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Traders of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe

30 September 2022 Peter Webb 0 Comments

Once a year, I will taste some Betfair trading on French horse racing like a connoisseur tastes French wine, with a sense of appreciation but with the gusto of a true enthusiast.

French horse racing

On Friday, I traded the ‘evening’ racing at Moonee Valley in Australia and will return in the early hours of Saturday morning to have a look at some of the other group racing in Australia. It’s because I am intending to gear up for the Melbourne Cup Carnival in November.

Over the course of the year, opportunities do pop up in other markets around key periods. Australian racing provides the broadest mix as from September to April, with plenty of action on key days. Meydan kicks in during January and peaks in March, but just in front of us, we have a flurry of activity. We have group racing in Australia tomorrow, and then as we head to the end of October we end up in the US for the breeder’s cup.

But on Sunday, we have a highlight of the racing calendar taking place a little closer to home shores.

Longchamp – prix de l’arc de triomphe

I don’t tend to trade on Sundays, or on French racing, but the richest race in Europe always draws my attention as it and the companion races are nearly always an opportunity.

This weekend we see the two-day meeting at Longchamp.

Saturdays are intermingled with some quality in the UK, so they don’t tend to yield that much. But on Sunday, we have had the big stuff, which tends to trade reasonably well. Most of the surrounding card in the UK is not the greatest quality on Sunday, so I’ll tend to do some other things, then trade the French racing in between that. I’ll keep my powder dry generally for the big race on Sunday, and it will be pretty big.

Typically it’s pretty big in turnover terms, and it will probably match over a million and is, therefore, a highlight within this part of the racing calendar. When you say ‘l’arc de Triomphe to me, Frankie Dettori seems to have been a permanent feature in my mind on this race, for good and bad reasons. Probably the most notorious moment is his career was being banned after a drug test at Longchamp in 2012. Solemia won the race that year, but he has won it twice since.

On Sunday, he returns with red hot favourite Enable, which should ensure plenty of interest in the big race.

Betting exchanges are not legal in France

It’s worth having a look at the big race on Sunday, and you may want to give it a try trading it’s not going to trade exactly the way you would expect it would do in the UK, and you can have a very long period of money arriving. Of course, betting exchanges are not legal in France so there is no concept of sports exchanges overall. The state-owned PMU is typically the choice of French gamblers and France isn’t entirely backwards as they do have some online betting. So you can find out more information online at http://horseraces.pmu.fr/racecards, which caters for English speakers.

With no full-time betting exchange users, laying bets into the market is not possible, no Betfair trading software,  no betting exchange offers, no sports trading at all, really and with no stock exchange for sports, traditional bookmakers can’t hedge into the market either. So the behaviour of the market and the way that it’s shaped will be somewhat different to what you see when you are trading on Betfair in the UK. But all that to one side is worth a good look.

It’s also worth having a look at the races that lead up to the big race because they tend to start a bit earlier in the day. That will allow you to get a feel on how the race is likely to trade. I’ve done some really good results in the past but it does vary from year to year, so I will give the big one a fair go.

Good luck if you give them a go. I’ll be there on Sunday to see what I can squeeze out of the card.

Hippodrome Longchamp

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