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Billy Loughnane: ‘The Kid’ in Numbers

/in /by

Analysing the Performance of 'Wonderkid' Billy Loughnane 

The official 2026 UK Flat Championship started at the Guineas Festival on Saturday 2nd May and it will end on British Champions Day at Ascot on Saturday 17th October 2026, writes Dave Renham. The Champion will be decided on the number of winners ridden in both Flat and All-Weather races between those two dates.  Hence, as I pen this, roughly a week before publication, there are around ten more weeks to go and, currently, Billy Loughnane is nine wins ahead of Oisin Murphy in the Flat Jockeys Championship. [Update as of publication date: Loughnane has 96 winners, Murphy 82]

Timeline

In what follows I will dig into the record of this young star of the racing world. However, before that let me give some detailed background to the man himself.

Billy Loughnane was born in Ireland in March 2006 and is the son of Daniel Mark Loughnane, a UK-based Irish trainer.  The family moved to Staffordshire at the end of 2011 before relocating in 2017 to a yard near Kidderminster. Being the son of a racehorse trainer, Billy grew up immersed in racing. His brother Jack also rides, and Billy began riding out while he was still at school. He competed in pony racing, winning the All‑Weather Pony Racing Championship in 2022, which is seen as a key stepping stone to professional riding. Here are some highlights from his short but steeply ascendant career to date:

2022 – Loughnane has his first ride in October 2022 on Starfighter at Newcastle. The horse was unfancied and finished a respectable fifth of 12. It would take five weeks for Billy to land his first winner, on his 27th ride, when Swiss Rowe won at Wolverhampton on 28th November 2022 at odds of 28/1.

2023 – By the beginning of the 2023 turf season Loughnane's star was rising fast and, on 1st April that year, he won the Brocklesby Stakes at Doncaster aboard Doddie’s Impact. Five weeks later he was having his first ride in a classic, the youngest jockey since Lester Piggott to do so, partnering Sweet Harmony in the 1000 Guineas. In June of that year, he rode at Royal Ascot for the first time and although he failed to hit the jackpot in his eight rides he steered horses to 2nd and 4th (of 29) in major handicaps. Billy rode out his claim on 8 September 2023, taking less than 11 months to notch the required 95 wins.

2024 – Loughnane achieved his first victories at Royal Ascot at the 2024 meeting, landing successes on Rashabar and Soprano. By the end of the year, he had ridden a remarkable 162 winners from 1174 rides.

2025 – Registered his first Group 1 victory, for Godolphin’s Charlie Appleby aboard Rebel’s Romance in Germany, and became Annual Flat Champion Jockey achieving a record-breaking 222 winners in a single calendar year, surpassing Kieren Fallon’s 2003 record of 221.

2026 – This year so far, he has ridden four Group 1 winners in the UK with three of them coming on Bow Echo. The last of these successes was at Glorious Goodwood in the Sussex Stakes, one of the most stunning victories seen at this iconic venue.

Loughnane already rides like a seasoned pro despite his tender years and, based on what we have seen so far, he could become one of the greats.

 

It's time now to delve into the data. The study period covers Loughnane's entire UK flat (including all-weather) career from that first Newcastle ride in October 2022 to the beginning of August 2026. Profits have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission on all winning bets.

 

Overall stats

Below is a table showing all of Loughnane’s rides in the UK to date:

 

Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
4181 674 16.12 -98.98 -2.37

 

His strike rate has been around the one win in six mark and overall losses to BSP currently stand at just over 2 pence in the £.

 

Results by Year

Let me share the yearly breakdown next:

 

Year Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
2022 61 6 9.84 5.92 9.7
2023 875 130 14.86 -79.22 -9.05
2024 1171 162 13.83 127.34 10.87
2025 1321 222 16.81 -92.52 -7
2026 753 154 20.45 -60.5 -8.03

 

As can be seen, the last couple of years have shown modest losses, which is almost certainly down to his popularity increasing and being overbet.

Indeed, if we look at the average prices of his runners by individual year, we can see that he has ridden more and more fancied runners as the years have passed. The SP figures in the graph are decimal odds so the 16.0 figure for 2023 is equivalent to 15/1.

 

 

In addition to these yearly SP averages showing this trend, we can see a similar pattern when analysing the percentage of favourites he has ridden by year. The graph below shows these splits.

 

 

In 2026, just under one third of Loughnane’s rides have been on the favourite, compared with less than one in ten in 2022.

 

Results by Price (SP)

I want to show a breakdown of the SP prices of his mounts. I have used Industry SP splits as I used the Geegeez Query Tool for the research for this piece. For the record, profit/losses have still been calculated to BSP.

 

SP Price band Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
10/1 or less 3012 629 20.88 -28.68 -0.95
11/1 to 18/1 603 35 5.8 56.2 9.32
20/1 or bigger 566 10 1.77 -126.51 -22.35

 

 

The vast majority of Loughnane's rides have been priced 10/1 or lower, and backing all of these runners blind would have yielded a small loss of around a penny in the £. The 11/1 to 18/1 bracket turned a profit to BSP, while the biggest priced runners - those 20/1 or bigger - have produced quite significant losses.

In terms of market position, here are the splits:

 

Market Rank Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Favourite 901 317 35.18 -2.09 -0.23
2nd favourite 706 146 20.68 3.41 0.48
3rd in betting 581 86 14.8 11.48 1.98
4th in betting 458 49 10.7 15.01 3.28
5th+ in betting 1535 76 4.95 -126.8 -8.26

 

Having seen the figures for the 20/1+ shots earlier, we could have expected the fifth or bigger in the betting group to have made a loss. On favourites Billy has been close to breaking even, while horses second, third and fourth in the market have all nudged into a very small profit.

 

Results by Race Code

I want to compare now Loughnane's record on the turf versus the AW. Here are the figures:

 

Race code Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Turf 1871 290 15.5 -1.16 -0.06
AW 2310 384 16.62 -97.82 -4.23

 

He has had a slightly higher strike rate on the all-weather, but in terms of returns his rides on the turf have lost punters less, virtually breaking even. Let me dig a bit deeper into these numbers by looking at some individual course data.

 

Results by Course

As we know some jockeys seem to ride some courses better than others. Let’s see what the Loughnane stats show us. For a course to qualify he would have needed to have ridden in 40 or more races there:

 

Course Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Ascot 140 14 10 126.19 90.14
Ayr 41 8 19.51 20.84 50.83
Bath 117 19 16.24 -13.02 -11.13
Brighton 78 16 20.51 2.57 3.29
Chelmsford 205 31 15.12 -21.54 -10.51
Chepstow 58 11 18.97 0.98 1.69
Chester 49 5 10.2 -20.5 -41.84
Doncaster 103 15 14.56 -27.58 -26.78
Ffos Las 56 14 25 -1.96 -3.5
Goodwood 76 11 14.47 27.25 35.86
Kempton 407 65 15.97 20.17 4.96
Leicester 111 18 16.22 -26.78 -24.13
Lingfield 353 52 14.73 -33.36 -9.45
Newbury 58 8 13.79 -6.32 -10.9
Newcastle 311 54 17.36 -62.7 -20.16
Newmarket 213 31 14.55 -60.96 -28.62
Salisbury 60 12 20 -4.56 -7.6
Sandown 63 10 15.87 9.36 14.86
Southwell 295 39 13.22 -73.68 -24.98
Windsor 105 16 15.24 -8.67 -8.26
Wolverhampton 782 150 19.18 71.35 9.12
Yarmouth 190 26 13.68 -9.49 -4.99

 

The Ascot bottom line has been skewed considerably by a BSP 120.6 winner, but the remaining courses have not seen big priced winners significantly affecting the profit/loss figures. In terms of the all-weather, he has ridden well at Wolverhampton despite having quite poor figures over the two sprint trips of 5 and 6 furlongs. At the Midlands track over 7f or more Loughnane has piloted 119 winners from 555 runners (SR 21.4%) for a healthy profit of £135.94 (ROI +24.5%).

Sticking with the AW, at Kempton he has actually had a higher strike rate in handicap races than non-handicaps which is very unusual. His handicap record at the track reads 47 wins from 291 rides (SR 16.2%) for a profit of £57.12 (ROI +19.6%).

Meanwhile, on the grass at Goodwood Billy has a fine record when his mounts have been either favourite or second favourite. Combining these two market positions at the Sussex track has seen seven winners from 23 (SR 30.4%) for a profit of £11.82 (ROI +51.4%).

Newmarket has been a less kind track to Loughnane overall, and his record with favourites is actually extremely poor. When steering the market leader he has won only 13 of 46 rides (SR 28.3%) for quite hefty losses of £18.30 (ROI -39.8%).

One way to help assess how a jockey has ridden particular courses is to look at the A/E index which is a metric that determines value by dividing the actual number of winners by the expected number of winners based on their betting odds. Anything greater than 1.00 suggests potential value across the subset of horses analysed. Below is a graph showing the courses where Loughnane has achieved an A/E index of above 1.00 across the period of study:

 

 

Seven courses have made ‘the list’ and, considering I am basing the A/E indices on Industry SP, these are courses that Loughnane has almost certainly ridden well. For the record, he made a blind profit at five of the seven.

 

Results by Class of Race

A look next at class of race to see what we can glean from these stats:

 

Class of Race Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
1 180 26 14.44 145.19 80.66
2 384 37 9.64 -86.48 -22.52
3 327 60 18.35 12.04 3.68
4 882 149 16.89 -80.12 -9.08
5 1224 218 17.81 -40.14 -3.28
6 1184 184 15.54 -49.47 -4.18

 

Class 1 races have proved extremely profitable but in truth that BSP 120.6 winner was responsible for the vast majority of the profits. Having said that, Billy has made a blind individual profit in each of the Class 1 race groupings - Group 1, 2, 3 and Listed. He has, though, struggled somewhat in Class 2 events, especially non-handicaps, where losses have been close to 60p in the £.

 

Results by Trainer

Loughnane has ridden for 269 different trainers in his career to date, from which ten he has paired up at least 60 times. Those trainers are shown below (listed in alphabetical order):

 

Trainer Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
C Appleby 76 33 43.42 4.7 6.18
M Appleby 64 6 9.38 -43.21 -67.52
G Boughey 865 161 18.61 -38.28 -4.43
E Dunlop 71 9 12.68 -23.95 -33.73
C Hills 69 8 11.59 -29.95 -43.41
R Hughes 65 11 16.92 5.17 7.95
C Johnston 202 23 11.39 -93.39 -46.23
D M Loughnane 470 63 13.4 101.47 21.59
E Walker 66 10 15.15 24.68 37.39
I Williams 183 36 19.67 -14.22 -7.77

 

He has a good overall record with his father, although this year to date his mounts would have lost blind bettors close to 30p in the £. His partnership with George Boughey has seen some amazing race wins but overall the partnership has produced a small loss. The sweet spot for the Loughnane/Boughey combination has been with horses priced between 8/1 and 14/1. This cohort have produced 19 winners from 142 runners (SR 13.4%) for a heathy profit of £122.97 (ROI +86.6%).

 

Run Style 

Finally, a look at the results for different run styles. We would expect based on past data that Loughnane would have had the most success on front/early leaders. Let’s see the splits:

 

Run Style Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Leader 539 113 20.96 198.32 36.79
Prom 927 194 20.93 -19.76 -2.13
Mid div 1443 229 15.87 -59.83 -4.15
Held up 1263 137 10.85 -211.02 -16.71

 

As expected, front runners (leaders) have produced the best profit figure, although in terms of win rate front runners and prominent racers have both won close to 21% of the time. Of course, we do not know pre-race what run style the horse will produce, but clearly the more forward a Loughnane horse is early, the better. In general, hold up horses have struggled.

 

*

 

So, there we have it. As with most jockeys who become very successful, it is not easy to find profitable areas once the public latches on. However, a good starting point would be to ignore any runners priced 20/1 or bigger and focus on those who have better chances as reflected in the market. From there we can use other race reading angles to hopefully narrow down possible selections and hence help us find some horses offering value.

- DR

Monday Musings: Declines And Falls

/in /by

When you get to my advanced years, the one thing you cannot afford to do is take a fall, writes Tony Stafford. So many friends of my generation have suffered broken hips or worse, two in separate incidents in one case. Another, Maurice Manasseh, still feels the discomfort and has the bruising to show from his tumble down a difficult flight of steps during Royal Ascot, only minimised by girlfriend Clare’s alertness in interrupting the fall.

Late last week I learnt of another long-time friend’s awful situation. Prince Rajsinh of Rajpipla, son of the much-revered Maharajah of Rajpipla, owner of 1934 Derby winner Windsor Lad, slipped and fell in the foyer of his block of flats “two years ago”, he remembers. He suffered such serious injuries that he is now confined to bed and needing support from a team of four carers.

While feeling so frustratingly helpless, he says “I watch the racing 12 hours a day and still have my tiny bets”. Without the Sport of Kings and for that matter of Sons of Maharajahs, he would be totally lost.

A tall, lean, always-smartly attired man right up to the time of his accident, Pippy used to stroll every day from his apartment in Park Lane, next to the Dorchester Hotel, and up to St John’s Wood. It was almost a five-mile round trip. “Now, I cannot walk at all. It’s horrible,” he says.

In his early days in the late 1950s and early 1960s he was a youthful owner with Major Peter Cazalet, one of the premier jumps trainers of that era. He had plenty of success with Cazalet, even selling a couple of his up-and-coming horses, Three No Trumps and Oedipe II, the latter acquired from France, to Her Majesty the Queen Mother. They became good friends.

Apart from being one of the leviathans of the betting rings of the South-East in those days, he was also something of a man about town, often seen in the company of such as Joan Collins and her then husband, the singer/actor Anthony Newley.

I knew him from the track probably a decade later and then when I took over as part-time editor of The Racehorse weekly paper, inheriting Pippy as one of the correspondents. He was then living in France and used to send over his weekly offerings by post. It came in flowery handwriting and always showed how close he was to the action over there, close friends especially with the Head family, Alec and children Criquette and Freddy.

One Monday morning in May 1976, so 50 years ago, he called with a real exclusive. The day before he had been at Longchamp to see the Prix Lupin, a discontinued race for years, but in those days the best trial for the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby).

Owner Nelson Bunker Hunt, a major American owner-breeder, long before his demise after trying unsuccessfully to corner the world silver bullion market, had two runners in the Lupin. The favourite was Youth, ridden by France’s perennial champion Yves Saint-Martin, and his other runner, Empery, would be the mount of Lester Piggott. Both were trained by Egyptian-born Maurice Zilber and they finished in the correct order, with Youth first and Empery third.

The bombshell was that Pippy overheard Lester whisper to Zilber, “I’ll ride him in the Derby”. Talk about an exclusive. Even Peter O’Sullevan, Zilber’s friend, hadn’t been privy to the conversation. Empery was 33/1 that day, but not for long; Lester duly took the ride and Empery, 10/1 by Derby Day, won as he liked with Wollow, the 2,000 Guineas winner and favourite for Henry Cecil, failing to stay. Youth won the French Derby, naturellement.

It was also at that far-off time when Michael Dickinson was still a jockey riding for his father Tony from their yard in Gisburn, Lancashire, before the later move across the Pennines to Harewood in Yorkshire. The very tall Michael used to go to a sauna every night to help keep his weight under control and would then call me most evenings at the Daily Telegraph, starting every conversation with, “Now then!”

One night he said his dad was planning to travel to New Zealand to try to buy some horses. Derek Kent had had great success at that time with New Zealand imports in his yard near Goodwood and Tony wanted to try to follow his example.

Knowing, however, that I had a nice contact in France, I suggested to Michael that maybe they should first think about a shorter trip. Pippy soon organised a visit to the stable of Malcolm Parrish, a friend of Lester’s who had around 100 horses in his stable, officially under his head lad’s name, among them some “proper horses.”

They went over and came up with two: a four-year-old called French Hollow who had a very high handicap rating and a three-year-old who had already run twice over hurdles early in the year called Flying Hugue. They bought the pair and French Hollow turned out to be a top-class hurdler in the UK before transferring to the US where he became champion steeplechaser; Flying Hugue landed a massive gamble first time at Wetherby on Boxing Day.

There were three Dickinson runners in that race. Two older newcomers – Brother Broncho, ridden by Michael, and Carnival Day as well as Flying Hugue. Colin Tinkler had the mount on the three-year-old as he could do a light weight. So, while everyone expected Michael to be on “the one”, as he remembers, “I only told Col he would win in the paddock. He did!”

That purchase was the forerunner to my accidentally meeting Malcolm Parrish with David O’Brien (Vincent’s son, a Derby-winning trainer himself and now a happy wine grower in France) at the Cashel Palace Hotel, close to Ballydoyle. I came away from the meeting owning ten horses! I told Malcolm I had been the instigator to the French Hollow/Flying Hugue deal. “Want any more?” he asked. “Okay,” I replied. “Fancy ten for 100k?” “Why not?”, although I doubt I had 10 grand at the time.

Still, Brunico, Santopadre and others soon sorted out that impossible situation, while Malcolm, who owned carpet mills in Europe, later bought neighbouring Lordship and Egerton studs although he would later return to France with wife “Snif” having sold the farms near the National Stud and July Course in Newmarket.

Pippy came back to London soon after and as he says, “I’ve lived in this flat for 45 years now.” Apart from being a regular racegoer at the London tracks for most of those many years, he also took time to produce a well-received booklet called The War Zone and wrote for several years for the Sun newspaper, which used his title and racing knowledge in its own inimitable style.

If all that seems a long time ago, he does have a cherished memory of his last trip to a racecourse. He recalled, “The last time I went racing, I spent the day with Jilly Cooper. How awful that that wonderful person and writer should have died after a fall at her home last year.”

*

For many years, no Ascot meeting would have gone without the presence of Prince Pippy and he was always an astute paddock watcher before finalising his bets. He would have loved being there on Saturday for the latest instalment of the Shergar Cup, an event graced for only the second time, and first for 20 years, by Ryan Moore.

Granted a free day by the switch of last weekend’s Curragh fixture to Sunday, he gave great professional legitimacy to a day which is never short of enjoyment among the always healthy crowds. Ryan, winning two and placed second and third once each from his five mounts, won the individual award.  His UK and Ireland team, completed by Dylan Browne McMonagle and Saffie Osborne, took the team prize. “It’s been lovely,” said a beaming Ryan.

Meanwhile, son Toby was over at Newmarket getting home by a short-head on Man Of Vision in a handicap for his boss Charlie Appleby. With so many nice horses at home to ride, and with Ryan to keep an eye out for him, and rein in any over-confidence, it’s clear that the 7lb claimer is on the right path.

I spoke to his grandfather Gary at Goodwood the other day, saying he must be pleased with his grandson’s progression. He said, “He’s doing all right – considering he’s in a care home!” Wonder what he meant? No doubt Gary might have preferred the sort of rough and tumble with which his own four kids Ryan, Jamie and Josh, along with sister Hayley, started out. To think that Ryan’s first ever winner came in a hurdle race!

The most amazing result of the past week was by a Godolphin horse trained by Charlie Appleby.

When an Appleby three-year-old makes its debut at a place like Kempton, you would assume that all the work riders – lots of ex-jockeys among them – would have an idea of what to expect and the horse would be priced accordingly. But when Fortunadine, a gelded full brother to recently retired multiple Group 1 winner Rebel’s Romance took his first steps on a racecourse, he was only moderately fancied.

Fortunadine was allowed to start at 7-2, with James Doyle getting him fast out of the stalls in this 1m3f novice race, the pair simply stretching relentlessly further clear of their 11 rivals to the tune of 21 lengths.

It seems nobody had a clue, Charlie saying, “He shows us nothing!” He has now! Pippy was watching. “I’ve never seen anything like it!” he said.

- TS

2026/27 Footy Season Preview

/in /by

The World Cup is more than a fortnight past and I'm itching for the domestic action to get going once again. With Ay Curumba Cup (or whatever it's called now) first round matches preceding the opening weekend of league games, there's a little extra time to wrangle with your permutations: I don't expect those knockout results to have a significant bearing on ante post prices for the main action.

As ever, allow me to preface with the fact that I know little more than some of you, and considerably less than many of you, about footer so the usual 'buyer beware' caveat is watermarked across all of what follows.

2025/26 Season Review

Let's first have a squint at how last season went. I was late to the party and, as a result, a number of the prices on teams I wanted onside had been snaffled (mainly due to the Racing Post's excellent pullout leaning in similar directions before my tardy publication). As a risky workaround and a slightly desperate attempt to claw back some of the lost price juice, for the first time I added a couple of bankers to all tickets.

Mercifully, both PSG (1/8) and a Kane-inspired Bayern Munich (1/3) won their domestic divisions which added a 50% kicker onto the cumulative will pays of all tickets.

But, it's worth repeating, if either had failed to land the odds, the game would have been up. There are no certainties and it was a risky play.

Further down the slips came the English picks: two chances for promotion from the Championship, a single promotion guess in League One, and one each - to win and to be promoted - in the National League.

 

Championship: Ipswich / Sheff Utd

League One: Stockport

National League: York City win / Carlisle promotion

 

It's fair to say that no part of it was 'eased down' with three matches to play, except Bundesliga Bayern. Having put themselves in a very strong position, draws away at West Brom and, less frustratingly, a front foot Southampton, meant Ipswich needed a win on the final day at home to QPR. Two early goals all but sealed the deal as they secured the runner up spot behind Coventry City.

Sheffield United endured a luckless season, falling out of the blocks and then succumbing more than almost any side in the section to the dreaded xG variance. In the xG table, they were fifth for goals scored and sixth for xG difference. In the actual table, they finished 13th. Sigh. This pick was not nearly as bad as it might have appeared, for all that we'd have still needed a bit of luck to get into the playoffs on xG performance.

If we were a touch unlucky with the Blades, we probably got what we deserved with Stockport. Third over 46 games, without getting close to the top two, County beat Stevenage home and away in the playoff semi-final before getting found out at Wembley by Bolton. As I mentioned in emails at the time, however, this did offer us an opportunity to hedge a bit of our potential winnings. I hedged £300 on this.

 

 

And then there was the National League. With hindsight, this was a poor bet even though we nearly got both right. For a fun play, it's important to have as many avenues open as possible; so, while the Championship and League One offer two automatic promotion places and playoffs down to sixth, and L2 has an extra auto with playoffs down to seventh place... the National League has a single automatic spot for the winner and a sole playoff spot for the best second to fifth placed team. That's notably less scope for retaining the interest and I won't be in a rush to return south of League 2.

That said, York City did win the division - just! And Carlisle finished a snug third, well placed for a playoff run against a dejected Rochdale who'd missed out on auto by a nose. But the Cumbrians were poor at home to their long-distance-travelling semi-final opponent Boreham Wood, and were fortunate even to take it to extra time before giving best.

Meanwhile, 'dale's late drama extended to the playoff final, and positively this time, as they snatched an equaliser in the 97th minute before prevailing on penalties to earn a deserved promotion.

In the end, then, I returned £468.92 off a stake of £240, so a profit of £225 or so. And a season's worth of fun and games along the way... If you didn't follow my Stockport headging advice/lead and instead let things ride, you would have lost about 30% of your initial investment. Not catastrophic on a fun long range bet, but also not as good as getting a few beers out of it.

 

 

You can review last season's thinking here, if you'd like to...

Let's roll on to the new season now.

2026/27 Preview

There is a key change to be aware of this season, relating to the Championship playoffs. Starting now, teams from third to eighth will be involved in playoff matches: the winners of single match shootouts between 5th vs 8th and 6th vs 7th will play two-legged ties against the third and fourth placed finishers to decide who goes to Wembley. From a promotion bet perspective, then, that's slightly more hedging wriggle room if our pick doesn't get it done automatically.

As a final aside, if you might be interested I've added a few further thoughts in a p.s. at the very bottom of this post.

Championship Promotion

I was really tempted to include West Ham to get promoted at 8/15, and I think they will. But... there are reasons to believe they'll have a choppy start. Off field issues with ownership might be compounded by a super tough opening four fixtures that include Burnley and Watford away, and Wolves at home. My feeling is that they'll probably drift a bit, maybe to 4/6 or so, by early September. That could be a time to include them in a rollup based on what has been learned across the early weeks.

Anyway, so much for who I'm not including. First name on this year's team sheet is Middlesbrough to be promoted. They've finally lost talisman Hayden Hackney but have also belatedly addressed an attack that has fallen just a little shy of what's needed. Defensively Boro were solid last season, conceding very close to a goal a game, a record as good as Coventry, Ipswich and Millwall - and a key to getting promoted. But they scored 25 fewer goals than Cov. Out went Hackney then (no other notable exits to date), but in comes the wing wizardry of Sarmiento and the potential goal output of Lankshear, a young 'sniffer' who, on loan from Spurs, suffered from lack of creativity behind him in a relegated Oxford side. They've also added proven Championship talent in Kyle Joseph from promoted Hull and a couple of lads from the MLS about whom I know nothing.

Their xG was bang there in the second half of last season when very often they were battering teams without winning. That sort of variance normally resolves itself soon enough and, because of West Ham's legit claim to bounce back, every other team is a square price. Middlesbrough are 3/1 in places, 11/4 generally and will be the sole stab in the Championship because of the Irons imponderable.

My working out includes not being sold on Wolves at the price, that Saints will start on -4 and might get a further deduction (it's a big ask already, even allowing for their blistering finish to last season), and that Burnley are likely to be thereabouts. Sheff U could sneak into the frame if their financial situation is sorted pronto, but that looks a big 'if'; and I don't really see the case for celebrity US-owned Birmingham or Wrexham, which is not to say that they won't show me the case!

League 1 Promotion

We're definitely not going back down the Stockport route this season. Under new manager Jim McNulty, poached from National League runners up and now L2 Rochdale, the squad is in transition and it doesn't look strong enough this time.

The elephant in the L1 room is a fox, or an earth of foxes more accurately. Leicester City's squad and manager tower over this division. Russell Martin got Southampton promoted from the Championship to the Premier League, and has lots of experience; and his squad has shed a few - but surprisingly few (so far) - of the relegated collective. Off went Fatawu, Winks, Daka and El Khannouss along with some older and more expensive wage contributions. In come Conor Chaplin and Liam Cullen, while still at the club are the likes of Mavididi, de Cordova-Reid, Skipp and Choudhury.

However, all those named are attacking talents and last season's big problem was defensive: they shipped 58 goals against an expectation of 65 on the quality of the chances they gave up. They were really poor at the back. Naturally, attackers in League One are a level below those in the Championship, but still work is needed. City have recuited Alex McCarthy, well known to Martin from their time at Southampton, to challenge for cat duties and they've had an excellent pre-season. At 4/5 and 8/11 they are very short but they're not the wrong price and could even be a smidge of value. And they will doubtless give us something to cheer for a large part of the season at least.

I'm not at all sold on the Lazarus case for Sheffield Wednesday, preferring the prospects at bigger prices of Plymouth and Blackpool; but, slightly more than that pair (who are playable in promotion singles if you fancy it) I like Luton Town. Unexpectedly (for me anyway), Jack Wilshere did pretty well after joining the Hatters in mid-October and led them to a win in the EFL Trophy as well as 7th in the league - just missing the playoff spots. They finished unbeaten in their last twelve matches, eleven in the league, a run that included nine wins.

Wilshere has made some good looking acquisitions: striker Callum Marshall scored 9 in 43 in L1 two years ago aged 19; right back Harrison Ashby had 42 Championship appearances in the past couple of seasons; and both Gideon Kodua and Kasey Palmer have signed permanently after strong scoring loan spells last season. I expect Lu'on to at least make the playoffs, their promotion odds being 11/4 in places and 5/2 generally.

League 2 Promotion

After last season's flirtation with the National League we revert to League 2 to round out the wager. On the plus side there are three auto spots and playoffs down to seventh. Consequently, however, prices are a little less juicy - we can't have our cake and eat it!

Over the last ten seasons, 40 teams got promoted. A quarter of them had been relegated from L1 in the previous campaign (40 such teams), a quarter were beaten in the previous season's playoffs (30 such teams), and a half went up from 'the rest' (170 such teams).

That means that relegated L1 sides made up 25% of the promoted teams from a cohort of 16.7% of all L2 teams. Beaten playoff sides made up 25% of promoted teams from 12.5% of all L2 teams. And teams finishing 8th-22nd in L2 (18) or promoted from the National League (2) were responsible for 50% of promoted teams from 70% of all L2 teams.

Still with me? The management summary is hardly earth-shattering: sides dropping down and, especially, those who almost got promoted the year before accounted for half of all promoted L2 teams in the past decade, from slightly less than 30% of teams in the division. Of course, that's hardly lost on a market which has many of those sides to the fore in its ante post lists.

Salford make perfect sense and they're credible favourites, but they fall into the MK Dons bracket for me: expensive to follow even though you know that eventually - as MK did last season - they'll get promoted. Apprehensively, I'll step over them. Barnet were good - and unlucky - last season, just missing the playoffs, but they've lost the goal threat of Stead (their top scorer) and creativity of Glover (most appearances, assist machine) which tempers enthusiasm for a repeat bid.

I'm taking a chance first off with one of the playoff teams from last season, Grimsby Town. The Mariners have finished ninth and seventh in their last two League Two campaigns and this is a team with continuity at its core. Manager David Artell has been in charge for more than three years and they've retained all of their attacking options from last term. They boasted the highest xG in the league as well as the highest xG difference, and if they can convert those 'quality of chance' superiorities into a couple more wins they'll be right in the shake up at around 5/2 or 11/4.

For the second pick in this section I was mulling between the trio of Bristol Rovers (top manager, strong end to last season), Chesterfield (beaten in playoffs, a lot of ins/outs this summer) and Port Vale (massive player turnover). In the end, I've plumped tentatively for the Gas. I very much like the case for teams that a) finish the previous season strongly, and b) have a high degree of continuity in personnel to offer hope that more of the same will follow.

Rovers are managed by 'been there, done that' Steve Evans and they retain their two major goal outlets in Cavegn and Harrison; the former is a rising force and the latter a proven if not prolific scorer at L2 level. They won eight of their last ten last season, drawing the other two, and - though they have a tricky opener - look to have a nice run of fixtures to establish a front rank position through September. They're 2/1 or so for promotion, which gives us the cheer down to seventh spot.

The Bet

So it's a perm trixie - doubles and trebles.

Sixteen bets, so for 50p's it's £8, and fingers crossed we can at least get an automatic double and a playoff hedge chance somewhere in their midst.

365 are top or equal top price on almost all picks, so no messing/shopping around this time...

Here's my ticket:

 

 

So that's what I'll be cheering from the cheap seats this season. But what about you? Can you make a case for or against any team, or perhaps a cheeky under the radar exotic market play somewhere?

If I've annoyed you with what I've said about your team, tell me why I'm wrong (I probably am!) - just leave your comment in the box below.

Good luck!

Matt

 

p.s. as mentioned earlier, a few other things I'm thinking about.

Barcelona (4/5) will probably beat Real Madrid again to win La Liga.

Bayern Munich are very short this year, especially with Harry K-nackered up top. They'll likely just win the Bundesliga once more, but 1/8 is tight enough.

PSG at a similar price (as big as 1/6) look as close to a good thing as there is. Barring a points deduction or some such, they'll win Ligue 1 again.

Hull simply must be relegated and 1/4 is fair enough about a team that fluked into the top tier and haven't bothered reinforcing, appearing to accept the overwhelming likelihood of their fate.

It might be one of those years where the three promoted to EPL get relegated again, but I think Sunderland at 4/1 to go down is a very good bet. They over-performed significantly last season against xG, they had half their squad at the World Cup and so less rested, and they have Europa League as a distraction this time around. Though it pains me to say it, 10/1 Bournemouth might give you a relegation run by a similar rationale.

4/7 Celtic will win the Scottish Premiership again.

Parlaying Barca, Bayern, PSG, Hull and Celtic comes to about 7/2, pretty much all of which is on the coin tosses in La Liga and the Scottish Prem (apols to Jambos). You'll get a run for the pennies even though a lot needs to go right for a payout and only one thing wrong for a kicking...

One last thing. The Premier League is comfortably the deepest talent pool in the world and, as such, our teams have outstanding chances in both the Europa and Conference Leagues. I'll backing those dashing Cherry Reds to win the Europa League at any double digit quote. It would truly be the most ridiculous story ever to be told in our other great game...

Monday Musings: A Little Bit of Rekindling

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At my age it doesn’t take much to trigger long-hidden memories, writes Tony Stafford. I wondered as I sat down to open these words why the song “A little bit of soap”, an ordinary ditty from 1961 by the Jarmels (who they, I ask?) should be inhabiting my brain. The next visit to the bathroom revealed all, a tiny amount remained in the soap dish – barely enough to work up a passable lather.

I’d already had another memory from the 1950s/60s when I spoke to Jack Morland about his first-time two-year-old Spes Durat Avorum, which ran yesterday at Yarmouth. That Latin name is the school motto of Kimbolton School and my school, Central Foundation in London, has the school motto and song, Spe Labore Fide.

It still is, and the school remains where it was, at the roundabout between Old Street and City Road just north of the City of London’s boundary.

It meant “hope, labour, faith” and, even more than six decades since my three (or was it four?) years’ learning Latin, a fair remnant remains, still helpful in guessing the meaning of some more obscure words.

I’m sure my first wife retains that ability, too. She got 100 per cent in her first Latin examination, and the following time it was 99%. The teacher, a kindly soul, remarked, “You’re on the slippery slope, Gillian!”

I normally remark here on June 23 or thereabouts that we are on the slippery slope to ever-shorter days for the next six months until just before Christmas. It was during the period of maximum darkness that I embarked on something I hadn’t previously – gorging on a Netflix series.

I’d found the odd ten- or twelve-episode stuff to ease me into subconsciousness before going off to sleep, but his time I’d discovered the ultimate. It encapsulated hope, labour, faith in full measure.

On Netflix you get various menus and one day I noticed a series that I’d maybe seen the odd episode of from way back when first screened more than 30 years ago. It was the hospital drama ER, Emergency Room, situated in Chicago and the idea of novelist Michael Crichton, which began in 1993 and continued until 2008.

You click on ER and it comes up as Season 1 Episode 1. The first season ran for 25 episodes. Each of the next 14 – yes there were 15 seasons! – contained 22 shows, so a total of 333! On Friday night I finished them all, by way of two or three every night, so obviously from midwinter onwards.

When it rather cleverly ended on that ultimate double-length finale, it showed that, like life, everything in an ER goes on as before, however much the personnel changes. Nobody is indispensable. Bereft of my bedtime nourishment, I looked on the menu on Saturday for available shows and there it was. Season 1 Episode 1. I couldn’t resist a quick look, but after viewing for a minute, I switched it off, trusting that I never again will succumb to its addictive charms.

Racing’s a bit like that. You get to a point when you might think you are losing your enthusiasm and then something happens to rekindle the excitement. Goodwood is always a track that did that for me and my two visits on Tuesday and Thursday were no different. I enjoyed being close to the action as Scandinavia in the Goodwood Cup and Diamond Necklace in the Nassau Stakes reaffirmed the Aidan O’Brien team’s status as the top stable of 2026.

In between, hoping for a restful day in front of the box rather than another 280-mile round trip, I admired the power of Bow Echo’s finish under Billy Loughnane to catch old rival Gstaad in the Sussex Stakes.

George Boughey is such a cool customer. I remember one day when he was assistant trainer to Hugo Palmer in his Newmarket days, going up to watch one of Ray’s young horses make its debut at Thirsk. George was in his early 20s then, but he already had a calm assurance about him. The horse ran well but didn’t go on. George did, in spades.

If anyone on the TV teams on either ITV or Racing TV read this, none of them has bothered to change the pronunciation of Bow to Bough, meaning the echo coming from the bow of a ship. Who cares, apart from George Hill, or Mr Pedantic as we must call him from now on. He’s visiting some of his grandchildren in the US now, so he won’t be offended at the disrespect.

I remember sitting with Sheikh Mohammed in a car near a yard at Dullingham near Newmarket, it must have been more than 40 years ago, when he said, “To develop a serious breeding programme it can take 30 years.” His Darley Stud and Godolphin operation have pretty much achieved that now and are serious producers along the lines of Coolmore, if without that stud’s breadth of stallion and mare talent, Juddmonte and Shadwell and the Aga Khan Studs.

Another Middle Eastern power, this time from Qatar, has sought to make a short-cut to prominence in the game. Wathnan Racing, using the recruitment skills predominantly of Richard Brown, has gone for buying young horses from the sales to horses in training that have already shown ability.

Initially Wathnan’s ownership was secretive but now we know in its third full year of operation that the Emir of Qatar is the owner. If you own a country, that always helps; Qatar also is the main sponsor of Goodwood, pushing its prizemoney ever upward. Understandably, Wathnan targeted the meeting to showcase its development, and last week had a spectacular time.

They won seven races in all, culminating with a head victory for James Doyle’s mount Evening Saigon on the less-favoured far side in a typically tight finish for the week in the Stewards’ Cup. Their 37 runners were spread through most of the top domestic yards, but their home champion trainer Hamad Al Jehani showed his own talent when as well as the Stewards’ Cup, he also won another big handicap with Archivist earlier in the week.

Just as Ryan Moore sometimes gets on the wrong horse when Coolmore has multiple runners, so Doyle occasionally must watch on as another rider takes the prize. It happened three times last week, but I know how proud his mum Jacqui is at her son’s success in such a high-profile job. He rode four of his team’s winners, one fewer than Ryan Moore and equal second on the week with Dylan Browne McMonagle.

McMonagle is rising to the top with his boss Joseph O’Brien, leading trainer at the meeting with four wins. Dylan is a little older than the meteor that is Loughnane, who over the past fortnight has stretched his lead in the 2026 Championship table over four-time winner Oisin Murphy from four to 11, now 84 to 73 thanks to 18 wins in those two weeks.

As ever, agent Tony Hind has been the catalyst. Former champions Ryan Moore and William Buick’s agent also handles Loughnane. An example of his astuteness came on Thursday. Roger Teal was running his twice-raced filly Avalon Queen in the two-year-old fillies’ maiden. The word here before racing was that the Aidan O’Brien filly So Lovely, a daughter of Wootton Bassett out of 1,000 Guineas and Oaks winner Love, was a bigger certainty that day even than Diamond Necklace.

Roger told me, “They rang up for the ride for Billy on Avalon Queen. Tony Hind must have fancied her.” In the race Loughnane was always a couple of lengths ahead of the hot favourite and, although it was quite tight at the line, So Lovely didn’t quite get up.

I’ve called Billy a future champion many times and one reminiscent of a young Lester Piggott. It seems that the future is now and while Oisin has the Andrew Balding masses at his disposal, Loughnane is getting his rides from an ever-widening circle. I reckon it’s done and dusted. Maybe even for the next ten years! I hope I’m around to see it.

- TS

Course Topography: Uphill Finishes

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Horses racing at a course with an uphill finish – is a good run at a similar course LTO a positive?

Almost all American tracks are flat, left-handed (anticlockwise) ovals, whereas in the UK the courses differ considerably, writes Dave Renham. Before I get to the meat and bones of my latest research let me outline some of these differences:

  1. Track Layout & Shape

UK flat tracks vary dramatically in geometry, and this can be a factor in terms of affecting how races play out.

  • Galloping tracks - (e.g., Newmarket Rowley Mile, Doncaster). They usually have long straights and sweeping bends tend to favour long‑striding horses who build rhythm.
  • Sharp tracks - (e.g., Chester, Catterick). Sharp tracks have tight turns and often short straights, and this usually rewards early speed and handy positioning.
  • Left‑handed versus right‑handed - Some horses show clear preferences depending on the direction of turns.
  1. Topography & Gradients

Courses vary greatly because they are not all totally flat. Here are three types worth noting:

  • Severely undulating: Brighton is the classic example — rolling cambers and slopes test balance and agility.
  • Unique gradients: Epsom is famously challenging, with steep climbs and descents, plus a cambered straight.
  • Perfectly flat tracks: Some courses (e.g., Nottingham) offer more ‘level’ racing with fewer balance challenges.

These differences mean course specialists can emerge.

  1. Surface Type

Not only does the UK have turf and AW racing, but the turf conditions vary due to the weather conditions, the amount of watering used when it has been hot/dry, the make-up of the soil (clay, chalk), and so on.

Indeed, it has been quite eye-opening looking at each individual course over the past five full years (2021 to 2025) in terms of the percentages of races that were run on ground good or firmer. I had assumed that the Southern courses would have the highest percentages and the Northern courses the lowest, based on rudimentary knowledge of UK weather patterns. However, things did not pan out entirely in that way. Firstly, let me share the course with the top ten percentages of fast ground prevalence:

 

Bar chart of UK flat racing courses with the highest % of races going good or firmer; values from Newmarket 86.9% to Ripon 72.8%.

 

As we can see, half of the ten courses hail from the north of the country namely Wetherby, York, Musselburgh, Beverley and Ripon. So, what about the ten courses with the lowest percentages? The next graph highlights these courses:

 

Bar chart showing UK flat racing courses with the lowest share of races where going was good or firmer; Pontefract 65.4% down to Ffos Las 48.6%, with Carlisle 63.6, Leicester 62.6, Nottingham 62.4, Doncaster 58.7, Hamilton 56.9, Goodwood 55.6, Catterick 52.2, Chester 50.2.

 

This is a more Northern-dominated perspective although it is a surprise perhaps to see Goodwood appear given that the track is on the South Downs which lies on chalk. I am assuming they water the course much more than most.

  1. Course Configuration & Distance Options

Different tracks offer different combinations of:

  • Straight courses (e.g., Newmarket’s straight mile)
  • Round courses with multiple turns (e.g. Chester)
  • Short run‑ins versus long finishing straights
  • Courses with multiple configurations (e.g. Goodwood has two loops as does Kempton)

These variations can influence draw bias, and suitability for certain running styles.

In summary then, UK flat racecourses differ in shape, surface, topography, direction, distance configuration and run style/draw bias. These differences create distinct racing challenges and can strongly influence which horses thrive at which venues.

Now I have given some background and set the scene, let me share my recent research.

I have been looking at the performance of horses on the flat that ran well on a course with an uphill finish last time (LTO), when racing at a track next time out that also had an uphill finish.

To count as 'running well', I deemed this to be a finish in the first three. To be included, a course had to be one of those categorised as having an uphill finish in the Geegeez Query Tool ‘Specific Config’ variable. On the flat in the UK this includes eight courses – Beverley, Carlisle, Chepstow, Hamilton, Leicester, Newmarket, Pontefract and Sandown. The data has been taken from flat racing at these courses spanning five full years from 2021 to 2025, and the filters I selected in QT are shown below:

 

Three small data panels showing race settings: Dates (From 2021-01-01 To 2025-12-31); Current Run (Country UK; Race Code Flat Turf, Flat AW; Specific Config Uphill Finish); Last Run (BETA) (Country - last run UK; Race Code - last run Flat Turf, Flat AW; Specific Config - last run Uphill Finish; Placing last run: Min 1, Max 3.

All profits and losses quoted have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% on winning bets.

The first set of stats to share therefore is for all qualifying horses – in other words those who raced at one of the eight courses with uphill finishes having finished in the first three at one of the same eight courses LTO. I was hoping that the results would be relatively positive suggesting that these horses maybe perhaps suited to uphill finishes. Here are the numbers:

 

Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
4445 872 19.62 237.63 5.35

 

If we had backed all qualifiers ‘blind’ we would have secured a return of a smidge above 5 pence in the £. This is a very promising starting point. For the record, the PRB (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) stands at a very healthy 0.61.

From here, let me share the yearly splits to see how consistent, or not, these qualifiers have been:

 

Year Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
2021 875 171 19.54 50.33 5.75
2022 935 198 21.18 67.88 7.26
2023 910 166 18.24 56.32 6.19
2024 858 155 18.07 -85.85 -10.01
2025 867 182 20.99 148.96 17.18

 

Only 2024 saw a reverse, while the other four years produced solid results and profits. Indeed, when we look at the yearly PRBs we see excellent correlation and consistency:

 

Bar chart of PRB values for uphill finishes in UK flat racing, 2021–2025: 0.61, 0.62, 0.60, 0.60, 0.60.

 

As we can see the figures range from a low of 0.60 to a high of 0.62.

Time to split the results by LTO position to see if there was much difference between those finishing either first last time, second or third.

 

LTO position Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
1st 1615 341 21.11 74.77 4.63
2nd 1504 303 20.15 99.72 6.63
3rd 1326 228 17.19 63.13 4.76

 

We see comparable strike rates for the qualifiers finishing first or second last time out, with a small drop off to those finishing third. In terms of profits/returns we see positive similar outcomes meaning the results have not been skewed by the performance of one specific LTO position.

Let me now share the results when the horse has returned to the same track as last time – so Newmarket last time to Newmarket this time, etc. How has each individual course with an uphill finish fared in terms of these qualifiers? Below shows a graph of the ROI percentages for each.

 

3D bar chart of ROI% by UK courses for uphill finishes; Beverley 13.9, Carlisle -18.2, Chepstow 15.0, Hamilton 1.2, Leicester -14.5, Newmarket 4.1, Pontefract -20.4, Sandown 26.8 (BSP).

 

Five of the eight produced overall blind profits, while three - Carlisle, Leicester and Pontefract - produced losses. Below is a table showing a full breakdown for each:

 

Course LTO course Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Beverley Beverley 287 60 20.91 39.74 13.85
Carlisle Carlisle 135 22 16.3 -24.63 -18.24
Chepstow Chepstow 250 48 19.2 37.47 14.99
Hamilton Hamilton 339 69 20.35 4.21 1.24
Leicester Leicester 116 24 20.69 -16.82 -14.5
Newmarket Newmarket 757 154 20.34 31.35 4.14
Pontefract Pontefract 161 26 16.15 -32.8 -20.37
Sandown Sandown 140 28 20 37.56 26.83

 

The two with the lowest strike rates, Carlisle and Pontefract, have shown the poorest returns but, overall, when combining all eight together we get the following totals:

 

Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
2185 431 19.73 76.08 3.48

 

Hence, a top three finish LTO when returning to the same course as last time has produced a small overall profit.

 

What about a different course LTO to course this time? Below are all those combinations where we have had at least 75 qualifiers. They have been ordered by strike rate / win%:

 

Course LTO course Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Hamilton Beverley 79 22 27.85 59.93 75.86
Hamilton Carlisle 107 24 22.43 24.47 22.87
Sandown Newmarket 122 27 22.13 6.83 5.6
Newmarket Sandown 138 27 19.57 -23.21 -16.82
Carlisle Hamilton 101 19 18.81 19.76 19.56
Newmarket Leicester 131 23 17.56 73.05 55.76
Beverley Carlisle 81 14 17.28 -0.47 -0.58
Carlisle Beverley 75 12 16 5.41 7.21
Newmarket Pontefract 89 13 14.61 -6.52 -7.33
Pontefract Beverley 89 13 14.61 30.55 34.33

 

There are plenty of positive combinations here with Beverley LTO to Hamilton, and Leicester LTO and Newmarket faring extremely well from a profits/returns perspective. Horses going from Sandown to Newmarket performed the poorest out of this group in terms of profits/returns.

Now, I mention all the time that with any data we need to be careful it is not skewed significantly by big priced winners. So let me share the results for all qualifiers that started at a BSP of 16.0 or lower. Here are those numbers:

 

Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
4124 866 21 369.62 8.96

 

As can be seen, the returns are better than those when including qualifiers at any price. We have hit nearly 9p in the £ compared to the original figure of 5.35p in the £. This is always something I like to see.

What about handicaps versus non-handicaps? I wasn’t sure what I would find other than I assumed there would be far more handicap qualifiers than non-handicap ones and that the non-handicap strike rate would be higher. Here are the splits:

 

Race type Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
Non-Handicap 1091 258 23.65 62.67 5.74
Handicap 3354 614 18.31 174.96 5.22

Both my assumptions proved correct and, interestingly, the returns for each group have been remarkably similar, both between 5 and 6p in the £.

There are three more points I would like to share before winding this piece up. Firstly, let me show the differences in results for horses aged six or younger versus those seven or older:

 

Age Runs Wins Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI
2yo to 6yo 3976 811 20.4 321.52 8.09
7yo+ 469 61 13.01 -83.88 -17.88

 

These results have been extremely enlightening, showing that it would have been best to avoid qualifying runners aged seven or older.

Secondly, if we restrict qualifiers to horses that had won just once previously at the course we get the following: 242 wins from 1008 runners (SR 24.01%) for a BSP profit of £229.25 (ROI +22.8%). Not only that, if we look at the start of this year 2026, up to 23rd July, when I penned this piece, this cohort had secured a profit of close to £120 to £1 level stakes with an ROI of over 82%!

Thirdly and finally, I want to discuss whether there have been any significant differences in results when comparing horses running over the same distance to LTO with those going up or down in distance. When I say the same distance, I am allowing half a furlong either way. This makes sense as at some courses specific distances, for example Beverley’s 7f and 1m trips, are actually run over 7½f and 1m ½f respectively. It also allows flexibility in the results for courses that move their rails to increase or decrease the distance by half a furlong or less.

Below is a graph showing the PRBs for distance change across all qualifiers:

 

Bar chart titled 'UK Flat racing 2021 to 2025 - Courses with uphill finishes' shows PRB values for distance changes: down in distance 0.58, same distance 0.62, up in distance 0.57.

 

As the graph highlights, horses running over the same trip as last time have comfortably outperformed horses which switched in distance by a furlong or more. Also, if we compare strike rates, profits, returns and BSP A/E indices we see the ‘same distance’ coming out well on top across the board:

 

Distance change Win% BSP P/L BSP ROI A/E (BSP)
Down in distance 16 -74.29 -14.15 0.93
Same distance 20.75 395.08 13.62 1.08
Up in distance 18.4 -60.24 -5.87 1.03

 

Clearly, a run LTO over the same distance or within half a furlong has been a strong positive when returning to a track with a similar uphill finish having finished that previous race in the first three.

Based on the evidence uncovered in this piece, a finish in the first three LTO at a course with an uphill finish should be seen to be a positive if the horse returns to a similar track or the same one next time.

- DR

Monday Musings: Another Landmark for the Balding Dynasty

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Fifty-five years on from when the wonderful Mill Reef won the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes for the late Ian Balding, on Saturday at Ascot, his son Andrew sent out Kalpana to win a stellar renewal of the race, writes Tony Stafford.

Mill Reef was a Derby winner, and now the five-year-old mare needed to beat this year’s Irish Derby hero Benvenuto Cellini and last year’s Epsom winner Lambourn to land the prize.

Not just the Aidan O’Brien colts, but also fellow five-year-old Calandagan, officially the world’s top-rated racehorse, and a gelding to boot, so one that the Aga Khan studs can continue to race with impunity as long as the legs and wind, never mind form, warrant it.

The early skirmishes featured Coolmore’s pacemaker, Action, leading Lambourn at the head of the nine-runner field. We were wondering whether Kalpana, the sole UK runner, would cope with the O’Brien quartet, principally Benvenuto Cellini and the four-year-old filly Minnie Hauk, as well as the Francis-Henri Graffard pair of Calandagan and Goliath, the two latest winners of the race, as well as a well-respected pair from Japan.

One of that Asian duo, Masquerade Ball, was strongly fancied having run Calandagan to a very close second in the Japan Cup last November before another eye-catching runner-up spot, only one length behind the world’s leading prizemoney earner Romantic Warrior at Sha Tin, Hong Kong, on his latest start in April.

So it was disconcerting to say the least when he, sporting the colours of the Shadai Race Horse Club, and outsider Wurttemberg, ridden by Oisin Murphy, were both toiling a long way behind the rest as the Ascot bell tolled to accompany the field into the straight. Wurttemberg is a homebred running in the colours of Shadai Farm’s boss Teruya Yoshida.

Masquerade Bell did move up one place past a badly weakening Minnie Hauk in the last furlong, but Wurrtemberg was allowed to coast home barely at a canter by Murphy.

The wait goes on then both for the King George and, even more agonisingly, for a Japanese winner of the Arc. Not even their late super stallion, Shadai-based Deep Impact, could achieve that objective; but you know they will keep trying.

Kalpana’s win turned around last year’s one-length defeat in the race by Calandagan. In third that day was the then seven-year-old gelding Rebel’s Romance, at three-and-a-half lengths. He followed that with an almost faultless year, the latest of 22 wins from 32 races coming in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes at the July Meeting at Newmarket a little over a fortnight ago. Godolphin announced his retirement last week.

Kalpana started her racing career relatively late, making her debut – a winning one – at Kempton in January 2024. She was ridden in that maiden race by Hayley Turner, and other jockeys to have won on her during a so-far 17-race record have been Ryan Moore, PJ McDonald, William Buick and now Juddmonte’s retained rider Colin Keane.

He took over after that second place in last year’s King George. The one anomaly of her career is that Oisin Murphy didn’t win on any of the four rides he had on her. She has eight wins, six second places and two thirds with only seventh place in last year’s Arc standing out as a substandard effort. I doubt Oisin will be getting back on Kalpana any time soon!

During an ordinary month (by their impossible standards) since Benvenuto Cellini overcame Derby winner Christmas Day at the Curragh, the Aidan O’Brien team characteristically kept going and were gratified by Benvenuto’s display on Saturday. Having been passed by Calandagan, he battled back dourly almost to catch the French star in the last furlong. Lambourn was a creditable fourth, but the rest were well beaten off.

Suggestions – Matt, are you putting words and ideas into people’s minds again? – that the Breeders’ Cup Turf would be an ideal place to show off Peter Brant’s green colours on this horse might well come to fruition, but it’s hard to see his going to Keeneland without running a time or two over here or in Ireland beforehand. The other partners will have their say on that.

So now the dust has settled, it might be time to question whether Andrew Balding’s steady but relentless rise up the trainers’ listing is set for a final push to a first UK championship. The £1.13 million purse on Saturday brought his tally for the year to £4,847,000 compared with O’Brien’s figure of £5,830,000, less than a million more.

Last year Balding had a best of £7.2 million, from 192 winners, compared to Aidan’s £8.1million. He’s already up to 120, the ninth year in a row where he has sent out more than 100 wins, and he’s at a best-ever strike rate of 21%.

It’s not just Kalpana that he can look to for big-race success either. At York on Saturday his Dante Stakes winner, Item, also running in the Juddmonte colours, strode clear of the 2025 Dante winner Pride Of Arras in the £93k Sky Bet York Stakes over the Dante 10.5-furlong trip under Rob Hornby.

Item seemed not to have stayed the Derby trip when finishing ninth to Christmas Day at Epsom, but he has surely opened up a nice avenue of races at ten furlongs for the rest of the season, leaving Kalpana to do her thing over the Classic distance that suits her so well.

*

It’s easy to dismiss racing as solely for the big battalions – as just a numbers game. But, from a smaller team, William Knight is re-rewriting his own statistics this year. From the four seasons covering 2022 to 2025, he sent out eight two-year-old winners on the turf from 92 runs, with six individual winners from 38 horses.

Already this year he has matched the six individual winners from the four previous campaigns – each having won once – from nine total starts. The latest success came on Saturday evening at Lingfield where Spirit Of Lyra, a 16,000 guineas yearling buy at Tattersalls  Somerville sale last year, won by almost four lengths with her head in her chest.

One of the more equitable changes to racing over the past few years has been the growth in Restricted maiden and novice races divided into Bands B, C and D depending on sale prices. Even in Band D, which Saturday’s race was, you can get the odd potentially high-class performer and, while it’s early days, this Rathmoy Stables partnership horse could be pretty decent.

It’s never been a numbers game for Lew Day, initially with a few with the late Eric Wheeler and then more recently with the smart pair Spark Plug and Raheen House with Brian Meehan, the latter moving to William Haggas before his sale to Australia.

This year’s hopes on the track rest with the three-year-old filly Rossa Raheen, and she showed terrific guts for the Ollie Sangster stable when winning at the first try at 1m4f at Salisbury on Saturday evening. Lew has a great belief in stallions Sea The Stars and Kingman. This progressive filly is by Palace Pier, a son of Kingman, out of a Sea The Stars mare

Lew can be a stubborn kind of fellow, but he knows what he believes and, as with his own small band of broodmares, is prepared to back it up with cash. He is carrying out that single-minded policy with a great chance of success.

- TS

The Impact of Last Time Out Run Style

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An Investigation into Last Time Out Run Style

In the last couple of weeks, the Geegeez Query Tool has been upgraded with many exciting new additions, writes Dave Renham. To read about these changes click here.

One of the new options means we can now analyse how the run style of a horse last time out potentially affects their next race. The Query Tool includes a set of ‘Last Run’ (and 2nd Last Run) variables, including LTO Pace score, which tells us what run style the horse displayed on their most recent start.

Run style is a topic I have written numerous articles about before; this is simply because it is still an area that is under-researched compared with most others. Furthermore, it is partly misunderstood by some, but most importantly it has the potential to give us punters an edge.

To recap, then, run style data on Geegeez is split into four sections - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. Here is a quick explanation of which type of horse fits which type of pace profile:

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

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

Mid Division – horses that race in the middle of the pack but in front of the rear ‘quarter’;

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

Geegeez assigns points in regard to which position a horse adopted early in its race. Leaders get 4, prominent runners 3, horses that ran mid-division 2, and those held up score 1.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, these pace or run style scores could only be found in the Geegeez Gold Racecard or within the Query Tool under ‘current run’. Now, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, we can get LTO run style data from the last run, and for that matter, the second last run as well. In this article, I am just going to focus on the last run, but I no doubt will be expanding this research to the last two runs in future articles. Let’s crack on.

So where does early pace give us an edge? Essentially, there is an edge in flat racing to horses that lead the race early. Indeed, horses that track the pace also have an edge over those that race midfield or near the back early. This edge is stronger in some races rather than others, but if we look at all UK flat handicaps from 2021 to 2025, we can see how strong this edge actually is. Below is a table detailing the performance of the four main run styles in all these races:

 

Run style Runs Wins Win % BSP P/L BSP ROI
Led (4) 29517 4750 16.09 11718.13 39.7
Prominent (3) 48896 6296 12.88 2751.8 5.63
Mid Div (2) 59892 5939 9.92 -5237.5 -8.74
Held up (1) 68385 5692 8.32 -12133.5 -17.74

 

Across the four run style groups the win and ROI percentages correlate positively, with leaders outperforming prominent racers which in turn outperform mid div runners which outperform hold up horses.

This front running advantage is stronger over shorter distances. The table below helps to illustrate this as it shows the performance of front runners in handicaps across different race distances:

 

Distance Runs Wins Win % BSP P/L BSP ROI
5f 4309 879 20.4 2994.78 69.5
6f 5702 938 16.45 3165.97 55.52
7 5110 785 15.36 2128.17 41.65
1m to 1m2f 8998 1372 15.25 3187.7 35.43
1m3f+ 5334 768 14.4 224.9 4.22

 

Again, we have positive correlation across the metrics once more.

Of course, it is all very well knowing this, but taking advantage of such front running bias is another matter. It is not as if we have clairvoyance that we can unleash before each race to tell us which run style will be employed by each horse. However, past run style is a solid indicator of future run style as the data I am about to share will show. Let me start with a graph and underneath I’ll explain what it represents:

 

 

The graph shows the percentage of runners that employed a specific run style based on the run style they showed LTO. Thus, the orange line highlights the percentage of runners that led early in the current race, the blue line is for those who raced prominently, the green one is for those who were mid division, and the hold-up horses are represented by the brown line. We can then match these up with the four LTO run styles shown on the horizontal axis at the bottom. Effectively the graph produces four vertical lines with four coloured dots, where LTO leaders’ line up down the left, moving across until we reach LTO Hold up horses lining up vertically down the right.

Starting with those that led last time out, we can see 33.8% led again next time, 30.5% raced prominently, 20.8% raced in midfield and 14.9% were held up. So LTO leaders are more likely to lead in their next race compared to any showing any of the other three run styles, and there is an almost two in three chance they will lead or race prominently if they led last time.

If we move over to the right of the graph and look at the data for horses that were held up last time, we can see that only 6.5% of these horses led next time, while 15.9% raced prominently, 29.1% raced in mid division and  a whopping 48.4% were held up again.

These LTO hold up stats are particularly powerful, showing that nearly half of all horses that were held up on their most recent start show that same style next time. Also, with less than 7% of LTO hold-ups leading next time, when we are trying to predict the front runner of a race, we can fairly confidently dismiss horses that were held up LTO. Overall, this graph highlights that LTO run style can have a significant influence on run style next time in terms of what position they will take up in the race early.

Let me now look at horses that led LTO to see whether we can improve the 33.8% figure for those who went onto lead early next time too. One general finding is that horses that drop in distance lead less often next time out. The table below looks at all handicaps between 5f and 1 mile across the period of study showing the percentages for each run style group focusing on LTO leaders and the distance they raced LTO compared with the current race.

 

Distance Change Led% Prom% Mid Div% Held Up%
Same distance 36.3 30.9 19.9 12.8
Down in distance 27.2 30.7 23.3 18.8
Up in distance 37.8 28.3 18.8 15.1

 

As the table shows, horses that led early last time and now move up in distance led again 37.8% of the time. Sticking to the same distance the figure is 36.3%, but LTO leaders dropping down in distance from their last run find it much harder to lead, their percentage sinking to 27.2%.

The highest percentage I found for horses that led LTO which went on to lead again in their subsequent race came when focusing on LTO winners. This group led 42.7% in their next run.

Moving now to horses that were held up LTO, let me look to see whether the distance they raced last time has a bearing in terms of the likelihood they will be held up again next time. For this, I restricted the previous run to being a handicap too as that seemed to make sense. Here are the percentage splits:

 

 

This graph shows that most distances run LTO produce very similar figures to what we saw earlier. The LTO 5f stats have the smallest figure at 44.4%, while once we get to 1 mile 5 furlongs or further it sneaks above 50%. It seems therefore, as the saying goes, 'a leopard doesn’t change its spots'.

There is one more set of LTO hold up stats I want to share. If we focus on horses that were held up LTO in a handicap, aged four or older, the run style breakdown in their next race looks as follows:

 

 

We see that over 51% of older horses that were held up last time, were held up again next time. This slightly higher percentage makes sense as older horses are more likely to have developed a preferred running style. 3yos, and more especially 2yos, have less experience and fewer races under their belt and so are more likely than older horses to switch run styles race to race.

Having dug a little into how the last time out run style potentially affects a horse’s run style in their current race, let me share the bottom lines for each LTO run style. The focus again is on UK flat handicaps spanning the five years from 2021 to 2025, and for this subset I am including LTO runs that were also in UK handicap races (flat/AW).

 

LTO Run style Runs Wins Win % BSP P/L BSP ROI
Led (4) 25447 3130 12.3 229.58 0.9
Prominent (3) 42895 5167 12.05 291.78 0.68
Mid Div (2) 51331 5657 11.02 -2254.62 -4.39
Held up (1) 59098 5851 9.9 -2890.95 -4.89

 

As we can see, horses that showed a led or prominent run style LTO produced the best strike rates, and both nudged into profit. LTO mid div runners won more often than LTO hold up horses, while both showed losses of between 4p and 5p in the £.

Therefore, based on these numbers, a more prominent sit early in a horse’s previous race does seem to improve its chances next time out.

I want now to restrict the qualifiers to horses aged four or older as I feel this should improve matters based on the fact that cohort are more likely to replicate a run style from last time out. These are the results:

 

LTO Run style Runs Wins Win % BSP P/L BSP ROI
Led (4) 16897 2053 12.15 641.29 3.8
Prominent (3) 28485 3321 11.66 178.43 0.63
Mid Div (2) 35332 3783 10.71 -1568.39 -4.44
Held up (1) 41267 3954 9.58 -2636.54 -6.39

 

The win rates and ROI%s combine once more to suggest that LTO front runners have been the best value, followed by LTO prominent racers, then LTO mid div, with LTO hold ups bringing up the rear... sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun!

Also, if we now split this ‘older runner last time out Led group’ into those that led in an all-weather handicap LTO compared with those that led in a turf handicap LTO we see an interesting split:

 

LTO Surface Runs Wins Win % BSP P/L BSP ROI
AW 7628 867 11.37 40.12 0.53
Turf 9269 1186 12.8 601.17 6.49

 

4yos and older that led early in a turf handicap LTO have performed significantly better than those which led in an AW handicap LTO. I am not sure why that is the case but it a worthwhile nugget to be aware of.

Before wrapping this piece up, it is important to note that a few big priced winners have not skewed the results. If we look at 4yos and older priced 8/1 or shorter when racing in a UK handicap after running in a UK handicap LTO we see the following:

 

LTO Run style Runs Wins Win % BSP P/L BSP ROI
Led (4) 8483 1647 19.42 236.48 2.79
Prominent (3) 14177 2648 18.68 130.73 0.92
Mid Div (2) 16613 2973 17.9 -209.92 -1.26
Held up (1) 17567 2985 16.99 -702.84 -4

 

The same pattern emerges once more, with the strike rates dropping from top to bottom (led to held up) and the profits/returns following the same pattern.

*

So, what has this digging helped uncover?

Well, even something as simple as looking at the run style of a horse last time out when contesting a handicap can give us a bit of a steer in a couple of ways.

Firstly, it can help with establishing a horse's most likely run style next time. We saw that horses that led LTO have led again next time a touch above once in every three races; whereas horses that led LTO adopting an early position near the back of the field next time (held up) occurred only around once every seven runs.

An additional point to note is that LTO early leaders in races of 5f to 1m have been more likely to lead in their next race when either racing at the same distance to last time or if upped in distance.

There were even stronger numbers when looking at horses that were held up LTO. This cohort showed the same held up style again in their following race roughly half of the time, whereas only about one in 15 of them went onto lead early in their next race.

Secondly, I found that horses which led or raced prominently LTO had an edge over LTO hold ups / mid div runners from both a win strike rate and a returns perspective. Additionally, horses aged four and up that led LTO had the best figures, particularly if the LTO race was on turf.

Well, that’s all for this one. The natural progression from here is to look at the combination of run style in the last two runs, and that will be coming soon. Until next time...

- DR

Monday Musings: Think Big-ger!

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What, writes Tony Stafford, does a small money syndicate do when the horse that has won it nine races (seven flat and two hurdles) in 18 months is incapacitated after sustaining an injury during a race at Royal Ascot? Well, the Think Big Syndicate did just that – they thought big and simply got another!

I’ve mentioned the exploits of Carlton in these musings a time or two, having marvelled at the way he moved from a rating of 48 to 82, initially exploiting the frequent handicaps for lower-grade animals that the 1m6f trip at Chelmsford used to afford it.

As his mark rose, the opportunities were less plentiful, but still the magician that is James Owen – himself a shareholder in Carlton – contrived to winkle out three more on the level after an initial four-timer all over that track and trip.

Carlton, a son of Frankel (stud fee £350k), was sourced for the boys in a private deal for £6,000 brokered by bloodstock agent and former jockey Freddy Tylicki, out of the Tracy Waggott yard.

The genes, then, are from possibly the greatest racehorse of all time – I still have Sea Bird II challenging him from my early years writing about racing all those decades ago, as the alternative. None of Sir Henry Cecil’s star performer’s 14 unbeaten runs – all at ten furlongs or shorter – needed a performance to match Sea Bird’s 1965 Arc when he obliterated a line-up of world-class animals and future stallions. But enough of that, Think Big were happy enough to settle for a Frankel! [There aren’t many Sea Bird’s about these days – Ed.]

At one stage over the winter period, Carlton’s hurdles rating – earned at the time of his previous incarnation – wasn’t far short of his flat mark. Two wins, the second a landslide of Andy Burnham’s leadership non-election proportions, brought it to a still manageable 105, but alas Ascot stopped all thoughts of that.

He had finished with great and possibly surprising vigour to be fourth in the Chester Plate, consolation race for the Chester Cup in early May. Maybe you would have thought a run in the second phase of the Northumberland Plate would have been a good idea, but Mick Godderidge, Philip Simmonds, Edmund O’Connor and Leroy Oxley much preferred the prospect of togging up for Royal Ascot.

Even at the elevated mark of 82, Carlton would never have got into the Ascot Stakes, so the Queen Alexandra, final race of the meeting and over 2m5f, was the only possibility.

The boys must have arrived at the track with hopes of a bit of a show for their money, and just before the home turn, Cieren Fallon still had him in the first three, admittedly rowing way. Then, Ryan Moore on favourite and eventual winner Illinois, one of several rated around two stone Carlton’s superior, tightened him up and it appeared to cause Carlton to stumble and instantly lose several positions.

To that end, it was a valiant effort to beat three horses home including the well-backed Willie Mullins runner Columbus (rated 109), but on pulling up it was clear that the race had brought its downside.

Meanwhile, Owen had been to Doncaster sales a month earlier and picked up a dual-purpose performer from the Harry Fry yard, the seven-year-old gelding High Fibre, winner at that stage of two hurdle races (from 15 starts and a rating of 122) and one on the flat (rating 79) from ten appearances.

The price was £15k and James, after Carlton’s Ascot mishap, suggested to Carlton’s co-partners that High Fibre might make a suitable replacement.

I was in the owners’ room after the end of proceedings on the second day of the July meeting at Newmarket, even managing to blag a food ticket for Philip, when they said a horse that they would probably be taking over ownership was running over 1m4f in a late race at York.

We watched closely and the way he stayed on into third place without being asked an over-serious question impressed me. I reckoned that they should have been delighted, not realising only a portion of the tale had been available to me.

A few days later High Fibre was on the much underestimated and underused schooling grounds by Newmarket golf club. Owen, who has done miracles equally with jumpers as with flat horses, had four to school and one was High Fibre with Alex Chadwick doing the honours. The school was to determine High Fibre’s readiness for a challenge for last Saturday’s fifty grand Summer Hurdle. He passed that test and when it became known that champion jockey Sean Bowen would be available, the die as they say was cast.

Thirteen horses were declared on Thursday morning, with High Fibre propping them all up on bottom-weight of 10st7lb. When the first prices came out, Mick was amazed to see his “not yet” horse was available at 20/1. Mick’s business acumen had sealed a deal whereby the quartet would agree to buy the horse from the trainer, paying all the training fees before paying for the horse itself in the near future.

Mick followed up his original bet with one more at 16’s and a third at 12/1. When I saw him resplendent in full Hawaii mode, floppy tea shirt and shorts at Newmarket last Friday, his attire contrasted starkly with Philip’s. Old-school to the core, Phil wore smart jacket and tie, befitting the paddock of the 2,000 Guineas over on the other course, rather than for yet another after-racing concert from evergrey Madness on a Friday night.

Philip said he hadn’t supported him yet but intended having “A nice each-way bet in the morning”. I hope he wasn’t too dismayed to see that by 7 a.m. he was around 7/1 and, by 9 a.m., a strong second favourite at 4/1!

Philip and Leroy attended the meeting, but Mick and Ed could not. Mick said, “Sometimes life, and selling used cars, can get in the way!”

In the race, Bowen soon had him nicely placed behind the leaders who were setting a strong pace. He didn’t hold his position down the back straight second time around the sharp Market Rasen circuit, but Sean held on to him, and kept him wide in the home straight, guaranteeing him an uninterrupted run home.

It wasn’t until going to two out that High Fibre could be seen to be moving up fast. By the last flight, he had got into a share of second place, but the leader, Indemnity, despite conceding 21lb, was five lengths clear and apparently impossible to catch. A mistake there though interrupted his momentum, and High Fibre made mincemeat of him, turning that deficit into a near three-length winning margin.

Later Mick said, “No doubt I will have my account closed. Bookmakers don’t like it when you back any winner, but when it’s 20/1 about a 7/2 shot, they appreciate it even less.”

After the race, Sean Bowen reported that while they were going round, he was thinking High Fibre needed another half mile, but the way he finished off, maybe they could keep the horse to two miles for now.

Having watched Owen’s style in the few seasons he has been training, I reckon High Fibre could well be one for longer-distance handicaps on the flat. Seeing how he handles fast ground, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine his winning a race or two and earning a place in the Cesarewitch field.

One thing I can be sure of, though. Nobody will be getting 20/1 about him next time, be it on the flat or over the jumps.

*

Irish Oaks Day on The Curragh on Saturday started with the unwelcome news that Joseph O’Brien’s Epsom Oaks winner Thundering On would not be risked on the fast ground. Joseph and Irish champion jockey Dylan Browne McMonagle had a more than adequate deputy as Johanna Walsh romped to a four-length success. This Sea The Stars filly is improving fast, overturning a narrow defeat by Earth Shot in the Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot to the tune of almost 12 lengths.

*

There’s one event from Friday night that I cannot get out of my head. Long-term friend Steve Howard had a table of pals in the Newmarket owners’ room and Michelle, one of his group and only recently a convert to racing, had a speculative £5 single line on the Tote Placepot.

When the ticket came back, her selection in the fourth leg was a non-runner and the Tote substituted it as is normal, with the favourite. Unfortunately, the non-runner made it a seven-runner and therefore two places only race.

Subsequently, she did find the winner of that race, Tom Clover’s Rocking Ends, and backed it singly, but it was second favourite rather than the expected favourite at the off.  The favourite finished third! Sod’s Law.

Imagine the frustration, all the other five selections won, respectively at 10/11, 15/8, Evens, 3/1 and can you believe it, 25/1! The Placepot that night paid £50.90 to a £1 stake, so she should if life was fair, have collected £254.00 for her fiver. Imagine though had she linked the six in a £5 win accumulator, she would have been more than £16,000 better off! I’ve never seen the like of that before in all my years of racing and punting!

- TS

Combining Pace and SR Ratings, Part 2

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A four-week trial of combining Pace with SR Ratings, Part 2

This the second in a double header where I am sharing a very simple ‘system’ which I tested over a four-week period from May 1st 2026 to May 28th 2026, writes Dave Renham. Before reading on, it would make sense to read the first piece if not done already and that can be found here.

Not everyone is a fan of systems, but my racing journey was enriched by reading books and articles by the racing systems ‘king’, Nick Mordin. Hence, although I don’t tend to use rigid systems per se when selecting my bets, there are systematic elements that I do lean on within the whole process.

It should be noted that in order to find these system selections, a Geegeez Gold membership is required as that includes access to some of the key data needed.

To recap here are the ‘system’ rules:

  1. UK Handicap races only
  2. Race Distance 5f to 1m1f
  3. The Percentage of Rivals figure (PRB) for the ‘led’ group on the pace tab for the specific race conditions must be 0.60 or higher
  4. Horse must have one of the top three pace scores for the race
  5. Horse must have one of the top three SR ratings for the race

Note that if there were two joint third rated pace horses then both would potentially become a qualifier if either or both of their SR rating positions were also in the top three. If there were three or more joint thirds, then I would count the two with the highest most recent race pace scores. In terms of SR rating joint thirds, I need to include them all as I have no way of splitting them. Also, if a horse had only three previous pace race scores, I would use their pace average figure to compare with the four race averages that most horses have. In this case, the horses with the three highest averages across either three or four past races would count. I did not consider horses with one or two past scores.

I mentioned in the first article that I am only using handicap races, as they give us the most reliable results for this type of idea.

In that first part I shared the results for weeks one and two. Again, just to recap, these are below with profit/losses based on BSP (Betfair SP) less 2% commission.

Week 1

 

Table of betting statistics: Bets 29, Wins 6, Win% 20.69, P/L BSP 12, ROI BSP 41.38.

 

Week 2

 

Table of betting stats: Bets 20, Wins 4, Win% 20, P/L BSP 16.39, ROI BSP 81.95

 

First two weeks combined

 

Table of betting stats: Bets 49, Wins 10, Win% 20.41, P/L BSP 28.39, ROI BSP 57.94

 

So, all in all, the first fortnight delivered some positive early findings. Of course, the sample size at this juncture was still relatively small. However, a further positive after these 49 races was that there had been 11 second places as well.

Time to move into week 3.

Week 3

The results for the third week were as follows, with winners highlighted in red. There were four qualifiers where the PRB ‘led’ sample size was small and those horses have an asterisk next to their name:

 

Informational table of race results spanning 15–21 May 2026, listing Date, Course, Horse, PRB 'Led', Fin Pos, BSP, SR rank, and Pace rank for each entry (courses include York, Ripon, Lingfield, etc.).

 

The last two days of the third week (20th and 21st) saw an excellent run of results with six wins from just 13 qualifiers. Previous to that there had been four winners from 29 showing a small loss of £3.88. The overall figures for the week ended up like this:

 

Table of betting stats: Bets 42, Wins 10, Win% 23.81, P/L BSP 12.93, ROI BSP 30.79

 

We saw the best weekly strike rate to date, but there were less near misses with only three second places (five thirds). Hence, there could be a valid argument that this week was a tad lucky, with so many winners. However, as we know it is better to be lucky than good. Although even better to be lucky and good!

I was three weeks in now and the overall results read as follows:

 

Table of betting statistics: Bets 91, Wins 20, Win% 21.98, P/L BSP 41.32, ROI BSP 45.41

 

All three weeks were consistent with win rates around the 20% mark and solid profits each time. Will we see a similar pattern in week four? Well, let’s find out.

Week 4

The results for the final week are shown in the table below with winners once more highlighted in red:

 

Table of 2026 racing results showing date, course, horse, PRB 'Led', final position, BSP, SR rank, and pace rank for races at Goodwood, York, Windsor, Redcar, Bath, Lingfield, Hamilton, Beverley, and Ripon (22–28 May 2026).

 

The final week of the four-week experiment went with a bang rather than a whimper with ten winners from 29 runners. There were five seconds, too, so over half of the qualifiers finished in the first two. The profit and loss figures are shown below:

 

Compact table of betting stats: Bets 29, Wins 10, Win% 34.48, P/L BSP 70.34, ROI BSP 242.55.

 

A huge profit and returns across the seven days of over 242 pence in the £. Yes, this bottom line was helped by a BSP winner priced 38.53 in Partisan Hero, but even if we take that winner out, after commission, profits still stood at +33.56.

With the four weeks up, I can now share the final totals:

 

Table showing betting stats: Bets 120, Wins 30, Win% 25, P/L BSP 111.65, ROI BSP 93.04.

 

This has been a pretty amazing run of results across the 28 days to create such figures. Of course, we cannot get too carried away, as 120 bets across four weeks is essentially a snapshot. However, it is a snapshot that makes me want to expand my research to other weeks and months and see what they bring.

So far, I have shared just the results without doing any additional digging into the underlying numbers; I'm sure there are some extras for us starting with the average PRB figures for the system qualifiers week by week. The graph below shows the splits:

 

Bar chart of average weekly PRB figures (May 1–28, 2026): Week1 0.66, Week2 0.68, Week3 0.58, Week4 0.71 on pink background

 

When analysing PRBs we need to appreciate that the average figure for all runners in all races is 0.50. This is the benchmark to judge against. Anything above 0.55 is usually seen to be positive and once we get to 0.60 and above then we have a strong positive. Therefore, for three of the four weeks to have average figures for all qualifying horses of over 0.65 is exceptional. Even week 3’s figure of 0.58 is very decent. These findings give me much more confidence in the small four-week sample I have looked at.

PRBs are a useful metric because in many respects they expand sample size by considering all runners in each race. For the record the overall average PRB for qualifiers across all four weeks was a very strong 0.65.

I want to focus now on the 30 winners and see which run style they employed in the individual races where they came home in front. Being in the top three of the racecard pace figures for their specific races means I would have expected a led or prominent style in the race to be more likely than a mid-division or hold up one. The graph below shows the splits in terms of percentage of runners within each run style group:

 

Bar chart of run styles among winners: Led 50%, Prominent 33.3%, Mid Division 13.3%, Held Up 3.3% (May 2026)

 

As predicted (and hoped), we see that most of the winning qualifiers had a led or prominent style; in fact, five from every six winners did. This helps cement further how effective the four racehorse pace figures in the Geegeez Racecard are in terms of helping to predict run style.

Finally, I wanted to look at the results based on their actual ranking within the SR rank and pace ranks. Hence top rated in both would count as a 1,1 in the table below.

 

Betting performance table: SR Rank vs Pace Rank with Bets, Wins, Win% and P/L BSP (red for losses).

 

Of course, as we have nine combinations the sample sizes for each are very small. However, what was interesting was when I split the results up comparing those where at least one of the two rankings was top (e.g. 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 2/1 and 3/1) compared with those that weren’t. Here are the splits:

 

Informational table: two rows of betting stats with bets, wins, and win rate; row1 73 bets, 20 wins, 27.4%; row2 47 bets, 10 wins, 21.28%.

 

Those with at least one top ranked position did much better. Again, the important caveat is that the samples are quite modest. However, there is a big difference between the PRBs for each group with the 'top ranked' group averaging 0.67 and the other at 0.59.

 

*

 

That's enough for this two-parter but I hope, if nothing else, the performance of this Geegeez Gold system, albeit over just four weeks, has provided food for thought. Personally, I will be doing more digging into this system, that is guaranteed!

Until next time...

- DR

Monday Musings: Whisper it…

/in /by

Mention it quietly, the youngsters are coming, writes Tony Stafford. Saturday’s July Cup at Newmarket was a refreshing change as future champion jockey Billy Loughnane teamed up for the first time with Aidan’s youngest, Donnacha O’Brien, and collected the big prize with 11/1 shot Commanche Brave.

Commanche Brave, a four-year-old son of Wootton Bassett – who else? – had been only seventh but less than three lengths behind the winner Almeraq in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot, but now, nicely poised all the way, never looked likely to be beaten.

The nature of top-class sprints at a period of no outstanding divisional champion is to have a host of contenders still in the mix going into the closing stages. It was slightly the other way around at Newmarket, five others keeping on, three from unpromising positions, to get within hailing distance of the winner. The first six were again within less than three lengths.

While Almeraq in ninth didn’t live up to his form from the Royal meeting, both Commonwealth Cup heroine Venetian Sun and Japan raider and 2/1 favourite Satono Reve, who was second to Almeraq last time, had been there all the way to take the minor places.

Just over a length back in third, Satono Reve was sending another compliment, as if he needed one, to Hong Kong’s finest, Ka Ying Rising, who had him a grovelling second, more than four lengths back, when they met at Sha Tin in April. It would be great if Ascot could entice his connections to let him come over for next year’s Royal meeting.

Last weekend, Donnacha O’Brien had achieved an excellent performance with sister Ana’s A Boy Named Susie when second to Constitution River in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown. There was a further family connection this weekend; Aidan and wife Anne-Marie’s Whisperview Trading Ltd are the breeders of Commanche Brave.

For the parents, that took away some of the pain from the less than brilliant effort of another Ascot winner, Mission Central, aiming to stretch out over an extra furlong from his win at the minimum in the King Charles III Stakes. He was one of the first beaten when the field set off up the climb towards the finish.

It was a mixed week for Aidan, with both Precise on Friday – never going fast enough to peg back Andrew Balding’s Blue Bolt in the Group 1 Falmouth Stakes – and on Saturday coming out second in a drawn-out conclusion to the Superlative Stakes. In this, both his odds-on shot Abraham Lincoln and market rival Charlie Appleby’s Al Hubaida showed greenness before the latter got the verdict on the line.

The earlier two-year-old maiden brought a win to Ballydoyle, via Justify colt Haffner over Godolphin’s Al Wathba, the latter a colt by Wootton Bassett. This was the race where last year Appleby’s Distant Storm came out on top with none other than Constitution River as the runner-up.

As usual, the multiplicity of top meetings on Saturday will have annoyed the purists. York had the John Smith’s Handicap and a Group 3 heading its card; Ascot had a Group 2 and another Heritage handicap, matching the Bunbury Cup at Newmarket as a major back-up to the top events.

Even Chester, relegated to only fourth-place status, would no doubt have attracted its usual massive crowd. Their feature was a £34k seven-furlong Listed, while all the other seven races on an eight-race card carried identical win money of £7,731. Still, any winner’s a winner!

I would love the July meeting to revert to its traditional Tuesday to Thursday slot, leaving Ascot and York to have a more dominant position in the Calendar. There were 16,000 people on the July Course on Thursday, Ladies Day, but only half that number on Friday.

I had a nice chat with quite a few trainers over the first two days at Newmarket but neglected to quiz Ian Williams whether he fancied anything for the Saturday. Of course, I should have asked him his thoughts about Aalto, going for a second win after his 2024 victory in the Bunbury Cup – one of my favourite handicaps ever since Pinctada, who originally raced in my colours, won the race for Terry Ramsden in 1988.

Last year, Aalto was caught in the final stride in the race by More Thunder, nowadays a Group-race performer for William Haggas. Now, from the foot of the handicap, and running off 5lb lower, no wonder he and William Buick headed the market. He won comfortably and no doubt will continue to be a feature in valuable handicaps.

*

I know I often turn this article around to stuff that’s happened to me as in the Pinctada episode. The summer before his Bunbury Cup success, he won six races in a period of 20 days for Rod Simpson at a time when horses could run for almost three weeks after a win with just a single penalty if the timing was right. Glory days.

More recently, I have owed a debt of gratitude to Raymond Tooth. The world-famous family lawyer signed me up in 2007 and for most of the time since Ray punched above his weight. Now, in his mid-80’s he has finally decided to retire and close his Sears Tooth law firm.

I was grateful to be given the role of racing manager at a time when several part-time jobs that I had after taking early retirement from the Daily Telegraph evaporated away.

We first met on the day Punjabi was a runaway 19-length winner of the Grade 2 Adonis Hurdle at Kempton, introduced through mutual friend Derek Hatter. Coincidentally, he was looking for someone to ease the burden of keeping up with 30 horses in training along with his demanding day job.

In the winner’s room, my credentials were advanced to him by my long-time acquaintance, the late Brod Munro-Wilson, who was also there that day. Years before, I had bought Talon, a staying jumper for Brod. He was one of 12 winners in a single day, one Boxing Day, yet another record set by Michael Dickinson. Can you match that one, Dan Skelton?

Punjabi went on to win a Champion Hurdle for Nicky Henderson, not bad for a one-time seven-furlong handicapper on the flat and a £42k HIT sales buy out of the Geraldine Jones yard. Some trainer, that Henderson!

It wasn’t just on the NH side of things that Ray enjoyed success. He paid £25k for a yearling filly by Indian Ridge with Richard Hannon. The year before we met, she collected almost £140k when winning a sales race for juveniles and went on to win the Cheveley Park Stakes.

After finishing just behind the placed horses at Newmarket, she missed out on a run in the Irish 1,000 Guineas, Richard waiting for the Coronation Stakes at the Royal meeting.  It rained heavily on the morning of the race, and Steve and Kevin Howard, my pals, had a right old killing along with a couple of their mates, at well beyond the 8/1 starting price.

Richard Hughes waited before sending her into full stride a furlong from home and, amazingly in view of the opposition, which included the winners (in order of finish) of the German (Mi Emma), French (Darjina), English and Irish (Finsceal Beo) 1,000 Guineas among the 13-runner field, she obliterated them all.

Indian Ink strode majestically clear to win by six lengths, a performance that brought a 2million gns bid from Hamdan Al Maktoum’s Shadwell Stud at the end of the year. The one sadness for Ray, and me to a lesser extent, was the fact she never raced again after that Coronation Stakes, while many of her “victims” continued to thrive.

Ray’s last big winner came after he was recommended to French trainer Nicolas Clement by agent Charlie Gordon-Watson. After an unremarkable start, Nicolas suggested he find one for Raymond himself and he came up with the already-named French Fifteen, a colt by Turtle Bowl, bought at the sales in France as a yearling for €30k.

He won five in a sequence of six races as a two-year-old, culminating in the comfortable success in the Group 1 Criterium International at Saint-Cloud. Within a few days, French Fifteen had been sold to Qatari connections and he came across to Newmarket the following May to run Camelot close in the 2,000 Guineas – some performance against the O’Brien colt before his Derby success.

As I said, Raymond always punched above his weight, like his long-time right-hand man Steve Gilbey. Both men have been true friends and have been valued life advisors to me for the best part of 20 years. I hope Ray continues to enjoy good health and retains the knack of picking out winning patents from his modest wagers in the Star Sports betting shop in Mayfair.

More on Combining Pace and SR Ratings

/in /by

A four-week trial of combining Pace with SR Ratings, Part 1

Back in May of 2025 I wrote a couple of articles looking at 5-furlong handicaps with the focus being the scores for each horse found in Geegeez Racecard pace tab, writes Dave Renham. In the second of those pieces, which can be read here, I looked at a set of results based on the top three horses ranked in terms of pace scores in their specific race, when they also appeared in the top three of Peter May’s SR ratings for said race.

The findings were extremely promising over the whole year for horses in the top three of both as the table below shows:

 

Table showing betting statistics: Bets 809, Wins 151, Win% 18.67, P/L BSP 82.04, ROI BSP 10.14.

 

Considering these results came from combining all UK courses, some of which do not strongly favour horses that race close to, or on the pace, I think the results were even more impressive.

In this article I will revisit that idea but before getting to the meat and bones, let me briefly discuss the pace tab and SR ratings, especially for new readers.

The pace tab shows the running styles of the horses for a maximum of their last four races. Each past running style is given a score of between four and one. The breakdown is as follows:

4 – Front runner / early leader

3 – Prominent racer

2 – Raced in midfield / mid division

1 – held up near or at the back early

Past number crunching has noted that early leaders / front runners have a strong advantage over other running styles at some of the shorter distances. This front running bias does not occur at every ‘shorter’ course and distance, but at a significant number.

The one tool that should be able to help us is the Geegeez Gold pace tab. Logic dictates that the higher a horses’ pace score total, the more likely it is to lead and, if it leads, then over time such runners are at an advantage offering us punters good value. Let me share an example of a 5f handicap race run on 25th June of this year focusing first on the pre-race pace ratings:

 

Racing form dashboard showing pace categories Led, Prominent, Mid Division, Held Up with runners and trainer info.

 

The first point to note, before we look at the pace totals for each runner, is the performance of early leaders over this course and distance (C&D).

The most important number for me is the PRB figure of 0.64 for early leaders/front runners (the ‘Led’ group). That suggests front runners have had a significant edge over this C&D in the past. Hence, this is the type of race where, if we can predict the front runner and back it, we should make good money over time. I will come back and discuss the C&D PRBs later in the piece.

In the image above I have ordered the runners by their pace scores and we have two in double figures, namely Iris Dancer and Mr Cool. Pre-race it seemed likely that one of these two would lead. Here is how the race panned out:

 

Final standings table for the Hamilton Park 25-Jun-2026 handicapped race: 1 Iris Dancer, 2 Sherlock (IRE), 3 Penny Mountain (IRE) with trainers and jockeys listed.

 

Iris Dancer did indeed take an early lead and made all the running. Mr Cool was pressing the lead early but eventually finished fifth. The race followed the most likely pattern and the most likely result. Now, of course, there will be plenty of times when a race does not pan out like this, but the odds should generally be in our favour.

Just before I share my new research, I want to briefly talk SR ratings. These are derived from a neural network developed by Peter May. They are much more than a measure of speed; they include a number of form considerations making them a sort of composite of, in Racing Post terms, RPR (Racing Post Rating) and TS (Topspeed) - both of which we also publish in the daily racecards. Crucially, though, the SR figures are not published on every racecard in Christendom, and so fly under the radar considerably more.

Now, going back to that previous race, let me change from ordering the horses by pace rank to SR Ratings:

 

Race card: seven runners with form, trainer, jockey, and recent figures for each horse in the table.

 

Here we see Tarlac top rated on 61, Penny Mountain second on 58 and Iris Dancer third on 56. Hence, based on my previous research article looking at horses being in the top three of both the pace rankings and the SR rankings, the winner Iris Dancer, was the only horse to appear in both top threes.

So, onto today's new research. I thought it would be interesting to come up with a very simple ‘system’ similar to what I did in that original article and test it over a recent four-week period. I chose the first four weeks of May of this year, 2026, to do the testing.

Here are the ‘system’ rules:

  1. UK Handicap races only
  2. Race Distance 5f to 1m1f
  3. The PRB figure for the ‘led’ group on the pace tab for the specific race conditions must be 0.60 or higher
  4. Horse must have one of the top three pace scores for the race
  5. Horse must have one of the top three SR ratings for the race

It should be noted that if there were two joint third-rated pace horses then both would potentially become a qualifier if either or both of their SR rating positions were also in the top three. If there were three or more joint-thirds, then I would count the two with the highest most recent race pace scores. In terms of SR rating joint-thirds, I need to include them all as I have no way of splitting them. Also, if a horse had only three previous pace race scores, I would use their pace average figure to compare with the four race averages that most horses have. In this case, the horses with the three highest averages across either three or four past races would count. I did not consider horses with one or two past scores.

As before I have stuck with handicap races as they give us the most reliable results for this type of idea, but I have expanded the distance consideration from 5f only to races of 5f up to and including 1m 1f. The other main difference is that I am only considering C&Ds where the past data indicates a significant front running bias (PRB of 0.60 or more). For the record, I have excluded any rare three-runner races as all three horses would always qualify in those races under these rules.

OK, let me share my findings. For the rest of this article, I will look at results across the first two weeks, and next week I will share weeks three and four, as well as some thoughts on the four-week trial as a whole.

 

Week 1

There were 29 qualifying horses in week one and the table below gives each individual result. In the table I have added eight columns – date, course and horse being the first three, then the fourth column gives the PRB figure for ‘Led’ runners under the race conditions for that C&D race (i.e. based on the going and number of runners grouping). Column five gives the finishing position of the horse, then their Betfair SP, SR rank of the horse, and its pace rank.

The results for this first week were as follows with winners highlighted in red:

 

Table of horse racing results for early May 2026 showing date, course, horse, PRB 'Led', final position, BSP, SR rank, and pace rank (color-coded rows indicate outcomes).

 

For the record, I have asterisked (*) Nakatomi simply because the sample size for the pace ‘led’ PRB figure came from a very small sample. Most of the PRB ‘Led’ samples came from a very decent number of horses which adds confidence to the overall findings.

Here is the summary for week 1:

 

Table showing betting stats: Bets 29, Wins 6, Win% 20.69, P/L BSP 12, ROI BSP 41.38.

 

A very positive start, although with the caveat that there were only 29 qualifiers. Having said that, there were six horses that finished second and a further four that finished third. Therefore, over half of the qualifiers finished in the first three.

 

Week 2

After a great start could the momentum be maintained in week two? The first race in week two where we had qualifiers was the 3.40 at Chester on 8th May. Note that the ‘Led’ PRB for these races conditions (6f, Good going; runners 11 to 14) stood at 0.67 so it comfortably matched system rule three.

I will share both top-rated runners using the SR ratings and then show top rated pace runners to help clarify the selection process. Ordered by SR ratings first:

 

Chester race card with pace bands, odds, and runner table for 08-May-2026 race.

 

We had three joint third SR ratings, which actually is extremely rare, but it did mean I had five potential horses that could become a qualifier. Onto the pace rankings now:

 

Race results table listing three horses—ROSENPUR, MANILA SCOUSE, MIRACULOUS—with their trainers and jockeys, and final scores.

 

A clean top three here, with Rosenpur and Miraculous appearing in both lists, hence they were both qualifiers. The race result was thus:

 

Race standings table listing position, horse name, trainer, age, weight, jockey, and notes.

 

I haven’t given all the finishing positions as we were only concerned with Rosenpur (who won) and Miraculous who finished fifth. An excellent winning BSP for Rosenpur of 9.54 compared with the ISP of 6.5 (11/2). Also, we should note that Rosenpur led early and made all the running.

Week two had started on the best possible note and below is a table with all the results from that week including those two.

 

Table of horse race results with date, course, horse, PRB Led, final position, BSP, SR rank, and Pace rank.

 

A quieter week with 20 qualifiers and the weekly summary was as follows:

 

Performance summary table: 20 bets, 4 wins (20%), P/L BSP 16.39, ROI BSP 81.95%.

 

Four winners from 20 this time and, as with Rosenpur, the other three were good prices (BSP 7.5, 7.27, 12.74), hence the excellent profit figure and ROI%. There were also five more horses that finished second.

After two weeks therefore the overall figures read:

 

Table of betting stats: 49 bets, 10 wins, win% 20.41, P/L BSP 28.39, ROI BSP 57.94

 

We see a very impressive set of numbers here, but I do appreciate it's from only 49 qualifiers. Having said that, the winners do not seem to have come out of the blue because along with the ten winners, there were 11 second places, too.

This incredibly simple system, for which Geegeez Gold members are able to work out qualifiers on a daily basis, has started very positively. Will weeks three and four continue this trend? All will be revealed next time... until then...

- DR

Query Tool v2 is Finally Here (Very nearly!)

/in , /by

It's been a loooong time coming, but the upgraded Query Tool is very, very nearly ready. In fact, it is ready and we'll be deploying it to the site this week, probably tomorrow (Wednesday). In this post - video and, underneath, text/images - I'll show you what's new and, I hope, improved.

One very important point to note, which I'll return to in what follows, is that QTv2 is being released in 'beta'. This means we've tested as far as we can, but the multitude of different browsers and devices, as well as the almost infinite combinations of variables, means there may well be some residual unsquashed bugs. So, if you spot anything, please do let us know. Thanks.

OK, video explainer below. Text and image explainer underneath that. Updated user guide here (see page 138 onwards).

 

 

So, at long last, welcome to Query Tool v2. What's new and what's the same? At this point, the interface is largely the same and all of the features you're accustomed to are as they were, including the charts and QT Angles functionality. We do plan to update the interface - the way you interact with the data - later in the year because it's a) a little dated, and b) a little limited, particularly in terms of visualisation.

As for what's new, as you can see in the image below, there's a splash of colour and a couple (three actually, one hidden in that snap) of new blocks.

 

 

The colour has been used to differentiate between three sets of variables which enable you to quiz our database on each of the current run and now also the previous run and penultimate run of a horse. Note the (BETA) labels for the last run/2nd last run blocks.

We've used a nice pastel yellow for CURRENT RUN. This houses the parameters you know and love from the original QT. To these we've added a light blue block for parameters relating a horse's last time out run, and violet shading for its second last run.

We've also removed the BOLD CAPS from from the variables to further differentiate and to be slightly less offensive on the ol' peepers.

 

Clicking on CURRENT RUN reveals the third new block, CAREER STATS. This is also in beta, so do notify of any quirks.

 

 

In this block, you can filter the database by runs and/or wins, and by a number of subsets thereof.

For example, if you wanted to know which trainers have performed well with horses making their first start in a flat handicap over the past two years, choose 'Runs (Handicap)' 0 to 0 and group by trainer. N.B. don't forget to select 'Handicap' under the RACE parameters, otherwise you'll get all of the classy non-handicappers that have never (and may never!) run in a handicap.

 

 

In the breakdown data here, I've sorted by PRB and displayed only those trainers with 25+ qualifying runners in the time frame. There are plenty of familiar names in there.

 

 

 

Let's move on. I'll click the RESET button and also remember to clear my '25 runs' stipulation (if you don't see the expected data in the main part of the window, always check you haven't got a filter of some sort in the top area).

This time, I want to see if a runner's pace score in its last (couple of) race(s) is predictive in five furlong UK turf races.

 

 

It looks like it is. As per the below, those with a score of 3 (prominent) or 4 (led) last time out won at better than 13%, while those racing in the middle or back of the field early last time won at less than 11%. This was replicated in the each way percentages as well.

 

 

What about second last run pace score?

 

 

 

A similar pattern emerges, though the dichotomy is not quite as stark. In fact, it's fair to say that the strongest stat might be avoiding those horses that scored 1 (held up) in both runs. Let's query that to see if it's correct. Here, I've expanded the time window to five years:

 

 

Breaking the output down by year shows that it's been a bumpy ride, no doubt predicated on some big-priced winners:

 

 

Taking it all the way back to 2009 shows the same difficult route to Betfair SP profit:

 

 

But figures have been largely consistent across all of win%, place% and PRB.

The inference is that, generally speaking, in five furlong turf races horses that were waited with in their most recent two starts are best avoided. Meanwhile, those that raced at least midfield in their most recent two starts would likely form the basis of solid wagering going forwards, regardless of whether the race is a handicap or not:

 

 

These are just a couple of examples of the sort of research that can be undertaken with the extended Query Tool.

[Note that the pace data in our development database is not updated as much as the live one that you use, and so if trying to replicate the above you should expect slightly different results, and apologies for any confusion that might cause!]

 

Please also note - and I make no apology for labouring this - that, in case you didn't know ;-), we're in beta mode here so stuff might by wonky. Please shout if you see anything more weird than wonderful and we'll investigate, and fix as necessary.

Good luck!

Matt

Monday Musings: Where are the Brits?

/in /by

The £5 million mark for Aidan O’Brien in the UK this year has easily been passed, Constitution River and to a lesser extent his third-placed stablemate Hawk Mountain seeing to that in Saturday’s Coral-Eclipse Stakes, writes Tony Stafford.

The Sandown victory made it 12 Group 1 wins in a season already for the stable and most commentators seemed to be calling it a formality that he would exceed his own worldwide season’s best of 28. Just 16 to go – still sounds a lot to me.

Amid the euphoria about Constitution River, fully deserved after the style of his triumph in a race which might not have gone entirely to plan, we need to examine the dearth of home talent either capable of or certainly willing to take on the O’Brien stars this year.

In the Irish Derby, the nearest UK runner behind an O’Brien 1-2-3 was Owen Burrows with the much-fancied Raaheeb in fourth, eight lengths behind the winner Benvenuto Cellini. Richard Hannon was the only other raider from these shores and his Bunyola Bay, after briefly helping make the pace, finished a tailed-off last of eight.

On Saturday, three from home challenged four O’Brien runners, three for Aidan and one for his younger son Donnacha. The market suggested either Saddadd (Roger Varian) or Gethin (Burrows again) would get in amongst them, Gethin even having the services of his owner’s King’s Gambit (Harry Charlton) as the pacemaking counter to Coolmore’s Flushing Meadows. Both are four-year-olds, so where was the home Classic generation?

Gethin had been a close second to Ombudsman last time out while Saddadd had limbered up with a third to Almaqam and Bay City Roller in the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh in May.

Both started 4/1, although Gethin had been much shorter earlier in the week. Market confidence in the favourite grew the closer to race time it got and the performance showed that this time the Ballydoyle bush telegraph was in full working order.

Saddadd did show with some promise going to two out until Ryan Moore employed overdrive on the winner and that was that. As with Raaheeb in the Irish Derby, he was eight lengths back at the line. Gethin had already shot his bolt by that time, a brief flirtation with the lead early in the straight quickly evaporating to the extent that he was another seven lengths back in fifth, with only the gasping pacemakers in his wake.

There will be more than enough comment on the winner who, after all, had under Ryan overcome the difficulty of an apparently impossible outside draw to win the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) ahead of Hawk Mountain and another stablemate, Montreal.

The margin between the pair was extended from three-parts of a length to more than three and the argument that he would have won the Derby had he been routed to Epsom rather than Chantilly grows ever more convincing.

Now though it’s the Juddmonte, Irish Champion and our Champion Stakes – stallion-maker events all. As I hinted earlier in the piece, however, there’s another intriguing angle to this story. In a determined second place, just nudging ahead of Hawk Mountain close home, was A Boy Named Susie.

You may wonder why a colt would be given such a name. People of my age group know that the great film actor John Wayne was born Marion. This has a simpler explanation: the colt’s mum was called Soho Susie, a daughter of Montjeu, the great Coolmore stallion and Galileo’s counterpart for so many years at the stud. The Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue must be the reason and a clever one too. Nobody will forget his name!

Soho Susie is also the half-sister to Tony O’Callaghan’s prolific winner-producing stallion Mehmas. Anne O’Callaghan, Tony’s wife, is John Magnier’s sister.

A Boy Named Susie, trained by Donnacha, is owned by his sister Ana. I always loved seeing her full given name Anastasia in racecards when she was a highly promising jockey until injury curtailed her career.

She entrusted her brother with the training of A Boy Named Susie, unlike two other nice horses that elder brother Joseph handled for her to win races before selling profitably later. This colt, a 200k son of Coolmore’s Starspangledbanner, made a winning start with a three-length stroll at Killarney last summer.

You might have expected a graduated campaign, but Donnacha launched his sister’s pride and joy immediately into Group company and, so far, they have yet to be rewarded with another win.

Never mind, the prizemoney tally is now up to £370k from seven subsequent runs. He has been second three times, third once and fourth on another three occasions, but the progression has been steady and consistent.

And the names of the winners of those seven races? His second two-year-old race produced a promising fourth in the Irish EBF Futurity (Group 2) behind Constitution River. Another Group 2 fourth place followed, albeit last of four but only five lengths adrift of Benvenuto Cellini in the Champion Juvenile Group 2 at Leopardstown.

He stepped up next time with a short-head second to Christmas Day in the Group 3 Eyrefield Stakes at Leopardstown and wound up for the year with another second, two lengths behind Pierre Bonnard in the Group 1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud.

Things didn’t get any easier in 2026, starting out with third to Christmas Day in the time-honoured Derby trial, the Group 3 Ballysax Stakes at Leopardstown. Then it was on to Chantilly for fourth in the Jockey Club and thence his finest hour on Saturday in the Eclipse.

The winners thus of his seven races since that debut have been Constitution River three times, Benvenuto Cellini, Christmas Day twice and Pierre Bonnard. “Dad, could you forget to enter anything next time?” could be the obvious refrain from Donnacha. “No chance, son. You find something I haven’t spotted!”

The horses that have won his races have gone on to success in the Derby (Christmas Day), Irish Derby (Benvenuto Cellini), French Derby and Eclipse (Constitution River), The only “flop” if you could call him that is Pierre Bonnard, just the third in the Irish Derby on the credit side since he beat Susie in France last October.

But where oh where are our Group 1 middle-distance horses? A look through Horses In Training shows legions of expensively bought and classically bred middle-distance animals in several powerful yards in Newmarket, Lambourn and elsewhere. Does the trials programme get going too late as against such races as the Ballysax early on in Ireland?

Whatever the reason, the big home teams haven’t been able to stem the tide. You thought King Canute had a tough job! After Sandown, O’Brien senior is already more than five-eighths of the way towards his record tally of £8.3 million set two years ago with the help of City Of Troy – and he still has that brilliant horse’s progeny to come on stream.

The future’s grim, the future’s Coolmore!

*

It was sad to hear of the death of Graham Bradley at 65. He hadn’t been in the best of health for some time. Despite spending many years trying to atone for earlier misdemeanours, this most stylish of jockeys was never allowed a licence to train.

Having been in the Michael Dickinson yard in its heyday and as the winner of the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup on Bregawn, heading home the Famous Five, he would have had plenty of expertise to make the transition to trainer.

He wouldn’t have been the first or last brilliant jump jockey to lose his way, but it seemed he was always the one marked out for “special” negative treatment by racing’s authorities.

Equally, it was also sad to hear of the passing of Peter Waney, whose West End restaurants Zuma and Meraki have long been a feature of the London scene.

Karachi-born, Waney and his family moved to Mumbai at the time of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. He later became a long-standing owner with the Hannon stable. The only time I went to a Waney restaurant was when Ray Tooth took his staff (and me, thanks Ray!) to Dubai a decade or so ago. Waney arranged to squeeze the dozen or so of us in an otherwise fully booked evening session at Zuma and the food was delightful. Farewell Peter, your many racing friends will miss you.

- TS

 

A Look at Summer All-Weather Racing

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All-Weather racing in the height of summer

In this article, I will be looking at horses running on the all-weather (AW) in the months of July and August, writes Dave Renham. Data have been taken from 2017 to 2025 UK AW races and profits/losses calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP), less 2% commission on any winning bets.

Naturally, the focus for most in July and August is the turf with some big meetings including three of the biggest of the year at Newmarket, Goodwood and York. However, away from the limelight, has all-weather racing during those months offered punters an edge in any way over the past few years? Let’s start digging to find out.

Market Rank

I want to look first at the betting market focusing on market rank or position in the betting. I am using the BSP ranked positions for this:

 

Table comparing market ranks (Favourite through 6th+ in betting) with Runs, Wins, Win %, Win PL, and ROI; shows performance and profitability by rank (e.g., Favourite: 2337 runs, 769 wins, 32.91% win rate, negative Win PL/ROI).

 

The value has been with those second in the market, a cohort that secured a blind return of just over 3p in the £. Indeed, when focusing on non-handicaps only, this group enjoyed 175 winners from 694 runners (SR 25.2%) for a profit of £76.38 with returns of 11p in the £.

In terms of favourites, we can see they suffered overall losses of 5.5p in the £, and it was non-handicap market leaders that struggled the most. Such runners won nearly 41% of the time (285 wins from 697), but their losses were steep: £69.45 (ROI -10%).

Digging into this group a little more, if we look at the record of 2-year-old favourites in non-handicaps we can see that they performed very poorly. They managed 122 wins from 377 runs (SR 37.8%) but at a loss of £59.45 (ROI -18.4%). Narrowing the 2yo non-handicap favourite data down further to 2yo maiden races, favourites endured a dreadful time of time of it with just 21 winners from 78 runners (SR 26.9%) for significant losses of £32.81 (ROI -42.1%).

It is also worth noting that horses sent off sixth or bigger in the betting performed quite poorly, losing close to 20 pence for every £1 staked.

Regular readers know that I like to concentrate on 'non-rags', so let me split the results by those that were BSP 16.0 or less versus those BSP 16.01 or more:

 

Table showing BSP band performance with two rows: 'BSP 16 or less' and '16.01+'; Runs, Wins, Win% (Win rate), Win PL, and ROI values for each band. For BSP 16 or less: 11838 runs, 2074 wins, 17.52% win rate, 89.17 Win PL, ROI 0.75. For BSP 16.01+: 10115 runs, 253 wins, 2.5% win rate, -2310 Win PL, ROI -22.84.

 

This perhaps should not come as such a big surprise based on the findings shared earlier about horses sixth or bigger in the betting; a good chunk of such runners would have ended up in the BSP 16.01 or more group. In fact, if we focus on an even bigger priced cohort, those BSP 30.0 or longer, that would have lost over 32p in the £.

Clearly July and August has been a time where not many big priced winners have popped up on the sand. Thus, hereafter, I will be focusing on horses that were priced BSP 16.0 or less only.

 

Sex of horse

Let's now look at the record of male horses versus female ones. The splits below are based on the results of races open to both sexes. It makes no sense to include male or female only races in any such comparison:

 

Table comparing male and female horses: Runs 6598 vs 2641; Wins 1167 vs 401; Win % 17.69% vs 15.18%; Win PL 63.13 vs -71.53; ROI 0.96 vs -2.71.

 

There was well over twice as many male runners, which is the norm, and they recorded a better win rate, also the norm. In terms of returns males edged that, too.

The difference between the sexes widens a little when we look specifically at mixed age handicap races. The breakdown was as follows:

 

Table comparing male and female horses on Runs, Wins, Win%, Win PL, and ROI; Male: 5,281/869/16.46%/−83.17/1.57; Female: 2,178/309/14.19%/−88.93/−4.08.

 

Well, it certainly widens in terms of returns with males having a slightly bigger upside here. From an A/E (BSP) index perspective, a metric that measures value, males in mixed handicaps have offered better value as the graph below shows.

 

Bar chart comparing A/E BSP indices for UK AW racing July/August 2017–2025: male 1.04, female 0.97.

 

A figure above 1.00 indicates value and male runners have edged above that hitting 1.04.

 

Age of horse

For this section I have ignored two-year-olds as there is little point comparing them to other age groups.

 

Table of racing performance by horse age (ages 3–8 and older): Runs, Wins, Win %, Win PL, and ROI for each age group.

 

The biggest takeaway from here is the very poor performance of older horses: losses of just over 33p in the £ has been very poor. For the record, 3yos have a similar record in 3yo only races compared to those open to 3yos and older ones.

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

Let us see how the most recent run has affected performance based on last time out finishing position.

 

Table comparing performance by finishing position (First to Sixth or worse) with columns: Runs, Wins, Win %, Win PL, and ROI. It shows how many runs and wins each position yields, their win percentage, projected winnings, and return on investment, highlighting that First and Second have higher ROI while Third and later places show negative ROI in places.

 

LTO winners nudged into a very small profit, while horses that finished second produced huge profits. Their A/E (BSP) figure stands at an impressive 1.12.

 

Race type LTO

I wondered if a run on the AW last time or on the turf would make a difference, and when I looked at the strike rates there was a difference of just over 1.5% as the graph below shows:

 

Bar chart comparing win strike rates: Turf flat 18.24% vs AW flat 16.71% for BSP 16.0 or less (Race Code LTO); y-axis 0–24%.

 

Does this strike rate difference affect the profit and loss figures? The table below reveals all:

 

Comparison table of Turf Flat and AW Flat races showing runs, wins, win rate, BSP PL, and BSP ROI.

 

The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’, thanks to a difference of £462.41 between the two to £1 level stakes. The difference in terms of returns was a smidge above 8p in the £. Clearly, based on these numbers, a run last time on the turf is preferable.

We saw earlier that both last time out winners and last out runners up were profitable over the period of study. When those most recent firsts or seconds were on turf, the figures improved further as the table below shows:

 

Table of LTO results for First and Second positions: First—710 runs, 171 wins (24.08%), BSP PL 43.37, BSP ROI 6.11; Second—1,016 runs, 277 wins (27.26%), BSP PL 298.36, BSP ROI 29.37.

 

Not only have the strike rates improved but the returns have, too. The ROI% increase for LTO winners was around 4% while for last time runners up it increased by nearly 10%. The A/E (BSP) index for this cohort of runners up stands at a very healthy 1.22. Hence, any horse that finished first or second LTO on the turf needs close scrutiny this July and August when running next on the AW.

 

Trainers

On to trainer performance now. Below is a table containing all trainers who had at least 100 runners on the AW in July and August (2017-2025) priced BSP 16.0 or less. The table is sorted by win strike rate:

 

Table of trainer performance: runs, wins, win percentage, BSP PL, and BSP ROI for each trainer.

 

There were more trainers in profit than in loss in this table (19 of the 28), with several showing good returns. Let me share a few observations:

George Boughey

Over the last two years Boughey's record reads 10 wins from 36 (SR 27.8%) for a profit of £34.90 (ROI +96.9%). He also did well when his runners started second in the betting market. This cohort won 35.7% of the time (10 from 28) for a profit of £15.64 (ROI +55.9%).

 

John+Thady Gosden

Look out for Gosden-trained favourites. Their 61 qualifiers fared very well, winning 55.7% of the time and returning just below 20p in the £.

 

Richard Hughes

Horses second in the betting have been profitable for Hughes thanks to 12 wins from 40 (SR 30%) for a surplus of £13.52 (ROI +33.8%). He also had an exceptional record with LTO winners, scoring with 50% of their follow-up AW starts (10 wins from 20) for a healthy profit of £17.96 (ROI +89.8%).

 

Sir Mark Prescott

Sir Mark has been consistent across all six AW tracks producing profits at five. The only losing course for him was Wolverhampton where he had minimal losses of 4p in the £. Horses that finished fourth or worse LTO had a good record on the all-weather in July and August for the stable thanks 19 wins from 65 (SR 29.2%) for a profit of £31.55 (ROI +48.5%).

 

Roger Varian

Varian has performed well with second favourites, claiming 17 wins from 56 runners (SR 30.4%) for a profit of £16.20 (ROI +18.2%). He had a good record specifically when sending runners to Lingfield: 10 wins from 27 (SR 37%) for a profit of £7.62 (ROI +28.2%).

 

Archie Watson

Take note when Watson runners appear at Lingfield. His record reads an excellent 10 wins from 30 (SR 33.3%) for a profit of £24.79 (ROI +88.6%). He also did well at Wolverhampton with 21 winners from 58 (SR 36.2%) for a profit to BSP of £26.15 (ROI +45.1%). Watson's LTO winners performed with credit winning 12 of 30 starts (SR 40%) for a profit of £5.97 (ROI +19.9%).

 

Earlier I shared the fact that a LTO run on the turf had been preferable, and below is a graph showing the trainers with the best records with horses that raced in a turf flat race LTO. To qualify, they must have had at least 75 qualifiers and recorded a profit. The graph shows their relevant returns on investment to BSP.

 

Bar chart showing BSP ROI% by trainer; top ROI J Prescott 60.5%, M Bott 49.1%, others range 8.8–39.2%.

 

There were some excellent returns especially for Messrs. Botti, Fahey, Palmer and Prescott.

 

*

 

That wraps up this piece and it there have been plenty of positive angles highlighted for racing on the AW over the months of July and August, as well as some clear negatives.

Below is a quick summary of positives and negatives, mainly focusing on horses priced 16.0 or less BSP. The aide memoire excludes trainer findings as there were so many different positive angles, highlighted separately above.

 

Two-column table labeled Positives and Negatives listing betting considerations: positives include second favourites in non-handicaps and male horses in mixed-sex handicaps; negatives include horses 6th or higher in betting or BSP above 16.0, favourites in non-handicaps (especially 2-year-olds), favourites in maiden races, and horses aged 8 or older.

 

- DR

 

 

Monday Musings: Easy As…

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One, two, three, it’s easy as ABC, or rather it’s easy as shelling peas for AOB, writes Tony Stafford.

It was thought in some circles beforehand that Irish Derby win number 18 might have been threatened by the unbeaten and highly regarded Owen Burrows-trained Shadwell colt Raaheeb.

Backed down to 11/4 second favouritism here, behind Betfred Derby phantom non-runner (that ran!) Benvenuto Cellini, he did win the race for the non-Ballydoyle team.

For the record, this one-two-three was led by Frankel’s son Benvenuto Cellini (Ryan Moore) by almost two lengths, from Christmas Day and his Epsom partner Ronan Whelan, with Pierre Bonard an honourable third just behind. Raaheeb beat the rest by five lengths, but trailed home half a dozen lengths behind Pierre Bonnard and Wayne Lordan.

So Ryan got his second Derby win of the year, following on from the Prix du Jockey Club when he and Constitution River led home Hawk Mountain and Montreal over the ten and a half furlongs at Chantilly for a rather less overwhelming Coolmore trifecta.

That makes it at least half a dozen O’Brien three-year-old colts that will continue to dominate Group 1 middle-distance races for the rest of the year.

While not everyone agreed with the declaring of Benvenuto Cellini a non-runner, one who was vocal in applauding the decision was Peter Brant, in whose green colours the son of Frankel runs, but with all the usual Coolmore team as partners.

Brant is also on the team associated with Christmas Day. Like the regulars, he now has the Irish and English Derby winners in his ownership and the 28 lengths by which Benvenuto Cellini trailed home his teammate at Epsom has been officially expunged from the records. As in, “It wasn’t me, guv!”

The main plank of Peter’s justification was that Ryan was unable to take up the prominent position that had been planned for at Epsom. He couldn’t, he said, owing to that odd “caught up in the framework” incident, but he wasn’t all that close early on yesterday either as the team’s outsider Action set a fast pace from Christmas Day.

While he did show impressive pace to catch Christmas Day once Action had faded away, neither the second nor the third did anything to diminish his reputation. Both placed colts are by Camelot and must be among the prime contenders to maintain Coolmore and O’Brien’s customary strong hand in the St Leger.

Apart from the Irish Oaks, that pretty much does it for the spring/summer 2026 Classics and if hadn’t been for Bow Echo and George Boughey, this year would have been almost a whitewash for the O’Brien team.

I’ve been waiting for a suitable time to contradict everyone else’s pronunciation of the 2,000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes winner’s name.

George Hill, whose granddaughter Grace Learoyd-Hill, 20, won a big showjumping class for senior newcomers at Newport on Saturday – a star for the future he hopes, any sponsor out there? – tells me the Bow should be pronounced as Bough. It relates to the echo from the bow of a boat. You heard it here first.

If the Derby form from Epsom stood up well this weekend, the Oaks suffered a less satisfactory result when easy English winner Thundering On (Joseph O’Brien) could finish only fourth behind the five-year-old mare Estrange in the Pretty Polly Stakes.

David O’Meara has had to be patient with the Cheveley Park Stud-owned mare, who was running for only the ninth time (six wins) in her career. The long-held plan has been the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and that looks ever more feasible – even though Coolmore and the French will throw everything at her. She better get it done this October as top geldings like Calandagan and Goliath will be eligible to run in it twelve months hence. “Mon Dieu”, said M. Fabre.

I was interested to catch Dan Skelton yesterday talking about his season’s target which remains aiming to beat Martin Pipe’s record of 243 wins in a single jumps campaign, set in 1999/2000.

We kept watching almost in awe as his prize money tally for the term ending late April approached and then passed £5 million. His 194 winners from 1,094 runners realised £5,045,615. Putting that in perspective, O’Brien has won 40 races in Ireland this flat season, with earnings exceeding €3 million. I doubt it will be long before he passes Skelton’s 2025/26 tally in the UK this year. His 15 2026 wins have contributed to £4,679,151 win and place earnings.

And it won’t be getting easier for anyone to challenge him for the top prizes next season. A series of smart juvenile winners over the three days of the Irish Derby weekend was climaxed by the scintillating six-length romp of Sea The Stars filly Alpha in the opening seven-furlong fillies’ maiden yesterday.

A smart-looking and pedigree-powerful squad opposed this filly who was making her second start. Ryan took her to the front from the outset and she made all to beat stablemate Ibelieveicanfly by an easy six lengths.

When the two fillies made their debuts together a few weeks back, Ryan rode Ibelieveicanfly and Wayne Lordan was on Alpha, the pair going off as 2/1 joint-favourites, finishing in second and fourth respectively.

Ryan was on the right one this time and having been one and a half lengths Ibelieveicanfly’s superior then, she emphatically extended the margin. The winner’s dam, Alpha Centauri, was a top-class filly rated 123. If ever there was a long-range Oaks candidate, surely Alpha must be an early front-runner.

Having endured those unreal temperatures at the backend of last week, I must applaud the decision of the BHA to stage early-morning fixtures rather than afternoon programmes. The French have been doing it for ages – their meetings last week at Deauville (8.30 am) and Chantilly at 8.45, so an hour earlier here, were halfway done before Doncaster began at 10.15am.

My mate Richard Farnese won’t have been happy. There is a tradition with many Yarmouth racecourse regulars to stop off on the way to the track to his Café La Continental for a sumptuous breakfast. I confess to that predilection.

I cannot bear the thought of all those superb all-day breakfasts going uneaten. A race sponsor at Yarmouth for many years, I trust Richard will have been on site last week to remind everyone that he would still be open for breakfasts after the last race at 1 pm.

- TS

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