Topspeed Ratings in UK National Hunt, Part 2

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An analysis of Racing Post’s Topspeed (TS) in UK National Hunt Racing, Part 2

This is the second article of two looking at the performance of the Racing Post’s speed ratings, known as Topspeed, in National Hunt races in the UK, writes Dave Renham. In the first piece, which you can read here, I looked at a variety of Topspeed stats including win rates for different rating positions, percentages of rivals beaten (PRB), and some general stats for top-rated and second-rated runners.

Introduction

In this concluding half I will dig deeper into the performance of top-rated runners, looking first at non-handicaps and then at handicaps. As with the first article, for the most part when talking about the Topspeed Ratings I will use the abbreviation TS.

The next paragraph is basically a carbon copy of what I wrote in the first article, as it gives some background information regarding the TS ratings. Feel free to skip it if you have read the first one.

First and foremost, TS ratings are the Racing Post’s Speed Ratings. The raw TS figure is a measure of the speed a horse achieved in a particular race. It is amended slightly considering things like distance, weight carried, and the ground conditions. Essentially the TS is calculated by comparing a horse’s time with a standard time for the same course and distance. The TS figure we see in the Geegeez Racecard are known as adjusted TS ratings with the main adjustment made for weight carried in the current race. I believe the TS handicapper also tweaks this adjusted TS rating for the current race conditions. The adjusted TS figures we see in the Racecard are based on the best raw TS performance in the past 12 months. These performances must have occurred in the same ‘Race Code’, so for NH racing, past hurdle race TS raw ratings will be used for hurdle races only, while past chase TS ratings will be used for chases only.

My focus for this article, as stated earlier is UK National Hunt racing, and I have ignored hunter chases as many of these horses have been running in point to points; I am also excluding NH Flat races run on the AW. Data has been taken from January 1st 2019 to December 31st 2025, with the profit/loss figures calculated to Betfair SP (BSP) less 2% commission.

Non-Handicaps

By TS Rank

I want to begin by focusing on non-handicaps races and I will start in a similar way to last time by looking at the win percentages (strike rates) for different TS-ranked runners in non-handicap races.

We saw in the first article that for the ‘all races’ data the graph showed strong correlation between rank position and strike rate. Let’s see if that has occurred when focusing on non-handicaps only. In terms of understanding the graph, the horizontal axis is labelled from 1 which stands for the top-rated runner, 2 is the second rated and so on:

 

 

 

The win strike rate for TS top-rated runners has been an impressive 31% in these non-handicaps with a significant gap to the second rated on 19.5%. Arguably more importantly, the win percentages have correlated positively once more with the TS ranked positions. We have the left to right sliding scale that is the ‘ideal’.

Each way strike rates for individual positions correlate also, showing the same sliding scale. For the record, the top-rated runners in non-handicaps have finished in a win or placed position over 56% of the time. Below are the PRBs (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) by TS rank:

 

 

We can see high PRBs for both the top-rated (0.70) and second top (0.61), whereas we get similar low figures from 6th downwards (0.43, 0.42 or 0.41).

Here is the record of every TS top-rated runner in non-handicaps since 2019:

 

 

A small profit would have been achieved in non-handicaps backing all top-rated TS runners ‘blind’. Let’s now split this data into different areas or sections.

Race Type – TS top-rated runners

Firstly, in terms of non-handicaps, I am going to look at different race types to see if the TS top-rated runner fared any better in either hurdle races, chases or NH Flat races.

 

 

Despite having the lowest win percentage, NH Flat races provided the best returns for TS top-rated runners in non-handicaps. An ROI of a smidge above 12p in the £ was impressive. Top-rated chases also turned a small profit, and at a very healthy one in three strike rate, too.

Sticking with NH Flat races, the TS top-rated runners finished in the black in six of the last seven years. The annual returns (ROI) are displayed in the graph below:

 

 

2022 was the one losing year, but overall, the NH Flat results for top-rated runners have been good and consistent.

Race Class – TS top-rated runners

A look at race class next starting with a table:

 

 

The highest level of race (Class 1) endured the poorest results by some margin. These races delivered the lowest PRB of 0.60 and losses in excess of 13p in the £. All Class 1 races have shown similar levels of loss: Grade 1s were down around 11p in the £, Grade 2s around 13.5p and Listed races a whopping 16p in the £.

Conversely, Class 2 races enjoyed the best profits, although the bottom line was skewed somewhat by a BSP 90.0 winner. That said, shorter priced TS top-rated runners had a very good record in Class 2 non-handicaps. Those priced 2/1 or shorter won 69 races from 114 for an excellent strike rate of 60.5%, producing a profit of £28.64 (ROI +25.1%).

Class 3 contests were also kind to these 2/1 or shorter priced runners, hitting a 57% win rate and returns of over 10 pence in the £.

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners

In the first article I looked at market rank across all races. Here are the splits solely for non-handicaps when it comes to the TS top-rated runners:

 

 

There was no clear pattern here unfortunately in terms of profit / loss. I am slightly surprised at the relatively poor returns for second favourites especially considering that favourites were marginally profitable.

Age – TS top-rated runners

A look at the age splits now:

 

 

Three-year-olds performed well and returned a tidy profit although a few big priced winners helped. However, it should be noted that 3yo favourites also proved profitable thanks to 84 wins from 147 (SR 55.1%) for a surplus of £20.45 (ROI +13.9%). On the flip side, 8yos and up had a relatively poor record losing 12p in the £.

 

Run Style – TS top-rated runners

When we examine run style, the general pattern sees front runners score more often than prominent racers who in turn out perform mid-division runners, while hold up horses tend to have the lowest win rates. Below are the win strike rates by run style group for TS top-rated runners in non-handicaps:

 

 

The graph perfectly aligns to the stereotype: horses which led did best in terms of strike rate, and if we had been able to predict their run style pre-race we would have basked in returns of over 12p in the £. Compare this to top-rated runners which were held up - they collectively lost a massive 35p in the £.

 

Handicaps

By TS Rank

Time to switch to handicaps now and the performance of the TS top-rated runners in those races.

Before that, I want to share the win percentages (strike rates) for different ranked runners:

 

 

Top-rated runners again secured the best strike rate, but only just. In terms of each way strike rates the top-rated runners still came out top on 38.1%, with second rated next on 36.3%. The remaining positions in the ratings continued the usual sliding scale showing positive correlation with the win rates.

In terms of PRBs the splits were as follows:

 

 

The PRBs follow the same pattern as expected, although the top three rated positions were all within 0.02 of each other.

It is time now to look at the record of every single TS top-rated runner in handicaps since 2019. The figures make for positive reading:

 

 

We see a very small profit, but a profit nonetheless, from simply backing the top-rated Topspeed horse in all handicaps. I'm sure we'll be able to improve on that as we delve deeper.

Race Type – TS top-rated runners

 

 

There was quite a difference in terms of profit and loss between race codes. Handicap chases saw TS top-rated runners do extremely well and, although they have had a sprinkling of big priced winners, their record at the shorter end of the market was impressive too. Focusing on TS top-rated runners priced 11/1 or shorter in handicap chases, the following totals emerge:

 

 

These are a very solid set of metrics, and it should be noted that for this specific cohort, five of the seven years would have turned a profit.

Race Class – TS top-rated runners

Race class is next up and the results from 2019 to 2025 were as follows:

 

 

Just as we saw with non-handicap races, top-rated runners in Class 1 handicaps struggled. In fact, their record was very poor with a win rate of less than 7% and losses of over 30p in the £. Listed races were the worst performers within this cohort with just two wins from 73 top-rated runners. I am not sure why Listed races came out that bad, particularly when Class 2 races again saw the best returns,  mirroring what we saw with the non-handicap results. There were five winning years out of seven at this class level.

 

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners

Here are the market rank splits for handicap races only when it comes to the TS top-rated runners:

 

 

Favourites effectively broke even with second favs producing a very small loss. The value seems to have been with those ranked third to fifth in the betting market, though the top five combined showed a handsome profit and a solid ROI. Once we hit sixth or higher,  performance and returns have dipped somewhat.

Age – TS top-rated runners

Onto the age stats now. Here is how they have panned out across the time period (I have ignored 3yos this time as there were only 23 qualifiers):

 

 

This has been a bit of a mixed bag with no clear patterns other than the 9yo+ group having the lowest PRB figure by some way as well as the lowest win strike rate. It will be difficult to use these stats to our advantage so it may be best to ignore age with any top-rated runners we might be looking to back in the future.

Run Style – TS top-rated runners

As with the non-handicappers, let me share the win strike rates within their specific run style groups:

 

 

There are no surprises here with the bars dropping down as we go from led (left) to held up (right). If we had been able to predict pre-race the run style of every single TS top-rated runner in handicaps, we would be retired now! The splits looked like this:

 

 

This is just another example about the importance of position early in a race – even in NH races.

 

**

 

Well, that’s about all for now. In conclusion, I hope these two articles help to point you in the right direction when it comes to the TS ratings published on geegeez racecards. TS top-rated runners have an impressive record overall and, based on past results, there has been plenty of value to be had under various circumstances. Hats off to the TS team at the Post – they have been doing a very good job.

Once the flat turf season gets underway, I will aim to do some further digging and share TS stats for that code. The all-weather and jump racing results have surprised me a little, and in a good way. It will be interesting to see if we find similar performance on the level.

- DR

Topspeed Ratings in UK National Hunt, Part 1

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An analysis of Racing Post’s Topspeed (TS) in UK National Hunt Racing, Part 1

Back in December I wrote a two-part article analysing the performance of the Racing Post Topspeed Ratings (TS) in all-weather (AW) racing, writes Dave Renham. You can catch up with part one here and part two here.

I must admit to being pleasantly surprised by the overall performance of the ratings and so, in this article, I am going to analyse Topspeed in UK National Hunt racing. Hereafter I will use the abbreviation TS in lieu of Topspeed. TS ratings can be found in the Geegeez Racecard and past TS data is now interrogable in the Query Tool, which I have used to research this piece.

Introduction

If you have yet to read the two AW pieces let me explain what the TS ratings are and how they work. First and foremost, they are the Racing Post’s Speed Ratings.

The raw TS figure is a measure of the speed a horse achieved in a particular race. It is amended slightly considering things like distance, weight carried, and the ground conditions.

Essentially, TS is calculated by comparing a horse’s time with a standard time for the same course and distance. The TS figures we see in the Geegeez Racecard are known as "adjusted" TS ratings with the main adjustment made for weight carried in the current race. I believe the TS handicapper also tweaks this adjusted TS rating for the current race conditions. The adjusted TS figures we see in the Racecard are based on a horse's best raw TS performance from the past 12 months. Performances must have occurred in the same ‘Race Code’, so for NH racing, past hurdle race TS raw ratings will be used for hurdle races only, while past chase TS ratings will be used for chases only.

So where do we find the TS figures on a daily basis? In the screenshot below I have highlighted in yellow where the adjusted TS figures can be found on the Geegeez Racecard from a race run on Feb 5th this year:

 

 

It should be noted that some races will have a horse or horses that do not have a TS rating. This may be due to the race being their first run in a chase for example, or horses on debut, etc.

My focus for this article, as stated earlier, is UK National Hunt racing and I will be analysing TS figures for these specific race codes (NH Flat, hurdles and chases). I have ignored hunter chases as many of these horses were previously running in point to points, and I am also excluding any NH Flat races run on the AW.

Data have been taken from January 1st, 2019, to December 31st, 2025, with the profit/loss figures being calculated to Betfair SP (BSP) less 2% commission. Like my AW deep dive, this is the first of two articles exploring the results of the Racing Post’s TS ratings.

Strike Rates by TS Rank

Over the years I have talked to numerous figures in the racing world who have compiled their own ratings in the past, be they speed ratings or ability ratings. All of them have stated that in order to judge the effectiveness of their ratings the win rate is key. The top-rated runner should win the most often, the second-rated should have the second highest win rate and so on, gradually reducing for the others. In an ideal world, the top-rated runner would also be the best performer in terms of returns. However, it is important to point out that regardless of how good a set of ratings is, we cannot really expect the top-rated runner to secure a blind profit across thousands of races.

I am going to start by looking at win percentages (strike rates) for different TS rated runners. This covers all qualifying races across the period of study. The horizontal axis is labelled from 1 and stands for the top-rated runner, 2 is the second rated, 3 the third rated and so on:

 

 

The win strike rate for top-rated runners has been better than one win in every five races which is a decent starting point for any set of ratings. More importantly perhaps, the win percentages have correlated positively with the rated positions showing the sliding scale I was talking about earlier. Hopefully, the same pattern will be replicated as we look at Each Way (win & placed) strike rates. Here are those splits:

 

 

The top-rated runner has achieved the highest percentage once more, and the sliding scale is once again in evidence. These ratings certainly have the right ‘feel’ at this juncture.

Finally for this opening section, let me share the Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) figures. Being able to share these is due to another of the recent Geegeez additions - that of having PRB figures available in the Query Tool Results Summary. Again, the hope is that we see the same type of graph, with the bigger bars on the left and the smaller ones on the right:

 

 

We have the hat-trick in terms of correlation with this graph. Based on the first three sets of data analysed, the TS ratings seem to have been highly accurate at predicting the overall performance of a horse in relation to the TS ranked positions.

TS Top Rated in UK National Hunt

From my initial starting point, having seen the edge for the top-rated runners in terms of win rate, EW rate and PRB, it makes sense to focus on the TS top-rated horses to see if we can find any positive or indeed negative angles to exploit. Below is the record of every single TS top-rated runner since 2019:

 

 

Over 25,000 top-rated runners is a significant sample, and to see a small profit overall is extremely impressive. From here, it is time now to dig a bit deeper.

Annual strike rates – TS top-rated runners

Let me start the digging process by comparing the yearly win strike rates, and the yearly win & placed (Each way) strike rates to see how they matched up. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

Both lines are relatively straight indicating that the performance of the TS top-rated runners has been consistent from year to year out when it comes to winning and placing. In terms of the PRB figures they have been remarkably consistent, ranging from a low of 0.60 to a high of 0.61.

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners

I would now like to look at the record of the top-rated runners in terms of market position / rank. The market rank is based on traditional SP, that is Industry SP rather than BSP. Profits and losses, however, have still been calculated to BSP:

 

 

Top-rated runners when favourite have edged into profit, but the overall figures do not really conform to any major pattern. Essentially, all market positions have performed quite well with only second favourite and 6th+ in the betting runners producing losses. In reality though, the losses have been quite small.

TS top-rated favourites by Race Code

Sticking with favourites, let me share how well they have performed across the three different race codes namely chases, hurdles and NH Flat (bumpers):

 

 

There were much higher win rates for favourites in hurdle and NH Flat races than in chases, and perhaps this has influenced the bottom lines as both are in the black. The record for chasing favourites has still been decent enough considering we are talking over 2000 qualifiers.

TS top-rated favourites by Handicap or Non-Handicap

How about top-rated favourites in terms handicaps versus non-handicaps? The splits were thus:

 

 

Non-handicap TS top-rated favourites nudged into profit while the handicappers broke even. All findings so far are generating 'good vibes' as far as the TS ratings set is concerned, as each group of results has shown robust consistency.

TS top-rated favourites by Handicap Chase or Handicap Hurdle

The final set of favourite stats I wish to share are the TS top-rated splits in terms of handicap chases versus handicap hurdles. Once again, we see the consistent theme continuing.

 

 

We have seen remarkably similar metrics across the board.

 

Handicaps versus non-handicaps – TS top-rated runners

Reberting to top rated TS runners, regardless of their market rank, I now would like to examine the difference between handicaps and non-handicaps in terms of those top-rated horses. The split was thus:

 

 

As we should have expected top-rated non-handicap runners had the better win rate; but both secured a blind profit, albeit only just in the case of the handicappers.

 

TS Performance by Rating Rank

In the second half of this two-parter I will share more top-rated stats, but for now I want to move away from the top-rated horses and take a quick look at the performance of the second-rated runner. Before I do though, let me share the results for different rated positions across all races:

 

 

As the table shows, second ranked TS rating runners have secured a significant profit. However, before we get too excited and back these runners blind, let me divide those second-rated runners into two cohorts, one priced 20/1 or longer and the other priced 18/1 or shorter:

 

 

Both were in profit, but as we can see the vast majority of the profit came from the longshot bracket. That said, six of the seven years for the 20/1+ group turned a profit as the table below shows:

 

 

Strike rates of between 2% and 3% are only for those with titanium constitutions, so here is the breakdown for the shorter priced group (18/1 or less) of TS second-rated runners by year:

 

 

There were four winning years out of seven, and the three losing years were not too bad. Again, we can see excellent consistency in terms of win rates and PRB figures.

2nd Top-Rated Bonus Stats

There are a couple of extra stats worth sharing as regards the second-rated TS runners.

Firstly, when starting favourite, second-rated TS runners have scored just under 38% of the time (1789 wins from 4715) for a sound profit of £200.08 (ROI +4.2%).

Second, focusing on hurdle races only would have seen a return of over 12p in the £ for those positioned second in the TS ratings.

**

For the TS top-rated and second rated to both prove profitable over such a time frame is testament to the quality of the ratings. Next week, in the second article, I will expand on the performance of top-rated TS runners, looking in depth separately at both non-handicap and handicap data. Until then...

- DR

NH Jockeys: Home or Away?

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Home or Away? NH Jockey Performance by Retained Stable or Other

The iconic BBC TV show A Question of Sport is one that I am sure many readers will remember, writes Dave Renham. One of its regular rounds was ‘Home or Away’ where team members could answer a ‘home’ question on their own sport for one point, or an ‘away’ question on any sport which was worth two points.

Introduction

That was the inspiration for a piece of research in which I analysed different jump jockeys and split their data set into two. One cohort was for performance with their main, or retained, trainer, and the other was for their record with other trainers. What I mean by ‘main’ trainer is the trainer with whom the jockey had most rides for in a particular calendar year.

For some jockeys that will mean the trainers or stables they are contracted to where they would be known as the stable jockey. Harry Skelton is Dan Skelton’s stable jockey, for example; Nico De Boinville is Nicky Henderson's, and so on. These jockeys ride for their ‘home’ stable as it were. For others, they may not be contracted specifically to a stable but there will be a trainer from who they get more rides from than anyone else.

Of course, even jockeys who have the vast majority of rides for one trainer will get rides for others – these are the ‘away’ trainers, as it were.

Therefore, I plan to start by looking at a group of jockeys comparing their overall performance for their main trainer compared with all other trainers combined. From that point, I will dig deeper in the hope of uncovering some positive and negative angles that hopefully we will be able to exploit in the future.

The data has been sourced from eight full years of UK National Hunt racing spanning from 1st January 2018 to 31st December 2025. Profits / losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission on any winning bets. I have not included jockeys who ride rarely; all jockeys in this piece have ridden numerous times for both cohorts.

 

Home vs Away: Broadest Win Strike Rate Differentials

Let me first compare win strike rates – below is a graph showing the NH jockeys who had the biggest differential between win rates for their main trainer compared with all others combined:

 

 

Win strike rate is not everything as we know, but these ten jockeys have won far more often for their main trainer compared with other trainers combined. Focusing on these ten jockeys, below are their ROI percentages based on a one unit level stakes bet. However, to avoid big priced winners potentially skewing the figures, I have restricted horses that were priced BSP 20.0 or less.

 

 

Here we see that only six of the ten have had better returns with their main trainer, whereas four (Bass, Deutsch, Hammond and Mania) fared better with other trainers combined. Having said that, Fox, Gethings, O’Brien and Powell have all had significantly better returns when riding for their main trainer.

Here are a few snippets to share (with the BSP 20.0 or less price cap in place):

  1. David Bass has secured a strike rate in excess of 20% for Henry Daly and David Dennis. The sample sizes were quite small (53 rides and 28 respectively), but both turned a fair profit too. He had a similar record with Charlie Longsdon when riding primarily for Kim Bailey – he now rides primarily for Longsdon!
  2. James Davies had an excellent full set of stats when looking at his rides for his current main trainer, Nick Gifford. He has had 31 winners from 154 (SR 20.1%) for a profit of £46.13 (ROI +30%). Virtually all of these profits have come from chases.
  3. Derek Fox rides for the Lucinda Russell yard and their record together at Scottish tracks is worth noting, with the aforementioned price cap – a strike rate of 19.6% thanks to 111 winners from 567 for a healthy profit to BSP of £90.11 (ROI +15.9%).
  4. Paul O'Brien now rides primarily for Harry Derham, and their record together is excellent. Their strike rate has been a very impressive 27.1% for a profit of £49.85 (ROI +14.4%).
  5. Brendan Powell has struggled when teaming up with Alan King – they are 0 from 22 with the price cap, 0 from 14 with bigger prices. On a more positive note, when riding for Joe Tizzard at Ascot they have a very good record with 10 wins from 24 (SR 41.7%) for a profit of £30.65 (ROI +86.1%).

 

Home vs Away: Top NH Jockeys Win Strike Rate Differentials

Below is a comparison of home vs away win strike rates for ten more jockeys including some of the biggest ‘hitters’, namely Sean Bowen, Harry Cobden, Gavin Sheehan and Harry Skelton:

 

 

Nine of the ten continue the theme of earlier with higher win strike rates for their main trainer. James Bowen bucked the trend, just, with a 15.4% win rate for other trainers compared to 15% for his main trainer. However, these stats are potentially slightly misleading because he has had over two hundred rides in the past two years for two separate trainers – Warren Greatrex and Nicky Henderson, and over a hundred for his father’s (and now brother's) yard, that of Peter/Mickey Bowen.

Let me compare these jockeys as I did previously by displaying their ROI percentages with the max BSP 20.0 price cap in place:

 

 

In terms of ROI%, seven of the ten had worse returns for their main trainer. Having said that most of the gaps between the numbers were small. It does seem that for Skelton and O’Neill, riding for their main trainer has seen much better returns.

 

Top Trainer Combinations

Here are some additional stats for these jockeys with horses priced BSP 20.0 or less, starting with Brian Hughes. He has had an excellent record when combining with the following trainers:

 

 

I would definitely keep an eye out for any of these Hughes trainer combos in the future. An added extra before moving on is that if we had backed second or third favourites when Hughes was riding for one of these six trainers, we would have secured a sizeable profit of £97.30 (ROI +48.4%) thanks to 53 wins from 210 (SR 36.4%).

It will be interesting to see how Harry Cobden fares next season when he begins his role with JP McManus. I wonder how often he will get to ride for other trainers compared with the last few years when stable jockey for Paul Nicholls. The reason I say that is because one trainer who he rides occasionally for, James Owen, produced some excellent results (BSP 20.0 or less) – 18 wins from just 58 rides (SR 31%) for a profit of £13.35 (ROI +23%). Hopefully Cobden will still be able to ride for Owen from time to time in the future.

Ben Jones has done well when riding for Ben Clarke. Ignoring those big outsiders (of BSP 20.01+) their record together saw 18 winners from 65 (SR 27.7%) for a healthy profit of £73.44 (ROI +113%) being achieved.

Sean Bowen is currently stable jockey to Olly Murphy and, since their partnership started to grow in 2023, their combined record has been positive. The last three full years (2023 to 2025) with horses priced BSP 20.0 or less delivered 249 wins from 879 rides (SR 28.3%) for a profit of £73.48 (ROI +8.4%).

During this three-year time frame, they combined to be dynamite at Ffos Las, hitting 13 wins from just 27 runners (SR 48.2%) for a profit of £45.37 (ROI +168%).

In terms of other trainers, there are three with whom Bowen enjoyed an excellent record between 2018 to 2025 with the price cap in place. They are shown in the table below.

 

 

These are three more trainer / Sean Bowen combos to keep an eye out for.

Moving on to Gavin Sheehan now, and his record with trainer Jamie Snowden with horses sent off 20.0 or lower BSP. The last five years have been extremely solid for this pairing, with the last three being particularly good. The table below shows the yearly splits from 2021 to 2025:

 

 

Four winning years out of five, with the losing year showing only a very small overall loss. Sticking to this 2021 to 2025 period, when combining at Huntingdon the Sheehan/Snowden combination excelled with 18 first places from just 35 runners (SR 51.4%) for a profit of £32.70 (ROI +93.4%).

 

Selected NH Jockeys: Single Ride on the Day

Finally in this piece, I have looked at some data for these 20 jockeys when they went racing for just one ride on a specific day, as long as the price on the horse in question was BSP 20.0 or less. Firstly, when that single ride was for their main trainer; secondly when that single ride was not for their main trainer.

'Home' trainer stats

I will start by looking at their ‘one ride on the day’ stats when it was for for their main trainer:

 

 

The figures for Nico de Boinville have been particularly impressive from a significant sample size. When having just one ride on the day for his boss Nicky Henderson their strike rate has been close to 32% with excellent returns of nearly 20 pence in the £. Brian Hughes has an excellent record also, albeit from a much smaller sample.

'Away' trainer stats

And here are the stats for the same jockeys when the one ride on the day is not for their main trainer. Again, to qualify the price of the lone horse must have been 20.0 BSP or lower.

 

 

14 of the 20 jockeys would have made a blind profit with these runners from 2018 to 2025 which is noteworthy. One negative to note has been the record of Sam Twiston-Davies with his sole daily rides having produced losses in both groups, of 35p and 28p respectively.

Three others to note in the 'away' column

I have just one more thing to share before I conclude this piece. There are three jockeys, outside of the 20 I have discussed, that I would like to highlight in terms of their records with single rides in a day when not riding for their main trainers. These are Rex Dingle, Richie McLernon and Jack Quinlan. Their stats have been as follows:

 

 

*

 

This article has covered a variety of jockey angles which were new to me, and hopefully a fresh take for you, too. I hope and expect that we will be able to use of some these numbers to our advantage over the coming months.

Until next time...

- DR

Measuring the impact of a Tongue Tie

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Don’t get tongue tied talking about tongue ties!

Firstly, let me apologise for the title of this piece, writes Dave Renham – it is simply my attempt at humour! However, it certainly points us in the right direction for the subject of today's article.

 

 

Introduction

A tongue tie is a piece of material, usually made of nylon or a rubber band, that sits over the horse’s tongue and under the lower jaw. There are a few reasons why trainers deploy tongue ties. For example:

  1. It helps to prevent upper airway obstruction.
  2. It can stop a horse from getting their tongue over the bit, increasing the jockey’s control.
  3. It can help prevent the horse from potentially swallowing its tongue.
  4. It aims to improve performance due to greater air intake.

 

The jury is out in terms of how effective tongue ties really are, so in this article I am going to delve into the stats in terms of performance for horses that have worn tongue ties in races and try to deliver a verdict.

The data has been taken from UK National Hunt racing between 1st January 2018 and 31st December 2025. Profits have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission on any winning bets. Around 90% of the stats I will share have been sourced from the Geegeez Query Tool.

 

Tongue Ties: Overall Performance

Let me start by sharing the overall data for all horses that have raced in a tongue tie during the period of study.

 

 

As can be seen there have been nearly 60,000 runs in total for horses wearing a tongue tie. Clearly, a lot of horses wear tongue ties at some time in their careers. Returns to Betfair SP have actually been slightly better for tongue tie wearers than for those which have not worn them – a loss of 2.7p in the £ versus a loss of 4.1p.

Furthermore, tongue tie wearers edged the strike rate battle 12.4% to 11.9%. Maybe tongue ties do improve performance very slightly? Let's do some more digging.

 

Tongue Ties: Annual Strike Rates

I want to share the yearly win strike rates first for horses that have worn a tongue tie, and the splits are shown in the graph below:

 

 

There has not been too much fluctuation over the years. 2022 saw the highest win rate of 14%; 2020 the lowest at 11.3%. But what about returns on investment?

The yearly splits for these have been thus:

 

 

2024 was somewhat out of kilter with other years with losses just a smidge under 9 pence in the £. Six of the seven other years saw returns lie between +2.4% and -2.8% so fairly similar.

 

Tongue Ties: Market Rank

A look at market rank now, and I have based the following table's betting positions on Industry SP:

 

 

Favourites snuck ‘into the black’ with some solid stats across the board, while second and third favourites also performed pretty well, producing relatively small losses across 7000+ bets each.

For the record there were 20 winners priced at BSP at 100.0 or bigger, so it again makes sense to put in place a price cap for the remainder of the article. That prevents a big-priced winner here and there skewing the bottom line. I will use an Industry SP price cap at 16/1 – so the remaining stats shared only include runners that were sent off 16/1 or shorter. Here are the results for all runners wearing a tongue tie that were priced ISP 16/1 or less:

 

 

Nearly 42,000 horses have still qualified using the price cap and, overall, runners have performed well - even nudging into profit if we had backed every single horse ‘blind’.

 

Tongue Ties: Handicaps vs Non-Handicaps

Let me look at handicaps versus non-handicaps – here is what the splits tell us:

 

 

Non-handicappers won more often, as would be expected, and both ended up in the black once more. That's pleasantly surprising.

 

Tongue Ties: Race Class

How about class of race? What has that shown? The table below reveals all:

 

 

The Class 1 stats were possibly to be expected: a relatively modest win percentage and a loss made. However, I must admit I had expected slightly bigger losses. However, if we restrict Class 1 races to non-handicaps only, we can see that horses wearing tongue ties struggled even with the bigger priced runners excluded. This cohort of horses priced 16/1 or shorter in Class 1 non-handicaps managed 175 wins from 1033 (SR 16.9%) for a loss of £98.09 to £1 level stakes (ROI -9.5%). Hence, losses were not far shy of 10p in the £.

Going back the table, Class 3 and 4 races both delivered sound profits; however, I cannot explain why this may have happened. If any reader has a logical suggestion, I would love to read it in the comments.

 

Tongue Ties: Age Factors

My next port of call was the age of the horses in question when priced 16/1 or less:

 

 

I find these stats the most fascinating so far. Three-year-olds have really struggled and, although the sample size was small compared to many of the age groups, 325 runners was still a decent number. Losses of more than 50p in the £ coupled with a low strike rate suggests that these runners can be safely ignored from calculations in the future.

Indeed, an additional 3yo stat connected with market rank is worth sharing: 3yos that started in the top three in the betting won 20.9% of races (37 wins from 177) for a hefty loss of £46.20 (ROI -26.1%). Before moving away from 3yos completely I had a look at their record when priced 18/1 or bigger – just three wins from 222 attempts.

The other age stats that caught my attention were those for horses aged 11 or 12. Both have produced similar solid profits and returns. My theory is that when talking generally some of these runners have been overlooked or ignored. Most bookmakers and punters would not immediately be drawn to horses wearing a tongue tie who were also aged 11 or 12, so I reckon a few have started a point or two bigger than their true price, giving us a value scenario over time.

 

Tongue Ties and Topspeed

One of the relatively new angles that can be tested in the Query Tool is the performance of the Topspeed speed ratings from the Racing Post. The graph below compares the PRB figures (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) for the top three rated/ranked runners as well those ranked fourth or bigger.

 

 

We see fairly strong positive correlation. Let me dig deeper by sharing the records in full for the top three rated/ranked runners:

 

 

All three have made a blind profit across the 2018 to 2025 timeframe, with solid looking strike rates to boot. Betting all of the top three ‘blind’ would have turned a profit in five of the eight years under review, with two small losing years and a borderline break-even year.

 

Tongue Ties in combination with other headgear

I next wanted to take a look at what happened when other types of headgear were used in conjunction with a tongue tie. For the record, there were a couple of scenarios where two additional types of headgear were combined with the tongue tie but, with only 48 and 12 qualifiers respectively, these have been ignored. The splits for the rest were thus:

 

 

Adding either blinkers or a visor has seen the worst outcomes in terms of both win rate and returns. In contrast, the hood/tongue tie combo performed very solidly.

Regarding the results for tongue tie only we see the following:

 

 

As can be seen, a small profit was achieved for the tongue tie only brigade.

 

Tongue Ties and Run Style

A quick look at the run style stats now – the PRBs for the tongue-tied runners were as follows:

 

 

We see the usual pattern with the graph sloping from left to right, and front runners clearly doing best. If we had been able to predict which of the tongue-tied runners would lead early in their races, we would have secured a huge profit of £2294.70 to £1 level stakes (ROI +29.3%). In contrast, hold up horses lost £2352 equating to losses of nearly 20p in the £.

 

Tongue Ties: Trainer Angles

The final area I want to explore is some trainer data.

First time tongue tie

Firstly, a look at trainer performance when their horses have been wearing the tongue tie for the very first time. Trainers with at least 75 qualifiers priced 16/1 or shorter are shown in the table:

 

 

These stats have been extremely positive for many of the trainers with ten of the 14 making a profit. The Kim Bailey (and Mat Nicholls) yard have had outstanding results with a near 23% win rate, returns of over 80p in the £ and a PRB standing at 0.63.

Two yards stand out from a negative perspective – the O’Neill stable’s performance has been very poor with losses of nearly 72p in the £. Likewise, the Greenall/Guerriero yard have had similarly disappointing returns (69p in the £).

Second time tongue tie

Let me now look at the same 14 stables and their record when horses are racing in a tongue tie for the second time:

 

 

This time the results are far less punter-friendly with just five of the trainers in the black. The stables of Bailey/Nicholls, Olly Murphy, Fergal O’Brien and David Pipe (just!) all again secured profits.

And the O’Neill stable performed much better with second timers, albeit from a smallish sample, while the Greenall/Guerriero yard also produced a much stronger performance this time, though their runners as a whole still recorded a small loss.

 

Summary

Overall, the stats for horses wearing tongue ties were a lot better than I was expecting. There have been a number of positive areas highlighted that we potentially can take advantage of in the future. Likewise, a few negative angles to be aware of too.

At some point in the future, I will have a look at flat racing data for tongue tie wearers to see what tells us.

Until next time...

- DR

Uttoxeter 3m Handicap Chases: Deep Dive

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3-mile handicap chases at Uttoxeter: a deep dive

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

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

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

Race Distance

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

 

 

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

 

Betting market

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

 

 

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

 

Age

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Course form

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

 

 

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

 

Distance change

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

 

 

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

 

Weight carried

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

 

 

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

 

Recent form

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

 

 

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

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

 

Run Style

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Ratings

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

*

 

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

 

Bangor 3-mile handicap chases

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

 

Exeter 3-mile handicap chases

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

 

Perth 3-mile handicap chases

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

 

 

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

Until next time...

- DR

Miscellaneous Jump Racing Angles

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Four Micro Research Angles

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

Trainers with NH Runners on Debut

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

 

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

 

Trainers with NH Runners on 2nd Start

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

 

 

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

 

Trainers with NH Runners on 3rd Start

On to start three:

 

 

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

**

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

- DR

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

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

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

Rationale

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

Handicap vs non-handicaps

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

 

 

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

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

 

Race Class

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

 

 

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

 

Last time out race position

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

 

 

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

 

Jockey change?

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Odds Last Time Out

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

 

 

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

 

Age of horse

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

 

 

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

**

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

- DR

A Look at Favourites in All-Weather Races

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Favourites in All-Weather (AW) Racing in 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites Overall

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Race type

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Course

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Time of Year

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Class of Race

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Days since last run

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

 

 

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Headgear

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Draw

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Trainer

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Conclusion

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

 

 

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

- DR

Kempton 7f Handicaps: Deep Dive

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An in depth look at 7f handicaps at Kempton Park

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

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

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

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

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

Betting market

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Course LTO

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

 

 

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

 

Sex of horse

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Change in distance

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

 

 

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

 

Course form

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Run Style

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

 

 

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

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

Draw

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

 

 

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

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

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

The five strongest positives

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

*

 

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

- DR

Boxing Day: To Bet, or Not To Bet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: BSP Market Data

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

 

 

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

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: Favourites by Course

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

 

 

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

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: Market Movement

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: Trainers

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

- DR

Topspeed Ratings on the All-Weather, Part 2

/in /by

An analysis of Racing Post’s Topspeed (TS) on the All-Weather, Part 2

This is the second article of two looking at the performance of the Racing Post’s speed ratings, known as Topspeed, in races on the all-weather (AW), writes Dave Renham. In the first piece, which you can read here, I looked at a variety of general Topspeed stats before focusing on non-handicap races. In this concluding half, the spotlight falls on handicap races and, from now on, I will use the abbreviation TS when talking about the Topspeed ratings.

Introduction

The next paragraph is basically a carbon copy of what I wrote in the first article as it gives some background information regarding the TS ratings. Feel free to skip it if you have read the first one.

The raw TS figure is a measure of the speed a horse achieved in a particular race. It is amended slightly considering things like distance, weight carried, and the ground conditions. Essentially the TS is calculated by comparing a horse’s time with a standard time for the same course and distance. The TS figure we see in the Geegeez Racecard are known as adjusted TS ratings with the main adjustment made for weight carried in the current race. I believe the TS handicapper also tweaks this adjusted TS rating for the current race conditions. The adjusted TS figures we see in the Racecard are based on the best raw TS performance in the past 12 months. These performances must have occurred in the same ‘Race Code’, so for all-weather races only past TS raw figures in AW races have considered. Likewise for turf flat races, only past turf flat raw TS figures will be considered. For the jumps past hurdle race TS raw ratings will be used for hurdle races only, while past chase TS ratings will be used for chases only.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph this article examines all-weather racing analysing the performance of the TS figures in handicap races only. The time frame covers January 1st, 2019, to November 30th, 2025, and it includes both UK and Irish racing with any profit or loss being calculated to BSP less 2% commission.

Overall Performance of TS in All-Weather Handicaps

I noted in the first piece how it is generally considered that, for a set of ratings to be effective, the win rate is key. The top-rated runner should have the highest win percentage, gradually reducing for the remaining runners. Ideally, the top-rated runner will also be the best performer in terms of returns. However, it is important to point out that regardless of how good a set of public ratings is, be they speed or form-based ratings, it is unreasonable expect the top-rated runner to secure a blind profit over a long period of time.

Let's start in a similar way to last time by looking at win percentages (strike rates) for different rated runners in handicap races. This covers all such races on an AW surface over the period of study. We saw in article 1 that for the ‘all races’ data the graph showed the right type of correlation between the rating position and the strike rate. Let’s see if that has occurred when focusing on handicaps only. In terms of understanding the graph, the horizontal axis is labelled from 1, the top-rated runner, to 2, the second rated, and so on:

 

 

The win strike rate for TS top-rated runners has been just under 15% and, more importantly, the win percentages have correlated positively once more with the TS ordinal rank. We have the left to right sliding scale that is the ‘ideal’.

If we look at the Each Way (win & placed) strike rates, we have a similar pattern:

 

 

The top-rated runner has the highest percentage once more, albeit only just, and the sliding scale is replicated once again.

The third graph looks at Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB). Being able to share these is down to another of the recent Geegeez additions of having PRB figures available in the Query Tool Results Summary. Here are the splits:

 

 

We can see exactly the same type of correlation once again so it seems therefore, that in handicap races, the TS ratings have been very accurate in terms of predicting the overall performance of the horse in relation to their TS ranked positions.

 

Top Rated TS Runners in AW Handicaps

For the remainder of the article my main focus will be the handicap race performance of the TS top-rated horses to see if any positive or indeed negative angles can be found. Firstly, let me share the record of every single TS top-rated runner since the beginning of 2019:

 

 

We see a close to break-even situation, which is an excellent starting point. Let me now break down the TS top-rated performance in more detail.

Annual strike rates – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps

In terms of delving deeper I want to start looking at the TS top-rated runners in all-weather handicaps by comparing their annual win strike rates and win & placed (Each way) strike rates to see how they matched up.

 

 

Both the win and EW strike rates have been extremely consistent and this has also been the case with the yearly PRB figures that have ranged from a high of 0.59 to a low of 0.56.

 

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps

Below is a table highlighting the performance of the top-rated runners in terms of market position / rank. The splits over the period of study were as follows:

 

 

Favourites made a small loss but those ranked two to four in the betting market all edged into profit. Returns were slightly less good when horses were fifth or higher in betting.

One potential issue when looking at data across all prices is that some bottom lines can be skewed by winners at big BSP prices. Interestingly, though, out of the 2445 TS top-rated winners only five had a BSP price above 50.0 (52.07, 54.15, 61.52, 126.19, 145.1). Even so, as in the first piece I am going to use a price cap hereafter in case any of those bigger priced winners skewed certain findings. For non-handicaps my price cap was 10/1 (ISP), for handicaps I think we should go slightly longer at 12/1 (ISP).

 

Sex – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

This is an area I feel is always worth checking out. The splits over this timeframe were thus:

 

 

These stats do not correlate with the usual male/female stats found on the AW where males tend to win more often within their group than females. Here we have witnessed a different scenario where female TS top-rated runners priced 12/1 or less have been very good value going back to 2019. TS top-rated female runners aged four and five have done particularly well, combining to win 19.8% of the time (280 wins from 1416) for a healthy profit of £295.21 (ROI +20.8%).

 

Age of horse – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

Onto the age splits now. We know from the previous paragraph that the female four- and five-year-olds performed well, but they only made up about 25% of the total runners for both those age groups. Let me share the full breakdown combining male runners with female runners:

 

 

Each individual age from three to six made a blind profit which is interesting, but it was clear that once we got to 7yos and older the performance dipped markedly, despite still being top-rated. Losses of 16p in the £ are steep at the best of times, so TS top-rated runners aged 7 or older are probably best swerved in the future.

 

Course – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

Do the TS top-rated runners in all-weather handicaps have similar records at each course? Let's review the PRBs first:

 

 

The Irish track of Dundalk has seen the strongest PRB figures, and I wonder will that correlate to better returns?

 

*Southwell data based on results on the tapeta surface which had its first race in December 2021.

 

Don’t be fooled when seeing that Dundalk had the lowest strike rate; their races had the biggest average field size compared with all the courses. There were blind profits for Dundalk and for three other courses, with only Kempton TS top-rated runners producing disappointing losses. I am not sure why the Kempton figures were so disappointing compared with the others.

 

Race Distance – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

A look at the results across different distances now. The figures were as follows:

 

 

TS top-rated runners performed well at the minimum distance, which may be because five furlong handicaps are generally run at a good clip and hence speed ratings should be fairly accurate. All in all, though, the table suggests that speed ratings work to a similar level regardless of distance. [The six furlong data looks an anomaly and is hard to explain otherwise]

 

Field Size – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

My next question was could anything be gleaned from the data for different field sizes? It was a slight surprise to me that the number of runners in a race did seem to make a difference. Below are the ISP A/E indices for different field sizes:

 

 

As can be seen, the better value has clearly been in smaller sized fields as far as the TS top-rated all-weather handicap runners have been concerned. This was also reflected in the profit and loss figures as the table below shows:

 

 

Based on the past few years it does seem that fields with eight or fewer runners provide the best value when it comes to the TS top-rated runners. The performance of the 6-8 runner group was extremely good.

 

Headgear – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

The splits between the number of TS top-rated runners that wore some sort of headgear / equipment and those that didn’t were almost the same. Hence, I thought it was a good idea to see what the results were for each group. They are shown in the table below:

 

 

The numbers clearly favour horses that did not wear any headgear securing a better return - over 8p in the £ - coupled with a 3% better win rate. This is something to note for the future I feel.

 

Run Style – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)

When I looked at the run style for TS top-rated in all-weather non-handicaps, I noted the traditional edge to more prominent styles of runner. Hence, let me take a look at the win strike rates (within their specific run style groups) to see if the usual pattern has been repeated:

 

 

In terms of win rate early leaders have done best, albeit the gap between them and prominent racers has been closer than we usually see. There was a clear dip in strike rate from prominent racers down to horses that raced midfield or were held up.

As I mentioned in the first article, we do not know pre-race what the run style of each horse will be and hence any profit/loss data shared in this section is essentially hypothetical. However, if we had been able to predict which TS top-rated runners took the early lead in handicaps when priced 12/1 or less, they would have made a decent BSP profit of £359.41 to £1 level stakes. This equated to an impressive return of over 17 pence in the £. Prominent racers made a profit also with returns of just over 6p in the £.

I want to share the A/E indices next for the TS top-rated runners in terms of run style. They are shown in the graph below:

 

 

Early leaders / front runners have offered the best value, surpassing the 1.00 figure. Indeed, these A/E indices are calculated from ISP so the BSP A/E index would be around 1.16 which would be considered excellent value.

What was especially interesting was when I looked at the performance of TS top-rated horses that had led early in 5f handicaps. If we had known pre-race which TS-top rated runners would have led in these sprints, we would have seen 104 winners from 308 runners (SR 33.8%) for a huge profit of £330.41 (ROI +107.3%); PRB 0.69.

Finally, one last run style fact worth sharing is that when we look at all runners priced 12/1 or less roughly 14.3% of these runners led early. In 5f handicaps however, the TS top-rated runner led early 20% of the time. Hence, when trying to predict the front runner in 5f handicaps, the TS top-rated horse will lead much more often than those runners TS ranked 2 or lower. Combining this information with the Geegeez pace score totals for each 5f handicap should enable us to improve our chances of predicting the front runner more often – should we wish to do that.

*

Before embarking on this research, I had not expected the Topspeed top-rated runners to have performed so well in all-weather handicaps. For a set of public ratings, the top-rated performance has been extremely good. I, for one, will take more stock of them in the future, especially on the sand; and the beauty is that they appear right where I need them, on the Geegeez racecard!

In the near future, I will dive into Topspeed ratings for NH racing. This will happen probably sometime in January 2026. Until then...

- DR

Topspeed Ratings on the All-Weather, Part 1

/in /by

An analysis of Racing Post’s Topspeed (TS) on the All-Weather, Part 1

One of the reasons Geegeez has won the Best Betting Website award eight times since 2017 has been because it has not stood still, with upgrades and improvements made on a regular basis, writes Dave Renham. We have seen that again this December with some new additions to the Query Tool. One of these additions is the subject of this article, namely the Topspeed Ratings (TS) from the Racing Post.

 

Introduction

Topspeed ratings are the Racing Post’s Speed Ratings. The raw TS figure is a measure of the how fast a horse got to the finish in a particular race. It is amended slightly considering things like distance, weight carried, and the ground conditions. Essentially, TS is calculated by comparing a horse’s time against a standard time for the course and distance of the race. The TS figures we see in the Geegeez Racecard are known as 'adjusted TS ratings' with the main adjustment made for weight carried in the current race.

I believe the TS handicapper also tweaks this adjusted TS rating for the current race conditions. The adjusted TS figures we see in the Racecard are based on the best raw TS performance in the past 12 months. These performances must have occurred in the same Race Code, so for All Weather races only past TS raw figures in AW races have been considered. Likewise, for turf flat races only past turf flat raw TS figures will be considered. And, for the jumps past hurdle race TS raw ratings will be used for hurdle races only, while past chase TS ratings will be used for chases only.

It is not for me discuss the pros and cons of how the TS figure we see in the racecard is calculated. Ultimately, this is a method that the Racing Post have been using for many many years, so we need to assume they know what they are doing... or ignore it completely!

So where on geegeez.co.uk do we find the TS figures on a daily basis? In the screenshot below I have highlighted in the blue box where the adjusted TS figures can be found on the Geegeez Racecard.

 

 

My focus today is All-Weather racing and analysing the TS figures for this specific race code. The time frame used goes from January 1st 2019 to November 30th 2025, including both UK and Irish racing, with profit/loss calculated to BSP less 2% commission. This is the first of a two-parter and is slightly more of a general piece / overview, whereas the second will drill further into the stats.

 

Topspeed All-Weather Performance by Ordinal Rank

I have spoken to numerous respected analysts who have compiled ratings in the past, be them speed or ability ratings and, for them, to judge the effectiveness of their ratings the win rate is key. The top-rated runner should have the highest win percentage gradually reducing for the others. Obviously, it is hoped the top-rated runner is the best performer in terms of returns. However, it is important to point out that regardless of how good a set of ratings is, be they speed or form-based ratings, we cannot expect the top-rated runner to secure a blind profit over 1000s of races.

Let’s start with looking at the win percentages (strike rates) for different rated runners. This covers all races on the all-weather over the near seven-year period of study. The horizontal axis is labelled from 1 which stands for the top-rated runner, 2 the second rated and so on:

 

 

The win strike rate for top-rated runners has been slightly better than one win in every six races which is solid for any set of ratings. More importantly perhaps, the win percentages correlate positively with the rated positions showing the sliding scale I was talking about earlier.

If we look at the Each Way (win & placed) strike rates, we see a similar pattern:

 

 

The top-rated runner has the highest percentage once more, and the sliding scale is replicated showing strong positive correlation with the win only figures.

Finally, for this opening section, let me share the Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) figures. Being able to share these is down to another of the recent Geegeez additions of having PRB figures available in the Query Tool Results Summary. The splits during this timeframe were thus:

 

 

The same sliding graph appears again. So we can say that the TS ratings seem to have been accurate in terms of predicting the overall performance of horses in relation to their ordinal ranked positions.

 

Topspeed All-Weather Performance for TS Top Rated Runners

From here, it made sense to mainly focus on the TS top-rated horses to see if we could find any positive or indeed negative angles. Hence let me look at the record of every single TS top-rated runner since 2019:

 

 

A loss of less than 3% at Betfair SP is a solid figure considering this has included every single qualifier over almost seven years. Time now to dig a bit deeper.

Annual strike rates – TS top-rated runners

Let me start the digging process by comparing the yearly win strike rates, and the yearly win & placed (Each way) strike rates to see how they matched up. The graph paints the picture.

 

 

Both lines are fairly straight indicating that the performance of the TS top-rated runners has been consistent year in year out when it comes to winning and placing. In terms of the PRB figures they have ranged from a yearly low of 0.59 to a yearly high of 0.62, again highlighting their consistency.

 

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners

I would now like to share the performance of the top-rated Topspeed runners in terms of their market rank. The splits over the period of study were as follows:

 

 

Although TS top-rated runners have not made a profit when they were also the market leader, it has seemed that a position nearer the top of the betting market has been preferable. Looking at TS top-rated runners that started in the top four of the betting we can see that they would have proved profitable if backing all ‘blind’. OK, a profit of £132.90 to £1 level stakes over 14,422 bets would not have been a massive return but it was a positive return, nonetheless.

Race Class (handicap races only) – TS rating of average winners

I want to delve into class of race for a bit, focusing on the TS top-rated runners racing only in handicaps. The reason for using handicap races for class analysis is simple, because a non-handicap race could be a maiden, it could be a novice race, and when we get to class 5 or lower it could be a claiming race or indeed a seller. Hence, when we group non-handicaps together, we get a mix of different race types so it makes less sense. Of course we do see the occasional handicap selling race, but the horses are still carrying the correct weight that they would in a normal handicap.

Before looking at the TS top-rated runners, I first wanted to look at the average TS rating for the winning horses across each race class classification. To do this I simply added up the ratings of each individual winner within each class bracket and divided it by the number of winners. The graph below shows the results:

 

 

As we would expect we get a similar looking graph to previous ones. The higher the class the higher the average winning TS rating and there has been a similar differential between each ‘next door’ class classification.

 

Race Class (handicap races only) – TS top-rated winners

Now it’s back to focusing on the top-rated winners and their averages. Let me share these splits.

 

 

Of course, these were always going to be much higher than the average figures for all winners, but these average winning ratings gave me an idea. What about looking at the performance of top-rated runners that had a TS figure higher than the winning class average for all top-rated runners? In other words, for class 2 handicaps where the average top-rated winner was rated 98.1, how did the TS top-rated runners rated 99 and higher do as a cohort? Likewise for class 3 handicaps where the average top-rated winner was rated 90.6, how did the top-rated runners rated 91 and higher do etc, etc. Here’s what I found:

 

 

 

In the higher classes of race (class 4 and above) we see positive profits and returns. The two lower classes (5 and 6) both showed losses, although the class 6 figures were close to breaking even. So perhaps the TS ratings work better in class 4 or higher as far as the TS top-rated runners are concerned? Indeed, if we look at those classes again and tweak the rating of the top-rated runners up a little more, we see even stronger returns:

 

 

Certainly, for classes 2-4, it seems that the higher the rating the better when it comes to the TS top-rated runners. Also, this has been the case too for class 6 handicaps where the TS top-rated runner was rated 70 or more (rather than the 63+ tested earlier). This cohort of TS top-rated runners would have secured 138 wins from 1058 qualifiers (SR 13%) for a profit to BSP of £76.77 (ROI +7.3%).

Handicaps versus non-handicaps – TS top-rated runners

I now would like to examine the difference in handicaps and non-handicaps in terms of the TS top-rated horses. The splits were thus:

 

 

As we would have expected top-rated non-handicap runners have had the better win rate but overall losses have been quite steep, edging towards 10 pence in the £. However, if I introduce an Industry SP price limit of 10/1 we see a different story:

 

 

This time the bottom lines are very similar, with a tiny profit for handicap runners and an even tinier loss for those TS top-rated in non-handicaps. Unsurprisingly, non-handicap TS top-rated runners priced 11/1 or more have a shocking record, winning just 29 times from 1133 qualifiers (SR 2.6%) for hefty losses of £526.61 (ROI -46.4%). These look worth avoiding in the future based on this dataset.

For the final section of this piece, I am going to concentrate on some further non-handicap stats looking at the ISP 10/1 or less cohort.

Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by Price (ISP 10/1 or less)

Let me look at TS top-rated qualifiers in terms of Industry Starting Price bands with the limit of 10/1 in place. Below I share a graph showing what the BSP returns would have been in four price bands – 2/1 or shorter, 9/4 to 7/2, 4/1 to 6/1 and 13/2 to 10/1:

 

 

The shortest prices (2/1 or less) were close to breaking even to BSP, while the 9/4 to 7/2 and the 4/1 to 6/1 groups saw similar losses of around 3½ pence in the £. The best value across the timeframe were those priced 13/2 to 10/1 which showed a healthy return of over 11 pence in the £. This price band has definitely offered value since 2019 for TS top-rated runners in non-handicaps.

  

Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by sex of horse (ISP 10/1 or less)

A look at the gender of horse now. Anyone who has read my previous contributions on geegeez.co.uk will know that male runners tend to have a edge on the all-weather. I wonder if we will see that happening again here. Let’s take a look at the splits based on the 10/1 price limit:

 

 

Males have outperformed females, by a fair amount in win strike rates but only just in terms of returns. Hence, there has been no significant edge to males under these circumstances over the past few years.

 

Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by age of horse (ISP 10/1 or less)

Onto the age splits now, and a table showing performance in non-handicaps of top-rated Topspeed horses by individual age group.

 

 

As can be seen, the majority of non-handicappers were aged two or three, and TS top-rated 3yos have performed well. They have secured a win rate close to one win in every three, while showing a small BSP profit of £60.49 (ROI +3.8%). Older top-rated runners, those seven and older, fared the worst in terms of both strike rate and returns with losses of around 7½p in the £.

 

Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by run style (ISP 10/1 or less)

Finally for this article I will share some data for run style – possibly my favoured area of research. Firstly, a look at the win strike rates (within their specific run style groups):

 

 

We see a familiar pattern to previous run style research where early leaders/front runners have comfortably attained the best win percentage within their group while hold up horses having the lowest.

As I have mentioned many times before, we cannot know pre-race what the run style of each horse will be and hence any profit/loss data shared is essentially hypothetical. However, I always like to show the splits in the hope that one day I buy a crystal ball that actually works!

 

 

Those numbers speak for themselves really. The PRB figure of 0.78 for early leaders has been the highest recorded in the whole article. If the TS top-rated runner leads early in a non-handicap when 10/1 or shorter, then we have a value selection.

*

This article has uncovered some interesting and positive findings. From what I have gleaned so far, when looking for selections in AW races top-rated Topspeed runners should be noted and potentially shortlisted for further investigation.

In the next article I will delve deeper into the performance of Topspeed in handicap races. Until then…

- DR

Thinking Out Loud: Trainer ‘P’ Form

/in /by

I have been researching horse racing for just over 25 years now, so I have delved into a lot of different areas and ideas, writes Dave Renham. Some have provided profitable angles, some have not. I tend to write up an article after I have done the research so that I have all the stats in front of me to help decide if it is worth converting into a piece. When ideas have offered little or no significant edge, I have tended to ‘bin’ them, as a fair proportion of readers are concerned more with profit than interesting ideas which do not offer any long-term edge.

This time, however, I am playing it slightly differently by researching and writing my findings up as I go. The risk here has already been mentioned: that there is little or no punting nutrition in the angle and associated research; but it is good to mix things up from time to time. I have penned one or two this way before, but it is a rare occurrence.

Today I am examining a new idea, for me at least. It is based around recent trainer form. This is regarded by many as an important consideration when it comes to betting on horses. Indeed, on Geegeez we offer Trainer reports where members are able to study 14-day or 30-day trainer form for all trainers who have runners on the day. The screenshot below shows an example of this:

 

 

My idea is to look at some individual trainers during specific months to see if their win strike rates showed correlation with their percentage of runners that had been pulled up.

The theory is that the fewer horses that were having to be pulled up, the higher the win percentage, and vice versa. Of course, I appreciate that the percentage of pulled up runners could impinge on the win percentage to a small extent, but we are not generally talking about pulled up monthly percentages of 30 or 40%, so the effect should be minimal. I estimate that in some instances it may make a difference of around 1% in terms of the monthly win SR%.

Data have been taken from UK National Hunt racing spanning from 1st Jan 2021 to 20th November 2025.

I will be looking at five trainers who each have a significant number of runners per year, which should make the findings more robust. The trainers are Nicky Henderson, Olly Murphy, Paul Nicholls, Dan Skelton and Nigel Twiston-Davies.

Let me start by sharing the overall percentage of horses for each trainer that were pulled up during the period of study:

 

 

As we can see there is a range of figures, with Nicky Henderson’s horses being pulled up roughly one race in every seven, whereas Olly Murphy’s runners have been pulled up roughly one race in every 14. These are the base figures I will work from for each trainer. I will move in alphabetical order and start with Henderson.

 

Nicky Henderson

We have seen that 14.1% of all of Henderson's runners were pulled up which seems quite a high figure. In fact, the overall percentage of pulled up runners for all trainers, not just these five, stands at just under 10%, (9.6% to be precise). Indeed, what inspired my research for this piece was the form of this particular yard in March 2024. It was when the stable was really struggling with an unexplained illness that saw numerous withdrawals and several very poor runs. Indeed, in March 2024 over 35% of Henderson’s runners were pulled up and they only had two winners across the whole month. Here we saw in black and white the possible strong link between the percentage of pulled up runners and stable form.

To test my correlation idea over the longer term I have come up with the following plan. For each stable I will use the overall percentage figure for pulled up runners as my starting point. So, for Henderson it is 14.1%. Then I will decide upon a lower ‘Pulled Up’ percentage (PU%) for specific months in an attempt to determine when the stable has potentially had a ‘much better’ month in terms of win rate, and then a higher monthly PU% when hopefully the stable has had a ‘much poorer’ month. The upper and lower figures I will choose for each trainer will be chosen by gut feel more than anything else. Also, once I have chosen these figures, I won’t tweak them in any way. It would be easy to back-fit the results slightly to help fit the narrative, but that defeats the object.

For Henderson then, my higher monthly PU% will be 19% and my lower monthly one will be anything under 10%. Hence, any month where the PU% was 19% or above, I will combine the results for all such months and work out the overall win strike rate across those months. I will do the same for months where the PU% was under 10% and work out the overall win strike rate across those months. My hypothesis, I guess rather obviously, is that we should see a much higher win strike rate in the months where the monthly PU% was under 10%. Here is what I found for Nicky H:

 

 

The results are at least the right way round in terms of the hypothesis. A 4.2% differential in win rates is fairly significant, especially as the sample sizes were large for each group – 488 runners and 609 runners respectively. It will be interesting to see if the other trainers follow a similar pattern.

 

Olly Murphy

Next, we head to the Wilmcote-based trainer, Olly Murphy. For Murphy the overall percentage figure for pulled up runners is much lower than for Henderson runners, down at 7.2%. Hence, I need to once more decide upon my PU%s in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ months. For a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 11% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month 4.75% or lower. Here are the strike rates based on these limits:

 

 

We see similar strike rates to the Henderson ones. Again, the figures are the way round I was hoping for with a 3.9% differential between the two. So far so good in terms of my original hypothesis.

 

Paul Nicholls

Paul Nicholls is approaching 4000 winners in the UK and has been Champion trainer a remarkable 14 times. It will be interesting to see what his stats show us. The overall percentage figure for pulled up runners from the Nicholls stable stands at 10.4%. Therefore, for a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 14.5% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month I will look for a percentage figure under 7%. Here are the relevant strike rates for both:

 

 

Wow! This is a significant difference. When the stable’s runners are being pulled up far less often than usual, the win percentages are off the charts. In contrast, when the PU% hits a much higher monthly figure than the average, the win rate drops markedly.

At this point, the research is showing what I had hoped for, but with two trainers left to check, this could 'go south' pretty quickly. Let’s see.

 

Dan Skelton

Dan Skelton has been banging in winners in vast quantities over the past few seasons. I wonder if this coming year will be the year when he finally wins the Trainers’ Championship. The overall percentage figure for pulled up runners from the Skelton yard over the period of study stands at 8%. Therefore, for a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 11% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month I will look for a percentage figure under 5.5%. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

We see similar splits to Henderson and Murphy with a differential of 3.5% between the two strike rates. Again, the lower PU% group have the higher win strike rate.

 

Nigel Twiston-Davies

The final trainer to check is Nigel (and Willy) Twiston-Davies. His overall win percentage across all races is slightly below the other four so we should expect slightly lower percentages when we examine the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ month splits. The overall percentage figure for pulled up runners from the yard stands at 8.6%. Therefore, for a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 11.5% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month I will look for a percentage figure under 6%. The graph below shows the strike rates:

 

 

We see similar results to the ones we saw for Paul Nicholls with the ‘good’ month strike rate nearly double the ‘bad’ month one. All five trainers have seen a edge for the ‘good’ PU% months, with two showing a very clear win percentage edge.

So far so good, but there is another thing I need to check: Betfair returns (BSP ROI%) for each trainer. Obviously, based on the findings so far, I am hoping to see better ROI percentages for the months where the PU%s were lower. These figures will be in the middle column of the table shown below. The high figures will be in the column on the right. I have highlighted in green the best ROI% of each pair:

 

 

Four of the five have correlated positively with the win strike rates showing higher returns in the months where the PU% was low. Not surprisingly, two of them, Nicholls and Twiston-Davies, have a huge differential between their two respective figures. Both see a difference close to 40 pence in the £. The outlier is Dan Skelton whose figures are ‘around the wrong way’. However, it should be noted that two of the winners in his ‘high’ group were priced BSP 44.2 and 36.8. His ‘low’ group did not have winners anywhere as high as these two prices. Hence, the ROI%s are skewed a little based on this evidence.

 

*

 

This has been an interesting journey, despite it not being that quick a piece to research and write up; I hope it's been an enjoyable ride. Ultimately, from my original hypothesis perspective, that proved to be quite a good one. If only the Skelton ROI% figures were around the other way, then I could claim it was a very good hypothesis!

Based on the findings of this piece, it does seem that the percentage of horses from a stable that are pulled up each month has an impact on the win rate of said stable.

- DR

 

 

 

NH Trainers: Short vs Long Distance Travellers

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NH Trainers and distance travelled

We know that trainers have their own personalised methods of training horses, as well as how they go about placing horses in terms of which races they are going to run in, writes Dave Renham. In this article I will examine the records of certain trainers in terms of the distance they travel with their runners to the racecourse.

Introduction

Clearly, the location of training facilities impacts where the racecourses are in relation to the racing yard; trainers that train in Scotland for example are somewhat restricted in terms of short journeys to courses. Nick Alexander, who trains in Fife, has two courses within 40 miles (Musselburgh and Perth), and he still has to travel more than 90 miles to get to the other two Scottish tracks, Ayr and Kelso. Compare this to Nigel (and Willy) Twiston-Davies, Fergal O’Brien and Kim Bailey to name but three, who all train within 40 miles of six different racecourses.

In terms of data for this piece I have looked at UK National Hunt racing from 1st January 2019 to 11th November 2025. Any profit/losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission.

How a journey impacts a horse is hard to say. Logically, we could argue that the less time the horse has to travel the better: there's less chance for it to become unsettled on the journey and such like. However, the counter argument would be that for a trainer to send a horse on a very long journey there must be a good reason. There are a few situations in which a trainer might look further afield including more suitable race conditions, a less competitive looking race, targeting a specific prize, or looking to increase the profile of the horse or indeed the yard by entering at bigger meetings. There are also cases when the owners might want to run somewhere, either because it's convenient for them or because of any associated prestige/good day out. Trainers' and owners' intentions are not always 100% aligned!

When considering how a horse is likely to fare on a shorter or longer journey to the track, I am hoping that digging into individual trainers will help to give some answers. My assumption is that each trainer will be different with some trainers primarily targeting races close to home, whereas others happier to travel the length and breadth of the country in search of what they deem to be better opportunities.

My approach will be to first look at distances of 40 miles and less to the racecourse, as most of these journeys involve a horse travelling for about an hour or less. I will then look at runners travelling distances of 175 miles or more, which I estimate means a minimum journey time of around four hours given the likely vehicle speed restrictions.

40 miles or less

I'll begin by looking at shorter journeys to the track, and below are the figures for all trainers combined when travelling 40 miles or less to the racecourse:

 

 

This gives us a benchmark to use as a comparison when looking at individual trainers. Below is a list of the all  trainers who saddled at least 250 runners in total with travel of 40 miles or less from stable to racecourse. I have restricted qualifiers to horses that were a BSP price of 12.0 or less in order to try and avoid potential skewed profits from huge-priced winners. The table is ordered by Betfair SP Return on Investment.

 

 

21 of the 36 trainers made a profit with their runners priced BSP 12.0 or less, while 23 had A/E indices of over 1.00. A few handlers stand out, namely Rebecca Menzies, James Moffatt, Ben Pauling and Matt Sheppard. All four secured excellent profits over the timeframe. Looking in more detail at the record of Rebecca Menzies, there are three courses within 40 miles of her stables and her breakdown for each was as follows:

 

 

Profits at all three with the Newcastle record being particularly strong. What is also worth noting is her consistency year on year with these runners. The graph below shows Menzies' yearly win strike rates in this context:

 

 

Every year has seen a win rate better than one in five and in addition to this she recorded a blind profit in every year.

There are six tracks within 40 miles of Ben Pauling's yard, and he secured a profit at five of these. His record at Worcester was particularly impressive with 21 wins from 75 (SR 28%) for a profit of £37.37 (ROI +49.8%). He has been a rare visitor to Ludlow but of his 20 runners there, eight won (SR 40%) for a profit of £15.25 (ROI +76.3%).

All of James Moffatt’s qualifiers raced at Cartmel, while Matt Sheppard made a profit at four nearby courses - Hereford, Ludlow, Stratford and Worcester.

Moving on to some of the ‘big guns’, Nicky Henderson’s record looks quite modest for him but, to be fair, the only courses within 40 miles are Ascot and Newbury, two tough tracks at which to attain profitability. Like Henderson, the yard of Paul Nicholls has only two courses within 40 miles, Taunton and Wincanton. Nicholls has hit a strike rate of over 30% at both with his runners priced BSP 12.0 or less, Taunton producing a small positive return of just under 10 pence in the pound.

Dan Skelton has six courses within 40 miles (Cheltenham, Hereford, Stratford, Warwick, Wolverhampton and Worcester) but only Hereford has seen a positive return with these shorter priced runners. His record there was 26 wins from 69 (SR 37.7%) for a profit of £26.50 (ROI +38.4%). However, with favourites across all six courses Skelton has done well thanks to 122 winners from 286 (SR 42.7%) for a profit of £25.95 (ROI +9.1%). With those market leaders he has proved profitable across the three main race types and the BSP ROI percentages for each race type are shown below.

 

 

 

As can be seen, he has fared especially well with favourites ‘on the level’ in NH flat races/bumpers, returning nearly 19 pence in the £.

Before moving on, let me share the trainers who have secured returns of over 10% (10p in the £) with horses that started in the top three in the betting when travelling 40 miles or less. The graph below shows the 11 who made the cut:

 

 

It is perhaps no surprise to see Messrs Moffatt, Pauling and Sheppard in the line up based on the earlier data, and it may also be interesting that none of the perceived big guns make the list. From a punting perspective I feel it always gives us an edge when some of the lesser-known trainers have potentially profitable angles to exploit.

 

175 miles or more

As we did with the shorter distances, let me set the scene by sharing the overall figures for all UK NH trainers who travelled 175 miles or more to race. The total number of qualifiers is roughly half of those in the '40 or less' group which is no surprise:

 

 

We see a higher strike rate than the 'short distance travelled' group, but almost double the losses. Here, backing all runners blind would have cost us 8.3p in the £ compared with 4.4p with the other group.

As before, when looking at individual trainers I will be using a price cap of BSP 12.0. To qualify for this list, trainers needed to have had at least 100 qualifiers within this price bracket, and I have again sorted the table by BSP ROI:

 

 

This time, only 11 of 34 trainers made a profit with their runners priced BSP 12.0 or less, while 13 had A/E indices of over 1.00. These percentages of 'positive' trainers are not as good compared with what we saw earlier. In general, at this juncture, it does seem that a shorter trip to the course has been preferable to a longer one. Of course, not all trainers have had enough qualifiers to make both lists but, for those who have, I have produced a comparison of their data at the end of the article.

Looking at trainers with positive records with long distance travellers, Laura Morgan’s figures have been extremely impressive. Her record during this timeframe was particularly good when she sent runners to Scotland: such entries (BSP 12.0 or less) combined to win 34 of the 101 races (SR 36.7%) for a healthy profit of £64.05 to £1 level stakes. Returns equated to over 63 pence in the £. The majority of her Scottish raiders travelled to Perth, but all four courses north of the border returned a profit as the table below shows:

 

 

It seems that any of Morgan's runners heading to Scotland in the near future demand close scrutiny, unless the market suggests otherwise.

Paul Nicholls was another trainer to make a blind profit during this timeframe with longer travellers. When stable jockey Harry Cobden was on board the record was even better hitting a strike rate of close to 37% (82 winners from 222) for a profit of £58.36 (ROI +26.3%). They combined to ride at least 20 times at four different courses – Aintree, Ayr, Musselburgh and Southwell – and all four produced decent returns. Indeed, when we examine the value metric (A/E index) at these four courses, we see that the runners proved to be outstanding value.

 

 

In terms of other big names, Dan Skelton, like Morgan, has performed well when sending runners to Scotland. His raiders have provided returns of over 23p in the £ thanks to a strike rate of nearly 32%. Nicky Henderson rarely sends runners to Scotland, especially Kelso, Musselburgh and Perth. However, he has had five winners from nine at Kelso, three from four at Musselburgh, and four from eight at Perth. Returns combined at these three courses were over 50p in the £.

Finally, in this section, let me share the trainers who had the best records with long travellers sent off in the top three in the betting. Five managed ROI percentages of over 10% and these are shown in the table below:

 

 

Short vs Long: A Comparison

The last thing I want to do is compare trainers who had enough qualifying runners to make both main tables, short and long. Obviously, readers can look at the separate tables above, but having the key figures next to each other is more convenient. I have used the following metrics: win percentage, ROI% and A/E indices. ROIs that were negative are coloured in red; what I deem to be positive stats are highlighted in blue:

 

 

 

This table helps to highlight some potentially useful pointers such as Henderson, Lacey and Murphy’s stronger records with longer travellers; compared with Pauling, Team Twiston-Davies, Evan Williams and Venetia Williams who all have much better records with horses running closer to home.

I hope this article has offered up some interesting and useful facts and figures that we can take advantage of over the coming months. With trainers we need to be aware that ‘one cap does not fit all’, and I believe the more we dig into individual trainer records the better.

- DR

Top 10 Front Running Biases in Handicap Chases, Part 2: 5 to 1

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Top ten front running biases in handicap chases, Part 2 – 5 to 1

In this second article of two, I will be sharing what I believe to be the Top Five run style biases in handicap chases in the UK and Ireland, writes Dave Renham. In the first article, which you can read here, I revealed positions 10 down to 6; they all had very strong biases towards front runners. The five shared below I feel have been even more advantageous to early leaders.

I have used data for handicap chases only as they tend to offer more robust data; and I have gathered data from 2018 to 2024 with no minimum runner consideration. To assist with the correlation I have used two tools from this site, namely the Pace Analyser and the Query Tool. Having access to them is a huge benefit to Gold membership in my opinion.

The run style / pace data on Geegeez is split into four - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. A quick recap of the four run styles:

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

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

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack.

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

OK, let me kick on starting with number five.

 

5 Kelso 2m5½f-2m6½f

We start in the Scottish borders at Kelso, essentially over a trip of 2m6f. They sometimes race over a half furlong more or less then 2m6f. The stats for 2018 to 2024 were as follows:

 

 

Strong prominent stats make this a course where a position at or near the front early has been a huge advantage. There were slightly stronger Led stats at some other course and distance combinations that I looked at last week but, for me, the additional strength of the prominent figures cemented a very robust overall run style bias.

Horses trying to mount their challenges from off the pace have really struggled over the past few years here, as the win and placed stats clearly show. The struggles of horses racing off the pace early can be highlighted further when sharing the PRB stats. PRB stands for ‘Percentage of Rivals Beaten’.

 

 

I grouped the Mid Div and Held Up stats together; their figure of 0.40 (40% of rivals beaten) is a poor one and, to coin a phrase, ‘well off the pace’.

The bias to horses up with or close to the front was stronger on good or firmer ground, or at least the stats suggested this:

 

 

17 of the 20 races were won by either early leaders or prominent racers. The 'Led' A/E of 1.87 indicates that front runners were very good value on better ground during this timeframe.

Having started in Scotland we now travel south to Cheltenham.

 

4 Cheltenham 2m4f–2m5f

It is the middle distance range again, around the 2m4f mark, at Cheltenham (both courses, Old and New, combined). Perhaps not a track that initially would scream out front running bias, but the stats were very strong:

 

 

The comparison that caught my eye was the Led versus Held Up win ratios. Front runners won 26 races from just 96 runners, while Hold Ups won just seven from 260! If we had been able to predict the front runner(s) pre-race we would have made a fortune to SP, let alone BSP. Even backing each way would have been extremely profitable.

On good or quicker ground the bias seemed to strengthen as these stats suggest:

 

 

Of the 20 races with 15+ runners, just one win was achieved by a hold up horse from 114 qualifiers. The bias has still been strong on easier ground but not as strong.

Onto the PRBs (all going conditions):

 

 

I had expected a slightly higher Led PRB based on the placed stats but they have still been comfortably the best. A higher PRB would have probably edged this track/trip further up the list.

Finally, I felt the stats for races with bigger fields (10+ runners) were worth sharing:

 

 

Front runners have offered huge value in these races (A/E index 2.53), with potential returns to BSP of nearly 200%!

There have been 11 races so far this year, with just a single win from 16 front runners. However, they have had three further placed horses including a place BSP of 37.55!

 

3 Tramore 1m7f-2m

The Irish course of Tramore may not be that familiar to some UK punters but run style stats for handicap chases over the 1m7f/2m trip there are well worth sharing:

 

 

Yes, the sample size was relatively small but it was potent in favour of front runners with an extremely high A/E index at 1.79 and IV of 2.56. The PRBs correlate strongly and underscore the bias:

 

 

The 0.64 figure for front runners, compared with 0.42 for Mid Div/Held Up runners, over this timeframe indicated that the edge was huge. The big advantage of PRB figures is that they effectively help to make small datasets bigger. In racing we often deal with modest sample sizes, relative to what general statistics would consider so at any rate. Hence, when we then try to discern knowledge from the data by using PRBs we are examining all the runners in all the races, rather than just the winners and/or the placed horses. It's not a perfect metric - what is? - but it adds depth to shallow cohorts.

For the record, of the four qualifying races held in 2025 to date, two have been won from the front, at odds of 7/2 (BSP 4.99) and 6/1 (8.2). A third front runner in that quartet was still leading when unshipping his jockey five out.

 

2 Killarney 2m4f-2m5f

Staying in Ireland for number two, we head to Killarney over 2m4f-2m5f (use 2m4f when using the Pace Analyser / Query Tool):

 

 

The Led group of runners hit 2.14 in terms of A/E index and 2.88 in terms of IV. There was a huge 58.6% placed figure to boot. Horses that were held up managed a place percentage of just 13.3%. As with Tramore the sample size was relatively small so let me share the PRB figures:

 

 

The 0.66 figure for the Led group compared with 0.39 for Mid Div/Held Up runners helps to confirm the huge front running edge there has been over the past few seasons.

Each year we mighgt reasonably expect four or five qualifying races, which is fewer than ideal, but when they do occur they are races we need to try and take advantage of.

And now for my number 1...

 

1 Uttoxeter 2m4f-2m5f

Top spot goes to Uttoxeter and its mid-range handicap chases. The majority of races were at 2m4f, but a handful were contested over an extra furlong. These are grouped together in Geegeez (using the 2m4f distance) and stats were as follows:

 

 

There were over 100 races in the sample, making this set of data extremely robust. Front runners won better 31% from within their group, had strong metrics across the board and potential profit levels were high. Front runners and prominent racers won 73% of the 112 races from 46% of the runners; and front runners alone won 38% of the races from just 16% of the runners!

The PRBs confirmed the pattern:

 

 

The front running edge is clear to see by looking at the bars on the graph, especially noteworthy due to the large number of races at this course and distance.

Ground conditions have made little difference with the win rate for front runners on good or firmer being 32.2%, while on good to soft or softer it was 30.8%.

At the time of writing, 2025 had seen 14 such races of which seven were won from the front.

 

*

 

Incredibly, run style bias in NH racing is something that still goes under the radar for many punters. There are not many clear-cut edges we can still get as punters these days, but knowing which course and distance combinations offer the strongest biases will almost force us to improve our bottom line.

Until next time...

- DR

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