Over the past week or two I’ve noticed as I’ve left work for the commute home that it’s getting lighter, writes Jon Shenton. The seemingly everlasting spell of only being at home in eternal darkness is coming to an end: spring is on the way! It also means that the flat turf season is looming […]
This is the second of a two part article. In the first piece, which can be found here, I highlighted a number of training operations worthy of a second glance if their horses ran well enough last time to finish in a placed position. This follow-up will explore the other side of the equation: trying […]
I’ve been meaning to check this out for ages, writes Jon Shenton. With a bit of downtime over the Christmas and New Year period (if you can have downtime with three kids) I finally got around to pulling my thoughts together to test a few theories with some lovely data. I’ve always been curious about […]
In my last article I accidentally stumbled into unpicking all-weather course form and the relative importance of it at each track in the UK, writes Jon Shenton. It wasn’t my intention to evaluate anything in that area; however, when exploring a vast ocean of data sometimes you end up going where the wind takes you […]
There are few racing betting mediums as divisive as Southwell All-Weather, writes Jon Shenton. I know people who barely acknowledge its existence, and yet, in the other camp, are people like me: I absolutely love it with every fibre(sand) of my being! Indeed, I love winter all weather racing, full stop. It’s probably as a […]
A few weeks ago, my last article focused on National Hunt trainers who fly out of the gates in the autumn, writes Jon Shenton. When compiling data and researching angles for that edition there were a few other areas of interest which I’d like to touch on today. A key aspect that was considered for […]
As I’ve alluded to in previous articles I would consider myself more of a flat game specialist, writes Jon Shenton. However, with the onset of winter and the monumental battle of wills around when to put the heating on, perhaps you could argue that my timing is less than impeccable in terms of becoming a […]
Winter is coming About a week ago I was thinking about topics to turn my hand to, playing with possible angles and messing around with data, writes Jon Shenton. Given that winter is coming™ I was looking through general National Hunt stats and I stumbled across the below potentially revelatory information. The data […]
In the second part of this two part article, part one available here, Jon Shenton digs into Mark Johnston's performance record in search of profitable betting angles. Here he looks at older horses as well as Johnston's favourite course. Older Horses Roughly 70% of Johnston’s runners are 2- and 3-year-olds so perhaps there is less […]
When Poet’s Society delivered win number 4,194 for Mark Johnston in the Clipper Logistics Handicap to cement his position as winning most trainer in UK racing history, I read a number of tweets about the impossibility and frustration in predicting how his sizeable battalion of horses perform, writes Jon Shenton. This rang true: having searched […]
