Follow the most in-form trainers. Start with the top three on recent winning percentage. If the top-weight is from one of those stables, BACK IT.

DE Pipe was the top trainer in 5 out of 6 categories - all but TrainerForm/Course by volume. His horse won. I was distracted by the emphasis on the weight factor here which ultimately proved irrelevant compared to the strength of the trainer. My selection had a strong trainer too (NB King leads in that one area that Pipe doesn't) but it's fair to say that a trainer who leads in 5 out of 6 categories is a near dominator and clearly that's what tipped the balance here. I don't think the weight factor is irrelevant. All my studies of handicap hurdles point to it being key and top-weight is one of the sweet spots. So to is middle-weights though - normally defined as 10-10 to 11-3 but there have been exceptions to this namely when the bottom weight is higher than 10-0 and it was here. Bottom weight was 10-7 which promotes arguement to allow middle-weight range sweet spot to be raise a few pounds. That in turn would allow the winner, who carried 11-6, to claim a sweet spot weight too. However I look at it, Trainerform clearly is over-emphasized here in Huntingdon at least for this race-type.

Once again this is all about the trainers. You're looking for the trainers with the best record at the course and for the trainers with the best record over hurdles generally. They need to have the highest winning percentages in those categories but also they need to have some volume of wins behind them (a high percentage based on a single win does not count so highly here).

DE Pipe has the highest volumes of wins both for the course and over hurdles generally but his winning percentage is low whereas both Jim best and GL Moore have higher percentages and multiple winners in both categories which leads me to favour their horses.