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Top 10 Front Running Biases in Handicap Chases, Part 1: 10 to 6

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The Top 10 front running biases in handicap chases Part 1 – 10 to 6

Over the next two articles I will share what I believe to be the Top Ten current run style handicap chase front running biases in the UK and Ireland, writes Dave Renham. In this first half, I will reveal positions 10 down to 6; and next week I'll reveal my top five. Of course, I appreciate that there will be people who disagree with my hierarchy but, ultimately, all ten biases have shown themselves to be profitable to deploy alongside more traditional form reading. As a bonus, today I will also share three near misses that narrowly failed to make the top ten.

Introduction

To compile my top picks, I have used data for handicap chases only as they are not so prone to distortion by the ability range of the horses competing. Data are from 2018 to 2024 with no minimum runner consideration.

I mentioned in a recent offering that Gold members of Geegeez have so many benefits and one of these is access to the Pace Analyser. This allows users to dive into run style / pace biases at any racecourse in the UK and Ireland. The data can be filtered based on going, field size, distance and race type. There is also the option to separate hurdles and chase (and NH Flat) data at jumps courses; and across all courses the data can further be filtered by year to allow for possible changes in any bias. The Pace Analyser is ideal for research such as this, and it was the main source that I used to produce what follows.

The run style data on Geegeez is split into four groups - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. A quick refresher of which type of horse fits each profile:

Led – horses that lead early, usually within the first furlong or so; or horses that dispute or fight for the early lead.

Prominent – horses that lay up close to the pace just behind the leader(s).

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack.

Held Up – horses that are held up at, or near the back of the field.

 

Near Misses

In general, the ‘led’ group has an edge in most handicap chases. Some courses offer a stronger edge than others and hence let me start by looking at the C&Ds that were near misses:

 

Exeter 2m3f

To get this distance on Geegeez we need to use the 2m4f distance figure on the Query Tool / Pace Analyser as distances are grouped every two furlongs. It should be noted, too, that some race distances at a track change slightly sometimes due to rail adjustments. This happens more and more these days, or at least it is more accurately reported these days!

Let me share the Exeter figures taken from the Pace Analyser:

 

 

This is a good time to note that not all run style groups have the same number of runners; there are always going to be far more hold up horses than front runners / early leaders. However, despite the ‘led’ group having just 82 qualifiers compared with the held-up group of 161, they have still won 20 races compared with 15. The Win%s in the table show the strike rate within each run style group, and for this article that is how I will quantify ‘win strike rate’.

The ‘led’ group produced by far the highest percentage at 24%. That is, 24.39% of the horses that led early went on to win their races. (They actually won 31.25% (20/64) of all races in the sample).

Leaders' place percentage was comfortably the best too, with 47.6% of early leaders still in the frame at the finish line; while their A/E index of 1.39 indicates that front runners were very good value.

If we considered favourites only in these races and their performance by run style, we have seen the following win strike rates splits (I have combined favourites whose run style was either Mid Div or Held Up):

 

 

Front runners / horses that contested the early lead had an outstanding record when favoured by the market. However, it's a different story for those favourites that raced mid pack or at the back early. As can be seen, the bias over this course and distance has been very strong indeed, but still it wasn't quite enough to make my top ten. Exciting times ahead, then!

Before moving on, in terms of what has happened in 2025, of the eight races to date, five have been won by front runners.

 

Sedgefield 2m5f to 2m5½f

Using the Geegeez tools we use the 2m6f distance.

 

 

Front runners have hit a win rate in excess of 30% and the only reason this track/trip did not make the list is due to the relatively strong stats for horses that raced in midfield early. Also, the 2025 stats to date have seen horses racing mid-pack early doing well and winning three of the six races to date.

 

Lingfield 2m

The stats were as follows:

 

 

Strong figures again for front runners, although this is another course and distance (C&D) where qualifying races were relatively infrequent (only four races per year on average). Indeed, at the time of writing there has been just one qualifying handicap chase in 2025, but it was won by the early leader as we can see:

 

 

It is also worth noting that he was projected as the 'probable lone speed' in the race:

 

 

OK, near misses shared; onto position ten in my list.

 

Top 10, 10 to 6

#10 Chepstow 3m

Some readers may expect front runners to be at a disadvantage over longer distances in handicap chases: surely for a horse to lead from start to finish in a 3-mile race would not be any easy assignment, right? However, looking at the Chepstow breakdown I suspect might change a few minds!

 

 

Front runners have bossed these races over the past few seasons, while prominent racers have been clearly second best with much better stats than horses which raced off the pace. 68 of the 96 winners raced close to the pace or at the front - that's 71% of the winners from 47% of the runners. And a front runner has been over four times more likely to win than a hold up horse when analysing the win percentage within their respective groups (25% versus 5.7%).

Now, as stated earlier, we get more hold up horses than front runners in most races and there were just over twice as many hold up horses compared to front runners between 2018 and 2024. That means therefore that when talking purely about race wins, front runners have won just over twice the number of races than hold ups.

There have been seven races this year so far with two being won from the front.

 

#9 Sandown 2m4f

It is time to head to Surrey now, and specifically Esher, to look at the 2m4f stats from Sandown. The run style splits for this time frame were as follows:

 

 

It's a similar story to Chepstow’s 3-mile trip but front runners have had a better place record here, hitting over 53%. There have not been that many qualifying races per year (roughly five to six) but keep an eye out for confirmed front runners when they race over this C&D. Those on the early lead have had an even stronger edge on soft/heavy ground as can be seen below:

 

 

From Sandown we head up country to Haydock.

 

#8 Haydock 2m3f-2m5f

Haydock seemed to have 'played around' a little with the usual 2m4f trip occasionally adding or dropping a furlong. Hence, I have combined results together a furlong either side of two and a half miles. Let me share the run style stats:

 

 

There has again not been a huge number of races each year, but the front running numbers were extremely strong over the period of study. 11 of the 29 races were won from the front and that cohort also had an outstanding place record. Hold up horses really struggled in terms of winning, though they fared better from a placed perspective.

Haydock, like Sandown, has seen the front running bias strengthen on softer ground. On soft or heavy the run style win strike rates were as follows:

 

 

It should be noted the sample size stands at only 17 races. The A/E indices correlate strongly as the graph below shows:

 

 

All in all, Haydock over 2m4f has strongly favoured horses racing at the front end.

 

#7 Carlisle 2m4f

Staying north for number seven, as we head to Carlisle next. The run style splits were:

 

 

It could be argued that both Haydock and Sandown should be positioned higher than Carlisle in the list; but Carlisle’s overall sample size was bigger and that swung it for me, along with an outstanding A/E index of 1.57 and excellent IV of 2.4. The figures for both of these metrics were the highest of the four C&Ds shared to date, and comfortably so.

In terms of underfoot, once again we have seen a strengthening of the bias on softer ground. I will share the win strike rate percentages and the A/E indices once more. Firstly, the win stats:

 

 

Clearly, as with the 2m4f trips at Sandown and Haydock, on soft or heavy it has been hard to make up ground from further back. 21 of the 27 races were won by front runners (12 wins) or prominent racers (9). Hold up horses had a win rate of under 3% within their run style group which is the lowest figure seen to date.

The A/E indices positively correlate with the win SR%s as we would have expected:

 

 

A ‘led’ figure of 1.79 suggests huge value; not so for the 0.26 hold up A/E index.

One final front running stat to share for this track and trip combination is connected with those early leaders that were in the top three of the betting market. This collective won 16 races from 36 qualifiers which equates to a win rate of over 44%.

This year, at the time of writing, there have only been four qualifying races over this C&D (all going conditions), and three of the four have been won from the front.

 

#6 Doncaster 2m3f to 2m4½f

Onto Donny now to close out the first half of my top ten. They have races over similar distances from 2m3f to 2m4½f so all races within that distance band are included (2m4f for all on Geegeez Pace Analyser):

 

 

Front runners have won 20 of the 51 races and have an excellent placed record to boot. The ground is rarely testing at Doncaster, but on good to soft or softer the bias does seem to get even stronger:

 

 

11 of the 25 races, which equates to 44% of all races, were won from the front under these conditions.

If we considered favourites only at Doncaster and their performance by run style, we have seen the following win strike rates splits (I have once again combined favourites whose run style was either Mid Div or Held Up):

 

Favourites that led early have been far more successful than other run style groups.

And that rounds out the lower half of my top ten. Next time it will be the top five, some even stronger biases than these! Until then...

- DR

 

 

 

 

 

Monday Musings: Jamie’s Quiet Ascent

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The jump campaign 2025/26 began half a year and a few days ago but traditionalists, among the trainers especially, still regard the season proper as having begun authentically only at the Chepstow two-day fixture last month, writes Tony Stafford.

The season’s climax (or anti-climax if your name is Skelton) at Sandown late in April merely confirmed what we knew already. If Willie Mullins targets a potential achievement, he has the resources to bring it home. On that last day he sidestepped the first two races on the Sandown card but won three of the other five and broke doughty Dan’s heart once more.

As Gordon Elliott found several times in their domestic battles in Ireland, it didn’t matter how much of a prizemoney advantage he held over Mullins coming to the engine-room of the Irish season, Willie had the tools to do the job – and in style.

It’s worth re-living that final day. Having ignored the opening two races, both incidentally won by Gary and Josh Moore, Mullins’ subsequent hat-trick included the top prize, the £99k to the winner Celebration Chase where South African-owned Il Etait Temps overcame a year’s absence to humble erstwhile two-mile champ Jonbon, with Willie’s Energumene in third place for good measure. Back in home action at Clonmel in midweek, Il Etait Temps had a stroll round for €35k to set his season off in style.

Surprisingly perhaps, the Bet 365 (formerly Whitbread Gold Cup) didn’t fall to any of his ten of the 19 runners. It defiantly went to the Olly Murphy/Sean Bowen team with Resplendent Grey, staving off the first four of the Mullins horde, in so doing signalling both of their positions at the very top of the UK jumps hierarchy.

Murphy was one of 14 domestic trainers supplying 30 of the 51 runners in those five races contested by Mullins; and Willie had the other 20! In all he picked up £287k of the £530k available on the day – or 55%. If Dan still leads his 69-year-old rival going into the final day next year, maybe he can employ a bulldozer to dig up the course overnight. Then, no doubt, they will just switch the fixture to Kempton!

It might still only be the end of the “phoney” phase of the campaign, but Dan Skelton has already sent out 154 individual horses. Between them 46 have collected 57 wins and £888k in prizemoney. I said it was “phoney”, as remembering Armistice Sunday yesterday, when in early 1940 the bombs hadn’t yet started falling on London in what was known as the phoney war.

I’ll tell you how phoney the jumps season has been. Mullins has had just two jump runners here in Britain since he mopped up all that money back in April. Winter Fog, eighth in the Cesarewitch last month, went on to Wetherby for the Grade 2 staying hurdle on Charlie Hall Chase Day and was fourth of five, collecting a paltry £3,650 for his exertions. At Cheltenham, in between those two excursions, Chart Topper pulled up in a Pertemps qualifier.

Anyway, enough of that old suff. Not entirely, as the main thesis of my article – took a while coming, Ed! - as it relates to a chance comment on Sky Sports Racing that, “Dan Skelton is the ‘target’ trainer par excellence”. He’s pretty good, of course, habitually winning those Cheltenham Festival handicap hurdles especially from under the noses of the Irish handicap-doctored brigade.

But I would nominate another UK trainer, Jamie Snowden, as having honed the skill of making long-range plans for his horses. Before starting training in Lambourn in season 2008/09 he was a top-class amateur connected to the Nicky Henderson stable and a regular winner of the Sandown Military races following and during an army career.

On Saturday at Aintree his Colonel Harry returned after ten months off the track to win the Grand Sefton Chase with a patient ride from Gavin Sheehan, reminiscent, to me anyway, of Graham Lee’s wonderful victory for Ginger McCain in the 2004 Grand National on Amberleigh House.

He has inevitably the Coral Gold Cup in three weeks at Newbury as his immediate ambition. The way Colonel Harry finished off Saturday’s race suggests he will have a great chance to win another “Hennessy” as the trainer still calls the race following his victory two years ago with Datsalrightgino.

It took a few years for Snowden to get going as a trainer but single figures became 19 at the fourth attempt and the progress has been steady and impressive since then. After a few seasons in the high 40s he made a significant jump to 62 last term.

That was achieved at a healthy 21 per cent, comfortably better than Skelton (19%) and Mullins (18%) and his prizemoney peaked at £807k. Already he has won 38 races this season from only 130 runs, with 23 individual scores from a mere 57 horses to have run before yesterday.

He’s operating at an almost unthinkable 29 per cent so far this campaign with another 66 runners in the places 2nd to 4th – making it 104 of 130 in the first four.

Snowden has an exhaustive programme of sourcing and developing young horses. He is very mindful of pedigrees and, after deciding and securing horses, he often leaves sales purchases to learn their job for a year in Ireland before bringing them across. His is a stable that deservedly has made it onto the top table in the UK. Watch out – he is only getting better which he had already been doing superbly for years.

The 2025 flat race season ended in something of a whimper at Doncaster on Saturday. It’s nobody’s fault, but for a start there were few enough top riders still around, many taking a holiday after their exertions at the Breeders’ Cup – the season for title purposes ending with British Champions Day at Ascot in mid-October – while others are getting ready for lucrative winter work in Dubai and elsewhere.

It can take a while to get going on the demanding Hong Kong circuit – well two tracks anyway. David Probert and Richard Kingscote, who rode a close 2nd at Sha Tin yesterday, are yet to get off the mark after being there for a while. Not so Hollie Doyle who made an instant impact with an all-the-way winner on the first day of her contract there on a 20/1 shot on Wednesday.

Yesterday she had two second places, both outrunning their outsider odds and with rides in almost every race, you can see she will soon be a fan favourite in the former colony.

Back home, the star turn at Doncaster was undoubtedly Billy Loughnane, although he couldn’t add to his tally of 180 wins. But that, and his runner-up spot in the Jockeys’ Championship behind the remarkable Oisin Murphy, tells the now four-times champion that any lapse in his sometimes questionable concentration is sure to be readily punished.

Such is Loughnane’s momentum, in only his third full season, he could well hit the 200-winner mark after an initial six in 2022, 130 in 2023 and 162 last year. He seems unstoppable, getting rides for many top stables, notably Godolphin. His following is such that level-stakes bets on all his mounts in 2025 has shown a loss of 306 points – indicating that despite his above average ability, his mounts are routinely overbet.

Another young rider already making an impact is Toby Moore, 17, on the way with three wins (two for Charlie Appleby) from his first 20 mounts. Ryan Moore’s son must be a big candidate for next year’s apprentices’ title, if any bookmaker is brave enough to offer a price.

- TS

An Irish National Hunt Trainers Analysis

/in /by

An exploration of Irish National Hunt trainers using the Geegeez Query Tool

Gold members of Geegeez have so many benefits and for the first part of this article I am going to discuss how I used one of these, the Query Tool, to obtain a wealth of trainer data, writes Dave Renham. The second part of the piece will crunch some of those numbers.

My focus was Irish racing and hence Irish trainers in National Hunt races. Data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 30th September 2025 with profits and losses calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets.

 

Setting Up With Query Tool

So, the starting point for using the Query Tool was straightforward: by inputting the date range, then going to the RACE menu where, on the Country tab, I ticked ‘Ire’ and then, going to the Race Code tab, I ticked all of the NH code boxes. The screenshot below shows the filters used:

 

 

So, this gave me all the Irish data I was looking for so – over 11,000 races as can be seen from the 'Wins' column:

 

 

 

Next I went to the RUNNER menu and then clicked on the ‘Trainer’ radio button, which groups the criteria by the selected variable (in this case, trainer), and then I clicked 'Generate Report'. This gave me the records for every single Irish trainer who had had a runner during the period of study. The first few trainers in alphabetical order are shown below:

 

 

From here I wanted to focus only on the trainers who sent out the most runners in order to have big enough sample sizes to drill down into other areas. I ordered the trainers by runs in the Query Tool and decided on 800 runs or more as my cut off point. This gave me 29 trainers to review. By ticking the ‘+’ sign to the left of each of these 29 trainers' names (and, when doing this, the plus sign became a minus sign meaning the trainer had been selected), I added them to my shortlist. Once all were ticked, I generated a new report with only these 29 trainers shown:

 

 

I then went back to the SUMMARY tab (top of the main part of the page) and used the 'COPY' button to paste all of the trainer data into a Microsoft Excel file I had already opened. With the 29 trainers logged in the Query Tool, I then went about generating numerous reports by changing the Query Tool variables or options. Once generated, new reports were pasted into a worksheet and I added an additional column with the specific variable for that report. I created 30 different reports, all copied across to my Excel worksheet. This took no more than 20 minutes tops, and I now had all the data I needed to analyse and number crunch.

 

Irish NH Trainers, by Win Strike Rate

The rest of this article will take a more familiar format for regular readers, although I may discuss some Excel methods I used along the way, in case you want to do some digging for yourself!

First things first, let me share the results for each of the 29 trainers over the timeframe (trainers ordered by win strike rate):

 

 

One immediate point to share is that Irish racing has had bigger average field sizes when compared to the UK in recent years, and that helps to explain why the trainer strike rates are generally lower than we are be used to seeing when looking at UK trainer data. The maestro that is Willie Mullins was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of win strike rate having hit a touch more than one win in every four. His runners, if backed ‘blind’, made a very small profit to BSP. The second and third listed trainers, Henry de Bromhead and Joseph O’Brien, were also profitable to BSP. A handful of other trainers made a profit to BSP, but all of these had at least one massive BSP priced winner to skew their bottom line somewhat.

 

Irish NH Trainers, by 'Favourite' performance

One advantage of copying the 30 different reports into Excel meant I could create a Pivot Table to easily compare the data sets and see if there were any significant patterns or angles that were worth sharing. Pivot tables are an extremely useful way to number crunch data in Excel. For those interested in finding out more about them there are plenty of easy to follow YouTube videos around.

I started off by analysing some betting market stats beginning with trainer data for favourites. In order to have a big enough sample, I decided that a trainer must have saddled at least 100 or more favourites during the period of study. I wanted to start by comparing their overall win strike rate for 'All favs' with their strike rates for market leaders specifically in chases or hurdle races. The sample size for NH Flat favourites was too small for most trainers, so I have opted not to show that. The splits were thus:

 

 

Don’t be too put off by the huge variance in strike rates between, say, Mullins and Rothwell, because 88% of market leaders for Mullins were in non-handicaps, and 84% of Rothwell’s were in handicaps. Non-handicap favourites start at much shorter prices on average than handicap jollies, so Mullins was always going to have a much higher strike rate when comparing the two of them. Talking of handicaps and non-handicaps it makes sense for me to share and compare their win strike rates to help illustrate my previous point:

 

 

Most trainers conformed to the pattern of much better win rates in non-handicaps, although a few did buck this trend. Declan Queally, for example, had virtually the same strike rate in both race types and when we analyse his results in full, we see the following:

 

 

Favourites in handicaps produced excellent returns for Queally and anyone following his market leaders in these contests would have been counting their money. Philip Rothwell has fared far better in handicaps than non-handicaps with favourites, but the vast majority of his market leaders were in handicaps (only 18 in non-handicaps).

It's time to narrow down the research a little by looking at a handful of the most successful trainers.

 

Irish NH Trainers: Specific Handlers

Willie Mullins

I called him the ‘maestro’ earlier and he has been in a different league to his peer group in recent years. Clearly, he has the backing of some huge owners and gets many of the best horses, but one still needs to deliver. I have shared some of his market leader stats already, and below is a graph sharing his ROI percentages (BSP) in more specific race types – handicap chases, handicap hurdles, non-handicap chases, non-handicap hurdles and NH Flat races.

 

 

As can be seen, Mullins produced excellent returns when saddling the favourite in non-handicap chases. The full stats read 316 wins from 536 (SR 59%) for a profit of £116.47 (ROI +21.7%). He also showed a blind profit with market leaders in non-handicap hurdle races thanks to 540 wins from 1028 runners (SR 52.5%) for a profit of £75.68 (ROI +7.5%). He was less successful in handicaps, making a loss in both chase and hurdle race types. His worst record with favourites was in NH Flat races where losses were close to 9 pence in the £.

Switching to all runners rather than just favourites, Mullins had some powerful stats during the period of study when we analyse the run style of his runners in chase contests. Regular readers of my articles will know that chases tend to offer front runners a solid edge over all other run styles. Mullins conformed to this pattern in such races going back to the start of 2018 as the graph below, which shows his win strike rate across the different run styles, highlights:

 

 

Mullins’ horses that have taken the lead at the start of their chase races went onto win nearly 45% of their races. If we had known pre-race which of his horses would front run and backed them accordingly, we would have been in profit to the tune of £185.78 (ROI +36.1%). Compare this to the potential returns of midfield and held up runners, which would have lost 18p and 30p in the £ respectively.

Moving on to the very best contests, Class 1 events. Here, Mullins produced a blind profit and, considering he had 2536 runners in them, this was an impressive performance, even more so considering every Irish (and British) punter knows what this trainer has achieved. His record in Grade 3 races produced the best results: 117 wins from 457 (SR 25.6%) for a profit of £74.58 (ROI +16.3%).

Henry de Bromhead

Henry de Bromhead had some amazing wins in the UK during this timeframe, especially at the Cheltenham Festival, but here I will drill into his Irish record in more detail. His overall record showed a blind profit equating to over 6p in the £ and his yearly splits are shown in the graph below:

 

 

2021 was a poor year from a returns’ perspective, and 2020 showed a small loss, but the other six years all returned a profit. Hence, de Bromhead has been extremely consistent over this timeframe.

Like Mullins, de Bromhead has some interesting stats connected with run style but his most interesting numbers have been in hurdle races. His win strike rate splits have been as follows:

 

 

Horses that have led early have been the most successful by far and, if our crystal ball had been in tip top working order, backing these runners pre-race would have yielded a very healthy return of nearly 70p in the £.

From a personal perspective it will be sad that we will not see the iconic Rachael Blackmore riding for him in the future. They have been one of the best trainer/jockey combos of recent years and gave racing fans some great memories.

Gordon Elliott

For Gordon Elliott I would like to share his record with favourites in NH Flat races. Each year Elliott has had numerous runners in NH Flat races of which roughly 28% of them have started favourite. His record with these market leaders was as follows:

 

 

For favourites to return over 30p in the £ across a good number of bets is rare, so Elliott has performed well above the norm with this cohort of runners.

Elliott is another trainer who produced some very interesting run style stats during this time period. The stats for hurdle races were as follows:

 

 

As we know, the run style each Elliott horse employed was only known after the start of its race. Hence, the profit figures for leaders and prominent runners were not something we could have achieved in reality. However, what it does show once again is that for the majority of races the importance of being up with the pace rather than off the pace.

Geegeez Gold members interested in run style research can investigate further by using the Pace Analyser if wishing to dig into specific courses and/or distances. The example screenshot below shows some Carlisle data:

 

 

Parameters of race code, course, distance, going, number of runners, handicap/non-handicap and time frame can all be tweaked. Also we can check out both Irish and UK courses.

Members can also use the Query Tool for run style research like I have done for this article exploring other areas such as trainers, jockeys, etc.

Joseph O’Brien

Jospeh O’Brien, like Gordon Elliott, has produced positive stats when it comes to NH Flat races. The table below shows his overall record in these races, his record with favourites, and his record with horses that were in the top three of the betting:

 

 

O’Brien has clearly excelled in these races, and it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming season.

Like the other trainers discussed, O’Brien has worthwhile run style stats to share. Below is a graph showing the win percentages for each run style group in both chases and hurdle races:

 

 

Once again, we see front runners from his stable had a huge edge over prominent racers who in turn had a significant edge over horses that were held up or raced in midfield.

 

**

 

I hope this article has served two purposes. Firstly, I wanted to show that research can be undertaken very quickly to generate useful stats and across a variety of areas; and secondly, I have shared some data relating to the highest volume Irish trainers which we should be able to use to our advantage this coming winter and beyond.

Finally, I hope some members will be tempted to use the content here to inspire your own research using Query Tool, Pace Analyser and the other tools in the Geegeez Swiss Army Knife.

Until next time...

- DR

 

Breeders’ Cup 2025: The Review

/in , /by

Breeders' Cup 2025 in beautiful Del Mar, sunny California (obligatory adjectives) whizzed by over the weekend, a back-loaded two-day event featuring 14 Championship races, nine of them on the Saturday, and loads of international interest.

What follows is a combination of my race thoughts, betting outcomes and lessons learned from one of the toughest wagering puzzle books in the calendar.

For those of you who were not Geegeez Premium (Gold or Lite) subscribers at the weekend, you can now download my Breeders' Cup Compendium here to follow along.

Friday

Juvenile Turf Sprint

We kicked off Friday, a day comprising the five two-year-old races, with the Juvenile Turf Sprint. This was a full field of 12, though Charlie Appleby's Military Code missed the event and one of the 'also eligibles' (reserves) got a run. In my preview, I'd noted how hard it was to win from a wide draw and had sided against those runners, a group that included a lot of the speed in the race. As it happened, the horse drawn 9 tracked the wide speed and won well; Aidan's second string, Brussels, finished best for the runner up slot from stall 1.

This was to set the tone regarding wide drawn horses winning on the turf track - and my pre-race opposition to them - and is one of the lessons learned as I'll come on to. As we'll also see, it was a result that favoured me: I'd backed Cy Fair ante post before the draw, and at 20/1 compared with his US tote price of 5/1 (presumably bigger with the UK bookmakers). I would not have backed him on the day at his 'day of race' price or from his draw; so I was kind of lucky here. That luck wouldn't hold.

I nominated Military Code in the Compendium - he was a non-runner. The trends picks were True Love and Havana Anna, a pair of fillies which never got involved - getting in each other's way a bit before finishing 8th and last of 12.

Juvenile Fillies

The first dirt race, and one in which I'd made four ante-post bets, three of which failed to enter the race! This is another lesson to learn. The other one, and the view I'd taken in the Breeders' Cup Compendium (BCC hereafter), was Iron Orchard, winner of key prep the Frizette. It turns out that race was no good this year, which was what the market felt; I had suggested the form might be under-rated. I was wrong on that. The unexposed filly Super Corredora made all on an annoyingly speed-favouring track, another feature of the weekend.

I'd noted that "she showed much her best form when stretched out to a mile, blitzing her field by more than eight lengths. She seemed much more at home with the steadier tempo of that mile race, travelling kindly throughout" but the class gulf meant I overlooked her save for suggesting "Super Corredora and La Wally have small bits of a chance in what might not be a vintage renewal".

It wasn't a vintage renewal and Iron Orchard finished last, La Wally second last, with Super C returning around 9/1 having been 20/1 a day before the race.

Juvenile Fillies Turf

This is a race I've been trying to beat ante post for a while, my angle being that the Euros had a shocking record in it and the US team was vastly under-rated by the British books. However, Aidan had won two of the last three - and with classy fillies Meditate and Lake Victoria - so maybe the tide was turning. Certainly he had another top notcher in Precise entered this time, though she had the worst draw in 13 of 13. She got withdrawn on the morning of the race.

My plays were scattergun: five bets, two ante post non-runners and three guesses against the (withdrawn) favourite. The best I could manage was fifth as Balantina, an unconsidered Donnacha horse, beat Pacific Mission, an unconsidered Balding horse. They were drawn 10 and 12 respectively, and the third exited post 11. I could not have got this more wrong if I'd tried.

The key to the wide horses dominating the finish was a mental early pace set by Switch In Love, a Japanese runner who should have been in the sprint; she went 22.33 for the first quarter mile, which is ridiculous. That was material because it stretched the field out into almost single file, meaning those wide horses did not have to travel four and five horses away from the rail around the turns which they would have had to do off a more sensible tempo. I was unable to locate any run style information on the tearaway leader and that blind spot - not the last of the weekend - was expensive in this case.

Ultimate Love and Ground Support were the BCC trends picks in the race, the latter running third - under Adam Beschizza, remember him? - at close to 25/1. My own picks, as discussed, are still running.

Juvenile

The Juvenile featured one of the shortest priced horses of the weekend, Ted Noffey, in the shortest field of the weekend. Just six went to post after Civil Liberty and, more painfully for my ante post bets, Blackout Time were scratched. Ted got it done while Intrepido, flagged along with Blackout Time in the BCC, ran down the field: his waited with run style was extremely unfavoured on this track over the two days. I'm sure it's difficult but this was such a biased track for such a big day; surely they can do better. Ted was trends pick.

Juvenile Turf

Again, my angle was that wide would be compromised and again they went a million miles an hour. This time, Outfielder - who was also entered in the Juvenile Turf Sprint and surely should have run there - went berzerk, blitzing the opening two furlongs in 22.2 seconds! (They have a thing called 'run up' in US races, which is a bit of ground not measured by the clock meaning he achieved that time from a running start; I'd say it would be impossible to do it from a standing start!)

So, once more, the hellish early gallop stretched them out, Gstaad - the best horse in the race, no question - getting a great trip under Soumi. He was the BCC trends pick but was definitely not my form preview pick on account of... well you know by now. Joseph's North Coast was third and a 58/1 bomb ran second; if he'd beaten Gstaad, I'd have had a trifecta that paid for the weekend. 'If' is a very cheap word on Breeders' Cup weekend...

I flagged three e/w against the fav, the best of them, Street Beast, finishing fourth at 16/1 for place money with most books.

Friday Bets

A difficult punting day but not a massive disaster, mainly on account of there only being five of the 14 races staged that day! Here was my tale of the punting tape. The odds differential column on the right hand side compares the price taken with the US return. A number bigger than 1 means the price taken beat the returned price. This is for guidance only because there are lots of white spaces where the non-runners appear. Waaaay too many non-runners on Juvenile Friday.

 

Saturday

Bloodied but unbowed, Saturday arrived. I've long held the view that a 6-8 split of races would work better than the 5-9 - it's just a bit of a slog by the end on Saturday; but there's no real way to add a non-juvenile race to the Friday card without arguably undermining it a little. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to have either the Turf Sprint or the Filly & Mare Sprint start the Friday card. That would undoubtedly give more balance to the BC race distribution but I can see why it would be unpalatable to connections. As with so many things, it is what it is.

Filly & Mare Sprint

Speaking of the FM Sprint, it is a low key starter to Saturday's proceedings and, this year, was even more muted than normal thanks to the double scratch - veterinary advice, it's a big deal in California where the anti-racing brigade are visual and vocal and well represented in politics - of Sweet Azteca and Tamara, the first two in the betting.

They were also some of the speed, meaning it would be even harder for Zeitlos - my deep closer pick - to run them down from out back. As it happened, she made a really nice move on the turn before flattening out into fourth; which was no good from a betting return perspective. I didn't have a view in the BCC, flagging winner Splendora as a possible (along with others). The trends pick Hope Road ran third.

Turf Sprint

The first grass race Saturday and another Euro hopeful after notching two of the three turf contests on Friday. The race was again denuded of some of its lustre as Adrian Murray's well-fancied Arizona Blaze failed the vet. My pick, Motorious, always needs the splits to appear with his late running style; and they didn't here. He stayed on for a never nearer fifth. Arizona had been the trends pick. Shisospicy very impressively led all the way, while Khaadem, a horse that needs another furlong, produced a mighty effort in third for Charlie Hills and Frankie Dettori.

This was a race marred by the desperate loss of She's Quality, a massive flag bearer for the Jack Davison team. She pulled up soon after the start and was found to have an irreparable pelvic fracture. So sad.

Sprint

The six furlong dirt sprint was a race in which Bentornato was a strong favourite. I'd backed him after his prep run win - lucky me, right? - but couldn't put him up at shorter than 2/1 in a full field given the chance he might 'bounce' after that huge return effort. He didn't bounce and he again ran huge, scoring by better than two lengths for the same trainer, Jose d'Angelo, who had won the preceding Turf Sprint.

Bentornato was a trends contender in the BCC, and my trio of e/w bombs for the race included the Japanese horse American Stage, which ran 4th at 33/1 in UK. That was a paying place position.

Distaff

The nine furlong Distaff was all about Seismic Beauty for a lot of people but, as she "picked up a quarter" - a lovely euphemism for taking a bobble/pitching forward - a couple of strides out of the gate, her race was over; she was eventually eased off.

Her failure to contest the pace, which she habitually does, made life a lot easier for Scylla on that speed-favouring strip. She made pretty much all to score by a five length margin from Canadian hope Nitrogen, with my deep closer play Regaled (33/1) picking up third, and e/w pick Clicquot getting fourth - a paying place with many books.

Seismic was the trends pick, along with a non-runner, and BCC form picks Clicquot and Regaled both made the place payouts at solid prices.

Turf

Next up was the Turf, and it was a typical 'right thinking, wrong play' renewal of a race I just always get wrong. The 'wrong Euro' angle is so strong in the Turf. This time, Minnie Hauk was the strong betting favourite but she'd had a long enough season and a hard enough race in the Arc. Ethical Diamond, for Willie, had shown blistering closing speed in a Royal Ascot handicap and then the Ebor - and he did the same again here. In my write up, I'd noted, "He’s not a million miles from the required level, probably needing to find seven pounds or so; and he showed a dazzling turn of foot at Ascot, closing out the last quarter mile up the hill in 23.24 off an even tempo. And again, off a slowish early pace, he ran the last two furlongs at York in 23.89 seconds. I’m almost talking myself into this..!"

Almost. But I didn't talk myself into it.

The trends highlighted four horses which included Rebel's Romance in second and El Cordobes - 33/1 back home - in third. My BCC form suggestions were Goliath (very disappointing) and Amiloc (nice effort in 4th, a paying place).

Classic

A fascinating contest even without its star attraction, Sovereignty having spiked a temperature a couple of days before the race. I'd mused about the lack of form lines between generations and it indeed transpired that the older horses were clear of the classic cohort, filling the podium with the same trio that did likewise a year ago. The pack was shuffled this time, however, and it was the Japanese superstar Forever Young - on the same day that human compatriot Yoshinobu Yamamoto headlined in the LA Dodgers' unlikely World Series comeback win - that emerged on top for one of the world's best trainers, Yoshito Yahagi. It was a big night for Californian Japanese residents!

Forever Young, racing handily throughout, held the (frequently) unlucky Sierra Leone by an evaporating half length at the line. That one always comes hard and late in his races; you know by now the piste was against him. Fierceness rounded out a chalky trifecta as the remaining trends pick (Sovereignty, a lovely ante post ticket for me, was sunk on Thursday. Sigh)

I felt the market had the race by the short and curlies and so it proved. Trying to be cute, I sided with a pair of longshots who ran accordingly in 7th and 8th of nine, beating only the no hoper pacemaker. My other star ante post bet, Baeza, took a lot of support... and also ran clunk, with five horses in front of home past the wire 🙁

Mile

It was looking for all the world like a washout for yours true before the Mile. I'd invested in Notable Speech ante post at 6/1 and 13/2, another value bet before the gates opened, his SP around 5/2. Of course, I'd watched that show a number of times already over the weekend only to grimace at the twist in the tale. This time, no such worries as a confident William Buick steered Notable Speech to an easy length and a half verdict over Formidable Man, now six wins and a second on the Del Mar turf - and the best Californian grass horse for a few years.

The Lion In Winter ran a belter in third, with Sahlan for Francis-Henri Graffard closing too late into fifth. He was beaten a nose for fourth, sinking a decent ante post each way ticket. I'm running out of sighs.

Sahlan and Rhetorical, the horse that clung to fourth, were the Trends picks while BCC flagged Sahlan and Jonquil, the latter very disappointing (to me) in ninth.

Dirt Mile

This was one favourite I wanted to be with. Nysos had looked a proper horse this season and, though he'd had a minor injury scare since his last win, he towered over his field on form and numbers. As it turned out, he was all but undone by the track bias, eventually prevailing in a desperate head bob photo with the almost-all-the-way Citizen Bull, last year's Juvenile champion.

He was the trends pick and the form pick in BCC, and he was the second leg of a 'Ted Nysos' double for me which clawed back a few of the many prior wrong turns I'd made.

Filly & Mare Turf

We closed out with the FM Turf and, as it was last year, my biggest bet of the weekend. As it was last year, that was on Cinderella's Dream; and, as it was last year, I left the money in the satchel. A year ago she'd be terribly unlucky in defeat, a fast closing second having failed to secure the gaps. This time, she was flat as a dab and finished midfield. So much for cutely grabbing four places each way - she finished eighth!

More happily, I had also backed Gezora earlier in the week at 9/2. Gezora won in a photo with another wire-to-wire attempter, the excellent US mare She Feels Pretty. But wait, what's this? Gezora returned 9.1/1 on the US 'nanny' and 14.5 on Betfair! Jaysus holy cripes. Way to turn a winner into a loser!

Trying to catch the superfecta (first four correct order) which paid a tidy $781.15 for a $0.10 stake, I had omitted She Feels Pretty, the clear second choice and a mare I greatly respected, in the second spot despite taking five horses in that berth. It wasn't a good weekend for my on track tote plays.

Nothing here for the trends picks, Cinders and See The Fire (the only wide drawn horse all weekend that got beaten - this was a slow pace and she could never get a position). But the BCC form suggestion included Gezora along with Cinders. I very much hope some of you managed to get either US tote, bookie odds or Betfair SP, all of which were at least double the price I took. Siiiiiigh.

Saturday Bets

In the end, thanks to a short-priced double and the ante post bet in the Mile - as well as that losing winner on Gezora - I managed to scrape a profit from my bookie bets. But, by the time I'd accounted for $500 of losing tote tickets - I bought a voucher for that much and steadily burned through it over the two days, so it was at least easy to track the size of the hole - it was a losing weekend. Candidly, it looked like being a lot worse than it turned out.

The nature of festival betting, whether it's Royal Ascot, Cheltenham or the Breeders' Cup, is that it's a very small sample size which can make one appear disproportionately good or bad. This year I looked pretty bad based on the results, but I hope Compendium readers appreciate the amount of legwork that went into those losers! I'll be doing little different next year... but I won't be doing nothing different next year. See 'lessons learned' below.

These were my Saturday bets.

 

 

And this is a little summary info on my weekend, for whatever it's worth.

 

 

Lessons Learned

Every day is a school day, especially when punting big events. Below are my lessons learned from BC2025, the 42nd edition of what is a strong contender for my favourite event of the racing year. (Apologies to just about everyone reading!!!)

1 A fast pace brings wide-drawn runners into consideration on the turf course

Those sprinter fractions on the front end in the mile two-year-old races completely unstitched the inside draw bias. As long as the horse was good enough, shunning the early speed from anywhere was the way to get it done. We knew Gstaad was good enough, and respect to Balantina also.

2 Do not bet juvenile races ante post

This one is a bit more nuanced. I've had good results doing this in the past, and indeed Cy Fair was a solid start to the meeting this time on a horse I would not have played on the day. But there's no doubt that it's attritional in terms of horses either failing to enter at the pre-entry stage or getting scratched by the CHRB (California Horse Racing Board) vets. They may be slightly stricter than their Keeneland counterparts who will oversee next year's Cup, but it's a big risk annually that horses bet early may not get a run; seemingly even more so in the juvenile races.

3 Look for electric acceleration in the turf races

I think the lesson here is that, to win on the grass, you need very fast closing speed; and, obviously, that needs to be in the context of the projected race pace. Gstaad, Ethical Diamond, Notable Speech, Gezora and co were all super-rapid at the end of their races and had demonstrated that earlier in the season. This does seem the key to unlocking the mile-plus turf races.

4 Consider the impact of field size on likely winner odds

This year I backed a LOT of outsiders; many more than I usually do. It did not pay off. Looking at the field sizes, which were generally smaller on the main (dirt) track, that was a mistake. It can be a crushing meeting to be backing favourites, which often have a torrid time of it; but as field sizes diminish there is less scope for a randomizer pace burn up and shock results. I definitely need to keep that in mind in dirt race considerations going forward.

5 Don't bet so many closers

Related, smaller fields tend to mean less early pace, which in turn means less opportunity for late runners to get involved. The imponderable when putting a guide together before the meeting starts is always how the dirt track will play. Usually, it's pretty fair, but sometimes it just hugely favours early speed. This year was one of those years.

-

Breeders' Cup XLII (42 for cash) was a typically brilliant international showcase, with winners trained in UK, Ireland, France and Japan - as well as in the United States, of course. While it was shorn of its main star with the late defection of Sovereignty (who I personally feel would probably have been beaten given the primacy of the older horses), it still delivered quality and drama in supersize measure.

A quiet one for Aidan and Charlie - a single win apiece - meant space on the turf roll of honour for Donnacha, Willie and Francis-Henri. The meeting was all the better for that: expect at least the last two to be trying again twelve months hence, along with their more established colleagues.

It'll be Kentucky and autumnal weather for the BC43. God willing, I'll be there; and here's hoping for more of the same from a sporting perspective and, well, just more from a punting one.

- Matt

Monday Musings: Divided

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There are different opinions as to whether it was Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw who suggested England and America were two nations divided by a common language, writes Tony Stafford. Once again over 14 races at the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar, California, horse racing was the common theme, but American dirt is as foreign to European trainers as their own turf seems to be to the Americans.

All weekend, European horses mopped up where they ought to have done but among the stream of fantastic performances in either discipline, I have to nominate Willie Mullins and his extraordinary achievement in winning the Breeders’ Cup Turf with Ethical Diamond.

I never stop hearing from my friend Maurice Manasseh that his son David, who owns half of the top hurdler Ballyburn, swears by anything Willie Mullins tells him. Indeed, if he’d phoned that morning to say he’d walked across the Irish Sea rather than catch a plane to come to Cheltenham, he probably would have believed that too.

I’m sure that the Heffernan family, two of whose members that own Ethical Diamond would also believe that and anything else you told them about Ireland’s greatest jump trainer. His achievements even outdo those of Vincent O’Brien for the few years the great man and former incumbent at Ballydoyle bothered with the winter game.

In May 2022 at Arqana sales, Mullins and his talent spotter Harold Kirk paid €260k for the 11-times-raced Absurde from the stable of Carlos Laffon-Parias on behalf of the same Heffernan-based syndicate that was to own Ethical Diamond.

Within three months the then five-year-old had easily won a novice hurdle then was second to his star stable-companion Vauban in the Copper Horse Handicap at Royal Ascot. Unplaced then at the Galway Festival in a novice hurdle, he beat the high-class stayer Sweet William for the Ebor Handicap and its £300k prize at York.

The following year, 14 months after the other inspired purchase, the magical duo shelled out 320,000gns at Tattersalls July sale for the three-year-old Ethical Diamond a couple of weeks after he had broken his maiden at the third attempt for trainer Michael Wiliam O’Meara.

It took a little longer for him to match the achievement of Absurde, indeed he finished 51 lengths adrift of stable companion Majborough in the 2024 Triumph Hurdle on his third attempt in juvenile hurdles for Mullins. Yet after one run back on the flat, he was backed down to 7/4 for a handicap at Royal Ascot.

He didn’t win that day under Ryan Moore, but he put that to rights again under Ryan at 3/1 this June, and I remember David (and Maurice) telling anyone who would listen that “he’s a certainty”. Ryan was committed to riding a Coolmore horse in the Ebor, so William Buick stepped in and Ethical Diamond gave him an armchair ride in achieving that eye-watering double within two years for trainer and owners.

Moore, no doubt still bemoaning his luck at missing all the rides for Coolmore at the meeting – one winner from the top-class juvenile Gstaad was their return – will probably have been amazed by the performance of his former partner. The same will have gone for William Buick, especially as when he and Rebel’s Romance shot clear in the straight in the attempt to win the Turf race for the third time, it was the horse he’d ridden in the Ebor only a couple of months earlier that denied him.

I mentioned earlier the two nations that are divided by a common language. The otherwise well clued-up main US television experts dismissed the Ebor as “not even a Stakes race”. No boys, it’s just the most valuable handicap in Europe. Also, Jessica Harrington, one of whose former inmates is now being trained in the US, might not have been delighted to learn it “had been trained in England”.

While he has made a habit of winning flat-race races like the Cesarewitch and Ascot Stakes along with the Queen Alexandra Stakes, also at Ascot, Willie is still regarded as a jumps trainer per se. Not now though and I’m sure that while many UK trainers admired his achievement on Saturday, with his first runner at a Breeders’ Cup at the age of 69, they will be dreading his name appearing in many more of our valuable handicaps from now on.

The 28/1 winner was ridden with great confidence, coming from the widest draw of all by Dylan Browne McMonagle, the newly crowned, youthful and very articulate Irish champion jockey, who has been a mainstay of Joseph O’Brien’s team for a few years now.

Meanwhile Mullins and the two Heffernan boys were quickly out to San Diego airport to fly to Australia where Absurde runs in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. There’s no reason why the £2.2million prize there should be beyond this versatile performer who has a County Hurdle win at Cheltenham on his dance card.

Kerrin McEvoy, who spent time with Godolphin in the UK, comfortably manages his 8st6lb weight. Vauban, now with Gai Waterhouse and her training partner Adrian Bott, is also in the 24-runner field in the race that stops the nation.

I thought the win of Forever Young for his Japanese connections in the $7 million Classic was tremendous, not just for the result but the fact that the same three horses filled the first three places as they did a year ago.

Then, Forever Young had finished third behind fellow three-year-olds Sierra Leone and Fierceness. Here he overtook Fierceness coming to the last furlong and held off the strong and expected late finish from Sierra Leone. As he had also been only narrowly denied by Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone (nose and the same) in the Kentucky Derby on his earlier US sortie, this was due reward for trainer Yoshito Yahagi, who in 2021 had given Japan two other Breeders’ Cup wins on the same Del Mar track.

The alteration to the programme which has brought the Classic from its place as the climax of the card to having three more races to follow isn’t to everyone’s taste. The last of them, the Filly and Mare Turf, went to the pin up boys of French racing, Francis-Henri Graffard and Mickael Barzalona.

They had teamed up to win the Arc last month with Daryz and the Champion Stakes at Ascot two weekends ago with Calandagan. Now they struck again here with the filly Gezora, winner of the French Oaks in the summer but unplaced in unfavourably soft ground and from a very difficult draw when partnered by Tom Marquand in the Arc. She had been the morning line favourite on Saturday but drifted alarmingly in the market on the race, starting at a rewarding 9/1 as she ran down She Feels Pretty in the last half-furlong, winning by half a length.

She Feels Pretty will travel straight across to Kentucky where she will be offered for sale. Having already collected more than £2 million from eight wins and three second places in only 13 runs, She Feels Pretty will be on most of the big players’ sights.

It was good to see a smart ride by William Buick and a brilliant tactical plan by Charlie Appleby pay off with an easy, drawing-away win for 2024 2,000 Guineas victor Notable Speech in the Mile turf race. He was unluckily beaten a neck behind Diego Velazquez in the Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville in the summer.

Sam Sangster and the National Stud where Sangster’s shrewd acquisition will stand as a stallion next year will be delighted to advertise him as having beaten Classic winner Notable Speech in a Group 1 race. Sam won’t be bothered at all that had William Buick got him out of a tangle a couple of strides earlier, that crucial Group 1 win probably would not have happened.

- TS

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 5: National Hunt Flat

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Prepping for the Jumps - Part 5, Bumpers

 This the fifth and final article in a series which has been looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the previous piece I discussed handicap hurdles, while for this one, National Hunt Flat races, often called Bumpers, take centre stage.

For convenience, the previous articles are here:

Part 1: Novice Hurdles        Part 2: Novice Chases       Part 3: Handicap Chases       Part 4: Handicap Hurdles

Introduction

As throughout the series, data have been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profit and loss calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched, so this does not include Irish racing. Most NH bumpers are run on turf, but there have been a few races contested on the all-weather (roughly 20 every year). I will include both in the breakdowns.

Bumpers are not the type of races I bet in regularly, although I have had some bets in the past in the biggest races held at the Cheltenham and Aintree festivals. Hence, this was a piece of research I was looking forward to because of my limited past knowledge of such contests.

We have had a reasonable number of qualifying races per year, the average being around 270 over the past few years. So, over the time frame this equated to just over 2000 races. I will start as I have done for the previous four articles by examining the betting market.

Market factors

I used Betfair in terms of market rank and this was what I found:

 

 

 

Favourites performed solidly, losing only a small amount (1.5 pence in the £). The value has seemingly been with horses that started third in the betting. However, before we get too carried away, 2024 and 2025 combined proved a poor period for third favs as they lost £69.52 to £1 level stakes incurring losses of 18 pence in the £. As with some data I have shared in the past, I believe the overall profit for third favs was down to variance. Essentially the market has not been giving us great clues.

Let's move on then and, as with previous articles in the series, I have imposed a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower for the remainder of the number crunching, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line. It still included nearly 40,000 runners so the sample size remained huge.

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females but in bumpers the disparity is less stark than in other disciplines. The splits were:

 

 

Males edged it in terms of strike rate, but overall, all the key metrics were very similar. It should be noted that losses on the Betfair Place market have been far worse for female runners.

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now. Below are the A/E indices across different ages:

 

 

The sweet spot seemed to be with five-year-olds in terms of these figures. The below table covers a broader set of metrics:

 

 

Five-year-olds

As can be seen, five-year-olds had the best figures across all metrics. Not only that, this age group was profitable on the Betfair place market as well, to the tune of £82.12. Compare this to four-year-olds who would have lost us £176.80 on the place market. Overall, horses aged three or four seemed to be at a slight disadvantage, which may simply be down to lack of experience or physical maturity in general.

Five-year-olds were very consistent, which can be seen when viewing their yearly win strike rates:

 

 

In the last five seasons their strike rate has been virtually the same, with figures between 19.1 and 19.8%. Not only that, when we compare their A/E indices across the eight years, they have all been over the magic 1.00 figure suggesting good value in each year:

 

 

Sticking with five-year-olds, it does seem that experience counted for something because if we focus on runners in this age group who had at least two previous racecourse starts their record was 250 wins from 1123 runners (SR 22.3%) for a profit of £147.37 (ROI +13.1%). Meanwhile, five-year-old male runners outperformed their female counterparts, winning 633 times from 3160 runners (SR 20%) for a healthy profit of £221.47 (ROI +7%).

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at some data focusing on the country of breeding. The main country's break down as follows:

 

 

We see similar strike rates for the three main countries of Britain, Ireland and France which often is the case. German-bred runners were far less common but had the highest strike rate. French-bred runners proved relatively poor value overall, while the Irish-bred results were a notch above the rest from a betting perspective. This Irish-bred edge was replicated in the Betfair Place market as the table below shows:

 

 

It should also be noted that Irish bumper runners aged five and up produced a return in the win market of just over 7p in the £.

Older French-bred runners have been quite rare, but when aged six or older their record has been poor thanks to 19 wins from 123 (SR 15.4%) for a loss of £36.64 (ROI -29.8%).

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look next at some LTO data focusing on the most recent run of the horses in question looking a position the horse finished last time out.

 

 

LTO winners made a small loss, while all other groups somewhat surprisingly all proved profitable.

At this point I would like to share the results for horses who had not previously run and hence were making their racehorse debut. This cohort was obviously a big one with 5620 runners in total. Of these, 881 were successful for a strike rate of 15.7%. Losses to £1 level stakes stood at £231.80 (ROI -4.1%); A/E 0.96.

Trainers

Trainer data is always a favourite of racing fans so let’s see what we can find. In the table below all trainers who had at least 60 runners in the study period are shown. The trainers have been ordered alphabetically:

 

 

18 of the 43 trainers made a blind profit during the timeframe, while nine managed A/E indices of 1.10 or higher.

From this initial starting point, let me breakdown some of the data, starting with a look at trainer performance when the horses have started favourite. Below is a graph sharing the ROI%s where to qualify a trainer must have saddled 40 or more market leaders.

 

 

There are some real fluctuations regarding these figures. Harry Fry has had an excellent record with favourites. His ROI of +32.3% came from 21 wins from 46 (SR 45.7%) for a profit to £1 level stakes of £14.87, A/E 1.29. Jamie Snowden was another to have excelled when it comes to market leaders - 25 wins from 50 (SR 50%) for a profit of £11.19 (ROI +22.4%); A/E 1.29. In contrast, Fergal O’Brien has had a poor record with his bumper favourites losing over 19p in the £. His strike rate of 29.1% (35 wins from 119) was lowest of all the trainers shown in the graph. Nicky Henderson’s stats for bumper favourites have also been relatively poor. His record reads 57 wins from 161 (SR 35.4%) for a loss of £15.87 (ROI -9.9%); A/E 0.93.

Debut vs 2nd start

I would like to look now at individual trainer performance comparing horses making their racecourse debuts with horses that had run once previously. To help give us a benchmark, the overall figures for all trainers were as follows:

 

 

As we can see from these figures there was a clear improvement for second starters compared to debut runs so we would expect most trainers to conform to that type of pattern.

I have put the individual trainer data in a table comparing win strike rates, ROI percentages and A/E indices. Anything highlighted in ‘blue’ is a positive, anything in ‘red’ a negative. My criteria for each, was as follows:

 

 

By colour coding it helps us to compare the data sets a little more easily.

 

 

There are few trainers I would like to comment upon.

- Harry Fry had an excellent overall record in bumpers over this period and performed extremely well with debutants so keep an eye out for those.

- Alan King’s profile is similar to Fry with his debutants clearly outperforming those having their second start.

- The trainer combo of Lucinda Russell and Peter Scudamore (and now with Michael Scudamore) had an excellent record with debutants, producing returns of close to 32p in the £; A/E 1.14. Second starters, though, struggled losing 36p in the £; A/E 0.70.

- Chris Gordon’s second starters improved markedly in terms of win rate. Their strike rate went up from 15.7% to 28.6%. Second starters proved extremely profitable, too, with returns of 84p in the £.

- Nicky Henderson’s debutants had a decent win rate, but they were overbet based on losses equating to nearly 20p in the £. His runners definitely improved for the experience, and his second starters broke even.

- Messrs. McCain, Murphy, Pauling and Snowden are four trainers to note with second time starters; their runners seemed to come on a lot for the debut run.

Trainer Track Stats

To finish off, there are a handful of trainers who have produced impressive bumper stats at specific courses. They are listed below (ordered by number of runs):

 

 

There are some very impressive numbers in this table, although we need to be aware that some of the sample sizes were quite small. Having said that, I will be keeping an eye out for these trainer/course combos this winter.

**

And that concludes the fifth and final article in this series. It's another one chock full of stats that should point us in the right direction in terms of potential bumper bets over the coming months.

Good luck!

- DR

Monday Musings: Plus Ca Change

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Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, writes Tony Stafford. Save an accent or two – if cedillas and circumflex accents can be found on my keyboard, they’ve escaped me so far – but you get my drift. And I’m not going to lead off with Futurity win number 12 and an eighth British flat-race trainer’s title for Aidan O’Brien either.

It’s 25 years since my The Daily Telegraph Pocket Racing Guide, with the secondary title of the Inside Track on Horseracing, was published by Collins Willow, with a much-valued foreword by Henry Cecil.

Back then I took the opportunity to select three figures who I thought had been fundamental in making a major impact on the sport at the end of the 1990s. In bookmaking, it was Victor Chandler, who is no longer associated with the BetVictor brand that he developed.

Victor was far-sighted in transferring his business to Gibraltar, offering a cut-price betting tax rate of three per cent along with free telephone calls to his UK clients, rather than the nine per-cent prevailing at the time in the UK. Now, it seems, the desperate Rachel from accounts, Chancellor of the Exchequer, wants to bring back a tax on all betting on racing, off-course and on.

Then I picked Lord Hartington, who four years later inherited the title, Duke of Devonshire. ”Stoker” as he is universally known, was the man who presided over the transfer of racing power from the Jockey Club to the British Horseracing Board (now Authority), and as I suggested, was one of the trio that helped drag the sport from the 19th into the 21st Century.

Why plus ca change, then? Well number three was Peter Savill, then the recently appointed boss of the fledgling BHB, whom I described all those years ago as “much-criticised but highly independent … and the ideal man to preside over the technological revolution.”

Savill’s premise at the time was that racing needed to receive a greater share of betting revenue. Twenty-five years on, the issue remains the same and the news this weekend that Savill, along with UK racing’s most winning trainer Mark Johnston, have both joined the board of the Racehorse Owners Association, promises to shake things up.

He says he joined the board, on Johnston’s suggestion, as he felt it would give him more influence than he has managed to achieve with his own Professional Racing Association. He said that racecourses’ attitude seemed to be: “You’re not part of the industry.” “Well now we are!”

Savill, who ran the BHB for six years, promises to be unashamedly “strident”, a word often attributed to him as he enters his new role. The owner of Plumpton racecourse and a horse owner for many years, with a good few of them with Mark Johnston, he’s never been frightened of shaking a few trees, so the other disparate strands of racing’s establishment might well have a serious standard-bearer to line up alongside.

Peter’s aim remains the same: increasing prizemoney and he has firm ideas on how to move towards that ambition. I wish him well and have no doubt that he and co-new boy Mark of the 5,000 plus wins and the “Always Trying” slogan, will never give up in helping achieve their admirable objectives.

**

Okay, so now to Aidan O’Brien. It was salutary that only two UK-trained horses contested the final Group 1 race of the UK season at Doncaster on Saturday and even more so when those two had already been left toiling and trailing after the two-furlong mark.

The Futurity has now been won by O’Brien for his Coolmore partners in 12 of the last 27 years. This time, the one-two-three of Hawk Mountain, Action and Benvenuto Cellini pushed him comfortably over the £8 million plus earnings which put him £800k clear of the persistent Andrew Balding, The latter would have provided one possibly more dangerous challenger in Item, but unsuitably testing ground caused his absence.

Hawk Mountain was promoted immediately after to 8/1 favouritism for the Derby next June, supplanting Benvenuto Cellini, but with so many smart staying types in his stable, it seems foolish to want to commit to backing any of them at this stage.

To illustrate that point, the winner Hawk Mountain was one of 37 juveniles (25 colts) listed in the O’Brien team of juveniles to be sired by their recently deceased champion stallion Wootton Bassett. Second and third are among ten by Frankel in that list. Frankel, unbeaten in his 14 races for Sir Henry Cecil, is of course a son of the peerless Galileo who died three years ago. No wonder the team has been keen to acquire progeny from that Juddmonte stallion.

So then it was off to France yesterday and Saint-Cloud where the two feature races, both Group 1 contests for two-year-olds, were the target. The Criterium International and Criterium de Saint-Cloud, over one mile and one and a quarter miles respectively, each had multiple O’Brien runners. Also each carried a winner’s prize equivalent to £118k.

Unsurprisingly, Puerto Rico, the mount of Christophe Soumillon, started the short-priced favourite in the International following his easy success in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere on Arc Day. He lived up to that with a comfortable success, by almost two lengths from Jean-Claude Rouget’s Campasite. It almost goes without saying that he is another by Wootton Bassett and will be a contender for next year’s 2,000 Guineas.

As I mentioned earlier, it might be foolish to move too soon in Derby betting. One at least as convincing contender must be Pierre Bonnard. The recent Zetland Stakes winner over 1m2f at Newmarket had the proven stamina to win the Criterium de Saint-Cloud over the same trip and showed it along with a great finishing burst to draw easily clear. A double then for Belgian rider Soumillon, at his best on his normal hunting ground.

While O’Brien has more than £8 million earnings when top in the UK and Euro 7m in his home country, yesterday’s double keeps him in a clear third behind Francis-Henri Graffard and Fabre with more than £4.5 million in France – thus in total around £20 million in Europe’s three main racing nations.

Earlier the Prix Perth went to a less fashionable UK-based team, that of trainer David Loughnane and jockey Laura Pearson. The Shropshire-based handler’s five-year-old mare Sparks Fly, a non-winner previously in 2025 but successful at this Parisian track last November, won this Group 3 race very easily from the Andre Fabre-trained favourite. Sparks Fly clearly loves it when the mud flies!

Incidentally, if you would love to own a colt by Wootton Bassett, there are five slated on the first day of Tattersalls October Horses in Training sale, due to be offered today. They are Choir Boy (lot 87), Grafton Street (91), Ex Animo (226), Estoublon (229) and Genealogy (293).

The highest-rated in the draft are Mount Kilimanjaro (by Siyouni), lot 300, rated 110 and Shackleton, a staying son of Camelot (296) who is officially rated 108. If you are planning a trip there to try to buy one of these, remember withdrawals are possible up until time of sale.

With some opportunities later in the year beckoning in the Far East, O’Brien is limbering up with a potent force for the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar on Friday and Saturday this week. I’m sure the Editor has given you plenty of his thoughts to excuse my not delving into matters too deeply, but such as Precise, True Love, Gstaad, Minnie Hauk, The Lion In Winter and Bedtime Story offer lots of potential to say the least.

- TS

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 4: Handicap Hurdles

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Prepping for the Jumps - Part 4, Handicap Hurdles

This the fourth article in a series looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the opening part, linked to below, I discussed novice hurdle races, and today I am going revisit the hurdle theme but this time we'll be looking at all other handicap hurdle races. Essentially this will include all handicap hurdle races without the term ‘novice’ in the title.

As throughout this series, data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profit and loss calculated to the Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched so this does not include Irish racing.

The previous articles are here:

Part 1: Novice Hurdles        Part 2: Novice Chases       Part 3: Handicap Chases

On average there have been just over 1000 qualifying races per year, so we have a good sample size to review. I will start by examining the betting market.

Market factors

Betfair's market rank data shows the following:

 

 

Favourites made a small profit across the time frame, and it is interesting to see the A/E index broken down by time of year/months. Grouping months in pairs (e.g. January & February, March & April, etc) revealed this:

 

 

From September to April, the A/E indices were strong across the board. In the summer months, when there is less NH racing, the figures were low in comparison. [Readers may note that Peter May's SR figures are not produced on site between June and August because the data is considered less reliable at this time]

The betting returns (ROI%) correlate with the A/E indices as the following graph shows:

 

 

 

Anyone backing favourites from September to April over the period of study would have ended up doing quite well. If we had backed handicap hurdle favourites blind in the eight months 'non-summer months' from 2018 onwards profits accrued to £286.92 from £1 level stakes.

Having looked at the market, it is time to move on to other areas. As with the first three articles, I am going to impose a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower from now on, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line.

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females and the ratio in handicap hurdle races was around 3:1 over the period of study. The findings are shown in the table:

 

 

Both sexes achieved similar win rates but, overall, female runners offered better value. However, fillies - female runners aged three or four - struggled, albeit from a modest sample. 597 fillies raced in these contests with 58 winning (SR 9.7%) for hefty losses of £202.20 (ROI -33.9%); A/E 0.68.

 

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now. We saw that younger female runners struggled and, overall, that has been the case for both sexes as the table below shows:

 

 

Male runners aged three or four lost over 16p in the £, not as much as the fillies but still a steep loss. Horses aged five made a small blind profit and, looking across all metrics, five and six-year-olds showed a solid record.

The older brigade, those aged ten and up, made a fair profit with a decent A/E index of 1.09. Backing all these older runners to place on Befair was profitable also. Perhaps some punters ignored their chances based on age and hence they started slightly higher prices than their true price point. Sticking with the 10-year-olds, they performed even better over shorter distances of 2m4f or less. Their record with this distance requirement was 176 wins from 1328 runners (SR 13.3%) for a healthy profit of £204.62 (ROI +15.4%); A/E 1.13. On the place market the profit was also solid at £85.07. Based on this recent evidence, 10-year-olds may offer some value in the months to come.

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at some breeding data next with focus on the country of breeding. The splits were as follows:

 

 

American bred runners were rare and their record was poor. There was not too much in it in terms of the three main countries of Britain, Ireland and France, although the Irish figures read slightly better. German breds made a very small blind profit, as they did on the Betfair Place market, too (£18.78).

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look next at some LTO data focusing on the position a horse finished last time out. Here is the breakdown:

 

 

I feel Position LTO is a factor that I should always share but, on many occasions, there has been limited value to be found. Based on these stats horses running third LTO offered punters a minute profit but, in my view, this was likely coincidence and ultimately the finishing position last time offers no real clues to handicap hurdle races during the timeframe.

Days since last run (DSLR)

A look next at how long handicap hurdlers have been away from the track between runs. The ranges are necessarily a little arbitrary, and below is how I've broken them down:

 

 

It is rare for me to share these DSLR stats because usually there is nothing clear-cut to note. However, on this occasion there were some strong pointers which the table above shows clearly. Horses returning to the track within three days did really well, albeit from a smallish sample; and those who returned within four to seven days essentially broke even, so quick returners could be an area to keep a close eye on this season.

At the other end of the 'time off' spectrum, horses that were absent from the track for four months or more also turned a fair profit, so I am assuming a similar thing happened here as it did with the 10-year-old and older stats we saw earlier. My guess is that these runners started at prices that were marginally higher than their true price due to a possible ‘fitness bias’.

Trainers

Trainer data is always a favourite of racing fans so let’s see what we can find. In the table below I've listed all trainers who saddled at least 250 handicap hurdle runners during the study period. The trainers are ordered alphabetically:

 

 

23 of the 55 trainers made a blind profit during the timeframe, while 12 managed A/E indices of 1.10 or higher. Any of these 12 can be deemed to be trainers that performed well above the average.

On the flip side, a handful of trainers struggled, including Alan King, Martin Keighley, Seamus Mullins and Ian Williams. These handlers look over-bet in such races as a general rule.

From this initial starting point, I wanted to examine trainer performance across different BSPs. To do this I split their results into six price bands:

 

 

I wanted to compare A/E indices across said price brackets over the review period. Each trainer needed to have at least 60 runners within each individual price band to qualify and, to appear in the table, the trainer must have achieved that in four or more of the six price bands. Any price band where they sent out fewer than 60 runners was left blank.

Any entry highlighted in ‘blue’ was a positive, anything in ‘red’ a negative. My criteria for this was:

 

 

By colour coding it helps us to compare the data sets more easily. Here were the splits:

 

 

If we look back at Chris Gordon’s overall record, we can see that it was extremely positive with an overall A/E index of 1.08 and returns equating to just over 20 pence in the £. Hence, it is no surprise perhaps to see him with three ‘blues’ out of five, and indices of 1.00 and 0.93 in the other price segments. Likewise, Tom Lacey, whose overall strike rate was above 23% with returns of 28.9% and a 1.26 A/E index, had four ‘blues’ out of five with the other A/E index above 1.00 at 1.03.

Seeing that type of positive consistency across different price bands makes Lacey’s overall stats even more impressive. Rebecca Menzies, another trainer who had excellent overall stats, achieved four ‘blues’ out of five. She, along with Gordon and Lacey were trainers to excel during this timeframe and it will be interesting to see if they can replicate this over the coming months. If we combine the results of these three trainers and look at the yearly ROI% returns we see the following:

 

 

Seven winning years out of eight – I wonder if system punters might consider combining the three this year and backing all such runners?

Neil Mulholland attacks handicap hurdles on a regular basis so his overall figures are impressive. In terms of the price bands, he had three ‘blues’ out of six, with the other three indices being 1.00, 1.09 and 0.94. Again, over the past few years he has been a trainer to keep on the right side of, so I am expecting his runners to go well once more this year.

Other positives worth noting are that both the O’Neill stable and the Hobbs/White yard did exceptionally well with shorter prices runners (BSP 3.5 or less). The O’Neill stable had 49 winners from 109 (SR 45%) for a profit of £19.11 (ROI +17.5%); the Hobbs/White had a 50% strike rate thanks to 43 winners from 86 for a BSP profit of £24.86 (ROI +28.9%).

In terms of negatives, Alan King’s overall figures were quite poor, showing losses of over 27p in the £. That manifested as four ‘reds’ out of five. He is not typically a trainer to offer value in handicap hurdles based on these findings.

Summary

Let me finish by placing my interpretation of the main positives and negatives highlighed above in a table, as a sort of handicap hurdle ‘ready reckoner’:

 

 

That’s it for this 'NH Prep' deep dive. Next week I'll be taking a look at bumpers, or National Hunt Flat races to give them their full title. Until then...

- DR

 

Roving Reports: Shut That d’Or

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Do you know what the French for "doors closing" is? Until a couple of weeks ago I'd have struggled to tell you, but I now know that "porte à fermeture" is the correct French phrasing, writes David Massey. This is purely down to the number of times I took the lift at the hotel in which we stayed in Paris for our recent weekend away for the Arc. I now hear the words in my dreams, my wife has started saying it every time I leave the room and leave the door open, and it has become so ingrained in my memory I now remember it better than the names of my own children.

Maybe this is the right way to teach French to older idiots like me, just batter the phrase at them until they can no longer forget it. My wife Caroline was most impressed by my wonderful mangling of two beautiful languages in the pizza restaurant of "deux more beers, s'il vous plait" but at under four euros a boisson I definitely wanted deux more.

I'm jumping ahead here. Let's start at the beginning, when we decided earlier this year we'd go to the Arc for the first time. We booked through Racing Breaks #notanad and given my absolute fear of flying - actually, a fear of crashing - it was always going to be the Eurostar that took us to Paris. I've been on a plane three times in my whole life, once to Belfast, once to Dinan and once before to Paris, having been to Auteuil for Champion Hurdle Day there a few years back when One Track Mind took his chance. That was a fun day, and there are stories to tell that can't be repeated on here, but it was the last time I flew: after a rocky landing in Birmingham I swore off the air, preferring to stick to wheels and tracks to get about.

So we, along with seemingly half of England, are catching the Friday afternoon Eurostar to Paris. This, for a 56-year-old man who hasn't been abroad in years, is actually quite exciting. The Eurostar rattles along apace; there's a helpful video explaining how to break the window in your carriage and get out safely if something goes wrong, or perhaps get trapped with one of the many racing "personalities" that appear to be on the train. One of them is in our carriage. I've seen him more since he retired than I ever did when he was commentating.

We get to Gare du Nord an hour late. No, hang on, my phone has merely adjusted to local time. Forgot about that. Metro, then a quick ten minute walk to our hotel, not a million miles from the Eiffel Tower, and we're all checked in and in our hotel room 28 storeys up from the Parisian ground. I'm not struck on heights, either, but here we are.

As it's getting on a bit, we decide to find somewhere local to eat and find a great little pizza place two streets away. It's run by, as it turns out, an Iranian family, and they couldn't be more welcoming. The pizza is excellent, the beer cheap, and we have a good meal for a shade over forty euros.

Saturday morning breakfast in the hotel is incredible. So many people, so many nationalities, but everyone is catered for really well. You name it, it's there. Puts the standard buffet breakfast I'm so used to on my domestic travels to shame. And of course, the croissants are so much better than they are over here. I've lost a stone and a half in the last five months by eating better food, and I strongly suspect I might be putting a fair bit back on over the next three days.

We're off to Longchamp for their Saturday card, too. 80 euros for two tickets that get us pretty much everywhere we want to go is very fair given the quality of racing. I immediately fall in love with the place. I love the simplicity of it; paddock to bar to concourse in under a minute, and for all I love a battle with the old enemy on a British racecourse, the PMU machines fascinate me.

Sadly, what I thought was a winning forecast in the Cadran was merely a swinger, which teaches me a valuable lesson to know what bet I'm actually wagering rather than what I think I'm wagering. I think being three beers in at this point doesn't help - I can't drink like I used to, the Skegness years are long behind me - but I'm having such a fun time I don't really care. The racing is fantastic, although what's with the idea of two commentators for each race? Even for shorter contests they swap over at halfway. Imagine that over here. Over to John Hanmer halfway through the Epsom Dash. It'd be done before you've identified what's in front.

Saturday night sees us eating in a steak restaurant near the Champs Elysees with about ten others. It's an incredible place, the steaks hanging up in ageing cabinets and you can choose your own, should you wish. Our waitress for the evening is great fun, her English is superb - even her swearing is top-notch - and she keeps our rowdy lot in order. Suffice to say, the forty-two euros we paid last night would barely get you a look at the menu here. Throw in a couple of Uber's there and back and the night is not a cheap one. We do, however, get to see the Eiffel Tower all sparkly on the way back. Which is nice.

A lot nicer than Paris traffic, though. As someone that does over 20,000 miles a year driving to and from racecourses I like to think of myself as fairly competent, and can cope with whatever the British roads can throw at me. But Paris is on another level. This is basically real-life Mario Kart. Diving in for any gap that appears, lining up four wide at junctions clearly meant for two cars, getting cut up at roundabouts, these are all perfectly normal for your average Paris Uber driver, it seems. I asked our driver why there was so much traffic on the road at 11pm on a Saturday night. "Paris!" he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders. Two more motorbikes dive for the same gap at the lights in front of us. I think I'd rather fly.

Sunday is Arc day. After more hotel lift-related mayhem (smart lifts my arse) and another wonderful breakfast (I eat more than yesterday, given I'm likely to be drinking again and probably won't eat again until tonight) our coach arrives to take us to the track. One lady thinks we'll miss the first, but she's made the rookie error I made at Gare du Nord on Friday. Add an hour onto those Racing Post off times, we'll be fine.

There's ten times as many people here as yesterday and it's basically like being at one massive party. What a fabulous atmosphere there is. I bump into plenty of pals on my way around, and we meet up with my friends Alex and Sophie, regulars at northern tracks. The beer is flowing, the racing is superb. "Make some noise!" shouts the racecourse announcer as they go in for the Arc. I've had ale, readers, and am more than happy to oblige with his request. Daryz proves just too good for Minnie Hauk, a shame for the Irish but good for my bank balance as I tipped him up in the steak restaurant last night. Alex and I play the bandits - as we've named the PMU machines - all afternoon, and that's another thing the French do so well. They aren't scared of you having a bet, it's almost encouraged, in fact. Out front there are five large platforms with young people on top waving huge flags saying "Time To Bet!" five minutes before the off of each race. I'm not saying there aren't faults with a Tote system but my word, it has its merits too, with some huge jackpot bets on offer for small stakes.

The afternoon flies by, and it's been very enjoyable. It's really whetted mine and Caroline's appetite to do this again; both Auteuil and Le Lion d'Angers are mentioned (well, it does have that wonderful X-Country course, after all). At the age of 56, I think I might finally become a traveller, after all. Ludlow on a Wednesday has its undoubted charms, of course, but this weekend has been a real eye-opener for me.

Monday morning. And after one last breakfast, it's back to Blighty. We arrive in St Pancras an hour early. No, hang on...

Let the jumps season commence. See you all at Cheltenham this weekend, yes?

- DM

Monday Musings: A Five and a Six Away from Ascot

/in /by

On a day when Ascot’s Champions Day supplied winners at 200/1 and 100/1 for home stables, two of Ireland’s biggest yards were at it elsewhere, writes Tony Stafford. It came as little surprise when Aidan O’Brien had the first five and then mercifully allowed someone else to get on the scoresheet before making it six on the day back home at Leopardstown.

With several multiple opportunities through the card, it wasn’t easy to identify which would be the better, notably in the fifth, the Group 3 Killavullan Stakes. This went to 13/8 second-best Dorset in the Derrick Smith silks, after getting first run on the Michael Tabor colours on 6/4 favourite Daytona, clear of the rest and much to the mirth of the two gentlemen concerned back at Ascot.

I doubt whether even they or their trainer would have been able to predict all six beforehand. If they had, it was around a 1,150/1 six-timer, eclipsing the 200/1 longest-ever Group 1 winning starting price recorded by the Richard Fahey-trained Powerful Glory back at Ascot. His victory in the Qipco Champion Sprint owed much to a Jamie Spencer masterclass amid the whoops and disbelieving on the straight course at Ascot where his age-old skills never dim.

Two races later I did venture into the paddock, when many of the connections stay to view their race on the big screen, to watch the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. Horse racing can bring emotion far removed from everyday life and I swear I saw more than one very emotional woman and at least half a dozen men unashamedly crying as Charlie Hills’ Cicero’s Gift returned to unsaddle.

It was a day of days for owners Rosehill Racing and even jockey Jason Watson was wiping away a tear or two as he brought the unconsidered five-year-old back having edged out the big guns. Behind, a revived The Lion In Winter led home Alakazi and Docklands, with the disappointing pair Field Of Gold and Rosallion next home.

No doubt emotion in the entire Hills family was the order of the day just short of four months after Charlie’s father Barry, such a genius of a trainer, died at the age of 88. I snatched a few words with Barry’s widow and Charlie’s mum Penny earlier in the day. Afterwards I recalled one day driving down Fulham Palace Road in West London a decade or more prior, passing Charing Cross Hospital where Barry was being treated for cancer and seeing Penny on her way out having visited him, as she did every day during his illnesses.

She looked great on Saturday and I’m sure she felt that her son, often under-valued by ultra-critical people in racing – not always the kindest of arenas – had gone a long way to silencing his critics. After all, hadn’t he also won the Grade 2 Woodford Stakes at Keeneland two weeks earlier with the nine-year-old Khaadem, partnered by Frankie Dettori? That Fitri Hay-owned sprinter had won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee at Royal Ascot both in 2023 and last year. You don’t keep top-class horses going that long into a career without having a real talent for the job.

Frankie no doubt would have been keeping an eye on matters at Ascot on the 29th anniversary of his unique seven-race through-the-card feat. I saw Gary Wiltshire at Chelmsford on Thursday night and he’s still dining out on how he lost £2 million laying the last winner of that septet. I won’t ever forget it either, having to write an extra chapter for the book Year in The Life Of Frankie Dettori, ready to go as it was then.

Gary’s latest book detailing those days is a steady seller, and I hope Victor Thompson’s Eighty Years in the Fast Lane, also published by Weatherbys will get a nice response. I helped Victor and his partner Gina Coulson put it together, and the final piece in the puzzle came with Nick Luck’s stylish and heart-warming foreword last week. Publication should be at the end of this month.

If ever I write another book of my own, the title ought to be “I digress” (!), because almost the most unlikely eventuality of all those remarkable Saturday feats was occurring over in the US at Far Hills racecourse in New Jersey.

Gordon Elliott might have been bullied almost into submission in the top races over the years by Willie Mullins, but he certainly knows how to pick his spots. He sent a team of horses to the US’s biggest day of jump racing in both prestige and money terms on Saturday and won five, including their Champion Hurdle and Grand National.

Jack Kennedy, happily recovered from his latest injury, rode four of them, giving way to Danny Gilligan on Coutach in the £72k to the winner Champion Hurdle. Pride of place goes to the last of the quintet, Zanahiyr, an Aga Khan-bred son of Nathaniel, Enable’s sire. Nathaniel, at the age of 17, has been making enough of a revival to stand at an increased £20k at Newsells Park Stud. Graham Smith-Bernal, Newsells’ owner, was still bubbling over another sales triumph (3.6 million gns) even though only second of the pile at Tattersalls Book 1 for a son of Frankel, sold of course to Amo Racing.

Zanahiyr collected £120k for his neck success over fellow Irishman, the Gavin Cromwell-trained Ballysax Hank. He’s another versatile type having won the Summer Plate at Market Rasen (a race won the previous year by geegeez syndicate horse, Sure Touch, which also followed up there this week) and collected a 1m6f flat race on home turf before his trip to New Jersey.

Cromwell had fulfilled a long ambition when sending out Stumptown, a regular in good handicap chases, to win the Velka Pardubicka over the fearsome obstacles at Pardubice, Czech Republic, the previous weekend.

In all, Elliott’s five pulled in a total of £300,000. It’s to his credit that he’s come through the dark days and the ban that followed that infamous photo with ever more energy and operational dexterity.

Judged on recent events Elliott, Cromwell and Joseph O’Brien will be ever more visible going for the top UK prizes this winter when the home defence, with one or two exceptions, might struggle to withstand them – never forgetting the imperious Willie Mullins.

I hear a whisper that the champ already has earmarked the horses he intends to line up for the five Grade 1 races that were the fixture for so many years for the opening day at Cheltenham’s Festival meeting next March. One of the stable’s most ardent followers was bemoaning the rearrangement of the four-day programme that as he says dilutes the top races through the week. Maybe it’s a response by bookmakers sick of having their pants down and bottoms smacked every year by Wearisome Willie!

I digressed and did so again. What a day. We saw a proper middle-distance champion in the French gelding Calandagan, too speedy for the rest and ridden with great tactical awareness by Mickael Barzalona, two weeks on from his Arc de Triomphe win on Daryz. An early test of that form was Kalpana’s easy repeat win in Saturday’s Champion Filly and Mare race, soon clear in the straight and never tested in repelling a late thrust from Estrange. That striking grey ran a blinder considering the unsuitably fast ground.

John Gosden seemed more pleased to have ended the three-race tussle with Delacroix (who finished fourth) on the credit side, two-to-one, than worry about Osbudsman’s being beaten by the French raider who, like Daryz, is trained by Francis-Henri Graffard.

In that race I was astonished that Delacroix hadn’t finished in front of outsider Almaqam, trained by Ed Walker, especially as my vantage point was as near to level with the winning line as it can get. Certainly, it’s better than from the Royal Box fifty yards further down the straight!

Again, there was chat about Christophe Soumillon, even after winning the Two-Year-Old Conditions race on Mission Control for the Coolmore team and O’Brien. In the big one, he was ahead of both Calandagan and William Buick on Ombudsman turning for home but then was swamped by a pincer movement from behind, immediately losing his nice pitch. I doubt he would have troubled the winner, but he might have been in another close fight with the Gosden horse had he kept out of trouble. Most of us thought he ought to have done better in the finish for third too, but I’ve talked about his coming unstuck in photos before.

Then again, having had a chip each way (forget which of my old-time friends used to say that!) on Karl Burke’s Holloway Boy in the closing Balmoral Handicap, the one handicap on the day, my eyes again deceived me. I knew Crown of Oaks had won to give yet another big handicap to William Haggas but was sure Holloway Boy, in his first run since Meydan in April, was a narrow outright second.

Once more, I was wrong, the dead-heat announcement being a further surprise. Talking of Holloway Boy he, like the fifth-placed favourite Native Warrior, is trained by Karl Burke, one trainer inexorably moving up the ladder.

A reflection of that is how he’s now winning races overseas, too. Yesterday in the Group 2 Prix du Conseil de Paris at Longchamp he reversed Balmoral Handicap fortunes with Haggas, Convergent getting the better of his rival’s Dubai Honour by a neck.

Native Warrior was one of five Wathnan Racing runners on the day, from four different stables, all ridden by James Doyle. His is a fantastic job and one that can only get better as the owners and Richard Brown extend their tentacles.

There are still a few rungs to go before Karl Burke makes the top three in his peer group. After Saturday’s skirmishes, when O’Brien, Andrew Balding and the Gosdens each had one winner, it’s status quo in the UK trainers’ title race, with Aidan now guaranteed another triumph. If he wins the Futurity at Doncaster on Saturday, he’ll nudge over £8million in prize money.

Finally, after a day with more to mention than space warrants, on the way out I bumped into old pal Graham Thorner, former trainer and Grand National winning rider. I suggested that Ascot remains unique in that it attracts massive crowds for all its dates and that I’d never seen so many young people at a race meeting before. He agreed. Whatever Ascot’s blueprint for success, they should make sure they pass it on to less successful venues.

- TS

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 3: Handicap Chases

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Preparing for the Jumps - Part 3, Handicap Chases

In this third article in a series looking forward to the National Hunt season we'll continue last week's chase theme, this time focusing on non-novice handicap chases, writes Dave Renham. That is, any handicap chase without the term ‘novice’ in the title. As before, data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profits and losses calculated to the Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched, so this does not include Irish racing.

We have a good number of qualifying races per year, usually between 850 and 900; in total, then, this equates to nearly 6500 races. I will start as I always do by examining the betting market.

Market factors

I have used Betfair to determine market rank and the table below shows performance by position in the Betfair SP market:

 

 

Favourites performed well and even made a small blind profit. Concentrating on the other market positions, horses ranked fourth in the betting made a solid profit which is a big outlier when comparing to other market positions in the table whose ROI%s are all in the same ballpark. It is interesting that if backing horses fourth in the betting year in year out, a blind profit was achieved in six of the eight years.

Personally, I do not see backing horses fourth in the market as a strategy this coming season because I am assuming it is down to variance. Having said that, I looked back on the previous eight-year subset (2010 to 2017) and horses fourth in the market made a profit then, too. The ROI% was +3% in that time frame. I’ll leave you to decide how to interpret that...

Returning to favourites for a slightly deeper dive, here are the yearly ROI% numbers:

 

 

As we can see, there were flucatuations from year to year ranging from 2018, the year showing the best returns at +7.4%, to the year showing the worst returns (2019) at -12.3%. This is a good example that even annual results for a similar type of horse are rarely uniform. It is something as bettors we really need to appreciate. It’s like the tossing a coin analogy where the first ten tosses see seven heads and three tails, and the second ten see the script flipped somewhat with two heads and eight tails. The previous ten tosses are usually not a statistical or mathematical guide to the next ten. We know over a long period of time that the percentages for the number of heads compared to tails is going to trend towards 50-50, but over shorter periods we will get significant fluctuations.

Moving on, and still with favourites, here is performance by race class.

 

 

As we can see there are far more handicap chases when we get to Class 3 level or lower. The strike rate for Class 1 handicaps was lower than the rest and this was simply down to bigger average field sizes. The lowest class (5) has seen the best results with six of the eight years turning a profit, and the A/E index of 1.07 was extremely solid.

Having looked at the market, it is time to look into other areas. As with the first two articles, I am going to impose a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower from now on, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line. It still includes nearly 40,000 runners so the sample size remains huge.

 

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females but how did their stats stack up against each other? Let me see:

 

 

In terms of performance, both sexes performed in a comparable way across all the key metrics so there was no real edge to either.

 

Age of horse

Moving on to age data now, and I'll begin by sharing the A/E indices across different ages:

 

 

The 4yo stats are based on just 127 runners so, concentrating on the bigger samples of horses aged five and older, there seems nothing much in it between the ages of five and nine, but once we get to handicap chasers aged ten or older we start to see a dip.  Here is a fuller view covering other key metrics:

 

 

When looking at the data as a whole, there seems to be the same age bias as we saw in the graph in play here: lower win rates for horses aged 10 and older, and much poorer ROI percentages too. Even when focusing on horses aged 10+ that started favourite or second favourite, their record was relatively poor in comparison to the other market stats we saw earlier. This cohort of older favs won 374 races from 1671 runners (SR 22.4%) for losses of £160.48 (ROI -9.5%); A/E 0.93. Logic dictates therefore that in general we should concentrate on horses aged five to nine.

 

Country of Breeding

Changing tack to breeding and specifically the country of breeding, below is a breakdown for the four main breeding entities - British, Irish, French and German-breds:

 

 

We have similar strike rates for the three main countries, Britain, Ireland and France. German-bred runners are less common and have performed below the level of the other three.

There are interesting stats for French bred runners when we split their data into different age groups. Combining five- and six-year-old runners together they produced 400 winners from 2056 qualifiers (SR 19.5%) for a small profit of £52.94 (ROI +2.6%); A/E 1.05. Moreover, backing all qualifiers to place on Betfair also nudged into profit to the tune of £36.58.

Compare this to the record of French-breds aged 10 and up. This older cohort produced 168 winners from 1324 runners (SR 12.7%) for a hefty loss of £150.30 (ROI –11.4%), A/E 0.94.

British-bred runners aged eight or younger combined to produce a good set of figures: 832 wins from 4545 runners (SR 18.3%) for a healthy profit to BSP of £420.95 (ROI +9.3%). The A/E index of 1.08 suggests these runners have offered good value. British-bred older runners, though, performed even more poorly than their French counterparts, hitting a strike rate of just 11.6% (229 wins from 1973) for losses of £277.60 (ROI -14.1%); A/E 0.89.

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A quick mention of the most recent piece of form in terms of finishing position LTO. There were no clear patterns that I found but here are three stats that I thought were reasonably interesting.

Firstly, LTO winners performed reasonably well, making only a small loss of 1.5 pence in the £. They won 21.6% of the time, so with a bit of extra digging there may be some value to be found in certain last time winners in handicap chases.

Secondly, horses that fell or were unseated LTO did not perform well. They collectively achieved 201 wins from 1520 (SR 13.2%) for a loss of £114.44 (ROI -7.5%); A/E 0.93.

And thirdly, horses that were pulled up LTO but started favourite next time had a good overall record. Clearly, not a high percentage of horses that were pulled up LTO go off favourite on their next start, but when they did, 71 won from 201 runners (SR 35.3%) for a decent profit of £48.02 (ROI +23.9%); A/E 1.25.

 

Weight

In handicaps of course horses carry weight based on their Official Rating, although it is rare to find anything significant overall as the handicapper does such a good job rating and weighting horses. It can difficult sometimes to decide how best to analyse weight. Weight carried or weight rank are two obvious options, and I have used both many times before.

For these data I have chosen a new idea by comparing different groups in relation to the average weight carried in the race. As Geegeez has recently added the average OR for each race in their racecards it seems a good idea to take this approach. I have split the runners into three groups:

  1. Horses carrying 4lb or more than the race average.
  2. Horses carrying 4lb or less than the race average.
  3. Horses weighted within 4lb of the race average.

Here are the A/E indices of the three groups:

 

 

Horses carrying less weight offered the best value within the timeframe and the ‘4lb or less’ group turned a small profit of £238.04 (ROI +2%). Overall, this group contained 11,106 runners of which 1676 won (SR 15.1%). The other two groups lost 4p in the £ across 14,284 bets and 13,599 bets respectively.

 

Race Class change

A look at change in class next. Here are the splits:

 

 

Horses upped in class did best, albeit by a smallish margin given the number of runners within each group.

 

Trainer Angles: Overall

The final port of call for this piece is to look at some trainer data. Let me start by flagging those trainers with the highest win rates (who saddled at least 150 runners during the time frame). This is a big table containing over 50 trainers. They are ordered alphabetically:

 

 

32 of the 54 trainers made a blind profit which is a higher number than I had expected, while seven had A/E indices of 1.20 or higher – these trainers are Gary Hanmer, Ben Haslam, Matt Sheppard, Henry Daly, Martin Keighley, David Dennis and Richard Hobson. That septet appears to have gone under the radar somewhat. Here are some additional positives for some of those trainers:

  1. Ben Haslam seems to excel with older horses. Those aged 9 or older won 25 times from 107 (SR 23.4%) for a profit of £51.98 (ROI +48.6%); A/E 1.48. There were a few multiple winners but 11 different older horses came home in front so Haslam seems to have good knack of rejuvenating veteran runners.
  2. Henry Daly did especially well in races of three miles or more. In these contests he saddled 31 winners from 154 (SR 20.1%) for a huge £103.14 profit (ROI +67%); A/E 1.33.
  3. Sticking with Daly, his runners won just three times in 47 attempts in Class 1 or 2 events. However, in Class 3 or lower his record was 43 wins from 179 (SR 24%) for a profit of £111.44 (ROI +62.3%).
  4. Martin Keighley has shown excellent consistency when we compare his record across the year. When we split the year into four groups of three months (Jan to Mar, Apr to Jun, Jul to Sept and Oct to Dec), his win strike rates were as follows:

 

 

Not only was Keighley consistent, he also secured returns of at least 14p in the £ in each of the four quarterly groupings.

  1. Richard Hobson produced a profit in seven of the eight years. Hobson’s record with favourites should also be noted – 16 wins from 37 (SR 43.2%) for a profit of £20.09 (ROI +54.3%); A/E 1.48.

 

Trainer Angles: Comparative Data

The final data for these 54 trainers that I would like to share shows their results split into two groups – 2018 to 2021 and 2022 to 2025. I have placed the comparative data in a table covering win strike rate, ROI percentage and A/E indices. Anything highlighted in ‘blue’ is a positive, anything in ‘red’ is a negative. My criteria for each, was as follows:

 

 

By colour coding the table I hope that it helps to compare the data a little more easily. Here is the table:

 

 

Some points I would like to highlight:

Firstly, there is a statistical quirk which, when I saw it, I took a double take. Notice the two strike rates for the different groups of four years for Nick Alexander – they both are 16.77%, but what makes this even more remarkable is that the wins to runs ratio for both timeframes was 26 wins from 155 runners!

Other key points to note:

  1. Messrs. Daly, Haslam, Keighley and Sheppard, four of the seven positive trainers noted earlier, managed to be consistently good across both time frames.
  2. Brian Ellison, Warren Greatrex, Alan King, Ben Pauling, Jeremy Scott and Robert Walford have all shown a significant uptick in performance in the more recent four years.
  3. Nigel Hawke and Tom Lacey have both struggled more recently, well down on their stats for the 2018 to 2021 period.
  4. The Greenall / Guerriero stable, along with the Moore stable have both had decent results in both timeframes. We could say the same about Neil King and Evan Williams.

 

**

 

And that concludes my handicap chase analysis ahead of this jumps season. There's plenty to go at in there and I hope some of the stats will assist you in finding some good value handicap chase winners between now and the spring.

- DR

 

Monday Musings: A Ces for the Home Team

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I recently wrote about the sad decline in the attraction to trainers of Newmarket’s Cambridgeshire Handicap, run two weeks ago with a first prize of £90k, writes Tony Stafford. On a track where they could easily accommodate 35 horses and room for five or six London buses in between up the straight it looked a mundane affair at best.

They even used to run a consolation race (for much less money) for a few years not so long ago and while never having the relevance of the Chester Cup or Northumberland Plate consolations, it at least gave a run to people who had prepared their horses for the big race and missed out. While admiring the performance of its top-weighted winner Boiling Point for Karl Burke last month, the 2025 race was a tame and wholly domestic affair.

Of course, when it came to the Cesarewitch on Saturday, for a similar first prize, the Irish were interested – sending out ten of their mainly second-division stayers, but where was the feasible home defence going to come from?

In all, only 19 went into the stalls for the race that, as my friend Maurice Manasseh, half a century on from John Oaksey, reminded us, “It begins in Cambridgeshire and finishes in Suffolk”. One of those racing homilies I never tire of hearing.

Accustomed over the years to seeing a massive line-up way over there, a mile along the A14 just behind the service station, this year’s contingent went the reverse way all the 2m2f of it in dribs and drabs. It used to be a stream, and you wondered how they could survive four-and-a-half miles.

I’m sure it’s the smallest field for at least in my consciousness. I restricted myself to going back until 2019 – Wikipedia doesn’t list the size of field, but while there were a couple of near misses with 24 last year and 21 plus two non-runners on the day in 2022, otherwise it has been invariably 30-plus, certainly since 2019 in any case. [Certainly since at least 1997 – Ed.]

That 2019 race went to Willie Mullins with his star hurdler Stratum and was worth 217 grand to Midas-touch owner Tony Bloom. How can a race with this amazing history have declined by more than half in money terms in just six short years?

Part of that irrelevance, no doubt, reflects the enormous strides made by its Irish counterpart, run two weeks earlier with a full 30-horse field. That race carried a first prize of more than 300k whether you count it in £ or Euro.

Ours was a mere pittance in contrast but was well enough patronised by Joseph O’Brien and previous winners Willie and Emmet Mullins, Charles Byrnes as well as Tony Martin. He, apart from doing the job with Leg Spinner in 2007 also had a hand (at least) in the win of his sister Cathy O’Leary with Alphonse Le Grande last year while he was serving a ban – but not one severe enough to stop him celebrating afterwards on the winner’s rostrum.

The Irish on Saturday were 2nd,3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th from their ten representatives, while winner Beylerbeyi, fourth placed Divine Comedy (Harry Eustace) and seventh home Belgravian (Andrew Balding) did at least intrude on the invaders’ expected party. Certainly, the watchers around me were astounded that neither Willie Mullins nor Joseph O’Brien had the winner.

But such is the power of their two stables in flat race staying contests that between them they supplied 14 of the 30 starters at the Curragh two weeks previously including winner Puturhandstogether for O’Brien in the J P McManus colours. I doubt a 4lb penalty would have stopped him off 86 on Saturday (including the penalty) if he hadn’t had bigger fish to fry.

And so to the winner. I saw Ian Willims for a few minutes before he saddled Beylerbeyi for the race. I had been amazed that his five-year-old was as short as 7/1 for a race of this calibre and suggested his handling of the gelding had been remarkable, but he said, “We’ve got to see if he stays yet.”

Until July, I had Beylerbeyi firmly pitched as a middle-range miler; indeed apart from two unsuccessful runs in novice hurdles at the end of last year the longest trip he had ever encountered was one mile one and a half furlongs around Wolverhampton.

Williams loves acquiring chuck-outs from top French stables, most notably Francis-Henri Graffard – not a bad place to buy from – and Beylerbeyi, although a winner first-time at two, from four runs for Jean-Claude Rouget’s top yard, was picked up for only €7k and knocked down to Williams.

Like many trainers, he finds it harder to get his horses’ ratings to drop even after a series of unsuccessful runs, so he put the horse in the care of less-fashionable Patrick Morris, and the adverse effect happened, 13lb off for four defeats, upon which he entered the Williams team proper.

It took 11 runs starting from and ending on 62 before Beylerbeyi’s initial victory – point taken! – in June last year over seven furlongs at Wolverhampton. Within weeks that had transformed into a hat-trick with victories over seven again and then a mile at Doncaster. Three more runs preceded one further win, in the outing over the extended nine furlongs I mentioned earlier, back at Dunstall Park.

He was still racing at around a mile when he reappeared this year and then, in July, he was third when tried over one mile two and a half furlongs at York. Then it was another hat-trick, all upped to 1m4f. You would still hardly regard that as sufficient evidence for eyeing the Cesarewitch and its 2m2f slog.

Beylerbeyi is by Invincible Spirit, sire of many high-class sprinters and milers, and I doubt his breeders Al Shaqab Racing would have predicted a race like Saturday’s as on their radar. But the sire does have a good win percentage with the smaller group of his progeny that have tried 1m6f and above. When Ian moved him up to 1m6f, he finished strongly when second at the Doncaster St Leger meeting and then was an eye-catching third at Newbury.

But here he was, running over half a mile further than ever before, no wonder the trainer’s apparent uncertainty. Beylerbeyi broke slowly and Billy Loughnane held him up last of the entire field for much of the trip. He moved him out just as Hughie Morrison’s Caprelo had started his run a couple of lengths ahead of him on the outside and, when that opponent’s promise quickly evaporated, Beylerbeyi simply got stronger.

Caprelo’s rider Tyler Heard had been instructed to sit in the pack and hold on to his mount. He told Hughie afterwards, “They seemed to be going so slow; I was worried they would get away from me”. Morrison pointed out yesterday morning that in fact this was the fastest race on the day compared with standard times on a day when the Dewhurst and two other Group races for two-year-olds were contested. I can further tell Hughie that this was the second-fastest Cesarewitch of this century!

So just when the Irish hordes, headed by Joseph’s Dawn Rising with a run timed to perfection it seemed by Oisin Murphy, and Willie’s Bunting (William Buick), whose transit was troubled, seemed to have it between them, along came Beylerbeyi.

Loughnane, on the outside of what promised to be a three- or even four-horse conclusion, utilised the speed that won Beylerbeyi so many races at around a mile and he was soon clear, going away from his field at the finish.

With such races as the Chester Cup and Ascot Stakes among Williams’ favourites and both on his palmarès, expect Beylerbeyi to be aimed at those and maybe more ambitious targets next year. One regret Williams might have is that he didn’t give the five-year-old a third jumps run. His mark might even have been lower than he’ll get after tomorrow’s re-think.

Loughnane has 106 wins in the portion of the year that decides the Jockeys’ Champion with Oisin Murphy way out in front on 140 and guaranteed to collect his prize on Saturday at Ascot. Over the whole year, Loughnane has a remarkable 167 victories. Still only 19, he is destined for many jockeys’ titles of his own.

One former champion, Ryan Moore, has had to sit out a good portion of the important autumn this year as the number one for Coolmore. In his stead Christophe Soumillon hasn’t been received with universal joy by some of the people around the team.

His success in France last weekend was enough to quell some of the criticism, but now back on UK soil and despite big wins on fast-improving and now 1,000 Guineas favourite Precise on Friday and unbeaten Pierre Bonnard, impressive in beating stablemate Endorsement in the 10-furlong Zetland Stakes the following day, the chatter continued.

One said, “He’s okay with steering jobs or in France, but I reckon he’s been beaten in seven photo-finishes on Coolmore horses since York.”

The 44-year-old’s riding of Gstaad in the Dewhurst Stakes, the race that probably would have had the Aidan O’Brien colt in pole position for the 2,000 Guineas next May had he won, also drew criticism.

While James Doyle on the Andrew Balding-trained 25/1 chance Gewan raced prominently throughout the seven furlongs, Soumillon allowed Gstaad to drift back into centre-pack in the middle of the race and had several positions looking for gaps before getting into second in the last furlong. He was beaten by three-parts of a length.

A contemplative and solitary Ryan surveyed the paddock before the race, and I would love a penny for his thoughts on how it panned out. It did make a £350,000 difference in the gap between the two protagonists for the trainers’ title. O’Brien still holds a £630k lead over Balding, but a round million would have felt more secure going into a mouth-watering British Champions Day at Ascot next Saturday.

At least, with the weather set fair, we should have unusually decent ground for this fixture when if Delacroix, on his final appearance, should win the Champion Stakes it will all be done and dusted.

- TS

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 2: Novice Chases

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Preparing for the jumps – Part 2, Novice Chases

This the second article in a series which is looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the first piece I looked at non-handicap novice hurdle races. In this one, I will focus on novice chasers. I plan to look at both non-handicap and handicap races, starting with the former.

Data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profits and losses calculated to the Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets.

Non-handicap Novice Chases

There has been a serious drop in the number of non-handicap novice chases in recent years so good betting opportunities have proved somewhat limited. However, I feel it is still worthwhile sharing my findings and I would like to begin by looking at market factors for all qualifying races.

Market factors

I have used Betfair in terms of market rank and here is the breakdown:

 

 

Favourites won roughly 50% of all races and backing all of them would have made a small loss equating to just over a penny in the £. Second favourites offered some value and this was especially true when they had been shorter prices. Second favourites with a BSP of 3.0 or lower won 86 races from 194 runners (SR 44.3%) for a profit of £34.98 (ROI +18%). Meanwhile, backing horses positioned 4th or higher in the betting market would have lost a significant amount. That is despite a good looking A/E index.

Having looked at the overall market, it is time to look into other areas. As with the first article, I am going to impose a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower from now on, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line.

 

Sex of horse

Does the sex of the horse make a difference? Let’s see:

 

 

As can be seen, the ratio of male runners to female is around 6:1. In terms of performance, males have won more often but the bottom lines are very similar, as are the A/E indices.

 

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now, beginning with the returns across different ages (the BSP ROI percentages):

 

 

Note that the 4yo stats are based on just 29 runners, so concentrating on the bigger samples of horses aged five and older, we can see that the trend is the younger the horse the better the returns. Once we get to horses aged nine amd up losses become fairly steep. Here are the full stats, including other key metrics:

 

 

It is interesting to note that 5yos have an A/E index below 1. That is surprising based on the strike rate, profit and returns. At the other end of the age spectrum, it does seem that we should be slightly wary of horses aged nine or older.

 

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at breeding and specifically the country of breeding. Here are the splits for the three main countries:

 

 

French breds performed best and showed a healthy profit, while British breds produced the worst returns. French bred runners which won last time out did particularly well, winning once in every three starts (80 wins from 240) for a profit of £71.99 (ROI +30%); A/E (BSP 1.07.

 

Trainers

Finally for the non-handicap novice chases let's look at some trainer data. Below is a table sharing individual trainer data in non-handicap novice chases during the period of study and with the 20.0 BSP price cap. To qualify a trainer must have had at least 50 such runners during the time frame:

 

 

The trainers that stand out are Harry Fry, Alan King and Jamie Snowden with strong metrics across the board. Gordon Elliott’s figures are solid too.

*

Let's now move on to the second part of the article where the focus will be on novice handicap chases. There are around five times the number of these compared to the non-handicap ones, so we have more data as well as more races to potentially attack this winter. I will also be drilling down into some additional areas than I did for the non-handicaps. 

 

Novice Handicap Chases

Market factors

I will start again with market rank. This includes all runners; and, as with the non-handicap novice chases, once we move on from this section I will have imposed the BSP 20.0 price limit:

 

 

Favourites have gone close to breaking even, while horses second and third in the betting market have both lost small (and similar) amounts. Those fifth+ in the betting market have made a profit but essentially this boiled down to three winners at BSP 210, 180 and 324.41. Remove that trio and the cohort would have lost money. Hopefully this helps explain the price cap I will be using once more from now on.

 

Sex of horse

In the non-handicaps discussed earlier there was little in it between male and female runners. Was that the case in novice handicap chases? Let’s compare the strike rates first:

 

 

We see a definite edge to male runners this time. How about the A/E (BSP) indices?

 

 

Again, there is strong edge here for males, so does this correlate when we look at the profit/loss/ROI% figures? Here are the full splits:

 

 

There is a huge discrepancy in terms of the total number of runs for each group, but the male edge is there across the board. For mares, losses of nearly 17p in the £ coupled with a very modest 0.89 A/E index illustrate the struggles they had in such races. I would be wary of backing any female runner in novice handicap chases against the geldings.

 

Age of horse

We saw earlier that in non-handicap novice chases horses aged nine or older produced the poorest returns by some margin. Was that replicated in handicaps? As before I'll start by sharing the returns across different ages (the BSP ROI percentages):

 

 

This time, we see even poorer returns for the aged nine and up group. Losses of more than 18 pence in the £ are negatively noteworthy. Here is the full breakdown for each age group:

 

 

4yo runners were again relatively rare but they had the highest win rate, best ROI% and highest A/E index. Hence, it seems those young'uns require at least a second glance. 6yos had a good record and with over 3500 runners in a very decent sized sample; they made a profit to follow blindly in seven of the last eight years. I cannot give a logical reason why 6yos have done so well, except perhaps that this is the optimal year in their career trajectories from young horses graduating from novice or second season hurdlers.

Going back to the older brigade of runners aged 9yo+, they had the lowest strike rate and the poorest A/E index, coupled with those poor returns noted earlier. I would need a good reason to back an older horse in a novice chase of any description based on these numbers.

 

Country of Breeding

We saw earlier that French bred runners had an edge in non-handicap novice chases. We see a similar pattern in handicap novice chases, too:

 

 

The French breds held sway once more with the best figures across all metrics. It should be noted that German bred runners also performed well from a small sample. There were 79 GER-bred runners of which 18 won (SR 22.8%) for a very healthy profit of £51.59 (ROI +65.3%); A/E (BSP) 1.36. With 14 different winning German bred horses and no horse winning more than twice, nothing can be said to have skewed the data.

Going back to French breds, those who raced in a hurdle race last time saw excellent returns of nearly 25p in the £. Over 700 qualifiers there was a profit to BSP of £175.86 (ROI 24.8%); A/E (BSP) 1.17. Also, younger French bred runners fared extremely well with those aged seven or less producing a strike rate of 20.8% (409 wins from 1968 runners) for a profit of £180.10 (ROI +9.2%). Further, this young cohort was consistent with seven profitable years out of the eight - only 2018 producing a loss, and a small one at that.

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look now at the most recent piece of form in terms of finishing position LTO.

 

 

These splits are interesting. As we would expect, LTO winners had the best strike rate; and last day runners up achieved a better win rate than horses further back (third or worse) on their most recent start. However, those recent 1-2 finishers incurred losses of over 9p in the £ which is well above the norm for such runners: they're clearly over bet. Also, their A/E indices were lower than we would normally see.

The best value was found with horses that finished sixth or worse LTO and I guess some of these have flown under the radar.

 

Weight Carried

In handicaps horses carry weight based on their Official Rating so I wanted to review this angle. Below are the A/E indices for different weight brackets:

 

 

The higher weighted runners seem to have offered the worst value and when we look at the full splits, we see that this is the case:

 

 

The best value seems to have been with the mid-range weight bracket of 11st to 11st 4lb, followed by the 10st 8lb to 10st 13lb group. Higher weighted runners (11st 5lb or more) were indeed the worst value.

 

Trainers

The last port of call for this piece is to review some trainer statistics for novice handicap chases. We have more data to drill into than the ‘nons’ so let me start by sharing trainers who have saddled at least 100 such runners during the time frame. They are ordered alphabetically:

 

 

Almost half of the trainers in the table (15 out of 33) recorded a profit with their runners which is a decent effort. Here are a few individual trainer stats worth sharing:

  1. The Greenall/Guerriero yard have excelled with horses making their second chase start. This cohort won 9 of 24 (SR 37.5%) for a profit of £26.62 (ROI +110.9%); A/E (BSP) 1.96.
  2. Nicky Henderson had only 28 female runners but 9 won (SR 32.1%) for a profit of £21.10 (ROI +75.4%); A/E (BSP) 1.81. He also performed well with horses making their chasing debut thanks to a 25% strike rate (19 wins from 76) for a profit of £20.74 (ROI +27.3%), A/E (BSP) 1.14.
  3. The Hobbs/White yard made an overall loss, but when their runners start favourite we should take note. Their market leaders won 13 from 37 (SR 35.1%) for a profit of £13.04 (ROI +35.2%); A/E (BSP) 1.17.
  4. Paul Nicholls should be noted when saddling the favourite. His record with jollies has been superb. 45 of the 88 won (SR 51.1%) for a healthy profit of £22.83 (ROI +25.9%); A/E (BSP) 1.22.
  5. Evan Williams has bucked the trend when it comes to last time out winners. His record has been excellent with 13 winners from 40 (SR 32.5%) for a profit of £20.31 (ROI +50.8%); A/E (BSP) 1.63.
  6. Venetia Williams has done well with horses aged seven or younger. They produced a profit of £31.11 (ROI +20.6%) thanks to 37 winners from 151 (SR 24.5%); A/E (BSP) 1.09.
  7. Kerry Lee did not make the table due to having saddled just below 100 runners in total, but her favourites did well, winning 12 of 26 starts (SR 46.2%) for a profit of £9.89 (ROI +38%); A/E (BSP) 1.40.

**

That's it for this second part of our 2025/26 NH prep series. There is a banquet of stats and snippets in this piece that hopefully will point us in the right direction when it comes to novice chases this season. Look out for part 3 next week when I'll be lasering in on another cohort of runners performing through the autumn, winter and spring. Until then...

- DR

 

Monday Musings: Daryz Makes it the Aga’s Arc

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Ten furlongs (and a little bit) on fast ground at York is a world away from a mile and a half in very soft going at Longchamp in October, writes Tony Stafford. Run in a fast time – yesterday’s Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was the only race among a string of Group 1’s to better the standard – identifies it as a very good version of the race, certainly as far as the first two home were concerned.

The going might explain in part Daryz’s elevation from last of six as a 14/1 shot at York to winning the Arc at slightly bigger odds. In doing so, he collected more than £2 million for the Aga Khan studs. Sadly, Prince Karim, who died in early February this year, never lived to see his colt, a son of champion 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Arc winner Sea The Stars on the racetrack.

https://youtu.be/poLX14qVTA8?si=6MWEOQdjr4vIwOfK

Daryz only made his debut in early April and trainer Francis-Henri Graffard guided him gently through the grades before York, via two conditions events, then a Listed race and a Group 2, before sending him overseas for the first time.

There was an obvious feeling of shock when he flopped in the Juddmonte, but Daryz restored confidence with a narrow defeat in the Group 3 Prix du Prince d’Orange over ten furlongs of Sunday’s course three weeks ago. Just a neck behind Japan’s Croix Du Nord, his was very much a try-out for yesterday, and the form turnaround – 11 lengths – was a stark reminder of how the top French trainers have always used the racing calendar to their advantage.

Daryz would undoubtedly have been at much shorter odds bar the flood of money on the Pari-Mutuel for the three Japanese runners. Two, Croix Du Nord and Alohi Alii, were out with the washing in 14th and 16th of the 17 starters, while Byzantine Dream, supported down to 7/1 second favourite, could do no better than fifth.

So far, we haven’t mentioned the favourite, unreasonably so as Minnie Hauk ran an astounding race, beaten only a neck by the Mickael Barzalona-ridden winner having been in the front four throughout. When Christophe Soumillon took her to the front, it looked like being a Coolmore/Aidan O’Brien treble on the day, but Daryz proved just too strong.

As the colt and filly fought out the finish, it was admirable that they stretched more than five lengths ahead of their field. With such as the Juddmonte one/two Ombudsman and Delacroix absent, as well as unqualified-by-the-conditions star geldings including Calandagan and Goliath, it wasn’t the race of earlier vintages when EVERYTHING used to turn up.

Having been a fan of racing well before Sea Bird II’s 1965 Derby and Arc demolition jobs, I’ll never forget his day in Paris when he cantered over such as Reliance, Diatome and further back the top-class American colt Tom Rolfe.

Big money is to be earned with less sweat for connections and horses alike these days, though, and no doubt the Japanese will be regretting putting so much energy into their continuing luckless quest to win the race. They do far better on Dubai World Cup Day and yesterday’s valiant trio should be ready in time for that.

As the records describe him, Aga Khan IV won the race four times between 1982 and 2008 with Akiyda, Derby winner Sinndar, Dalakhani and the brilliant mare Zarkava.

His father, Prince Aly Khan, married to the actress Rita Hayworth and destined to an early passing via a fatal car crash, enjoyed success in 1959 with Saint Crespin. And his father, Aga Khan III, won the race which was founded in 1920 with Migoli in 1948 and Nuccio four years later.

Talking about the Arc soon afterwards Barzalona explained how he needed to make the most of his good draw. Soumillon on Minnie Hauk (drawn 1) was fast away and Barzalona slotted the winner, exiting stall two, in just handy. It’s always seemed weird to me that over longer distances it happens, but the draw did make a big difference in this race. The highest drawn of the first four home was Marco Botti’s Giavellotto, (drawn five) just behind third-placed Sosie (stall three) in fourth.

You would imagine that the winner, unraced at two, would have plenty to gain from staying in training, and might be aimed at a rare Arc double next year. I would love to see Minnie Hauk, a daughter of Frankel, continue too. One obvious stud route for her was closed when Wootton Bassett came to his untimely end in Australia last month.

It seems a date next month at the Breeders’ Cup has not been ruled out. Yesterday was only her fifth race of the year and seventh in all, so she has hardly been over raced. I’m pretty sure the ever-combative owners would be all for it.

Incidentally, Wootton Bassett had two winners on the Sunday card, both from mares by Galileo. Having already picked up the Qatar Prix Marcel Bousac with Diamond Necklace, O’Brien, Soumillon and the Coolmore partners added the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere for two-year-old colts with Puerto Rico.

Last weekend at Newmarket, on remarking to Michael Tabor that True Love had done well to retain her form through a long season in winning the Cheveley Park Stakes, he replied, “That’s what Aidan does.”

He could have used the same phrase to describe the progress of the Lagardere winner. He was beaten twice in maidens; another couple of times in Curragh Group 2 races before finishing 4th in the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes (Group 1) a couple of places behind True Love.

He broke his maiden at the sixth time of asking at Doncaster last month and improved again markedly on that with an all-the-way emphatic success here. Last year’s winner of the race, stable-companion Camille Pissarro, went on to victory in this year’s Prix du Jockey Club and was retired after getting injured when 4th to another stablemate, Delacroix, in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes.

The second win from that Wootton Bassett-Galileo nick was the Christopher Head-trained Maranoa Charlie in the Prix de la Foret. The three-year-old had been extremely unlucky when third at York and showed his true colours here.

There had been a few mutterings that Soumillon’s spell as temporary replacement for Ryan Moore had not been a success, but the contra view was that he would come into his own on the French tracks. His masterful judgment of pace coming from the back on Diamond Necklace was a typical French ride from the Yves Saint-Martin era, never getting involved until coming with a smooth run down the outside. Those 8/1 odds for Newmarket next spring might shrink a fair bit over the winter.

Unusually, yesterday wasn’t a great day for UK trainers, who drew a blank. One who did play a part in a piece of racing history, however, was Amy Murphy. Now happily settled in Chantilly, she had been among the back-up team behind Asfoora’s first ever win for an Australian-trained horse in France.

Asfoora’s trainer Henry Dwyer was rather sheepish as he related how if it hadn’t been for Ms Murphy and a very quick Uber driver, the mare would not have been allowed to race.

Instead of taking Asfoora’s passport to the track, he brought the one for a horse he’d bought at the Arqana Arc Eve sale on Saturday. Amy sorted the driver and the correct passport arrived with a minute and a half to spare.

It didn’t take Asfoora quite that long to beat her 16 rivals in the Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp under a very confident Oisin Murphy. She came through to challenge outsider Jawwal in the last furlong, winning by a comfortable half-length in 56.39 sec. The seven-year-old isn’t regarded as the best sprinter in Australia but she’s more than good enough to beat the cream of Europe’s speed merchants.

It was sad that Peter Charalambous’s Apollo One found so much trouble in the six furlongs of Ascot’s John Guest Racing Bengough Stakes on Saturday, more than enough to prevent a follow-up from last year’s triumph. Stopped in his run repeatedly, he stretched out gamely to the line, making up several lengths in the last furlong, but missed out by a rapidly diminishing short head to Mick Appleby’s Annaf.

Winning group races is never easy, but this was one that slipped through his owner-trainer-breeder’s fingers. It made the difference of £30k and prevented the seven-year-old (that’s right, another one) from getting neatly onto career earnings of almost exactly half a million quid.  I’m sure it’s only delayed.

  • TS

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 1: Novice Hurdles

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Preparing for the jumps – Part 1, Novice Hurdles

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer, which means the National Hunt season is beginning to click into gear, writes Dave Renham. October has 51 scheduled meetings in the UK over jumps, more than double the number in September. I will be writing a series of six articles over the coming weeks that share statistics, both positive and negative, that I hope we can use to our advantage this season.

Introduction

In this first piece I am going to concentrate on novice hurdle races, with data taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025, a period of a little over seven and a half years. Profits and losses have been calculated using Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets.

Novice hurdle races can be either handicap or non-handicap contests, and as there are roughly treble the number of non-handicaps, my focus is on this bigger group. Let me start by looking at market factors for all non-handicap novice hurdle races.

Market factors

I will use Betfair's market rank, which may occasionally be slightly different from the industry SP rank - though such differences are unlikely to materially impact any discernible patterns. I will start by sharing the results for the ‘value’ metric, the A/E index. These indices are based on BSP prices and the splits are as follows:

 

 

Third and fourth favourites offered the best value. Is that replicated when studying a wider array of metrics?

 

 

Third favourites performed the best from a profit/loss perspective, while fourth favourites essentially broke even, so the A/E indices were a good guide in terms of value. Meanwhile, favourites won roughly half of all these races but despite that dominance they made a small loss overall. Those sent off fifth market rank or lower on Betfair did extremely poorly, losing over 34p in the £.

Returning to favourites, horses aged five and six provided around 75% of all favourites, and those runners virtually broke even if backing all of them blind – 1293 wins from 2513 (SR 51.5%) for a minimal loss of £5.67 (ROI -0.2%); A/E (BSP) 1.01. There were some positive angles for favourites, but due to the short prices on offer it is difficult to produce significant returns.

Here are a few:

 

 

I will analyse trainers in greater detail below, but it seems that Gordon Elliott should be noted when saddling a favourite in non-handicap novice hurdle races.

Having looked at the market, it is time to move on to other areas. However, I have imposed a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower from now on, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line.

Sex of horse

Is there any difference between the performance of male horses versus female ones? There are three times as many male runners when it comes to non-handicap novice hurdles, so more races are won by males of course. However, was there a difference in the respective win strike rates using the BSP 20.0 or lower limit?

 

 

Males outperformed females by around 2.4% in absolute win percentage terms, which equates to a differential of just over 10%. That also translated to a marginally better bottom line:

 

 

As we can see, male runners broke even during the review period while female runners lost us just over two pence in the £. There was not too much in it overall but, in general terms, male runners were slightly better betting propositions than females over the period of study.

Age

A look at the age of horses racing in non-handicap novice hurdles next. There were only 15 three-year-old qualifiers since 2018 - that age group almost exclusively running in juvenile races - so I have ignored those. Here are the splits for four-year-olds and up:

 

 

It is interesting that the general trend in terms of win strike rate was the older the better, which is unusual in most race types across both flat and NH. Not only that but the best value was also with older horses. Those aged six and up recorded solid overall profits. Sticking with the aged six and older group, if we restrict races to shorter distances (2m 1f or less) their record improved further:

 

 

Returns approached 13p in the £ and this cohort secured a positive return (ROI%) in seven of the eight years as the graph below shows:

 

 

The only losing year has been this current year, 2025, but losses are small and there is still plenty of time to edge back into profit.

Previous hurdle runs

My next port of call looks at the number of hurdles races each runner had previously had. The findings surprised me a little:

 

 

The more experience over hurdles a horse boasted the better the win percentage. This perhaps correlates well with the age stats displayed earlier although it doesn't necessarily follow that an older horse is a more experienced one.

The most successful group in monetary terms were those making their debut over hurdles. These runners secured a profit of over £260 to £1 level stakes, equating to returns in excess of 10p in the £.

Perhaps not surprisingly based on previous findings, hurdle debutants aged six-plus was a strong angle: 116 wins from 560 runners (SR 20.7%) for a profit of £138.24 (ROI +24.7%); A/E (BSP) 1.12. It could be argued that this is back-fitting, but nevertheless the results catch the eye.

Last time out (LTO) Race type

What about LTO Race type? Is there anything to glean from these stats? Let us see:

 

 

The vast majority of runners ran in a hurdle race last time, which is to be expected, but it is the last day NH Flat figures that stand out with a near 9% ROI. If we further restricted those LTO NHF qualifiers to horses that finished in the first five on that prior spin, results improved to 258 wins from 1132 runs (SR 22.8%) for a profit of £156.87 (ROI +13.9%); A/E (BSP) 1.05.

Trainers

Different trainers target different types of races, and of course the quality of horses within their stables differs massively. That has a bearing on the handlers who appear in this section, others performing to better effect further down the line in handicap company.

Below is a table outlining individual trainer data in novice hurdles during the period of study with the 20.0 BSP price cap. To qualify a trainer must have had at least 90 such runners:

 

 

13 of the 32 trainers made a blind profit, with Lucinda Russell’s figures particularly impressive (returns of over 39p in the £). She had an excellent record at Ayr with 11 wins from 34 (SR 32.4%) for a healthy profit of £38.87 (ROI +114.3%). She also made decent profits at Newcastle (6 wins from 16) and Carlisle (7 wins from 19) – each with returns in excess of 100%.

In contrast the O’Neill and Pipe stables have performed relatively poorly, showing significant losses.

Previous hurdle runs by trainer

I would like to expand my trainer research a little by looking at the performance of trainers' runners in relation to the number of previous races they had had over hurdles. Firstly, let me compare win strike rates:

 

 

We saw earlier that, in terms of win percentage, the more exoerience the better over hurdles; but as far as individual trainers are concerned there are not too many that conform to that pattern. Lucinda Russell, for example, saw her strike rate drop as her runners gained more experience over hurdles. Her record with hurdling debutants was excellent – a strike rate of 30.9% thanks to 17 wins from 55 for a profit of £48.56 (ROI +88.3%); A/E (BSP) 1.53.

The stables of Alan King and the Moores also fared particularly well with hurdle debutants although both had fewer qualifiers in the past year or two.

At the other end of the scale was Ben Pauling whose hurdle debutants struggled overall, scoring less than 9% of the time and incurring losses of over 65p in the £. Likewise, Warren Greatrex runners in such races improved steadily from a low (9.68%) novice hurdle debut strike rate.

Trainers to note with horses having their second run over hurdles were Donald McCain and Jamie Snowden. McCain’s 33 wins from 94 (SR 35.1%) notched a profit of £17.93 (ROI +19.1%), A/E (BSP) 1.25; while Snowden’s 16 wins from 39 (SR 41%) was worth £8.27 (ROI +21.1%); A/E (BSP) 1.20.

In terms of the more experienced hurdlers, Kim Bailey's team did well when they'd had at least three previous runs (the 4+ group). His record in that context reads 19 wins from 46 (SR 41.3%) for a healthy profit of £16.73 (ROI +36.4%); A/E (BSP) 1.26. Fergal O’Brien also performed well with these experienced runners, securing 64 wins from 169 (SR 37.9%) and a profit of £31.28 (ROI +18.5%); A/E (BSP) 1.17.

Let me build on that and share a comparison of A/E (BSP) indices. For this table I have highlighted the most positive indices (in blue) and the poorest ones (in red):

 

 

Nigel (now assisted by Willy) Twiston-Davies earns a mention as the only trainer to have managed an A/E index above 1.00 across all four groups. The Hobbs/White yard were close with three 1.00+ figures and a 0.98, as was Kim Bailey whose only figure below 1.00 was 0.99. Not surprisingly I guess, all three of these stables made a blind profit with their novice hurdlers as can be seen in the earlier table.

Onto my final piece of digging, which is...

Trainers and courses

Have any trainers excelled at specific course with their novice hurdlers? These were the strongest combinations ordered by course (20 runs minimum to qualify):

 

 

All 16 combinations proved profitable, with the Hobbs/White performance at Taunton particularly impressive. Long may it continue!

 

**

 

I hope this opening salvo for the National Hunt has highlighted some interesting angles for non-handicap novice hurdles. I'll be back next week with Part 2, looking at the novice chase division.

Until then...

- DR

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