Books & Videos: Stats the way - but be careful out there.

Byline: Robin Gibson

Trainers 4 Courses

Ken Turrell (Old Steine, pounds 30)

SOMETIMES there's just nothing you can do. There you are, patiently working your way through this extensive book of stats - trainers to back, and lay, at different courses - when lightning strikes not once but twice.

The second day of Goodwood's Predominate meeting sees Ken Turrell highlight Saeed Bin Suroor as one of only a few names to back at the track, and up he pops with an 8-1 winner and 25-1 second in the first.

It's one of those days when Turrell's pointers are on the money. Or is it? Goodwood `caution trainer' Richard Hannon has eight runners and, while the first flops, the next two scream in first and second in the fourth race - at 100-1 and 25-1.

Which wouldn't be that bad - if he didn't advise readers to lay the caution trainers in his intro. Let's be fair, Hannon was as gobsmacked by his double whammy as Turrell must have been, but it's a strong reminder that stats need interpretation. Backing - or laying - blindly does not work, no matter what the author recommends.

However, assuming you didn't fatally hole your financial hull trying to net a few spare fivers by laying over the odds about Another Faux Pas, you'll find Turrell's tome useful - it throws up many nuggets about the patterns and preferences of trainers who are, essentially, creatures of habit.

There's a hell of a lot of information and, with a bit of selectivity and not too much indiscriminate laying, it could (on the basis of my limited research that threw up a few nicely-priced winners) be a boon to most punters, particularly in whittling down options at minor tracks.

ROBIN GIBSON

nAvailable from Trainers 4 Courses, Kingsway House, 134-140 Church Road, Hove, Sussex BN3 2DL (freephone 0800 0190598) for pounds 30 including postage and packing