A good day for the model yesterday. Across 120 races, the top pick won 37 times, a 30.8% strike rate that's comfortably above what a top-rated selection should return if the ratings carried no real edge. Add in the 64 occasions the first pick ran into a place and you've got a card where the headline selection was doing its job more often than not.
Widen it out to any of the top three picks landing the win and the number climbs to 86 out of 120, a 71.7% hit rate for at least one of the three highest-rated dogs in each race taking it out. Push that to a place finish and it's 112 of 120 races where the top three picks between them found a runner in the frame. Those are the kind of numbers that suggest the ratings were reading the fields well rather than getting lucky on a couple of results.
It wasn't a day where everything ran to script, and it never is, but the balance of evidence points to a card where the model's read on form, suitability and conditions held up under pressure. Days like this are worth banking without getting carried away by them, the same way a tougher day shouldn't be read as the model losing its way. It's the run of results over weeks that tells the real story, and yesterday added a strong entry to that ledger.