record in Curragh handicaps during that period is 22 winners and 46 places from 125 runners for a level-stakes profit of 90.63 points, and since he started training his record with handicap debutantes here is a strong 8/39 with 17 places, good for a level-stakes profit of 43.75 points.

The former jockey had many good days at the track, and he seems to have carried that affinity through to his second career so is a name to note as we head into the Oaks meeting, and indeed all other meetings at the track.