If you have ever come close to tipping the card for an entire race meeting you will understand the frustration that you felt when you contemplated what could have been. Imagine how harder it would have been to accept if you only missed by one race where your tip lost by a nose. Now imagine if exactly the same thing happened again four months later. Unbelievable? Well that is exactly what happened to Sky Racing's race caller, Luke Marlow last Saturday.

Marlow was on duty at Newcastle racecourse to call the eight race program last Saturday for the Sky Racing broadcast network. As usual, Marlow did the form before he arrived at the track and published his top selections for each race on the card. As the day began to unfold a clear trend began to appear amongst his top picks - they kept winning. By the time we reached the final race on the program, Marlow had tipped all 7 winners, with odds as high as $7.40 received from the win tote.

With just one more race left for him to tip the card, Marlow selected Clevedon Bay, a $2.75 chance. Marlow's tip settled back in the field but then quickly improved to get a better position in the running. The five year-old mare then started another advance on the all-the-way leader Lady Corelli, a $26 chance in the race. With each stride she made towards the finishing post, Marlow's tip was reeling in the leader helped along by his own cry to jockey Aaron Bullock during the call "Get stuck in son".

Despite the efforts of the jockey, Marlow and the punters who were wishing it in for the Sky race caller, Clevedon Bay just missed by a nose.

Source: SkyRacing.com.au

In an amazing twist to this story, Marlow had an almost identical experience earlier in the year when he called Richmond greyhounds back in May. Marlow started that night tipping the first two winners of the meet. Then in race three his selection Absolute Gunn missed by a whisker to run second. His top tip in the following seven races all won giving him an 'almost' perfect night.

While the focus here is on Marlow's misses, it's easy to overlook the extraordinary effort required to pick so many winners at a race meet and then to repeat it all again a few months later.

While it may easily be touted as a fluke by some punters, a closer look at Marlow's profit statistics point towards skilled form analysis as the likely explanation for this extraordinary double effort. Luke's horse racing tips have made his followers 17% profit on turnover (POT) over the past three months and a very significant 33% POT from his greyhound tips over the past 6 months.

Mike Steward