The card
In 2 days, 27 October 2026 · as at 25 October 2026
- Venue
- Mallee Park
- Code
- Thoroughbred
- Class
- Feature
- Distance
- 2000m
- Surface
- Turf
- Cycle
- Day
- Each way
- 1/4 odds, places 1-2-3-4
The Meridian is the feature at Mallee Park, 2000 metres at 4.20pm in two days, draw id MAL-R8-EB4FBD. The lap is 1800 metres, so the trip is one circuit plus 200 metres and the field passes the post once before it finishes. Twelve go round, which is the venue's maximum, and the book is 124.4.
Switchyard holds 261 of the 1,000 numbers from barrier ten, 26.1 per cent, with Fence Line on 196 from barrier one and Old Telegraph on 165 from barrier seven. Those three hold 622 and the other nine share 378. Eight of the twelve hold fewer than a hundred numbers and the thinnest, Sunday Pages on ten, is at $80.39.
Two blocks on this card are identical. Marble Bar at barrier two and Tally Room at barrier twelve hold 33 numbers each and are both printed at $24.36 for an implied 4.1 per cent. Between them sit fourteen career wins, two trainers and two jockeys, and the weighting table separates them by nothing at all.
Field
12 runners · no scratchings on this circuit
| No | Colours | Barrier | Runner | Jockey | Trainer | Form | Record | Price | Numbers | Implied | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Fence Line | Jonty Mapp | Faisal Karim | 57243 | 41-4-5-9 | 4.10 | 196 | 24.4% | One hundred and ninety-six numbers from barrier one, second block, with four career wins and nine thirds from 41 starts. | |
| 2 | 2 | Marble Bar | Priya Sandhu | Vera Lindqvist | 98367 | 29-6-3-3 | 24.36 | 33 | 4.1% | Thirty-three numbers off barrier two, tied with barrier twelve on the block and on the price at $24.36. | |
| 3 | 3 | Sunday Pages | Kaz Tupou | Nam Tran | 18785 | 46-11-8-6 | 80.39 | 10 | 1.2% | Ten numbers from barrier three, the thinnest block on the card at $80.39, against 327 numbers at Tin Creek the day before. | |
| 4 | 4 | Long Paddock | Eli Vandermeer | Trudy Aspinall | 23924 | 33-5-7-5 | 11.65 | 69 | 8.6% | Sixty-nine numbers off barrier four, fifth block, with seven career seconds from 33 starts. | |
| 5 | 5 | Paper Lantern | Cleo Baird | Nam Tran | 50432 | 57-13-9-6 | 7.88 | 102 | 12.7% | One hundred and two numbers from barrier five, fourth block, and thirteen career wins from 57 starts beside it. | |
| 6 | 6 | Ridgeback | Ruby Nankervis | Hugh Pentland | 5980 | 16-3-3-3 | 20.10 | 40 | 5.0% | Forty numbers off barrier six, 4.0 per cent, an hour and ten minutes after holding 281 in the Jacaranda Cup. | |
| 7 | 7 | Old Telegraph | Linc Pappas | Coen McTiernan | 26837 | 34-5-6-4 | 4.87 | 165 | 20.5% | One hundred and sixty-five numbers from barrier seven, third block, 20.5 per cent implied at $4.87. | |
| 8 | 8 | Ninepin | Ora Benjafield | Dorrie Slack-Smith | 31452 | 43-4-10-4 | 47.29 | 17 | 2.1% | Seventeen numbers off barrier eight at $47.29, tenth on the table, with 43 starts for four wins. | |
| 9 | 9 | Tin Whistle | Teddy Lamb | Coen McTiernan | 10149 | 33-6-6-4 | 53.59 | 15 | 1.9% | Fifteen numbers from barrier nine, 1.9 per cent implied, the second-thinnest block on the card. | |
| 10 | 10 | Switchyard | Gina Mavros | Bronwyn Esch | 48758 | 34-5-3-3 | 3.08 | 261 | 32.5% | The top block at 261 numbers from barrier ten, 26.1 per cent, off a form string reading 4-8-7-5-8 without a win in it. | |
| 11 | 11 | Stockyard Gate | Rhys Calder | Faisal Karim | 41101 | 43-9-5-3 | 13.62 | 59 | 7.3% | Fifty-nine numbers from barrier eleven, sixth on the table, a day after the 317 it holds at Coorong Park. | |
| 12 | 12 | Tally Room | Noor Haddad | Hugh Pentland | 15069 | 34-8-5-2 | 24.36 | 33 | 4.1% | Thirty-three numbers off barrier twelve, the same block and the same $24.36 as barrier two, with eight career wins from 34 starts. |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Prices on this page are the draw weighting in another notation. They are reference figures published with the card, not odds available anywhere, and not a betting recommendation.
A field is fixed when the card is published: there are no scratchings, no non-runners and no starting price. Why that follows from the draw.
The draw
The result is a weighted draw of 1,000 numbers without replacement: each runner holds a block of numbers in proportion to its price, a number is drawn once, and the animation is rendered from the order that comes out. Everything used to produce this race is printed below, so the race can be reconstructed.
- Draw id
- MAL-R8-EB4FBD
- Engine
- GP-Draw 4.2
- Seed
- eb4fbdaaa35815ff
- Numbers in the draw
- 1,000
- Book
- 124.4%
- Margin
- 24.4%
A draw without replacement cannot produce a dead heat, and a field that is fixed at publication cannot produce a late scratching. How a virtual race is decided works through the arithmetic in full.
The form desk
-
Top of the market
3.08 261 numbers · 26.1% true
-
Where the book is thinnest
4.87 165 numbers · 16.5% true
-
The outsider
80.39 10 numbers · 1.0% true
Stated once, as on every card: the result is drawn from the table without replacement, so no form line reaches it, and what follows argues about the numbers.
Sunday Pages is the line to keep from this card. It holds ten numbers here and 327 at Tin Creek the day before — the largest block on its own sheet and the thinnest on this one, a factor of nearly 33 across two cards 24 hours apart. Nothing happened to the horse in between. Two tables were published.
Switchyard tops the table off a form string reading 4-8-7-5-8, which contains no win, and the career column has five wins from 34 starts at a strike rate of 14.7 per cent. It appears on seven of the thirteen cards still to run, on blocks between 32 and 261. If a reader wants the single clearest demonstration that this circuit does not weight on form, it is a horse whose blocks vary eight-fold while its record sits still.
The venue note is the same one every Mallee Park card carries. Two turns of 500 metres and 400 metres of straight mean a field of twelve strings out round the first turn and comes back together up the running, and the order it comes back in was settled by the draw before the first frame rendered. The rail is fixed, because the engine has no groundsman.
Wren Tabakoff, Editor
Form desk columns are editorial opinion only. They are not financial advice, not investment recommendations and not an inducement to wager. A weighted draw has no form to read in the predictive sense; what these columns argue about is the published weighting.
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