April on the Flat: Focusing on the turf

For flat fans the wait for the new turf season is almost over, with the Lincoln fixture taking place this weekend, writes Dave Renham. Indeed, for fans of Irish flat racing, it has already begun! For me it is the most exciting part of the year as all the winter number crunching and research I have done gets ‘tested’.

In this article I will be looking at results in April (UK racing only) going back ten seasons, focusing on turf racing only and hence excluding the all-weather. Due to Covid there was no racing in April 2020 so I have gone back to 2012 to get the tenth year of data. Profits / losses have been calculated to Industry SP, and also quoted to Betfair Starting Price when appropriate.

I will be concentrating on general factors including market data, trainers and last time out (LTO) performance. I will drill deeper when applicable, for example to make comparisons with handicap and non-handicap results. So let’s get cracking:

Market Factors in April Flat Racing

So how do fancied flat horses fare in April on the turf? Here is the breakdown of the performance of top three in the betting:

 

 

In terms of returns to SP, second favourites have lost the least amount of money (just). To BSP second favourites have again done best of the three, losing just 2.4p in the £. Favourites would have lost you 7p in £, and third favourites a similar amount (7.1p).

Moving onto strike rates, second and third favourites have won as often as they should when comparing the data with other months of the year. Taking the ten years as a whole, favourites have under-performed in April when compared with other months. The overall strike rate for turf flat favourites (all months over 10 years) is 31.7%, so the 29.39% figure for April is just over 2 percentage points lower. I suppose this is to be expected – we have a good proportion of favourites making their seasonal debut after several months off and so fitness and form lines are likely to be a little ‘blurred’. Favourites therefore have not been particularly good value at this time as year, when looking at the whole data set. However, I do want to look at favourites in more detail and, as will be seen, recent favourite performance has seemingly ‘improved’.

Favourites in April

First things first, let me look at the yearly win and each way strike rates. Each way strike rates combine and win and placed horses:

 

 

The last five years has out-performed the previous five for both winning favourites and each way market leaders. If I group this 5-year data in a table it may be easier to see the recent trend more clearly:

 

As the table shows there has been an uptick in strike rate, returns, A/E indices and Impact Values over the past five seasons. The win & placed (EW) strike rates reflect this also with the last five years showing 4.5% more favourites filling an each way position. So a better recent record for favourites, but despite this improvement their figures are still a little shy of favourites at other times of the year in terms of strike rate and returns.

 

April Favourites by race type

Time to compare handicap market leaders versus non-handicap ones:

 

As one might expect, non-handicap favourites have by far the higher strike rate. However, returns are virtually identical for both groups in terms of A/E.

One positive stat worth sharing is that if we focus solely on 3yo only handicaps, favourites have actually made a small profit in this month. 3yo handicap favourites have had 194 wins from 663 runners (SR 29.3%) for a small profit to SP of £7.28 (ROI +1.1%). This profit edges up to £40.68 (ROI +6.1%) when betting at BSP.

Looking at a relatively poor favourite stat now from April handicaps – horses that were favourite in 4yo+ handicaps won 23.2% of the time, but lost nearly 16p in the £ to SP (12p to BSP).

 

April Favourites by age

A look at the age of favourites now. Having seen the 3yo handicap data, I am expecting that age group to edge this:

 

 

As I had expected 3yo favourites across all race types have secured the best results – in terms of strike rate, return on investment, A/E index and Impact Value. 3yo favourites actually would have broken even to BSP if backing every single one in April going back to 2012. One age group where favourites perform relatively poorly in this month is 2yos. If we graph 2yo favourites across all months we can see that April is the month with the lowest strike rate, and compared to May to August there is a significant difference. (I have not included March as there were on 13 2yo favourites in total during the time frame).

 

 

Hence I would be wary of backing 2yo favourites at this time of the year. This makes sense as, in most 2yo races in April there is virtually zero form to go on, with 73% of juveniles making their debut in this month. This is likely to be a key factor in the lowish strike rate.

With 2yo favourites struggling a little there must have been value elsewhere. Amazingly perhaps, if you had backed all 2yos 5^th or bigger in the betting market you would have made a profit, even to Industry SP! OK, the profit would have only been £38 to £1 level stakes which equates to around 3½p in the £. To BSP, though, these figures would have seen around £500 in profit, returning over 45p in the £. On average you would have only had 5 or 6 winners from roughly 100 bets each year, and there were five winning Aprils out of the 10. I wonder if there are any brave punters out there who will try this out in 2023?!

 

Trainers: April Turf Flat Racing

Let us now analyse trainers on the turf in the month of April. Let me begin by looking at the ten-year figures as a whole. I have included trainers who had at least 100 runs in April and have secured a strike rate of 11% or more, and I have ordered them by strike rate:

 

 

There is a fair smattering of profit as you can see – just under half the trainers on the list have proved profitable to SP. It should be noted that this will often be due to the odd big priced winner. Hence let us look at trainer performance with only the runners priced in single figures (minimum runs 60):

 

 

There are now nine trainers in profit to SP; however this figure increases to 15 if using BSP.

Let's dig into Charlie Appleby who heads both lists – first, here is his overall turf record in April (all prices). 197 of his 213 runners have been priced in single figures and, as the two tables above show, he has made a profit with all runners and with shorter priced runners only. His figures on the face of it are mightily impressive. Appleby's first year with results was 2014 and he had just one winner from 17 runners. From there he has ‘flown’. Here is the yearly breakdown by Win Percentage (SR%):

 

 

Five of the eight Aprils have proved profitable to SP; to BSP this becomes six (2017 profitable). Four of the last six Aprils has seen a strike rate in excess of 35% - Appleby has a good record all year round, but he clearly has his string ready to fire from the get-go.

I find it interesting that Appleby's win percentage in handicaps and non-handicaps is remarkably similar, as the next table shows:

 

 

There are comparable returns, too, with both race types returning over 20 pence in the £. This shows a good level of consistency. That consistency can also be seen when we look at his returns (ROI%) to SP across different market ranks:

 

 

As the bar chart shows Appleby has seen profitable returns across the board. He definitely looks a trainer to keep on the right side of this coming April.

Before moving away from trainers, here are some additional statistics that will hopefully give us more chance of making a profit through the first month of the flat turf season:

1. Along with Appleby, the following trainers have been profitable to SP with favourites – William Haggas, Roger Varian, John (JJ) Quinn and Richard Fahey.
2. Roger Varian has proved to be profitable when saddling runners at Newmarket in April thanks to a strike rate close to one in four. Focusing on his runners that started favourite or second favourite, his record at HQ reads a very impressive 13 winners from 22 (SR 59.1%) for a profit to SP of £25.25 (ROI +114.78%). To BSP this improves slightly to returns of 121p in the £.
3. Irish maestro Aidan O’Brien has not sent many runners over in April, but as a rule they have struggled with just four wins from 49. He is just 3 from 32 with horses priced in single figures, and has had only 1 win from 16 with favourites.
4. Richard Fahey tends to be a fast starter in April. He has secured profits at the following courses – Catterick, Leicester, Beverley, Redcar and Thirsk. Not only that, but his strike rate at all five courses has been 20% or higher. Horses from his stable that are making their seasonal debut have also made sound profits to SP; to BSP these runners would have returned you a profit in eight of the ten Aprils. In addition to this, Fahey has secured a 23.5% strike rate with his 2yos and six of the ten seasons would have secured profits to BSP. His overall figures with his 2yos show a 24p in the £ return to SP, 40p to BSP.
5. If you are looking for a trainer to spring a surprise in April, then Richard Hannon is arguably the most likely. He has saddled eight winners priced 25/1 or bigger in April from only 72 qualifiers. The next best any other trainer has achieved in the time frame is three wins – one of those, Tim Easterby, had 250 qualifiers to obtain those three wins!

 

Last time Out (LTO) Factors

The final area I wish to look at in this piece is connected with LTO factors. Firstly, a look at the race code of the last run. Now, because all weather racing goes on all the year round, there is a good percentage of turf runners in April that had raced on the sand LTO. Some horses also raced LTO in a National Hunt race as the table below indicates. I have added Betfair SP data to the table this time:

 

LTO runners who raced on flat turf have the best strike rate but to BSP they are the only group to make a loss. Now, of course, big prices can skew vast data sets like this, and so what the data tell me is that there seems no real edge to what type of race code the horse ran in last time out.

Moving onto last time out finishing position – the graph below gives us the spread in strike rates:

 

 

It is interesting to see horses that finished second LTO actually won slightly more frequently than LTO winners (in percentage terms). As a rule the graph shows the normal type of trending down as we go from left to right. LTO winners actually have broken even to BSP, so don’t be put off by a horse that won LTO, even if that win occurred the previous turf season.

 

MAIN TAKEWAYS for APRIL TURF FLAT RACES

1. As far as the market is concerned, second favourites have proved to best value, especially to BSP.
2. Favourites have produced very similar returns in non-handicaps and handicaps.
3. Favourites in 3yo only handicaps have made a small profit.
4. 2yo favourites generally under-perform, as do favourites in 4yo+ handicaps.
5. Charlie Appleby tends to start the season in very good form. His runners deserve close scrutiny regardless of price.
6. Favourites from the yards of Charlie Appleby, William Haggas, Roger Varian, John Quinn and Richard Fahey have been profitable in the past ten Aprils.
7. Roger Varian has an excellent record at Newmarket, especially with horses from the top two in the betting.
8. Aidan O’Brien is one of the best in the business but his UK runners in April have really struggled recently.
9. Richard Fahey is a trainer to generally keep on the right side of.
10. LTO winners have broken even to BSP during the period of study.

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So there we have it; hopefully this article will help your punting this month. It is not an easy month to make a profit so I would urge selectivity where possible.

However, before I go, as a bonus here are three pointers to the first big meeting of the year at Doncaster.

1. Favourites have had a poor record in the last ten meetings losing 31p in the £ to BSP. Favourites have performed particularly poorly in handicaps with just 10 wins from 93, losing 43 pence in the £ to BSP. Odds on favourites have made a small profit however (11 wins from 15).
2. Third, fourth and fifth favourites have all made a profit to BSP.
3. Richard Hannon is the only trainer to secure a strike rate in excess of 20% from those trainers who have had at least 25 runners (11 wins from 52).

- DR

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