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Uttoxeter 3m Handicap Chases: Deep Dive

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3-mile handicap chases at Uttoxeter: a deep dive

Last month, I wrote a piece on 7-furlong handicaps at Kempton, writes Dave Renham. That was the second time I had looked at a specific course and distance in this way. Certain types of races on the all-weather lend themselves to the approach as there are many such contests each year. In National Hunt racing we do not get the sample sizes that we do on the AW, but I still wanted to try a similar thing. I trolled through different course and distance (C&D) combinations and discovered that Uttoxeter over 3 miles had the greatest number of handicap chases annually of any course in the country. So it is that this combo begins my NH deep dive journey. As a bonus, there will be some additional course and distance 'goodies' appended to this piece.

I mentioned in the last article that looking for patterns and pointers for races from a specific C&D is a type of trends-based approach. Using past race trends has become more popular in the past 15 years or so, although generally this approach has been used for big races such as the Grand National or the Derby.

As stated above, I will be focusing on handicap chases over 3 miles only, with data taken from 2017 to 2025. Profits have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission. Let's crack on.

Race Distance

Before looking in depth at the numbers let me share the class of race we tend to get when racing over this C&D. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

Around 75% of all races are either Class 4 or 5 contests with not too many high class chases over the 3-mile trip here.

 

Betting market

Let me look at the betting market for our first main set of stats and specifically market rank. I have used the Betfair market for this:

 

 

As we can see favourites have done well, producing returns of just over 10 pence in the £. Second favourites have fared quite poorly, especially when priced higher than BSP 6.0 – this cohort has won just two races from 40 (SR 5%) for hefty losses of £27.92 (ROI -69.8%). Those ranked fifth or higher in the betting have had a poor record, and it should be noted that the biggest priced winner over this C&D across the 143 race sample was returned just 31.54 BSP. This has not been a happy hunting ground for outsiders. Horses priced BSP 35.0 or bigger were 0 from 149 with just nine placed efforts. Backing them to win would have obviously lost punters £149 to £1 level stakes if backing every single one but backing them instead to place on Betfair would have also amassed big losses of £70.01.

 

Age

A look next at the age of horses that competed over this C&D. There was only one four-year old runner, so I have ignored that age group. Let me share win strike rates first:

 

 

There seems to have been a clear advantage to younger horses, especially those aged five to seven. Let us see how the overall figures look in terms of profits and returns:

 

 

There definitely has been an age bias here, and this table confirms it. Younger horses, aged five to seven, have not just won far more often but each have produced a blind profit. In contrast, there were significant losses for those aged eight to ten. The 11-year-old-plus group have edged into profit but this figure is badly skewed as three of the nine winners were the three biggest priced from all of the races, with BSPs of 29.18, 31.07 and 31.54.

 

Course form

A look at course form next. Below is the breakdown of course winners versus non-course winners; however, the non-course winners have been split into two: those who had raced at the course before and those who had not:

 

 

Course winners had the best win strike rate, but they would have lost more than 10p in the £ if betting blind. Those with no course experience have performed quite moderately with the lowest strike rate and the heftiest losses.

 

Distance change

I wanted to look to see if a change in distance from last time out had made any difference. For the record, the ‘same distance’ stats include races of half a furlong shorter or longer from last time, as well as the exact 3-mile trip:

 

 

The figures suggest that a run last time out within half a furlong of the Uttoxeter 3-mile trip was the optimum. It produced the best win percentage and much better returns. The A/E (BSP) index for this group was excellent too, standing at 1.10.

 

Weight carried

I decided to look at weight carried by splitting the runners into two – those 11st 3lb or higher versus 11st 2lb or lower. This gave us fairly even groups to compare:

 

 

These results surprised me a little as I had expected those carrying more weight to win slightly more often. In terms of returns over this period, the lower weighted cohort almost broke even whereas those in the higher weight bracket incurred a hefty 20% loss at BSP.

 

Recent form

Next on my list was the performance last time out in terms of finishing position. The splits were thus:

 

 

A bit of a mixed bag here with horses that finished fourth last time faring best in terms of returns. Funnily enough the figures for last day fourths were not really skewed by big priced winners, but the sample size means these results are unlikely to replicated in the future; well, I surmise that to be the case, especially from a returns perspective.

The main takeaway here I guess is the inferior performance in terms of ROI% of horses that finished fifth or worse last time out – losses of 21p in the £ is steep. This is especially true as the overall returns combining all courses in 3-mile handicap races have seen a loss of just 3p in the £ to BSP.

 

Run Style

Back in November I wrote a two-parter sharing the top ten handicap chase C&D biases in the UK. This track/trip combination did not make the final list, but it was part of my ‘long list’ of 20 and was one position away from being shared with readers as it stood in 14th, and I shared the top ten as well as three near misses (11th to 13th). Anyway, the following splits for wins to runs ratio for each run style group should not surprise anyone!

 

 

Front runners / early leaders have had a strong edge, with hold-up horses really struggling. This has been mirrored by the each way stats with leaders making the frame over 43% of the time, compared with just 23% for hold up horses (within their run style groups). Hence the PRB figures also continue this strong correlation:

 

 

For the record, if we had been able to predict pre-race who would lead early then we would have seen huge returns of over 69p in the £!

 

Ratings

With the recent addition of Topspeed ratings and Racing Post Ratings (RPR) to the Geegeez Query Tool, I thought I would share some results over this C&D focusing on ranking position. RPR first:

 

 

The rankings proved to be excellent since 2017 with the top two rated outperforming the rest by some margin, both in terms of strike rate and profit / loss / ROI%. And how has Topspeed fared?

 

 

Top rated runners again performed very well while second rated runners also nudged into profit, albeit just. Both sets of ratings were extremely good across this time-frame.

 

*

 

I hope this article has highlighted where the value has been in these Uttoxeter 3-mile handicap chases, and now as promised here are some bonus C&D extras. These snippets cover Bangor, Exeter and Perth as each of these tracks hosted more than a hundred handicap chases over 3 miles between 2017 and 2025. The key findings are shared in bullet point format.

 

Bangor 3-mile handicap chases

  1. As with Uttoxeter there were no winners priced BSP 35.0 or bigger.
  2. Favourites lost over 10p in the £.
  3. Amazingly, just like Uttoxeter, horses that finished fourth LTO made a decent profit of 48p in the £ from an 18% win percentage!
  4. Horses carrying 11st 2lb or more again won more often than the 11st 3lb+ group and produced a small blind profit of just over 3 pence in the £.
  5. This has been a rare C&D where front runners have not had an edge. Indeed, prominent racers fared best in terms of wins to runs ratio. Meanwhile front runners, midfield and hold-ups all had similar wins to runs ratios, within 1.7% of each other.
  6. The top-rated Topspeed runner won 22 races from 104 (SR 21.2%) for a profit of £27.45 (ROI +26.4%).

 

Exeter 3-mile handicap chases

  1. Favourites really struggled here, winning just 19.8% of the time (21 wins from 106) for hefty losses of £38.58 (ROI -36.4%).
  2. Outsiders fared better at Exeter than at Bangor or Uttoxeter with five horses winning at odds in excess of BSP 35.0. Backing all such longshots would have yielded a profit of £180.60 (ROI +150.5%).
  3. 11yos and up enjoyed just one win from 90 attempts.
  4. Horses finishing first, second or third LTO all individually made a blind profit to BSP.
  5. Exeter’s 3-mile trip favours front runners very strongly. They won 29% of all races from just 15% of the total runners.
  6. The top-rated Topspeed runner won 16 races from 107 (SR 15%) for a profit of £14.98 (ROI +14%).

 

Perth 3-mile handicap chases

  1. Favourites excelled, winning 34.9% of the time and returning just over 11 pence in the £. Second and third favs also were ‘in the black’.
  2. There has been just one winner priced over BSP 18.0.
  3. Horses with two or more previous course wins did well with 22 wins from 94 (SR 23.4%) for a healthy profit of £42.78 (ROI +45.5%).
  4. Last day winners have struggled in terms of returns, losing over 27p in the £ at BSP. Horses that finished second or third last time were both profitable to follow.
  5. Front runners have a small edge over 3m at Perth, while hold up horses have really struggled.

 

 

That's all for this piece. I hope you will be able to make use of these facts and figures in the coming months and years.

Until next time...

- DR

Roving Reports: Work til you’re Musselburgh Bound

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About a year ago now, maybe a bit more, a plan was hatched, writes David Massey. It was a plan to go to Thailand as part of Mrs M’s sister’s 50th birthday celebrations. She’d like one more big holiday abroad, she said. I was all for it, as there was no way you were getting me on a plane to a country with the humidity levels of the Royal Ascot press room; I’ll be able to experience that without going abroad come June. So it meant that as the good lady and her sister sent me some lovely photos of sun-kissed beaches, wonderful food and quite lethal-looking fireworks displays that I found myself in the somewhat colder climate of Scotland. 

I’ve skipped ahead a bit here. Once it was clear I had little or no interest in the holiday - I detest flying, I detest heat - I started my own planning for these two weeks which began on Cheltenham Trials Day, took in the delights of Hereford and Chepstow where I was joined by my friend Alex for the day (she likes to pretend she’s my assistant for the day, which basically means having her photo taken with Mick Fitz and blowing smoke up his backside about how great he was as a jockey) and will finish at Warwick at the end of this week. Sadly, the weather played its part last week too, and the planned visit to Exeter will have to wait until the late spring. 

And in the midst of all this was my first trip to a Scottish course, namely Musselburgh. I went with my long-time friend Becky, who some of you might know as a racecourse photographer at Cheltenham. I’ve known Becky for a decade and more now; whenever people ask how we know each other, she says I stalked her one day at Towcester. She says stalked, I say "enthusiastically followed.” Big difference, as I told the court. 

So it is with great excitement we set off on Friday afternoon on our marathon five-hour journey (it’ll actually take six) to Edinburgh. I’m doing the driving, as Becky is cursed with bad luck when it comes to cars. She’s gone through more automobiles than Kia has trainers in the past three years, which is saying something. We have snacks (gone by the time we reach Sheffield) and great music, and the conversation on the way includes but is not limited to a Grand National quiz, my poor taste in music (she says), her ex-boyfriends (some household names in there, I’ll say no more, they’ll be in her autobiography no doubt), how many horses she plans on buying this year, and what they’ll win in the next four years. We hit Newcastle around six and the traffic grinds to a halt. It’s dark when we come out the other side and suddenly there’s just nothing around for miles; I feel we’re driving through some pretty bleak countryside, but as it’s as black as soot, it’s hard to tell. On cue, as we hit the Scottish border, it starts raining again. Still an hour to go. 

We arrive at our destination around seven, and grab some food. We do, of course, have separate rooms, there’s none of that shenanigans (a dirty weekend that’s squeaky clean) and agree to meet in the morning around eight. There’s some football on BBC Alba, St Johnstone vs Partick Thistle. I fall asleep with it on. 

Saturday. We make our way up to the track fairly early as I have some Trackside work to do. Part of the reason for coming up here is to try and get a few more bookmakers signed up to the on-course service as we’re planning to do a bit more work in the North this calendar year. I have a chat with the on-course books, they seem a friendly lot, and I know one or two of them anyway, who do the introductions. The course isn’t overly big but that’s a good thing, everything is easy to find and get to, and I have to say it has one of the poshest William Hill on-course shops I’ve ever been in. Plush seating? Very nice. There’s also some old-fashioned weighing-room scales in there for you to have a try on; there’s an overweight notice incoming when I give them a go. 

It’s good racing too, quality stuff. I’m against Lord in the first (too keen again pre-race) and just about cop, and Star Of Guiting is a small winner for me in the next. Easy, this game. And then it goes wrong, although I have to say I’m delighted to see JPR One, a horse I’ve always had a lot of time for, win the Scottish Champion Chase. Becky is chatting to his delighted lads afterwards; they’re off to Wetherspoons later to celebrate, they tell us. That’s how you do it. I try to get Absolutely Doyen beaten in the novice hurdle but fail, and that takes a chunk of the winnings back. Then I kick myself for not backing Magna Victor in the next (if it’s an Alastair Ralph runner at Musselburgh, just back the thing) but Kelce ensures the day at least finishes on a high. Becky, having had horses with Neil Mulholland in the past, is particularly pleased at Kelce’s victory, and Georgie, his lass, has been kind enough to sort us some owners badges for tomorrow which, with less work on, should be a more relaxing day. 

Back at the hotel, we sort-of plan on maybe going out before we realise we’re both old and knackered, and would rather just eat in-house again before falling asleep. I’m so tired I manage that much more easily than I did Friday night (always the case when I go away - awful sleeper first night, much better the second, weird that)  and don’t wake until seven the next morning. 

Becky’s already gone for a run, so I make my way down to breakfast about eight. With Leopardstown postponed for 24 hours, today is the first day of the DRF too, so I’m catching up on all the gossip via the WhatsApp’s from last night. Along with another cracking card at Musselburgh, it promises to be a great day ahead. 

Before we go racing though, we find the beach and go for a little walk. There’s always something very therapeutic about being next to the sea, hopefully when that big Lucky 15 comes in and we retire, it’ll be somewhere on the South West coastline. Failing that, there’s always a weekend in Skegness to look forward to. By some miracle, the sun has come out and the wind has dropped. For the first time this year, I’m fairly sure, I can feel some degree of warmth. It doesn’t last long, the cloud soon returns though.

So we’re back at the track. I tell you what, the music that the course is pumping out is best described as “eclectic.” We go from what appears to be some Ceilidh tune to - and I’m not kidding here - the House Of Pain’s finest moment with “Jump Around.” It makes my selection on the way home look normal. 

It’s also student day today, and the place is packed out with them. They’re very well behaved and cheer them home on every circuit, which is nice. I lose count of the number of times Becky says “you can see her arse in that skirt, and probably more” as the afternoon progresses. Being the gent I am, I don’t look. Obviously. 

Let me say how lucky we are to have the owners badges today as the hospitality is incredible. We both agree the meal is the best we’ve probably ever had on track, with a complimentary drink too (Becky has the wine, I’m driving so it’s just orange juice for me) and with sticky toffee pudding to finish off, well, superb work Musselburgh, that’s all I can say. Only Sedgefield on the one occasion I had cause to visit as an owner comes close to this. 

And then when Transmission wins the Edinburgh National and Becky has to collect the winner’s trophy, that’s her weekend made. She wears a smile a mile wide. I’ve managed to win enough off that one to pay for the weekend, which will do me fine. I’m not a greedy man. That said, if there’s any more of that sticky toffee going…

It’s soon time to go home. On this occasion, the light holds out and we enjoy the beautiful, rugged Scottish countryside that we couldn’t see on the way up. It really is something to behold, the sea never more than a couple of miles from the road. It’s been a fantastic weekend and I’m already looking forward to my next Scottish visit, which will be Kelso in a few weeks’ time for the Morebattle Hurdle. I get home by nine, and catch some shuteye. Back to the grindstone and Southwell on Monday - at least it won’t take so long to get there!

- DM

Monday Musings: A Short Delay

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Normally we would have had both days of the Dublin Racing Festival to reflect upon this not so bright Monday morning, but it’s rather like the 1997 Grand National, writes Tony Stafford. Then, at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign in the UK, a bomb threat led to 60,000 racegoers (including me) being evacuated from Aintree.

The race was delayed for 49 hours to the following Monday and those that could – unfortunately I couldn’t – reconvened for a single race off at 5.00 p.m. in the afternoon.

Naturally, my original tip for the race, Lord Gyllene, owned by Sir Stanley Clarke, also owner of Uttoxeter racecourse, trained by Steve Brookshaw and ridden by Tony Dobbin won the 36-runner race and its £178k prize by 25 lengths from Charlie Brooks’ Suny Bay. He started 14/1 and I don’t think I backed it!

This weekend the only villain of the piece was the ground on Saturday morning for the opening instalment of what is best known as the Willie Mullins Benefit Weekend. That card was rescheduled for today and in view of the lead up to yesterday’s programme, the ground didn’t look too bad.

The great man did win two of the Grade 1 races on the card, impressive scorers for the JP McManus/Mark Walsh team that will soon be dissolved when Harry Cobden takes over the job as his stable rider in the two countries.

First, in the Ladbrokes Novice Chase over 2m5 1/2f, Kaid d’Authie (5/1) rather than Mullins’ hotpot Final Demand (100/30 on) took the spoils. Willie had supplied three of the four runners. Then in the Ladbrokes Dublin Chase (2m1f) Majborough dispelled any fears about his technique over fences. He made all to beat favourite and last year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Marine Nationale by 19 lengths with an exhilarating display of front-running and fast jumping.

Majborough is now the deserved favourite for this year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase and there isn’t much that can happen in the six weeks that remain before the Festival to remove him from that position.

Mullins then had a later, and possibly even more unexpected reverse, with 10/11 shot Lossiemouth, regarded in many places as the likely Champion Hurdle winner next month following the departure from calculations of Sir Gino last weekend. In what looked beforehand a virtual match race for the Timeless Sash Windows Irish Champion Hurdle – great sponsorship that! - Lossiemouth was never going as well and was unable to match the finishing verve of Gordon Elliott’s Brighterdaysahead. That market rival was thus emphatically reversing the one-length Christmas defeat by Lossiemouth over the same course and distance.

Brighterdaysahead has now won ten of her 14 career starts. One reverse was when she failed to live up to second favouritism in last year’s Champion Hurdle, finishing a long way behind Golden Ace in fourth, a placing that even flattered her on the day.

It was won with a fair portion of good fortune by that seven-year-old mare, trained by Jeremy Scott. If anything, Golden Ace has improved her profile since. First, she ran a fine second at Punchestown last spring behind State Man, who had been denied a second Champion Hurdle victory when falling in a clear lead at the final hurdle last March. The margin of just over four lengths at Punchestown suggested Golden Ace was progressing. A gritty win in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle and second to Sir Gino in the Christmas Hurdle show her continuing improvement.

State Man is another absentee this time around. We could still be seeing the 2023 champion Constitution Hill if he comes through that tantalising hurdle-avoiding gallop round Southwell on Friday evening the 20th of this month. It’s strategically placed timing-wise before the big race, Southwell having grafted Hendo’s star’s target onto an original seven-race Friday night card.

Including that new race, there’s a total of £245k on offer during the evening, and Constitution Hill’s event could hardly have been more sensitively framed. It’s a 4yos and upwards novice over 1m4f. I hope there are some nice animals to make Constitution Hill work for the £21k first prize. Make a note in your diary, 5.00 p.m. off time, first leg of that Friday night bonanza.

He is down to a 6/1 chance, despite that litany of falls in his latest appearances. Brighterdaysahead and Dan Skelton’s The New Lion, workmanlike at Cheltenham the previous weekend, vie for favouritism, with Constitution Hill coming next. Such is the paucity of serious contenders at this stage, Lossiemouth is still fourth favourite with Golden Ace just behind her.

Brighterdaysahead and Lossiemouth are age seven. I remember when Ruby Walsh was talking on ITV the other day, he pointed out that Lossiemouth also has the mares’ race as a Cheltenham option – and that was before yesterday’s disappointment. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Willie decides on that course of action.

Now you know I love a statistic, even if as the Editor will be the first to point out, my interpretation is not always flawless. Mullins was matched for winners yesterday by Gordon Elliott who also picked up a valuable handicap hurdle with Bowensonfire (10/1). The UK champion jockey of that name, Sean Bowen, making his first visit to Leopardstown, is indeed “on fire” and he didn’t waste any time getting a winner. He was on Backmersackme who took another nice €88k’s worth for the Emmet Mullins’ (Willie’s nephew) stable.

Sorry Sean, you slipped in there before I could illustrate again what an unbalanced affair top Irish jumps racing is – as if it wasn’t already obvious. Yesterday Wilie Mullins had 32 runners on the card while Gordon Elliott had just the meagre ten, so 42 between them from a total of 96 on the day.

Today, Willie has 19 declared to Gordon’s 23, so between them 42 of 77, and over the two days 84 from 173, slightly more than 48 per cent. I think that’s ridiculous.

Willie’s UK raids continue to be hit-and-miss. On Saturday, impressive Kempton Christmas winner Kitzbuhel was widely expected to dominate Sandown’s Scilly Isles Novices Chase. Perhaps it was being denied an early lead that unsettled him, with the Fergal O’Brien-trained Sixmilebridge setting a fast pace in front. He never looked in danger of defeat once the favourite and a re-routed Paul Townend checked out at the sixth fence, where the rider was unseated after some poor right-handed leaps.

As I’ve already awarded the trainers’ championship to Dan Skelton, who sensibly kept away from Leopardstown, I must report over the past two weeks he’s had 20 winners from 54 runners, barely half Mullins and Elliott will have jointly sent out over two days in Dublin. Now past £3 million, it’s time to toast a great young force in the training ranks.

- TS

Miscellaneous Jump Racing Angles

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Four Micro Research Angles

There are times when researching ideas for Geegeez that I find something worth sharing, but it does not lend itself to a whole article, writes Dave Renham. In this piece, then, I am going to share four areas I have researched – I’ll call them micro areas. Each will start with a question, which I will endeavour to answer. From there I’ll share any extra data that I feel may be useful to readers. The fourth question leads to a more detailed response.

The data for this article have been taken from UK National Hunt racing covering the years 2019 to 2025. Any profits / losses quoted are calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP), with a 2% commission being applied on any winning bets.

 

1 A horse has had at least 10 career starts but never started favourite; is it a positive or a negative when the horse subsequently starts favourite for the first time?

This is quite a niche question / idea, but I was interested to see what the numbers told us, and the table below shows what I found:

 

 

We have a positive starting point with a blind profit to BSP. I guess punters and perhaps bookmakers may feel that a horse that has not been favourite before after at least 10 career starts may be a slightly false favourite, and hence the price ends up slightly higher than its true price. The BSP A/E of 1.04 supports such an assertion.

I then wondered if any trainers have been particularly successful with this type of runner. I found that there had been a handful of trainers who had excelled albeit from small sample sizes. The five who stood out were:

 

 

There were a couple of other positive angles I found. Firstly, if restricting qualifiers to only those that had finished in the first five on both of their last two starts, we get the following results:

 

 

Returns have been a smidge above 10p in the £ for this cohort of runners. Secondly, male runners have comfortably outperformed female runners. Female runners would have lost us over 6p in the £, whereas male runners secured returns close to 9p in the £ thanks to 286 wins from 849 runners (SR 33.7%) for a profit of £75.17 (ROI +8.9%).

 

2 A horse that has been beaten favourite on its last two runs; when it starts favourite again next time will it be good or poor value?

My gut feeling as regards this question before looking at the numbers was to assume that they had probably been poor value. However, the stats did not back up my thinking as the table below shows:

 

 

Essentially these runners hit a break-even situation over the past seven seasons. Interestingly, horses that were beaten favourite on their past two starts and finished third or worse both times produced the best figures when starting favourite again. Of the 176 qualifiers 62 won (SR 35.23) for a profit of £16.63 (ROI +9.4%).

So how did horses that were beaten favourite on their last two starts fare when not starting favourite again? I assumed that these runners performed moderately at best and this time I was right! Their results read:

 

 

It is not surprising to see far more qualifiers, and losses were fairly steep at close to 13 pence in the £. These look runners to be extremely wary of.

I also looked at the same ‘finishing third or worse’ idea for this cohort, in terms of finishing positions when favourites on both of their previous two starts. The results were poor as I guess we should expect. This group of runners managed just 78 wins from 745 runners (SR 10.5%) for hefty losses of £155.29 (ROI – 20.9%). This included a BSP win at 66.10, so take that out and losses would have been far worse.

 

3 How did horses perform in NH races they won the previous year?

It seems that certain trainers target certain races each year and a good proportion of horses end up contesting the same race as they did the previous year. The table below shows the results for horses trying to repeat an NH win in the same race as they won 12 months previously:

 

 

Overall, these results are much worse than I had expected. We see fairly significant losses of over 15p for every £1 bet. Even the iconic trainers Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls made significant losses when sending last year’s winner to contest the same race again. Henderson would have lost us 45p in the £ (from 31 runners), Nicholls 34p for every £1 wagered (from 54 runners).

Digging a bit deeper I noticed the same type of outcome (in terms of ROI% / value) when comparing handicaps versus non-handicaps, chases versus hurdle races, and the main season proper compared with the summer. The graph below shares some A/E index splits, with all lying quite close to the overall figure of 0.91:

 

 

I wondered if runners-up in the previous year fared any better, but the splits suggest their performance in terms of ROI% has been marginally worse:

 

 

Here we would have seen losses of just over 18p in the £ coupled with a slightly reduced win rate. The last split shows horses that finished third or worse in the contest the previous year, but we see a similar bottom line once again:

 

 

Everything is pointing towards the fact that horses who contest the same race the following year have been overbet – for the past seven years at least. This could work to our advantage with potential value to be found on other runners. It's perhaps something to keep an eye on for the remainder of 2026.

 

4 How have NH horses performed on their first three career starts?

I have done a significant amount of digging on this subject for flat racing, especially for 2yos. On the flat there is a significant rise in win rate when comparing debut runs to second and third starts. Debut runners on the level score around 8% of the time, and this improves to 12% on start two and 12% on start three. I had expected the same uptick in the NH sphere, but I was somewhat surprised when the win strike rates were as follows:

 

 

Horses on debut edged it when it came to the highest strike rate. Not only that, when we look at the ROI%s for each group we see the following:

 

 

Debutants have essentially broken even while horses having their second and third career starts have lost around 15p and 23p in the £ respectively. Fourth and fifth starters have both edged into profit and the graph below shows the BSP returns by number of career starts, from debutants through to those having their tenth run:

 

 

As the graph clearly shows these second and third time starters were completely out of sync in terms of returns when looking at early career runs. The reason why comes down to the success of outsiders. When we look at NH runners priced BSP 25.0 or bigger on any career start other than their second and third, they won 1.9% of the time losing just 1p in the £.

Compare this to second and third time starters using the same BSP 25.0 or bigger requisite – they won less than 1% of the time (0.95% to be precise) losing over 32p in the £. The messaging here is clear, those of us who like a poke at big odds, and I count myself as one of these, should not consider horses at big odds having their second or third career starts. The only second and third time starters to consider are those sent off at much shorter prices. Backing single figure BSPs blind for both would have hit a near break-even point.

Trainers with NH Runners on Debut

I thought it might be interesting to share some trainer performance with NH runners on debut. I have picked nine trainers and below are their results with debutants who were priced 10.0 or less on Betfair. Using this price point was to avoid skewed bottom lines:

 

We see some decent strike rates, which would be expected given the trainers in question. Olly Murphy has had a surprisingly poor time of it though in terms of his ROI, losing close to 38p in the £; while Harry Fry and the O’Neill stable have achieved decent returns.

 

Trainers with NH Runners on 2nd Start

Here are the same nine trainers with the same price cap for runners on their second starts.

 

 

Both the Fry and O’Neill yards have secured blind profits once more. Paul Nicholls also has a very solid record from a decent number of runners. David Pipe’s runners have seemingly struggled on start two.

 

Trainers with NH Runners on 3rd Start

On to start three:

 

 

Eight of the nine handlers were now in profit which is worth noting. Dan Skelton, on the other hand, has seen some very disappointing returns especially considering the odds of the horses in question.

**

This article has allowed me to pull together some micro angles, which I hope you've found interesting. If any reader has a niche area that they would like me to try and unravel, please leave a message in the comments. If I get enough questions that I am able to research, I’ll aim to combine them in a similar piece to this. Until next time...

- DR

Monday Musings: Keeping One Eye on the Pirate

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On a weekend when the hot favourite for the Champion Hurdle pulled up halfway round his trial and the two top horses in the world continued their merry way in Hong Kong, there was still only one contender for the lead in today’s article, writes Tony Stafford.

I stress that I have not been put under pressure from the Editor of this column. I feel though that after a decade or so looking for a top horse for his various syndicates, Matt Bisogno has finally struck gold for geegeez.co.uk in the shape of Dartmoor Pirate.

People strive for many years vainly looking for the elusive “Saturday horse”. Matt and trainer Anthony Honeyball have certainly found one, not just good enough to run at the weekend, but one that can snaffle a much-coveted race, Doncaster’s Great Yorkshire Chase and its £56k first prize.

From the time in May 2022 when Honeyball picked up the son of Black Sam Bellamy at the Goffs May Sales (stores) at Doncaster for £16,000, the members have had to endure patience in the extreme, knowing that the trainer has always held a high opinion of the horse.

His first three seasons – initially with a single run in a bumper – have each been followed by a gap of between 220 and 251 days. At that stage, having been through the novice hurdle season and then handicapping, including a single disappointing run in a chase, his tally was one win from ten.

The seven-year-old’s latest campaign started a little more promisingly with a fifth at Chepstow, tiring late on after giving some hope early in the straight. Then everything clicked. At Lingfield over 2m6f he forged clear in the run to the line to bring a first win over fences at the third attempt.

It took a measure of bravery for Honeyball, with the team’s acquiescence, to go for the Great Yorkshire and up to three miles. Here he would be facing a fast-improving chaser in Grand Geste, another with only three runs over fences on his record, but the latest of them a massacre of the Tommy Whittle Chase field at Haydock last time.

Understandably, the Joel Parkinson/Sue Smith runner started favourite even after his 10lb hike for the Haydock race, but he was soon in trouble, never dominating as he had in Lancashire.

Dartmoor Pirate had been almost as severely handicapped (up 7lb) for his less spectacular effort at Lingfield. Here though, after dropping back early in the straight, he came with renewed vigour under Rex Dingle in the closing stages; caught front-running New Order before the last and strode away for a near four-length margin.

Some of the geegeez.co.uk team associated with Saturday’s winner had gathered further north at Catterick three days earlier in the expectation that their newcomer Luna Lux would bolt up in the concluding bumper. The Masked Marvel filly had cost €50k at Arqana as a yearling in November 2023 and Honeyball took her north anticipating a relatively soft touch first time out for the promising newcomer, away from the big guns.

There are very few soft touches around anywhere these days, however, and especially when opposed at present by runners from the Adrian Paul Keatley yard. His German-bred Nightflyer was heavily backed against the Honeyball favourite and duly obliged, Luna Lux ending a well beaten third.

That made it five wins in a row for Keatley, ever famous for his Irish 1,000 Guineas win with Jet Setting over Minding immediately before that O’Brien/Coolmore filly’s triumph in the 2016 Oaks at Epsom. Was it ten years ago? Really?

For good measure Adrian won a seven-furlong race at Newcastle soon after the Catterick success before the sequence ended at Meydan on Friday, so the UK winning run is still alive.

Nightflyer, for his part, was sold at the post-racing auction at Cheltenham on Saturday evening for £95,000 and will continue his career with Jonjo and AJ O’Neill.

As well as Dartmoor Pirate, the boys and girls from the syndicates can look back with pride at the career of Listed bumper and staying hurdle winner, Coquelicot. This Soldier Of Fortune mare won nine and was second in eight of her 28 races, successful in three bumpers, four hurdles and two more races when belatedly turning to the flat.

Her attraction at the time of the auction to Anthony and Matt was that she was a half-sister by Soldier Of Fortune to the Ebor winner and Melbourne Cup runner-up Heartbreak City. She was sold in the 2025 January sale for 40,000gns, much to the sadness of the owners who had enjoyed such a wonderful time with her.

And, with Olly Murphy, much the same group – though with some newer faces – have enjoyed tremendous success with Sure Touch, himself a winner of ten races (nine for the syndicate) including the 2024 centenary running of Market Rasen’s Summer Plate, another £100,000 handicap. After third and then second with latest Warren Chase inmate Gee Force Flyer, they hope to go one better at Leicester on Wednesday (weather permitting).

I was especially delighted at the Great Yorkshire win as my regular Ebor week host Jim Cannon and fellow guests for the meeting Ian Wallis, a retired maths teacher, and Pete Williams (always ready to reply when a microphone is thrust in his face), are all in the syndicate, as they are in Luna Lux.

While the other pair were there to celebrate the win – and Matt assures me celebrate they did! – Jim had family business to attend to. Jim and wife Mary have three grandsons, so it was off to see one play rugby; another take part in a performance in a modern dance group while in between the third had a birthday to celebrate.

In between, York resident Jim sneaked away to watch home-town football team Carlisle trounced by his resident side York City, 3-0. I trust watching the Pirate win on Saturday cheered him up a shade. I spoke to Jim in the morning of the race and asked what he fancied – he likes a little flutter. He said he noticed that Kripticjim was running at Cheltenham and he would probably back it even though the Tizzard yard was out of form. It won at 14’s so it would have completed a lovely 119/1 double linked with his own horse.

I said to Matt – himself later elated by hometown Bournemouth’s win over Liverpool – after the race, “He’s a potential Grand National horse for next year”. Considering that stamina-laden performance, I think he could be if Anthony can conjure a stone or so more on top of the mark of around 135 tomorrow morning when the new ratings appear.

Okay, I admit there were other things going on. When Sir Gino was suddenly pulled up by Nico de Boinville having sat last of four in the four-runner Unibet Hurdle at Cheltenham, the howl from the course could easily be heard on my television set at home.

They had walked for most of the trip, and once the favourite had departed, it seemed a formality that The New Lion, then second-favourite for the Champion Hurdle behind Nicky Henderson’s Sir Gino, would have a facile romp around.

In the end he did win, Harry Skelton not troubled having to make ground from the last flight, but it was hardly an emphatic performance beating Nemean Lion (18/1) and 50/1 shot Brentford Hope by one and a half lengths and a head.

Yesterday we learnt that Sir Gino is out for the season, so it will be left to former Champion Constitution Hill to represent Henderson, no doubt dependent on his forthcoming flat run at Southwell. Betting on the big race at this stage is a minefield and it doesn’t help when the nearest to The New Lion in the betting, Lossiemouth, could be opting instead for the mares’ race at the Festival.

Further afield, the world’s two highest-rated horses, sprinter Ka Ying Rising and miler Romantic Warrior continued to stack up the earnings with wins at Sha Tin yesterday. Both had similar margins, but their starting prices were widely different, Ka Ying Rising going off at 100/1 on whereas you could get two to one on about Romantic Warrior.

Each earned almost £700k for his trouble, Ka Ying Rising bringing his win tally to 17 in a row, from 19, for £11.7 million. The older Romantic Warrior is now on 20 wins and five second places from 27 starts for £24.3 million. Almost as much as some footballers have to toil for two years to clock up!

- TS

The ‘Super Six’ NH Jockeys: What Happened Next?

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As a horse racing researcher, there are good days and bad days, writes Dave Renham. On good days I research an idea and find that the data connected with it is interesting and robust enough to dissect and eventually use for an article. On bad days the idea or ideas I research seem to constantly hit a dead end, with the data crunched offering little or nothing of interest to me or potential readers of said research.

The second week in January was a week where I had a few bad days in a row. All my ideas were falling flat or at least after some digging offered up nothing of significant interest. However, just as I was binning yet another idea, I stumbled across some numbers that made me stop in my tracks. Had I eventually found something that had the potential for a worthwhile piece? About half an hour later after testing a few further theories, I felt I did, and hence I will be sharing my findings today.

Rationale

The data for this article has been taken from UK National Hunt racing covering the years 2019 to 2025. Any profits / losses quoted are calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP), with a 2% commission being applied on any winning bets.

For this article, I have been looking at the performance of horses that were ridden last time out by some of the top jockeys in the country. I have chosen the following – Nico de Boinville, Sean Bowen, Harry Cobden, Brian Hughes, Gavin Sheehan and Harry Skelton. These six have had some of the best win percentages of recent years as well as riding a decent number of horses each season, which means we have an excellent initial sample size from which to work.

My initial reasoning for why this angle might prove fruitful was that it is rare for any of these jockeys to ride a complete no-hoper and hence most horses they ride are expected to run well. Of course, there is no guarantee that the same jockey will be on board again next time, but whether they are or are not, one would assume if these horses were expected to run well once, they would be expected to run well next time too. I felt that my reasoning had some sound logic behind it; however, the proof is in the pudding and all that.

 

Overall: horses ridden by Super Six last time out (LTO)

So, first things first, here are the results for all horses ridden LTO by one of my six jockeys in terms of their very next course outing:

 

 

This was an extremely solid – indeed, astounding – starting point producing a sound win rate, with returns edging towards 8 pence in the £. Splitting the results by year produced the following:

 

 

There have been five winning years out of seven, with the two losing years showing only smallish losses. Hence, this simple starting point has been fairly consistent.

Now these results include all possible BSP prices and as we know bottom lines can be massively skewed by big-priced winners. Unfortunately, this set of results does include such winners, with nine of the qualifying horses winning at a BSP of 100.0 or bigger. Backing all horses in triple figures over this timeframe would have yielded 60% of the initial £1572.30 profit figure. Hence, it made sense to ignore those bigger priced runners and focus on a subset of runners at shorter prices. Otherwise, one or more of those 100.0+ winners could be skewing some, or all, of the areas I wanted to explore. I decided therefore that a price limit of BSP 30.0 would be a much better and fairer option. Thus, the remainder of the article is restricted to horses that were priced BSP 30.0 or less.

Let me therefore look at the overall figures for this subset of runners with that BSP 30.0 price cap:

 

 

We have lost roughly 15% of the original qualifiers, but we are still left with a very good sample size, and although the returns are slightly less impressive, a blind profit of over 4p in the £ is still noteworthy.

From this starting point, I wanted to dig deeper, so I began by looking at the yearly A/E indices. The indices presented below are based on BSP rather than ISP, as the exchange prices are more accurate:

 

 

As the graph shows, these horses have offered ‘value’ (A/E 1.00 or bigger) in six of the seven years. Five of the seven years proved to be profitable with the worst year (2022) losing a smidge over 2.5p in the £ across all runners.

 

Handicap vs non-handicaps

A look now at race type; specifically handicaps versus non handicaps. The splits were thus:

 

 

A much higher strike rate has been achieved in non-handicaps, but this is the norm as they tend to be less competitive. All the profits, though, have come from handicap races.

An additional statistic to note is if we restrict the handicap results to horses that had raced in a handicap LTO as well. This specific handicap-to-handicap group produced 9707 qualifiers of which 1693 won (SR 17.4%) for an impressive profit of £974.15 (ROI +10%).

 

Race Class

Let me next examine the Class of Race to see if anything could be gleaned from it. The splits were as follows:

 

 

We can safely ignore the Class 6 findings as there were only 24 qualifiers, and the stats indicate that Classes 3 to 5 have offered up the best returns. The more competitive levels of Class 1 and 2 both showed losses to BSP.

 

Last time out race position

Onto position LTO now. Did that make a difference? Let’s take a look:

 

 

It is not surprising I guess that more than 7,000 of the c.17,500 qualifiers finished first or second LTO, as they were ridden by one of the ‘Super Six’; but a first or second finish last time was actually a negative when it came to next time out value. Conversely, horses that finished third or worse LTO combined to return over 11p in the £. It seems therefore, that this may be the group we should concentrate on in the future as those winners and almost winners last time are significantly over-bet.

 

Jockey change?

My next port of call was to examine the results where any of the six jockeys remained on the same horse next time out, compared with a jockey change which was not one of the six. Here were my findings:

 

 

The value lay clearly with horses ridden this time by a jockey who was not one of the six. Yes, the overall strike rate was lower but the bottom line was significantly better. Also, looking at the yearly splits for this cohort we see positive numbers in six of the seven years, and a negligible loss in the other one:

 

 

What I also found fascinating were the results when we examine the final possible jockey permutation – horses ridden by one of de Boinville, Bowen, Cobden, Hughes, Sheehan or Skelton last time and now ridden by a different jockey from the ‘Super Six’. In other words, a possible scenario being when Sean Bowen had ridden the horse last time, but Harry Cobden was on board this time; or Gavin Sheehan having been on board last time, being replaced by Brian Hughes this time, etc. Here are those findings:

 

 

These results have been extremely positive during the past seven years, so this looks like an avenue we could potentially explore in the future. One positive switch to mention is when Harry Cobden was riding a horse this time after being ridden by Sean Bowen LTO. This ‘combo’ saw 35 qualifiers of which 11 won (SR 31.4%) for a profit of £25.20 (ROI +72%).

[One such switch was when geegeez.co.uk syndicate horse Sure Touch won the 2024 Summer Plate under Cobden after Bowen was required to ride a horse for his father – Ed.]

 

Odds Last Time Out

Moving on, one area I always like to look at where possible is the LTO odds of the horses in question. Below is a graph showing the ROI% splits for different bands of LTO odds – I have used ISP for the LTO odds as the prices are tidier:

 

 

This graph gives us a clear cut steer, with runners LTO that were priced 9.50 (17/2) or higher producing much better returns on their very next start compared with prices LTO of 9.00 (8/1) or less. For the record, horses that were priced 5.0 (4/1) or lower LTO combined to produce blind losses.

 

Age of horse

Finally for this article, I am going to share the age of horse splits, and these are shown in the table below:

 

 

As can be seen, 3yos had a poor record. The double-digit generation also struggled a little when compared with the best range, those aged six to nine. Why this group has done best is probably because National Hunt horses are in their prime between six and nine. Suffice to say horses aged six to nine have clearly offered the best value in the past few years when ridden LTO by one of the Super Six.

**

I must admit that the data shared in this piece are far better than I had expected when I embarked upon the research. It will be interesting to see if these generally positive results are replicated in 2026 and beyond.

- DR

Monday Musings: A Bit of a Joke…

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Windsor’s Fitzdares Fleur de Lys Chase on Sunday carried £165,000 in total prizemoney, writes Tony Stafford. As such it was on a par with the previous day’s Clarence House Chase at Ascot, the two events providing the top two features on three days of Berkshire’s Winter Millions, began on Friday at the Thames-side course.

I say on a par, but as only two completed the course at Ascot, it meant between them they collected £165k. In the old days, prizes for non-completions or short fields used to be shared out with the ones that did complete. There’s no such largesse nowadays.

The even-money favourite Protektorat, trained by Dan Skelton, won the race 12 months ago in a common canter, despite being penalised 8lb for his Grade 1 success in the 2024 Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham where Envoi Allen was the runner-up.

He followed that Windsor victory with a good second to Jonbon, four lengths behind Nicky Henderson’s horse at Aintree. If anyone doubted Jonbon’s worth, his repeat win in the Clarence House a day earlier would have reminded them of his honourable never-out-of-the-first-two career.

I know that steeplechases over two miles, six furlongs take plenty of jumping, but the fact that Protektorat started at even money and was available at odds against for a while in pre-race betting, must rank as the value bet, certainly of the meeting, and probably this season.

Why? Well, while winning the Fleur de Lys carrying the maximum penalty last year, he weirdly escaped one for the second running on the race. Top marks to the Skelton team for noticing the rules aberration.

Protektorat faced four opponents and while he now had bottom weight, Ben Pauling’s Handstands, the Twiston-Davies’ Matata and Olly Murphy’s Resplendent Grey all carried a penalty. I suggest the race conditions are a joke!

The key date, for what obscure reason, was September 30, 2024. A winner of a Grade 1 or Grade 2 chase after that date gets 8lb; one winning a Premier Handicap (as in the case of Resplendent Grey in the bet 365 Chase at Sandown last year, and Matata at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day this month), a Grade 3 or Listed gets 4lb.

Handstands was a star novice for Ben Pauling last season, winning a Grade 1 and a Grade 2. On official ratings on these terms he had a monstrous 19lb to find with the Skelton horse, so when Ben Jones sent him past the front-running favourite going to the fourth-last fence at the head of the straight, he looked to be putting himself right in the top flight of steeplechasers.

I love the Windsor chase course with its long run-in and, for once over a golden weekend for Jones, he probably made his move a little early. That gave Harry Skelton time to gather his willing horse and conjure a rally from that 11-year-old partner, such that he had regained the lead between the last two fences.

It was hard work all the way to the line, especially with Resplendent Grey bringing out the stamina that won him the Sandown three-and-a-half miler in the spring, but Protektorat kept going for a near four-length win with the Murphy horse a couple to the good over Handstands.

I don’t know who framed the Fleu de Lys conditions: it carries the official designation of a Class 2 contest, with no Graded status. The quality of this field (and last year’s) and the lavish prize money surely demand its promotion next time round.

I referred to Ben Jones’ superb week. He won on both his rides at Windsor on Friday, including on the Emma Lavelle-trained Bluey in the featured mares’ chase, before clicking on his first two rides at Ascot on Saturday when The Jukebox Kid showed he was on an upward curve, if not quite as steep as stablemate The Jukebox Man’s!

Then half an hour after the Fleur de Lys, Jones did it the other way around, pulling back several lengths from the last fence to win the 3m4f handicap chase on Neo King for the Evan Williams yard.

Not to be outdone, Harry Skelton responded in kind in the finale, a high-grade bumper, coming from off the pace to swamp his rivals for speed and win at 12/1. That made it a 67/1 treble on the day for the Skelton team and, more significantly, added another £125k to their spectacular tally.

I mentioned that Jonbon won the Clarence House Chase. But it needed a superequine effort from the horse to claw back the lead that the Skelton runner Thistle Ask had initiated from the start. Winner before Saturday of four in a row, all handicaps and the last three since being acquired for only £11k when he came up for sale last year upon the retirement from training of James Ewart, his mark had gone from 108 to 158 in that time.

Now he faces another upgrade as he was within three lengths of Jonbon at the line and as Nicky Henderson admitted afterwards, it was stamina that won him the day over this probably now insufficient trip of two miles.

Jonbon, extraordinarily in a four-horse race was allowed to start at 6/1. True, he had been easily beaten last time out in the Tingle Creek at Sandown by Saturday’s favourite, Willie Mullins’ Il Etait Temps, but that was the biggest price Jonbon has ever started, Il Etait Temps no doubt being regarded as invincible at 2/5 in the market.

Maybe it was Thistle Act’s bold jumping and sustained pace that troubled him, but Il Etait Temps never looked like getting to the leader and he came down heavily two from home. Happily, it seemed it was merely tiredness and nothing worse, but from 5/2 for the Queen Mother Champion Chase he is now out to 8/1. Willie has others to fill in for him, no doubt.

The £51k that Thistle Art earned his connections, added to yesterday’s haul, has Skelton rapidly approaching the £3 million mark for the season. It was after the last-day turnaround when the Mullins team swamped Dan at Sandown that either Willie or son Patrick stated they would be targeting many more ordinary UK race meetings in the upcoming season. With that in mind, Patrick was dispatched from Co Carlow to the far east of the country yesterday, to Fakenham, to ride a couple of “steering jobs”.

In a 2m4f maiden hurdle, Clay Pigeons, who had already come across to Catterick to win a bumper, started 4/11 but was no match for Olly Murphy’s King Jon Oliver, the 5/2 second favourite. Then 2/1 on shot Lultimatom, was rolled over by – you guessed it – the Skeltons’ 13/2 chance Eastern Fire, ridden by Tristan Durrell.

As at Windsor, the Skelton team bagged another treble, all ridden by Tristan. If you got all six of the Skelton winers in an accumulator, it works out (or so my computer says), at 21,114/1; but if you did have it you were lucky as 13/2  shot Miss Cynthia was a long way behind Princess Keri at the final flight of the day’s feature when that mare’s rider Ned Fox got unbalanced after the obstacle and came off.

Mullins senior did collect the two Grade 2 races at Thurles yesterday, Jade De Grugy (1/7) picked up €29k for a school round under Paul Townend, who added a second success on Appreciate It, the even-money favourite, in a race where his trainer had four of the five runners and took the first three places.

The fates of his two UK runners over the weekend coincided with, if not a seriously worrying period for the trainer, certainly one with more reverses than expected. Over the past two weeks, Mullins has sent out 18 winners, but an astonishing nine odds-on chances in that time have bit the dust.

Maybe Cheltenham 2026 might be less of a one-sided battle between the Irish and the home team. Everyone was vastly impressed by Nicky Henderson’s Haydock winner Old Park Star in the Rossington Main Novices’ Hurdle. He made all to win the Grade 2 by 18 lengths under Nico de Boinville in the style of, dare we suggest it, Constitution Hill. How does the old boy continue to find them?

- TS

A January Random Roundup

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In this video post, I outline what's happening now and next on geegeez.co.uk, and beyond these shores. Specifically:

- Geegeez Feature Upgrades
- Australian Open AI Play
- Tix... PLUS?!
- Racehorse Syndicate Updates

The geegeez feature updates are first up so feel free to skip the rest if it's not of interest to you.

Enjoy!

Matt

p.s. link to the Nirvana du Berlais ex Futura syndicate detail is here >>

 

A Look at Favourites in All-Weather Races

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Favourites in All-Weather (AW) Racing in 2026

Friends of mine who go racing once or twice a year often ring me up beforehand asking for some ‘tips’, writes Dave Renham.

My initial reply is always the same, “what exactly do you mean by tips?”

And their answer is invariably the same, “winners Dave, I want to back as many winners as possible!”

“Ah!”, I reply, “then that’s a simple one – just back all the favourites”.

After my opening gambit I go on to explain the rationale behind such an apparently facetious answer: that in order to give them the best chance of backing as many winners as possible on the day, backing favourites is the way forward.

Of course, for serious punters the question would be different, as making money over the longer term is about finding value, not winners. If it was as simple as backing winners, we would all be backing the favourite and making lots of money. Favourites are like any other market position in that they can offer value, but of course that does not apply to all market leaders.

 

All-Weather Favourites Overall

In this article my quest is to find the groups of favourites that have offered value in the past, or those that have offered poor value. Poor value favourites give us two options essentially; we can lay them on the exchanges, or we can look for a viable option from the remaining runners.

The data for this article relates to UK AW Racing from 2018 to 2025 inclusive. Profits have been calculated to Befair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission. I am using Betfair Exchange favourites (clear favourites only) for this so let me start by showing the results for all such AW market leaders in the eight-year study period:

 

 

Losses are quite modest at just under 3 pence in the £, so there looks to be hope when it comes to finding a positive favourite angle or two. In terms of the betting returns on favourites, here are the annual splits:

 

 

Last year actually would have turned a profit, but 2020, 2022 and 2023 all saw steeper losses of over 5p in £.

 

All-Weather Favourites by Race type

What about different race types? Firstly, let me share the handicap versus non-handicap figures for favs:

 

 

As we can see there have been slightly smaller losses in non-handicaps. Having said that non-handicap maiden favourites lost more than 5% due to 549 winners from 1267 (SR 43.3%) for a loss of £64.28 (ROI -5.1%). In fact, this is where my first two negative angles come in, namely 2yo only maidens and Class 2-4 maidens:

 

 

Once losses hit the 10%+ mark, I see that as a strong negative as far as favourites are concerned. Both these subsets siginificantly beyond that threshold; and, while on the 2yo maidens’ theme, 2yos making their career debuts that start favourite in all-weather maidens have done very poorly thanks to just 38 wins from 126 runners (SR 30.2%) for a loss of £34.66 (ROI -27.5%).

On a more positive note for 2yos, favourites in nursery handicaps have edged into overall profit thanks to 297 wins from 918 (SR 32.3%, +£28.44, ROI +3.2%). This could have been improved upon if we limit qualifiers to horses that had run at least once on the AW before. This cohort won 33.3% of time (232 wins from 697) for a profit of £51.04 (ROI +7.3%). We will of course have to wait for the summer to potentially exploit this in 2026.

One other race type to quickly mention is claiming races. Favourites have secured returns of over 11% in these races, but unfortunately such races on the sand are extremely rare these days. Last year (2025) for example saw just two such races. Hence, unless there is a change in policy it seems unlikely that we are going to get many claiming races to go at.

 

All-Weather Favourites by Course

Have favourites performed any better at some courses compared to others? Let’s see:

 

 

The Southwell stats are based on tapeta races, so only since the change of surface; it seemed to make no sense to combine the fibresand results with them as they are no longer relevant. Southwell’s stats are the worst for favourites with losses edging close to 6p in the £. Wolverhampton has been the happiest hunting ground for jollies closely followed by Kempton.

In terms of Wolverhampton favourites, a group that have performed well are those runners who won last time out on the AW but at a different track (e.g. at any of the other five UK AW tracks). This group recorded a £69.44 profit (ROI +12%) thanks to 239 winners from 581 (SR 28.9%).

 

All-Weather Favourites by Time of Year

I would like to talk about ‘time of year’ now and below are the win strike rates by quarter:

 

 

Favourites have had the best strike rate in the first three months of the year, and the remaining metrics correlate with that time being the best for favs:

 

 

As we can see, January to March favourites would have lost us less than a penny in the £ across over 7000 selections. I am assuming this has been the case because at that time of year 91% of all favourites had raced on the AW last time out, whereas from July to December for example this figure has been less than 60%. Hence, by the start of the first quarter (January) the focus is solely the AW with it being nearly two months into the AW season, and horses are starting to run regularly on an artificial surface rather than potentially switching back and forth from the turf. That would also explain the poorer returns in the final quarter. That is simply a hypothesis but there is a definite logic behind it.

Sticking with that first quarter, we have already seen that Wolverhampton market leaders have returned the smallest losses. If we restrict Wolves favourites to January, February and March only we see the following – 586 winners from 1604 runners (SR 36.5%) for a profit of £96.53 (ROI +6%).

 

All-Weather Favourites by Class of Race

A look at Race Class now. The splits are shown below:

 

 

The highest two classes of race have proved profitable, but what is more interesting perhaps has been the very poor performance of favourites in Class 3 races. The losses have been significant at over 13p in the £. Most Class 3 events were handicaps, and handicaps actually produced losses close 15p in the £.

My initial theory for why favourites performed poorly in this class was that is may just be down to variance, but I back checked the 2010 to 2017 Class 3 results and noted that they produced similar overall losses (11p in the £). I cannot come up with a logical reason why favourites have struggled in these particular races, but the long-term stats suggest that this has been the case.

 

All-Weather Favourites by Days since last run

Moving on to how long it has been since the horse last ran, and there have been a couple of timeframes that have proved profitable over the past eight years:

 

 

Hence favourites having a very recent run, or one coming back off a break of 5 months or more have performed above the norm.

 

All-Weather Favourites by Headgear

Personally I am a little sceptical when it comes to fancied runners wearing headgear and favourites have had a poor record wearing blinkers over this period. They scored 27.2% of the time (382 wins from 1405) for losses of £168.40 (ROI -12%). This performance was worse if we focus on handicaps only – 305 wins from 1203 runners for a loss of £164.90 (ROI -13.7%).

 

All-Weather Favourites by Draw

I wondered how well favourites fared from the poorest draws, although I knew that data for specific course and distance combinations was going to be limited. What I wanted to know is how favourites fared when berthed in one of the three widest draws at Kempton over 6f, Wolves over 5f and Chelmsford over 5f. I currently perceive these three track/trip combos to offer the strongest AW biases - and, from a positive perspective, to inside draws, I should add. I looked at handicaps only as they offer the most robust results as far as draw data is concerned.

 

 

We're dealing with small samples here as I had anticipated, but all three confirm that favourites really struggled.

One other draw bias which I looked at was Kempton over 7f, but my reading of that bias is that horses need to be drawn very wide (in double figure stalls) to be really disadvantaged there. Hence, I looked at the performance of favourites from the three widest draws over 7f at Kempton with the caveat that the draw must be a double figure one. With such restrictions there were only 30 horses that were favourite under those circumstances, but they did struggle with only 5 winning and losses were steep at 46p in the £.

 

All-Weather Favourites by Trainer

Finally I wanted to see which trainers have done well with favourites and which ones have not. Firstly, let me share a chart of the trainers whose A/E index (based on BSP) is 1.15 or higher. This type of figure suggests their favourites have been very good value. To qualify, a trainer must have had at least 75 horses that started as favourite.

 

 

It is nice to see some different trainers appearing and indeed it makes sense that less familiar names would show up when looking in such an obvious place as market leaders. Jim Goldie tops the chart with an outstanding 1.50 A/E index and all seven on the chart have unsurprisingly been blindly profitable as the table below shows:

 

 

Not all trainers have done well when saddling the market leader, though. The table below shows the handlers that had recorded losses of more than 25p in the £ (again 75 runs minimum to qualify).

 

 

The most interesting name in the list for me is Charlie Johnston; his father Mark had a very good record with favourites at the start of this time frame. From 2018 to when he retired at the end of 2022 his record with favourites read an impressive 144 winners from 331 (SR 43.5%) for a profit of £54.25 (ROI +16.4%), A/E(BSP) 1.13. There has been a clear change in success for favourites since Charlie took over, perhaps as a result of a different focus or training modus operandi.

 

Conclusion

This article has highlighted plenty of positives and negatives. I have put the main ones in the table below as a type of ‘ready reckoner’. I have excluded the trainers as their tables are nearby and easy to access.

 

 

I hope this article will prove useful over the rest of the AW season as well as the remainder of 2026 as a whole. Obviously, we cannot always tell who is going to be favourite, especially in very competitive races. However, if we are able to back as close to the off as possible then we should know the favourite pre-race around 95% of the time.

- DR

Monday Musings: Early Payout for Skelton

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I’m sure I’ve gone over this ground a time or two before but last week’s irritating cold weather snap has inevitably slowed down the workings of this ancient brain, writes Tony Stafford. I intend to show, in the manner of a Paddy Power early payout when a team goes two goals up, that Dan Skelton has already won the 2025/26 British Jump Trainers’ Championship.

Many thought he would win it last time round, but Willie Mullins sent a flotilla of his best horses to Sandown on the final day of last season and ended up foiling him by almost £200k – Mullins’ £3,570k to Skelton’s £3,377k. It seems emphatic, but until Mullins had that near clean sweep of the lavish £1 million Grand National prize – his 1-2-3 collecting £800k and 5th and 7th another £60k – he wasn’t seemingly even contemplating a challenge.

Of course, Mullins is good at making up lost ground in the second half of the season, which is pretty much where we are now, as his rival Gordon Ellliott would frustratingly testify.

Before yesterday at home Mullins was reasonably in touch with Elliott, whose 275 individual horses had clocked up €3,150k from 134 wins and numerous places. Mullins’ individual 228 had notched 106 wins and €2,289k. Elliott’s best of €4,744k in 2023/24 compares unfavourably with Mullins’ peak of €7,299 in 2022/23. Willie’s haul last season was €6,028k, almost exactly €2 million more than his rival.

In the UK though, it will take not just a herculean effort to target the big prizes, in some part to the detriment of looking after business at home, for him even to begin to look a danger to Skelton.

The nearest four players behind Dan are multiple champions Paul Nicholls in second and Nicky Henderson in fifth, with in between the fast-progressing Olly Murphy and Ben Pauling. Nicholls at £1,116k, Murphy and Pauling are both above the £1 million mark, but even then, hopelessly out of touch with Skelton. I don’t remember anything so one-sided ever before.

With the most lucrative part of the season still to come, Skelton, on £2,470k, is already around 65% of the way to last year’s personal best return. Mullins is trailing more than £2 million behind him after the Irish champion’s so-far meagre return of £278k from four winning horses.

Unless he matches or exceeds last year’s Grand National Trifecta, it’s hard to see where he can begin to stem the tide of the Warwickshire onslaught, which has already produced 111 wins for the season. Only once before has he exceeded 200, in the days a few years back when he targeted summer jumping. That’s no longer on the agenda – it’s class and quality over quantity these days.

Saturday’s impressive performance at Kempton under a 10lb penalty from Precious Man could well be significant as the big 4yo prizes come along.

This second win for the team after he was snapped up from under the noses of the Mullins/Kirk buying partnership from France last summer puts him firmly in as a challenger to the no-doubt formidable array of Mullins juveniles from the same source that will be in the Triumph Hurdle line-up in eight weeks’ time.

The Skeltons have targeted the three days of the Winter Racing Festival at Windsor and Ascot over the coming weekend for a concerted aim at solidifying their already commanding lead.

Windsor on Friday offers seven races worth a total of £415k and Skelton has a dozen entered in five of those contests. Ascot on Saturday and then back to Windsor for Sunday, there are similar cards with almost precisely the same amount of cash to be won – in all £1.25 million for the 21 races.

I always loved going jumping at Windsor in the old days, particularly enjoying the New Year’s Day Hurdle which was a serious trial for the Champion Hurdle. I was unsure whether last season’s initial go at jumping after so many years away from the Calendar was a success, but any gremlins with the track seemed to have been ironed out when they staged the first fixture of the 2025/26 season in late November. I’m looking forward to a midwinter feast this weekend.

The promised ease in the weather over the coming days will ensure a strong entry for all those races and the Skelton runners will face determined opposition throughout the weekend. It’s hard to escape the feeling though that Dan and jockey brother Harry have elevated themselves onto a higher plane, their defeats at the hands of Mullins merely doubling their resolve.

**

I was very sad to hear the news of problems at Chelmsford City racecourse, struggling with a serious loss on the past financial year leading to a reported delay in full payment of staff on the days leading up to Christmas.

Chelmsford isn’t everyone’s favourite track, but it’s handy to get to for racegoers in East London in particular and all over Essex. The grandstand might be facing the “wrong way” and unless you go along to the winning line and combine that with watching on the big screen, much of what happens around the circuit can be hard, actually impossible, to follow.

Trainers from Newmarket love its proximity, just down the M11, but those around Lambourn can be subjected to harrowing journeys when the M4, M25 and the M11 North are playing up, sometimes all at once!

With only a single way in, it was always tricky for the track when it hosted well-attended (sometimes up to even 30,000) music events, but when Justin Timberlake appeared last summer the whole thing ground to a halt after his performance with cars stuck in the car park for hours and the adjacent road connecting the City of Chelmsford to the A120 similarly blocked for ages.

That brought a severe sanction on the number of people that would be allowed at any fixture, 10,000 I believe, effectively stifling the wonderful work done by Neil Graham and his staff. I’ve known Neil since he trained out of the yard in Newmarket adjacent to the Tattersalls sales paddocks, when he had horses in the yard for the Thoroughbred Corporation.

He knows his stuff and is a very nice man to boot. I hope Chelmsford’s troubles will soon be sorted. They’ve fought back before and hopefully will do so again. I always enjoy going there and wish I’d been free to go yesterday, but late additions to the schedule aren’t always easy.

It’s a place where horses can build up impressive winning sequences and my pal Mick Godderidge, a shareholder in the now six-year-old Carlton, saw the horse win six times from seven runs at the track between December 2024 and last September for James Owen. No doubt he’ll add to that tally over this winter.

- TS

Kempton 7f Handicaps: Deep Dive

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An in depth look at 7f handicaps at Kempton Park

I have mentioned several times before that I am a great believer in specialising when it comes to betting on horse racing, writes Dave Renham. On that note, this article revisits an idea I looked at in February last year, that of honing in on a specific all-weather course and distance and undertaking a deep dive into the plethora of past facts and figures.

Looking for patterns and pointers for races from a specific track and trip is a type of trends-based approach. Using race trends has become more popular in the past 15 years or so although more specifically this approach has been used for big races such as the Derby or Cheltenham's Gold Cup.

In that prior article I looked at Lingfield over 1m2f; today I will set my sights on Kempton's 7 furlongs range. I will consider handicap races only (but I'll ignore 2yo nursery handicaps), with data taken from 2018 to 2025. Profits are shown to Befair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission.

Looking at the results from a specific course and distance (C&D) should give us good insight and potentially an edge over fellow punters in such races. Choosing this particular C&D means we are guaranteed plenty of qualifying races each year – there are roughly 60 annually based on the last eight years.

So, let’s crack on starting with market factors.

Betting market

The price bands shown are Industry SP simply because these price bands are more familiar to most, and the splits were as follows:

 

 

As we can see from the numbers in the table, the market has been a very good guide in these races; surprisingly so, to me at least. The 15/8 or shorter group did exceptionally well, producing returns in excess of 17 pence in the £. Overall, if backing every single runner that had a final ISP of 8/1 or less a profit would have been achieved backing blind to BSP. Below is a graph showing the yearly BSP A/E indices for this 8/1 or shorter cohort:

 

 

Seven of the nine years saw A/E figures of 1.00 or more indicating ‘value’, with the two below not far off at 0.97. It seems that a sensible approach for this coming year, in these races, will be to focus on shorter priced runners. That is not to say that we put a line through the rest, but we need to treat runners likely to start higher than 8/1 with some caution.

In terms of the bigger priced brigade – once the price hit an ISP of 20/1 or greater, returns were very poor indeed. Taking all-weather handicaps as a whole, horses priced 20/1 or bigger would have lost us around five pence in the £ during this time frame. This has partly been due to some big prices winning and helping to claw back the losses, but at Kempton these big priced winners have been far rarer than elsewhere.

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

Let me now see if the finishing position last time out has given us any useful pointers:

 

 

On the face of it LTO winners have fared well, but their profit figure has been skewed somewhat by a winner with a Betfair Starting Price of 92.0. Despite there not being too many big-priced winners it seems more prudent to look at LTO finishing position restricting the results to horses that were 20/1 or shorter:

 

 

LTO winners have still done best when looking at finishing positions one to four, but bizarrely the value has been with horses that finished fifth to seventh on their most recent run. I am guessing that the profit for this group has been due to variance more than anything but having said that seven of the eight of the years would have produced a profit for this LTO 5th to 7th group. This is one stat I cannot easily explain.

For the remainder of the article, I am going to stick to horses that had an ISP of 20/1 or less, in an attempt to avoid any skewed bottom lines.

 

Course LTO

Next stop is a look at the course horses ran at last time, focusing on AW tracks only as they are the most likely courses at this time of year for horses to have had their last run at:

 

 

Poor returns from those racing last time either at Lingfield or Southwell. In contrast, I would view a run LTO at Kempton as a positive. In terms of horses that raced LTO on the turf, they have combined to win only 11% of races showing losses of close to 13p in the £.

 

Sex of horse

Anybody who has read previous articles penned by me on AW racing will know that males tend to outperform females in this discipline from a win rate perspective. However, for Kempton 7f handicaps there was a closer gap than normal.

 

 

Not only was the win rate gap closer than we normally see, but females have edged males in the profit / returns department. When I dug deeper into the female runner group, I noticed that older horses (mares) completely outperformed their younger counterparts (fillies), albeit from a much smaller sample. If we compare strike rates first – both the win rate, and the win & placed (EW) rate:

 

 

As the graph shows mares (females aged four and up) have performed much better than fillies (three-year-old or younger, so just 3yos in this study) from both a win and a placed perspective. Also, if we examine the PRBs (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) mares have won that ‘contest’ comfortably too – 0.59 to 0.55.

The overall stats for mares priced ISP 20/1 or less were excellent – 32 wins from 203 runners (15.8%) for a BSP profit of £112.99 (ROI +55.7%). Based on these findings, mares could continue to offer up some value over this C&D in the future.

 

Change in distance

Personally I have always felt that 7f is quite a specialist trip, so I wanted to see whether a run over the same 7f distance LTO was a positive. Likewise, whether being upped or dropped in trip proved to be a negative. Here were my findings:

 

 

These stats certainly back up my theory, at least as far as this C&D has been concerned. This definitely looks to be something to keep an eye on over the coming months and years.

 

Course form

I think comparing past course winners versus horses that have yet to win at the track (non-course winners) can be sometimes flawed, as some horses in the ‘non course winners’ group may not have even raced the track before. Hence, for this section a horse must have run at least twice at Kempton to qualify. Comparing the A/E (BSP) indices between both groups is enlightening:

 

 

Horses that have raced at the track at least twice before have been much better value if they're already a course winner. Indeed, all the main metrics were strongly in favour of previous course winners as the table below shows:

 

 

This has been a very important factor over this C&D across the eight-year time period.

 

Run Style

In many previous articles I have demonstrated the importance of run style, which can have a big say in shorter distance races on the flat/AW where front runners/early leaders often have an edge. This has been the case here too as the table shows:

 

 

I have not included profit/loss figures as we do not know the run style of the runner pre-race. Just for the record, though, if we had been able to know which horses would lead early, they would have produced huge returns of over 40 pence in the £.

Front runners have been able to win from any draw but it has been easier to lead if drawn low to middle. One final front-running fact is that front runners have performed much better in races in medium to bigger sized fields. Races with 9 to 14 runners have seen front runners really excel; the same run style would have actually made a loss in races of eight or fewer runners.

Draw

Finally, for this piece I am going to look at the draw. For potential draw bias to exist we need bigger fields to analyse so I have looked at races with at least eight runners. I will also not impose the 20/1 price cap as it unbalances the draw groupings and, as it turns out, those bigger prices winners have not significantly skewed the results in any particular draw section. Let me share the raw data first, splitting the draw into three sections – low third, middle third and high third, giving the win percentages for each third of the draw.

 

 

As far as the win rate goes lower draws had the edge, but in recent years middle drawn runners seem to be closing the gap. In the past two years for example the PRB for low draws was 0.54; for middle draws 0.52 (over the longer time frame it is 0.55 versus 0.50).

High draws have always struggled, however, and are generally best avoided. Indeed, horses drawn 9 or higher had a dreadful record, winning just 55 times from 1,116 runners for losses of £422.77 (ROI -36.4%). Compare this to horses drawn in the bottom three stalls (1 to 3) who recorded 142 winners from 1,255 runners with much smaller losses of £83.74 (ROI -6.7%). However, the best value has been with those drawn in stalls 5 to 7 thanks to 135 wins from 1,253 losing just £11.92 to £1 level stakes which equates to less than a penny lost per pound staked.

I think those middling stalls of 5 to 7 will continue to offer the best value as the lowest draws are slightly overbet, the highest draws really struggle, and the cut away in the Kempton straight allows those middle drawn runners who might not have got an ideal pitch early on more options in the final phase of the race.

The five strongest positives

  1. Horses priced 8/1 or shorter (esp. those 15/8 or shorter)
  1. Ran over 7f LTO
  1. Course winners
  1. Mares (females, 4yo+)
  1. Front runners

*

 

Undertaking this type of specific course and distance research can offer some useful insights to aid the selection process. If any reader has a specific track/trip combo they’d like me to review, then please drop a note in the comment section below. I will do my best to do some initial digging and maybe it will end up as an article.

- DR

A New Year: Time for Reflection and Resolution

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Did you get any of those 'your year in review' thingies from online subscriptions? I did. My Spotify listening age is 67 apparently (don't play classical music if you want to be considered young and hip - who knew?), and I'm in the top 0.1% of global ChatGPT users - and probably the top 0.00001% of those who swear profusely at the robot (may the lord preserve me when the machines rise up).

Well, no such automated 'done for you' harvested data flatter-fests here; something a bit more DIY - and more personal as a result - instead.

Seeing as we're in January, the month named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god who could look both back and forward, it's time for some reflection and resolution. That's a sentiment that applies as much to horseracing play as to other, more meaningful, facets of life. So in this post I'd like to share a few brief thoughts on my own reflection and resolutions.

Clear your plate

The turn of the year is an excellent time to de-clutter and to make the space to start afresh. That clearing out applies to tools as well as mindset.

Tracker

Racing trackers are brilliant aides-memoire. They provide a handy reminder, just when you need it, about a horse (or jockey or trainer or sire) in which you're interested. If you watch racing at all - even a little bit - you should add horses to a tracker. I really strongly encourage it. The geegeez tracker is part of our free provision so you don't even need to be a paying member to use it.

As well as adding a horse or other entity to the tracker - just by clicking the little star icon next to its name - you can include a comment about why you're tracking it. I use the comments religiously, while trying to use the tracker more sparingly, when I see something I think will be useful in future. Here's an example:

 

 

That randomly chosen example - Ballysax Lil' Mick - finished 2nd at 11/1 on his next start, and was then a slightly disappointing 6th of 14 the only time he ran since.

And now, as part of my 'reflect and resolve' activity, I have to choose whether to keep him on my tracker. In his case I'm going to remove him. Adding horses (or other entities) to a tracker has been a great source of winners for me; but removing them once they've served (or failed to serve, as is also often the case) their purpose is just as critical. Purge and reload.

So, step 1, review your tracker and clear it down. Or start using a tracker if you don't currently but you do watch racing.

The geegeez tracker is here.

 

Query Tool

Another tool I use a lot is the geegeez Query Tool. I do plenty of general research, occasionally replicate specific big race conditions so I can analyse, say, the Derby in more detail from a profile perspective, and I have lots of micro-systems and angles saved as QT Angles.

 

 

Again, the problem is that angles get added but they also need removing: sometimes the perceived benefit doesn't manifest or, more often, loses its edge. Reviewing the ongoing performance of QT Angles is good discipline in and of itself, but it also declutters the personalised content you pipe into the racecards.

After all, why would you want out of date and/or unprofitable intel presented as fact? That's one of the reasons ChatGPT and other LLMs are currently so moderate at assessing racing form. They will improve over time, but the fact that the companies want to burn as few tokens as possible means a lot of the responses are far less considered than they ought to/could be. Anyway, I digress.

I review my angles at least once a year and, to be honest, I'm overdue. I'll be finding time this week or next (there's a lot of actual work I need to do just now, alas) to pare my QT Angles back.

Once you get into it, it's actually pretty fun; and there's an above average chance you'll end up doing a bit of impromptu research triggered by one of your current angles which has gone 'end of shelf life' on you.

*

Clearing down your Tracker and Query Tool Angles sets you up to start adding new entries in the coming months. The danger with all such tools if they're not semi-regularly pruned is that their utility becomes diluted by content that you know to be stale but which you haven't cleaned up. So clean them up!

 

Review Performance

Once you've set the scene for the new year, it's a perfect time to look at how the previous year (or period, a year being entirely arbitrary) went. Below are two ways of doing this, one beloved of some and the other available to all of us.

Bet Tracker

So, how did you get on punting last year? What do you mean, you don't know?

Just kidding. Hardly anyone who bets knows where they are with their pee and ell. Part of that for a lot of people is because they either know they're behind and would prefer not to specify to what degree... or they just don't care: they're winning or losing a few quid and it doesn't matter either way because they're having a good time.

I am enormously ok with that take. Betting on racing - or anything else - should be fun first; otherwise it's just another form of work. Naturally, it can be rewarding in more than just passing the time terms.

If you want to know where you are on the profit/loss spectrum, you could use our Bet Tracker. Not only will it help you with your bottom line awareness, it will also highlight areas of strength and weakness - by race type, handicap/non-handicap, distance, field size, and so on.

Users who commit to adding their wagers to Bet Tracker evangelise about how helpful it is in understanding what they do well and where they're leaking cash. Often, it's confirmation of something long suspected; occasionally, it provides a shock in an area considered relatively strong.

 

 

Deposits and withdrawals

I should front up here and concede that I don't use Bet Tracker. Part of the reason is that a lot of my bets are not standard bookie bets. Rather, I play on exchanges and the tote a fair bit, which doesn't lend itself readily to this tool (although there are at least partial workarounds that can be deployed, especially if using the 'notes' function: use a prefix in the notes, and then sort your csv download by the notes column).

But what every online punter - including me - can, and arguably should, do is review deposits and withdrawals from bookie accounts. These won't include bookmaker balances or ante post bets in transit, but as a crude barometer of the ledger they are the one-eyed king in the land of the blind.

Further candid admission: whilst I haven't yet undertaken my annual public P/L exercise, I'm pretty sure I lost a small bit last year. There were reasons for that - apart from picking the wrong quadrupeds! - which I'll come on to when I do that article; but what is crucial is that I sort of knew what was happening throughout... and I was (and still am) totally fine with that. I have several 'jobs' where I derive my income, and I generally top it up a tiny bit from betting - but in real terms that amount has only ever been a vanity symbol. Last year, it probably wasn't. And I had a wonderful time betting horses all year! Anyway, like I said, more on that anon. Which leads me to...

Go Forward... or Sideways!

Having reflected, it's time to resolve. Once you know where you are - or have recently been - you have a choice to make. You might want to change, and you might not. There is no wrong option. Reflecting in the ways I've suggested will only truly answer the "did I make a profit?" question. That, almost certainly, is not the most important one.

Questions like "did I enjoy my time with the form?", "were there any unwelcome side effects?", and "is there something else I'd rather be doing?" are much better ones to ask, assuming the financial bottom line is acceptable to you.

My answers are, "Hell yes, I enjoyed my time with the form", "no side effects whatsoever", and "there is almost (almost!) nothing else I'd rather be doing with that time".

Your responses might be different. But by reviewing, and knowing what they are and where you are, you get to make an informed decision either way.

Forward is good, and sideways might be absolutely fine, too!

 

Happy New Year,

Matt

Monday Musings: Top Jockeys

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Much has been made in recent days about the 21st Century record that Billy Loughnane snatched from the grasp of Kieren Fallon on the final day of 2025, writes Tony Stafford. His single winner, the classy Enemy from the Ian Williams stable, won a £15k first prize at Southwell on Thursday which put Loughnane on 222 for the calendar year, exceeding Fallon’s best, set in 2003.

Fallon won the jockeys’ title six times, the final one in that year when 207 of the wins came in the prescribed period of the championship. The sextet was interrupted midway through in 2000 by Kevin Darley.

Billy would have had a more arduous task to secure the record at the tender age of 19 had Oisin Murphy bothered to stay in the UK for the conclusion of the 2024 season. Murphy and I had a chat at York’s Ebor meeting that August when I suggested that at his then rate of progress, he could even have bettered the record of Sir Gordon Richards, who collected 269 wins in 1947. That was the 20th of Gordon’s 26 championships.

Oisin decided not to stay in the UK, instead chasing the big prizes available to the top riders around the world. He still ended the year with 217. His best to date is 220 in 2019.

Richards missed out on the title three times, to Tommy Weston 100 years ago, Freddie Fox in 1930 and Harry Wragg in 1941. He achieved a lifetime ambition by finally ending his Derby hoodoo in that Coronation year on Pinza. He then broke his pelvis in a fall in the Sandown Park paddock the following summer and retired with 4,870 career wins to his credit. He subsequently enjoyed solid success as a trainer when Lady Beaverbrook was his most important client.

In more recent times, only AP McCoy, of course over jumps, has managed anything comparable, with 20 consecutive titles. His first was as a conditional rider in 1995/96 when based with Toby Balding, whose brother Ian, trainer of Mill Reef, sadly died last week.

AP’s last title came in 2014/15. He habitually broke the 200-winner mark each season, with a peak of 289, thereby considerably exceeding Richards’ best, in 2001/02. The latest champion, Sean Bowen, seems to have been made in McCoy’s single-minded mould. Riding for the prolific and upwardly mobile Olly Murphy, he looks to have a winner-providing source to match McCoy’s supply-line from Martin Pipe.

Bowen apparently sees “no reason why I couldn’t get to 300.” A little boastful maybe, but he won last season’s championship with ease with 180 wins and is already on 170 with almost a full four months to go – that’s 30-odd per month. He won’t want many cold spells to hinder that aim though.

Not an instant success, unlike McCoy and Loughnane, Sean Bowen has been developing his skills for around a decade, initially on now-retired father Peter’s horses. Peter has been succeeded with the licence by another son, Mickey, but is also the first port of call for many other top trainers, in addition to Olly Murphy.

Loughnane also got his riding education with a training father, Mark Loughnane, who normally sends out around 40 winners a year. Billy’s progress has been meteoric, going from six when first allowed to ride as as a 16-year-old in 2022, to 130, 162 and now 222.

Kieren Fallon has been able to watch the young man at close quarters as the former champion is a regular rider at Charlie Appleby’s yard, as is Loughnane. The teenager is the jockey of choice when Appleby needs an alternative when William Buick is otherwise engaged, usually at the main meeting of the day.

It’s a numbers game of course. To get to 222, Loughnane leant heavily on his boss George Boughey – 100 wins in 2025 – and gives great credit for his progress. In all he had 1,321 rides in 2025. Only twice did Kieren Fallon have more than 1,000 rides: 1,055 in his last title winning year and 1,109 for 200 in the following season.

Fallon describes Loughnane as “a guaranteed future champion that does all the right things.” Since the BHA restricted jockeys to riding at a single meeting in 2020 – I had thought it was longer ago than that – to help curb the spread of Covid 19, jockeys might have a quieter life, but the big numbers are less easy to be achieved.

Luke (have saddle will travel) Morris five times rode more than 1,500 horses in a year and despite the one-meeting restriction, he has still maintained at least 1,000 every campaign since 2010.

Fallon is also delighted his son Cieren is developing nicely, helped by a connection with William Haggas. He rode 136 winners despite having not much more than half of Loughnane’s rides (721 last year). Haggas has given him a Group 1 winner in Montassib and the other two victories for him at the top level have been for Roger Teal with his stable star, the sprinter Oxted.

I had a nice day out on Saturday, leaving at an unconscionable hour to make the first race at Lingfield, and I wasn’t the only one. The owners’ room has around 25 big round tables, each with eight chairs and for the entire afternoon most were fully occupied, alongside some very decent food and a well-stocked and easily accessible bar.

Multiple ownership and friends thereof made for a terrific buzz and young Fallon had rides for both his previous Group 1 providers. I was there to represent the owners of recent Southwell winner Florida Suite, only allowed to take her chance after a good deal of agonising by her trainer.

“I think the track might be too sharp – she looked more of a stayer when she won at Southwell – and I’m not sure if the blinkers will work again.” Cieren was more hopeful, but as she toiled home last of six having drifted like a barge, as they say, Fallon reckons Newcastle would be more to her liking. A winning Starman filly, would you want to risk another poor run when a convenient sale is close at hand?

Fallon partnered the Roger Teal newcomer Pangbourne later and that youngster showed some promise for the future. The always-cheerful Roger had already won the opener with All Too Beautiful, completing a hat-trick under Jack Mitchell. That followed a dead-heat for first time handicapper Three Socks On at Chelmsford the previous day.

With so much ice to clear from my car windows before setting off for Lingfield, I was more than a little surprised when Sandown survived the winter snap to provide jumps action that same day. Those frost sheets do pay their way, although Wincanton and already cancelled Newcastle confirm them to be fallible.

Back in the owners’ room at Lingfield, the atmosphere was great. As was mentioned last week, crowds at the race meetings around Christmas and the New Year were very good. To some extent the rather idiosyncratic scheduling of Premier League matches probably didn’t hurt in that regard.

I’m now going to speak a foreign language where the Editor is concerned. [Qué? – Ed.] I stayed awake until late listening to our much-maligned cricketers making a bold riposte in Sydney, only condescending to close my eyes when an accursed thunderstorm ended play early.

Matt no doubt had been annoyed when Arsenal beat Bournemouth on Saturday night. Bournemouth could have scored at least five if things had gone their way. They didn’t. Sorry boss!

 - TS

Monday Musings: On Legacies…

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Amid all the thrilling performances over the Christmas period so far, I cannot shake from my consciousness Ben Pauling’s Mambonumberfive, writes Tony Stafford. I must confess I hated the song of that name when it was popular – maybe I’ll be a bit more charitable after Kempton on Saturday.

Using times as a guide to merit in jump racing is never foolproof, but when successive races on the same card, distance and discipline are concerned, you have a chance of getting a reasonable line to the form.

On Saturday at Kempton – shamefully destined soon to be another housing estate it seems – both Ben Pauling’s Mambonumberfive in the Wayward Lad Novices Chase and Dan Skelton’s Thistle Ask, top-weight in the Desert Orchid Handicap Chase, both Grade 2 events, immediately afterwards were easy winners. The time of the former at 4.47 seconds faster than the standard for the two miles at Kempton, was 0.42 seconds better than Thistle Art’s demolition job in the handicap.

Dan Skelton is considering the Queen Mother Champion Chase for his eight-year-old, winner of five of six chases, the last four all by at least a margin of seven lengths since Skelton took him over from the retired James Ewart this season. He won off 115 first time for Dan and was already up to 146 on Saturday, with a hike guaranteed well into the 150’s when the new ratings come out tomorrow.

This was a race where the pace was unrelenting – three horses goading each other at the front until Harry Skelton pushed the button and sent Thistle Ask away from the rest of the seven-horse field. He seemed to be quickening throughout the race, gathering pace once more as they approached the first of three fences in the straight.

Thistle Ask will be a nine-year-old if he lines up for the Champion Chase, but you need to have an attacking mindset if you want to see off Willie Mullins.

Despite all this, Ben Pauling, a day on from the emotion of The Jukebox Man, Harry Redknapp and all that, unearthed a chaser I contend of equal potential to his stable star.

When Mambonumberfive went through the Arqana sale ring last year for €450k, the obvious question about the three-year-old’s qualification for such a lofty price was, “how?”

He had been unable to win in three tries in juvenile hurdles at Auteuil for French jumps training ace Francois Nicolle with the final effort in June 2024, a month before his sale, being a second to Double-Green homebred Raffles Dolce Vita.

That horse has failed to win again in seven tries, latterly when switched to Ireland. His latest effort was a fourth of six to Gordon Elliott’s Romeo Coolio, beaten 31 lengths, at Fairyhouse late last month. His chance was mirrored by the starting price, 125/1!

While his stock plummeted, Mambonumberfive has flourished under Pauling, initially in three tries over hurdles, winning the second, a Grade 2 novice at Kempton, then switching as a four-year-old to chasing this autumn.

A horse of impressive size and scope, he immediately took to this new role, winning with a sustained finishing effort at Aintree and trumping that with a comfortable two-length defeat of Mighty Bandit at Newbury.

From novice handicaps, Ben switched him to this weight-for-age Grade 2 race against his elders. Five runners here and for most of the two miles Ben Jones allowed him to sit at the back, with a couple of slight errors confirming that position.

Then, as they turned for home, you could see him making quick progress, and by the second last he had got to the front. From the final fence he was travelling so well that he had put seven lengths between himself and runner-up Hansard, a solid performer for Gary and Josh Moore. From last place four from home to seven lengths clear and careering away at the line. All as a four-year-old, although he will be five on Thursday!

You’d have to give him a chance in the Arkle Chase at Cheltenham as he clearly handles going left-handed as well as Saturday’s romp the other way round, but it might be less certain that Cheltenham would suit him as well as Aintree with the long straight there to get him organised for that charge to the line.

The amazing elements for me about Saturday were less that he was quicker than a possible Queen Mother contender having loitered at the back of his field for so long, against the sustained gallop of Thistle Ask’s race, but that he could manage it with so little previous experience of chasing behind him.

If his enormous talent was evident, his stablemate The Jukebox Man exhibited the one attribute that apart from natural ability is most elusive in racehorses, courage and determination not to be beaten.

I well remember how in 2009 when Punjabi won his Champion Hurdle for Raymond Tooth and Nicky Henderson, he was in the middle of a three-horse thrust up the Cheltenham hill between Celestial Halo and Binocular, grittily holding on to the narrow lead he and Barry Geraghty had taken at the final flight.

Here, though, The Jukebox Man did even better as he was overtaken by last year’s King George VI Chase winner Banbridge at that point in the race. It seemed inevitable that he would succumb to that Joseph O’Brien horse’s speed from the last and that of the joint favourites, Willie Mullins’ Gaelic Warrior and Nicky Henderson’s Jango Baie who were also bang there; but he would have none of it.

As four horses strained for the line, suddenly in the dying strides, The Jukebox Man, in the middle under Ben Jones, had his head down at the crucial time, winning by noses from Banbridge and Gaelic Warrior with Jango Baie half a length away. It was a race that racing needed and if you listened to the ITV commentators, a win in the Harry Redknapp colours that was “great for racing”.

It was great for Harry Redknapp and the two Bens certainly, but here was a man in his late 70s, however well known to the public, winning a race. Would his win inspire young racegoers to take more of an interest in the sport? That seems fanciful. Big days, be they at Kempton and Chepstow, where we got a great home win for the Rebecca Curtis/Sean Bowen horse Haiti Couleurs in the Coral Welsh Grand National, inevitably engender great enthusiasm for the young people that attend.

I remember last autumn suggesting that Champions Day at Ascot had many more younger attendees than I’d ever recalled at any meeting, something Grand National winning rider Graham Thorner also noticed that day. Getting them to come back for say, an all-weather card at Kempton, is another matter. I wonder who would get their many all-weather fixtures if the sale did go through.

Kempton was one of the many tracks near London, including Newmarket, my dad took me to from about the age of eight. I’d become much more interested in racing by 1961 at age 15. I recall one Easter we watched the Kempton Guineas trials from the stand at the top of the straight, where they now keep the course equipment.

The horse he’d backed in the 1000 Trial was in front passing us and I was shocked when it didn’t make the frame. That was three from home, though, and a long way out for a mile race! Even so, I thought I knew a bit more about the game than he did – not that ever in my life I’ve matched his facility for successful punting for small stakes.

One day in my teens, I had brought a girl friend to the flat in the afternoon with both my parents out at work, expecting a clear couple of hours. We were in the early throes of getting involved when I heard the front door opening. With a face like thunder, he took one look at the slight clothing disarray, went into his bedroom and within minutes had gone out again.

When mum arrived from work, she told me he went to Kempton, no doubt on the Fallowfield & Britten coach from Clapton Pond <Prince Monolulu, the famed so-called tipster who peed on my shoe at the halfway stop on the way to Newmarket one time, would always be on board>. When he came home, the girlfriend long gone, again I was greeted with a frosty silence as my mum looked on sympathetically.

The following night he went to Hackney dogs, his regular venue while I continued my apprenticeship in punting by going off with my mates to my favoured Thursday night track, Clapton. Slightly closer to home I always got back before him, and the difference in mood was soon evident.

He said, “I went to Kempton last night and had the Tote Treble <a regular bet in the second, fourth and sixth races of ten shillings, 50p in those days>. It Paid £98.18 shillings. Then tonight I had the Trifecta <first three home> at the dogs. It paid £123,15s,3d. <12 pence to the shilling>” He was always a lucky punter and couldn’t wait to tell me, whatever his feelings otherwise.

I never found out what happened to his last bet – he dropped dead in the William Hill betting shop (now closed) at Hackney Wick, 100 yards from his house and the ticket was never found. He was 82 and left me the heritage of Arsenal, cricket at the Oval and racing. What more did an eight-year-old need to set him up for life?

- TS

Boxing Day: To Bet, or Not To Bet?

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Boxing Day – To bet or not to bet, that is the question!

For avid fans, racing on Boxing Day is something to be cherished, usually for one of two reasons, writes Dave Renham. Firstly, the day includes one of the major steeplechases of the year, the King George at Kempton; and secondly, there is always a short hiatus before Christmas and, for those who bet regularly, a few blank days can feel like a lot longer. This year we have three days with no UK racing starting on the 23rd December, today.

In this article I will be examining data from the last ten Boxing Days, focusing on the National Hunt meetings that have been run in the UK. Profits and losses are calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with 2% commission applied to any winning bets.

This year there will be seven such meetings on Boxing Day: at Aintree, Fontwell, Kempton, Market Rasen, Sedgefield, Wetherby and Wincanton. Plenty of meetings to choose from, then, but when there are numerous meetings there can be a tendency to skimp when it comes to analysing and ultimately deciding upon our bets. Lack of time is a factor at this time of year so we need to be careful not to take our eye off the ball, and to continue to use the tried and tested methods we deploy at other times.

When discussing the need for pragmatism around Boxing Day wagering, I hope readers, and more especially my editor Matt, will permit some poetic license given the time of year – allow me a little rein, dear, as it were for the next few paragraphs. [*that was the Ed's joke - apologies! Fire away Dave, permission granted...]

A question I want to start with is, ‘Do you play chess?’

The reason I ask is because, as a keen player myself, I see a lot of parallels between a game of chess and finding a horse to bet on. A chess game is made up of three distinct phases – the opening, the middlegame and the endgame. The opening lays the foundation for the remainder of the game – it sets the stage as it were. When I play chess, which I do regularly online, the black pieces are my pieces of choice. This is despite white having the first move and effectively having the smallest of advantages. The big advantage of me playing black is that it is easier to steer the game in the direction that I would prefer. The middlegame is the complex part of a game of chess. There are usually plenty of pieces on the board and it is key to choose the best strategy for the position. Some middlegame positions see players looking to attack, others require a slower, more strategic approach. The endgame is the final phase where the ultimate goal is checkmating your opponent’s king and winning the game.

My approach to betting on horses is very similar to that of a game of chess. The process I use, like chess, has three distinct phases. The first, is scrolling through the racecard. I will start by looking for the types of races I want to bet in, as well as looking for horses that I have previously made notes on with a view to backing them another day. Just like with the opening in chess, I am trying to play to my strengths.

The second phase is looking in more detail at the races I have initially highlighted, deciding which races fit best in terms of the strategies I typically employ. Some races are easy to attack: they appear less complex, maybe with fewer runners or limited competition; while others demand more time and consideration. The final phase, or my ‘endgame’, is to decide which selections I am going to bet, with the ultimate goal being that I will have a winning day where the bookmakers are ‘checkmated’.

The other parallel that betting on the horses has with chess is how one’s preparation for both has changed in the last 25-30 years. The advance in technology over this period has changed things beyond comprehension for both. Before the late 90s the best humans were better at chess than the best computers. That is not the case now with computers so much better than the best players in the world. However, computers have changed how players learn, study and improve their chess. Likewise in horse racing, 30 years ago there was limited technology to help us with the study of races. Nowadays, 95%+ of serious punters will be using technology when analysing a race.

Here at Geegeez, Gold (and Lite) members have a plethora of tools, at the touch of a button, to help when it comes to the betting selection process. The Query tool, the Profiler tab, the Pace and Draw analysers, numerous daily stats reports, and of course the racecard. From the Geegeez racecard we can easily tap into past form, utilise the excellent Instant Expert tab, as well as look at past race trends, and instantly compare bookmakers’ odds.

Now, I appreciate that readers' approaches will all be slightly different when it comes to deciding upon which horses to punt. However, when betting this Boxing Day, I hope my chess and racing parallels will remind you to select bets in the same way that you would do on any other given day. I have been bitten myself on a few previous Boxing Days when I have rushed, not following my usual methodical approach. I have hurried in the past because of family commitments, which many of us have. But I have learnt that, if I am restricted time wise, I must simply look at fewer races. Alternatively, some, or indeed most race prep can be done before Boxing Day thanks to the early declarations. However, regardless of how many races I eventually look at, I still need to use all of the Geegeez tools that I normally do.

Well, that could be the longest preamble for one of my articles ever! So let me now share some numbers.

Firstly, I would like to look at the win strike rates of different BSP price bands comparing all UK NH results between 2015 and 2024 with the Boxing Day results for those ten years. Clearly, the sample sizes vary considerably but there have been over 430 races run on Boxing Day during this time frame which is a decent sample. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

As the graph shows, the comparative strike rates have been fairly similar across the price bands, although the 1.01 to 8.00 group for Boxing Day runners has been a couple of percentage points below the norm. Ultimately the evidence points to the fact that we are unlikely to see a plethora of unusual results this coming Boxing Day, such as huge betting coups landed on a regular basis, or most favourites going in.

 

Boxing Day Racing: BSP Market Data

To attempt to put more meat on the bones, below are some more detailed BSP splits for the last ten Boxing Days, looking not just at strike rates, but at profits/losses and returns too:

 

 

Horses priced BSP 30.01 and above have produced very poor returns, affirming that big shocks have been rare, indeed rarer than we see usually. The ‘sweet spot’ seems to have been those runners priced 12.01 to 20.00 – they have produced very solid profits over the past ten Boxing Days. The shorter priced runners (BSP 4.25 or shorter) have been slightly below par as a group.

Meanwhile we have seen quite a difference between the returns for the favourite versus the second favourite. Favourites on Boxing Day have been very poor value overall losing over 14p in the £; (133 wins from 438 for a loss of £62.38). Second favourites however have been good value, winning 100 times from 432 runners (SR 23.2%) for profit of £57.21 (ROI +13.2%).

 

Boxing Day Racing: Favourites by Course

I thought it was worth sharing favourite performance by course. I have not included Aintree as that is a new Boxing Day fixture and the sample size amounts to just 14 runs.

 

 

Only Fontwell favourites made a profit during the period of study, and the worst returns have come at the most prestigious meeting at Kempton. It will be interesting to see how favourites fare this Boxing Day at the Surrey venue. Neither Sedgefield nor Wincanton has been kind to favourite backers in the past ten years.

For the remainder of the piece, I would like to set a maximum price limit of BSP 20.0 in order to avoid any of the really big priced winners skewing the bottom lines.

 

Boxing Day Racing: Market Movement

With this price limit set I want to examine market movement, specifically the price movement from Early Morning Odds (EMO) to Opening Show (OS) odds. The table below shows my findings:

 

 

As the table clearly shows, horses that lengthened in price from early morning to Opening Show on Boxing Day have proved to be poor value. Conversely, those horses staying the same price or shortening have proved profitable. What is even more interesting is when we examine the group that shortened between EMO and OS but then drifted between OS and the final ISP. This qualifying group, still with the earlier caveat that their final BSP was 20.0 or less, have produced 454 qualifiers of which 79 won (SR 17.4%) for a healthy profit of £149.04 (ROI +32.8%). So, assuming the pattern repeats this Boxing Day, we should be looking for horses that shorten during the day, but drift in the last ten minutes or so before the off.

 

Boxing Day Racing: Fitness – based on days since last run

Time to look at ‘days since last run’ data, again with the 20.0 BSP cap. Below is a graph which shows the BSP returns (ROI%) based on different periods of time off the track:

 

 

In terms of value, the more recent the run, the worse it has been. Horses returning to the track within ten days of their previous run have lost over 20p in the £. Those off the track for 11 to 21 days would have lost us over 11p in the £. The better value has been with horses returning off a longer layoff, especially those absent between 22 and 84 days (three to twelve weeks). Even those off the track for more than 12 weeks (85 days+) have edged into profit.

 

Boxing Day Racing: Last time out (LTO) finishing position

The finishing position last time out is next on my agenda. The Boxing Day splits have been as follows:

 

 

Based on these stats a finishing position third or worse last time out has been clearly preferable. Horses that finished runner-up LTO have proved to be very poor value. Continuing with the runner-up theme, looking at horses that finished second LTO but were priced bigger than BSP 20.0, there were 65 such qualifiers and all lost. For whatever reason, horses finishing second LTO have clearly not enjoyed Boxing Day in recent years, and they've certainly been over-bet.

 

Boxing Day Racing: Trainers

Finally let me share some trainer data. Clearly, sample sizes for trainers with runners priced BSP 20.0 or less over just ten days are relatively modest to say the least. The table below shows those trainers who have saddled at least 30 runners:

 

 

A few trainers do stand out, one being Gary (and Josh) Moore. That yard has produced an excellent strike rate of 32% with returns of just under 16p in the £. Their market leaders have been particularly impressive with 11 wins from 16 (SR 68.8%) for a profit of £9.38 (ROI +58.6%). The Neil Mullholland stable has also performed well hitting a strike rate of just over one win in every five with the price cap in place. They have sent runners to most meetings, but two courses have seen significantly better results: Wetherby has seen four wins and two seconds for Mulholland from 12 runners producing a decent profit of £26.70 (ROI +222.5%), while the stable's record at Fontwell has been very similar with four wins and one second from 12 runners for a profit of £21.39 (ROI +178.3%).

Philip Kirby is another trainer who has excelled with his runners on Boxing Day producing huge returns from a strike rate in excess of 30%. Most of his profits have come from his handicap hurdlers which enjoyed eight wins from 22 runners (SR 36.4%) for a profit of £58.01 (ROI +263.7%). One other stat to note is that Kirby has sent eight runners to Sedgefield of which four have won at BSP prices of 12.0, 7.56, 4.65 and 10.27.

The legend that is Nicky Henderson has a decent Boxing Day record having secured a better than one in four strike rate, coupled with returns of a smidge above 16 pence in the £. His hurdlers have been the ones to follow thanks to 19 wins from 53 (SR 35.8%) for a profit of £31.60 (ROI + 59.6%).

A trainer who has fared less well based on the win stats is Paul Nicholls, with just 12 wins from 108 runners that were priced BSP 20.0 or less. However, before writing off his runners this Boxing Day, it should be noted that he has had 24 (!) second places across this time frame. It seems that luck may not have been on his side on Boxing Day in recent years, his illustrious record in the King George aside.

*

So those are my thoughts on the topical question, "To bet or not to bet on Boxing Day?"

That will be a question each of us must answer and, for those who respond in the positive, I hope the stats I have shared will point towards some value on the day.

Have a fantastic Christmas and thanks for your support and for the many positive comments members have posted over the past year.

- DR

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