In this article I am going to take an in depth look at three-year-old (3yo) only Class 2 handicaps run on the turf, writes Dave Renham. These are the highest level of handicap, so they tend to be very competitive. We often hear pundits saying something like "this horse could be a Group horse in a handicap", and there will be some of these 3yos which prove them right by going on to tackle Listed and Group level in the future.
The data have been taken from UK flat races (turf only) spanning eight seasons, from 2018 to 2025. The profit/loss figures have been calculated to Betfair SP (BSP) less 2% commission. It should also be noted that 65% of all qualifying races were staged at one of four tracks: Ascot, Goodwood, Newmarket and York. Plenty of top-quality handicaps held at top-quality venues, and we should expect around 35-40 qualifying races from this point in time this season.
Let me kick off by looking at market factors. In the table below I have split the results by BSP:
Horses at the shorter end of the price range (BSP 4.5 or less) performed well, while there was not a single winner priced above BSP 70.0 which is slightly surprising. The 28.01 to 70.0 group have edged into profit but this often happens if we get two or three more big-priced winners than the norm across a specific time frame.
Based on the earlier evidence, it will probably come as no surprise to hear that favourites have made a blind profit over the past eight seasons. The favourite stats have been thus:
Considering the competitiveness of these races, for favourites to return close to 16p in the £ ‘blind’ has been rather impressive. Favourites also did well at two courses in particular, Ascot and Newmarket, as can be seen in the following table:
Favourites also excelled from a small sample at Newbury with nine of the 14 winning (SR 64.3%) for a healthy profit of £23.50 (ROI +167.9%).
In terms of negative stats for favourites, market leaders struggled when racing up in the North or Scotland. In these contests their record reads 28 wins from 113 favs (SR 24.8%) for a loss of £14.67 to £1 level stakes, equating to losses of 13p in the £.
One final set of data for favourites that I will share looks at different distance bands. I have split the races distances into five groups in order to provide better sample sizes. The groups are 5f to 6.5f, 7f to 1m.5f, 1m 1f to 1m 2.5f, 1m 3f to 1m 4.5f and 1m 5f or longer. The BSP ROI percentages for each group have been as follows:
All five groups proved profitable during the review period suggesting real consistency across the board when it comes to market leaders.
Having looked at the market, it is time to look into other areas. For the remainder of this piece, I will be using a BSP price cap of 18.0 to avoid any winners especially from the BSP 28.01 to 70.0 bracket potentially skewing individual bottom lines.
Sex of horse
Let me share some data now in terms of the sex of the horse running. It should be noted that there are far more male runners contesting these races than females. However, when female runners have competed against their male counterparts, they have struggled somewhat. So, below I have considered only mixed sex races to get a fair comparison between the two. I want to share the A/E indices for each group first – these are based on BSP prices so are the most accurate:
Males have offered far better value than females in these races and, when we look at the win rates / returns, we see positive correlation with that finding:
Male runners delivered a better strike rate and in terms of returns would have lost us around 22p in the £ less than females. Female runners have been relatively rare, but they have not been good investments.
It is also worth splitting male horse data to review the performance of colts versus geldings. These results include male only races as well as the mixed sex ones. The splits were thus:
As we can see, colts have comfortably outperformed geldings so that is another useful nugget of information we could potentially utilise in the future in these contests.
Weight carried
A look at weight carried now. These splits do not include any jockey claim, so the chart displays the actual weights each horse was allotted for the race. In terms of win rate, we witnessed the following:
This pattern, where horses carrying more weight win more often, tends to be the case in all types of flat handicaps. However, prices are generally well adjusted for this so that there is no clear edge to those horses that win more often. Time to see how the splits pan out here in terms of profit/loss/returns:
Returns wise, the highest weighted runners only lost a small amount. There has been no clear pattern, although I would be a little wary of backing lower weighted runners (8st 7lb or less) without a very good reason. It should be noted that if we dropped to 8st 4lb or less this cohort would have lost about 8p in the £ more tipping the scales at a little over 24p in the £.
Previous Career wins
Has the number of wins a horse has previously achieved made a difference over the past eight years? Let’s take a look:
One or two prior wins seems to have been the optimum. Horses that have won three or more times were very poor value – I guess why this has been the case is because these runners have become more exposed and, therefore, open to less improvement. Indeed, horses that won at least three times and had raced at least six times had an even worse record, winning just 39 times from 340 (SR 11.5%) for losses of £85.07 (ROI -25%).
Considering briefly the number of previous runs in handicaps a horse has had, if we concentrate on runners that had at least six runs previously in handicaps they have scored just 9.6% of the time (21 wins from 219) for losses of £63.54 (ROI -29%).
Again, I am guessing some of these animals were just less open to improvement. Compare this to horses which had previously run just once in a handicap, such types enjoyin a positive record of 77 wins from 511 runners (SR 15.1%) for a profit of £26.54 (ROI +5.2%). These runners were far less exposed, with more scope for improvement, from their current handicap mark.
Finishing position LTO
Normally with last time out (LTO) finishing position we see LTO winners following up more often than runners-up, who in turn win more often than LTO thirds, and so on. We tend to see a sloping graph with the bars getting lower, the further down the field the horse finished last time. However, that pattern has not occurred for these races as the graph below shows:
The left-hand side of the graph starts in a familiar fashion, but then we see the bar rising on the right-hand side. Hence it seems that LTO position has not quite been as important as it can be for other types of races. The full splits were as follows:
The value clearly has been with horses that finished fifth or worse LTO. They produced very strong profit figures as well as a decent win strike rate. These numbers for the 5th or worse cohort can be improved if restricting last time out runs to handicaps only. The figures then read 62 wins from 402 (SR 15.4%) for a profit of £117.08 (ROI +29.1%).
Course LTO
A quick look to see if the LTO course data has given us any past positives. Well, there have been four LTO courses that would have produced a profit. These have been:
Four of the top tracks in the country which I guess should come as no surprise, three of them representing 75% of the major 3yo Class 2 turf handicap hosts. The LTO York figures have been particularly eye-catching.
Trainer Angles
The final area to look at is trainers. Good individual trainer datasets have been hard to come by for most handlers but nine have had at least 50 horses run in these events (with the 18.0 BSP price cap) and their stats are shown in the table below. The trainers have been ordered alphabetically:
Charlie Appleby, Andrew Balding, Clive Cox, the Gosden stable and Richard Hannon all performed well and made fair profits. In contrast, Ralph Beckett and Richard Fahey have both struggled, posting significant losses.
Appleby, Balding, the Gosdens and Hannon also fared notably well when saddling the favourite.
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Summary
This piece of research has highlighted plenty of positives as well as negatives in these handicaps. Here is a quick ready reckoner for us:
Until next time...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Summerghand.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-05-05 13:31:132026-05-05 13:31:13Making Sense of 3yo Class 2 Turf Handicaps
The draw and run style combinations we need to avoid
The inspiration for this piece was the recent Form Hacker’s Guide researched and compiled by Matt, and I suggest readers to take a look if not done so already, writes Dave Renham. In those two excellent pieces (which you can read here and here), Matt started by focusing on 10-runner handicaps on turning tracks, expanding later to 8- to 12-runner handicaps.
His research noted that the wider drawn runners generally struggled, as did those drawn 1 (those closest to the inside rail) if they did not get away well. He also noted that races of 1 mile or less were best as they tend to be run at a true gallop. My aim for this article is to build on those initial Form Hacker findings.
So, this was my plan. I wanted to highlight the worst course and distance (C&D) draw/run style combinations in the UK. I decided to look at handicap races only but expanded the remit to 8+ runner handicaps from 5 furlongs to 1 mile: the majority of these were 8 to 12 runner affairs. Unlike Matt's research, I also included races run on straight courses. Data has been taken from between 2021 to 2025, so five full years/seasons.
Being able to consistently find horses that represent poor value is extremely useful when it comes to improving your bottom line. The more horses we can (reasonably) confidently put a line through the better. If we can ignore, say, three horses in a 12-runner field due to the chance of any of them winning being considerably lower than their prices suggest, then we suddenly turn the betting market in our favour.
For example, imagine this hypothetical market on Betfair for a 12-runner handicap:
This market gives a book percentage of 102.3% (that is, an overround of 2.3%), so the type of market we will find on Betfair for this sort of race. Let us imagine that the horses ranked 4, 6 and 10 in the betting can be as good as ignored due to their draw and likely run style. That takes out just under 21% from the market book and turns the odds well in our favour.
Now, I appreciate that one of those horses we eliminated could win, but if we are right with our research then this will happen sufficiently rarely that the method will still give us a decent edge over the longer term. It’s time to crack on.
Mechanics
On geegeez.co.uk, we are able to look at draw and run style combinations through the Draw Analyser. Below is a 'heat map' screenshot taken from Chepstow over 6f for this recent five-year time frame in 8+ runner handicaps:
The numbers in this heat map image are PRBs (Percentage of Rivals Beaten). To refresh, Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) is a calculation based on a horse's finishing position in relation to field size. It makes key distinctions between a horse finishing, say, third in a five-horse race (PRB 50%, two rivals beaten, beaten by two rivals) and finishing third in an eleven-horse race (PRB 80%, eight rivals beaten, beaten by two).
PRB is beneficial for researchers like me because it helps to make datasets bigger. In racing we are often blighted by small datasets, relative to what general statistics would consider so at any rate. And when we then try to discern knowledge from the data by looking only at wins, we ignore nine-tenths of the information we have (assuming an average field size of ten, one winner, nine losers).
The Draw Analyser also gives us more extensive data for each draw/run style group, and this is shown for the same Chepstow example below:
We are able to see in this one table the sample sizes in more detail. They include win and placed percentages, profits/losses (SP and Betfair SP), A/E indices, Impact Values and the PRBs.
On geegeez.co.uk, we express PRB as a number in decimal form between 0 and 1 rather than a percentage. So 0.69 for example, the PRB for the low drawn led group (see table above), equates to 69% while the low drawn held up figure of 0.39 equates to 39%, and so on. The key thing to remember about PRB figures is that a par score is 50% of rivals beaten, or 0.50, so better than 0.55 is positive and worse than 0.45 is a fair negative.
To qualify as a ‘poor’ C&D draw/run style combination I am looking for groups of runners with draw/run style PRBs below 0.40, as this indicates these horses have really struggled. In addition, there must have been at least 40 horses within each specific C&D draw/run style combination which will give us a decent PRB sample size from which to work from.
Below are the worst 20 draw/run style C&Ds starting with those with PRBs of 0.38. The C&Ds are not strictly in order of poorness culminating with the ‘worst’, but in general the later C&Ds will show a slightly stronger negative bias.
Let's get to it!
The Worst 20 Course/Distance Draw/Run Style Combinations in UK Flat Racing
Carlisle 6f – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
We start with Carlisle over 6f. This C&D sees runners turn right roughly 150 yards after the start and then take a further shallow right turn just after two furlongs, with a final slight turn between the two- and three-furlong pole. Let’s look at the splits for low drawn held up runners:
The win rate was higher than both the placed% and the PRB of 0.38 suggests it should be. An extra win or two over 71 races can change the win percentage considerably. I surmise though, that over a longer period the win rate would be nearer 5 or 6% based on the PRB. All in all, low drawn held up runners over this C&D have been horses that have generally found it tough.
Chester 7f – draw third MIDDLE; run style – HELD UP
Chester is the tightest track in the country, so I had expected to see it make the list somewhere. Over 7f, horses positioned in the middle third of the draw have been at a significant disadvantage as the figures below show:
These runners lost a little over 70p in the £ over the past five years. I am guessing that some of the runners get squeezed somewhat from both lower and higher drawn runners starting more quickly and, on this tight track, being behind a wall of horses makes life very tricky. For the record low drawn hold up horses have also struggled with a PRB of 0.42.
Leicester 6f – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
To the Midlands and Leicester. The 6f trip at Leicester is run over on a straight course and high drawn held up types have had a poor time of it as the stats show:
Just the three wins from 64 qualifiers, and when we look at the stall position rather than simply highest third of the draw, horses drawn 10 or higher that were held up won no races from 40 runners. Indeed, horses that raced in mid-division when drawn 10 or higher over 6f here also failed to score, this time from 34 runners. Thus, high drawn runners that raced mid div or were held up have seen 74 consecutive losers over this 6f trip at Leicester.
York 1 mile – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
I have always been a fan of this C&D as low draws have enjoyed a strong edge in such races for many years. York's mile handicaps are run around a bend and the horses drawn in the top third (high), when held up, have struggled as the numbers below illustrate:
This C&D witnessed extremely low win and placed percentages for the high/held up cohort, especially considering the very decent sample size. Also, if we concentrate on handicaps with bigger fields, horses drawn 13 or higher when held up won just once from 61 (SR 1.6%) with only 3 horses placing (SR 4.9%). This is the strongest bias seen to date and clearly we should steer clear of habitual hold up horses drawn high over this C&D.
Windsor 1 mile – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
Windsor is a unique flat track as the racecourse is a figure of eight, although over a mile it is effectively like a round course. Horses drawn low that were held up really struggled since 2021 as these numbers indicate:
As we can see, not only has the PRB figure been very poor, but all other metrics have followed suit. Both the win and placed rates were extremely low and if backing all 115 runners we would have lost just over two-thirds of stakes. It should also be noted that horses drawn in the lowest stall (1) have performed dreadfully with 0 wins and just one placed effort from 26 runs; the PRB stands at a dismal 0.30. This backs up Matt’s findings in his Form Hacker’s Guide where he noted that slow starting horses drawn 1 tended to really struggle.
We can also see that the runners drawn in the bottom third of the draw struggled year on year when viewing the win percentages for each year. The graph below shows the splits:
In addition, the yearly PRBs correlate positively with the win percentages with four of the five years seeing PRBs of 0.39 or lower.
Musselburgh 1 mile – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
Musselburgh is a course I like from a punting perspective as over 7f and 1 mile there is a very strong front running bias. Hence, it comes as no surprise that we see hold up horses struggling over the mile trip when drawn low. Here are the splits:
As can be seen these low drawn runners have really found it tough going. They have the same PRB as the other C&Ds shared to date, but the lowest win rate, lowest A/E index and lowest IV value. If we had backed all 44 runners we would have lost over 85p in the £. Hold up horses drawn either 1 or 2 went 0 from 21 with just two placing in the five year review period. Low drawn hold ups are a ‘no no’ from a backing perspective.
Chepstow 7f – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
Chepstow’s 7f races are run on a straight track and hold up horses have struggled generally (we will see more evidence of this in a minute). Those hold up types drawn low produced the following stats:
Just a single win and, although the place% is one of the highest we have seen so far, when we compare it to the ‘LED’ place% over this C&D (all draw thirds combined) we see that this stands at 44.4%. There is quite a difference between the two percentages.
The next C&D on the list is the first where the PRB drops to 0.37 and it happens to be the same C&D as this one!
Chepstow 7f – draw third MIDDLE; run style – HELD UP
It is the middle third of the draw this time combined once again with held up runners. Here are their splits:
We see similar figures for most metrics, although the place% is lower than the high drawn figure previously shared. It should be noted that hold ups from the highest third also struggled and almost made the list as well but their PRB of 0.41 was just above the cut-off point.
It should also be noted that when we look at ALL hold up horses over this C&D (all draw thirds combined) that started in the top three of the betting, only two of 32 won for hefty losses of over 77p in the £.
Ayr 6f – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
Back up to Scotland and one of the sprint trips at Ayr next. Here are the stats:
The win rate looks slightly inflated based on the PRB and Place% but, having said that, backing all runners would have still incurred losses of £74.75 (ROI -65%). The bias against high drawn held up horses seems to have been accentuated on softer ground. On going described as good to soft or softer the PRB was just 0.32 over the past five years with a win percentage of under 5%.
Nottingham 6f – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
Over to Nottingham now and low drawn runners when held up off the pace performed poorly between 2021 and 2025. Their stats were as follows:
Just the two wins from the 50 hold up horses and the PRB as with Ayr 6f stands at 0.37. It may be that this bias is stronger on slower ground because for the 19 qualifiers who ran on good to soft or slower their PRB was a measly 0.31. They did manage one win from those 19 runners, but no other horse managed to place. Also, when we look at the other hold up horses from middle and high draws their performance on easier ground was much worse also. Hence this gives extra confidence that slower ground here makes it even harder for hold up horses.
Lingfield AW 5f – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
Lingfield's all-weather (AW) track next. The 5f trip is slightly unusual as round course 5-furlong tracks go because the stalls are placed on the outside, rather than next to the inside rail. I wonder if this is why high drawn hold up horses have struggled, especially when factoring in that the first turn at Lingfield occurs before a furlong of the race has been completed.
Hold up horses are either going to be trapped very wide having to go the longest route or, if they dive to the inside, they are likely to encounter significant traffic. We have a decent sample size supporting these assertions:
Such hold up horses over Lingfield's all-weather five incurred losses of 55p in the £ if backing all blind to £1 level stakes. Focusing on horses from the top three in the betting that were held up from one of the three highest draws, this cohort won just four of the 36 races (SR 11.1%) for a loss of £17.54 (ROI -48.7%).
Windsor 5f – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
5f at Windsor sees horses essentially race over a straight five though there is a slight kink at halfway, so horses on the inside (low) can get squeezed if racing off the pace and close to the rail. I am guessing this has been a contributing factor to the poor figures for this combination. The stats were as follows:
One win, and a placed rate of just one in seven. Compare this place% with that of early leaders here (any draw) which stands at 58%! Hence, front runners have been four times more likely to place than low drawn hold up horses over this 5f trip.
Backing all low drawn hold up horses over this 5-year period would have lost £50.22 (ROI -89.7%), and one additional finding is that on firmer ground (good to firm or firmer), the bias against hold ups seems to have strengthened still more. Under these conditions hold up runners were 0 from 33 with just three placed efforts; PRB 0.34.
This makes sense because, on firmer ground, the horses tend to congregate near the stands’ rail (low) meaning real traffic problems for hold up horses close to the rail. Conversely, on softer ground horses often fan out in the final two furlongs, racing middle to far side more, meaning that low drawn hold ups are not faced by a wall of horses sticking to the stands’ rail.
Wolverhampton 5f – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
Our second AW C&D, again over 5f, this time at Wolverhampton. Here the stalls are positioned, as we would expect, on the inside and higher draws are at disadvantage regardless of run style. However, the disadvantage is made worse if they are held up as these stats show:
This is the biggest sample of the 20 C&Ds in this article so we can be very confident in the findings. Backing all high drawn hold up runners would generated eye-watering losses of £193.48 which equates to just under 58p in the £. Horses drawn high that raced midfield also performed poorly with a win rate of under 4% and a PRB of 0.42.
York 6f – draw third MIDDLE; run style – HELD UP
Coming from behind at York over 5f or 6f has always been difficult and middle drawn held up runners over 6f have had a particularly poor record in recent times:
The draw, as well as run style, has often been key here over the past few seasons with lower draws definitely enjoying an edge. Hence, middle and higher draws have tended to be at a disadvantage at most meetings. As well as the middle, high drawn hold up runners have also found it tough over 6f here winning just five races from 126 runners; PRB 0.41.
Catterick 7f – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
A look at 7f at Catterick now. This is a round course 7f where the stats have been as follows:
We see a very low win rate from a decent sample of over 100 runners. I mentioned earlier about Matt’s findings regarding horses drawn 1 struggling when running around a bend. This has definitely been the case here as hold up horses drawn 1 have won zero races from 26. It has not been any better for those drawn 2 either, that group going 0 from 21. Nine of those losers (both draws combined) started either favourite or second favourite.
Catterick 5f – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
Over to the 5f trip at Catterick which is well known for favouring early speed. Hence, one would expect horses that have been held up to struggle and that has been the case. Those drawn high have produced the following stats:
Hold up horses have struggled regardless of post position here. Low drawn hold ups have a PRB of 0.41, while hold up horses drawn in the middle third of the draw appear next on this list...
Catterick 5f – draw third MIDDLE; run style – HELD UP
Horses drawn in the middle have also struggled over this C&D when being held up. As with the high drawn runners their PRB has ended up at 0.37. Here are all the relevant metrics:
We see a slightly lower win rate, coupled with a marginally higher placed rate. The A/E index though has been much lower as has the Impact Value (IV). I should also share that horses which raced mid-division from either a high or middle draw also performed poorly, winning just twice from 50 combined qualifiers (SR 4%).
It will come as no real surprise that there is a significant run style bias over this C&D as the graph below shows:
The graph combines all early leaders / front runners comparing their record to all hold up horses regardless of post position over this course and distance. This type of difference occurs at numerous courses over 5f.
Musselburgh 7f – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
Back to Musselburgh over 7f this time where high drawn held up runners have produced a poor set of figures:
This is the lowest PRB so far standing at just 0.35 suggesting it has been a huge disadvantage to be held up here when drawn high. Indeed, stall 8 seems to be where the trouble has started, as horses drawn 8 or higher when held up won just one of 70 races (SR 1.43%) over the five years with a place% of just 7.1% and a PRB of 0.33.
Musselburgh 5f – draw third LOW; run style – HELD UP
Sticking with Musselburgh we now look at the stats for low drawn runners when held up over the minimum trip of 5f:
Low drawn runners are stuck out wide at Musselburgh over five furlongs and it seems if they start slowly their chances of success are very low indeed. The lowest drawn runner (drawn 1) has a quite dreadful record when being held up managing no wins and also no placed efforts from 36 runs! The PRB for this cohort has been... wait for it... just 0.20. Runners berthed in stall 2 also drew a blank from a win perspective when held up (0 from 28 with just 2 placed efforts). There is an argument to suggest that this C&D has shown the strongest bias in the list.
Leicester 1 mile – draw third HIGH; run style – HELD UP
We come to the final C&D and the one with the lowest PRB in the list, at just 0.34. Leicester’s 1 mile trip has seen the following stats for high drawn hold up horses:
15 of the 44 races over this C&D over the past five years were won by the horse taking the early lead. Higher draws were at a disadvantage so knowing these two facts helps explain the poor figures for hold up horses drawn high. Finally, horses drawn 9 or higher when held up over C&D were 0 from 28 over the period of study.
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Summary
Before I finish this table shows the combined results from all 20 C&Ds including the Betfair profit and loss - well, just loss! - figures:
It makes fairly damning reading. Roughly one win in 25 and for every £100 staked a loss of £47.50. Ouch!
It is not an accident that all twenty draw/run style combinations were draw third/held up.
Horses that race at the back of the field early do not win very often in flat handicaps at a mile or shorter.
Here's a handy 'cut out and keep' guide to the 20, listed alphabetically:
How to spot a hold up horse...
The million dollar question, of course, is how do you spot a hold up horse? Well, that's not straightforward to answer, but I can tell you this: in the five year study period, across UK flat handicaps, horses that were held up in their two previous races led on their next start just 4.2% of the time... and they were held up again 56.5% of the time. 27% of this 30,000+ sample size raced in midfield, meaning that five out of every six horses that were held up in their previous two races raced in the latter part of the field on their next start.
It's not a crystal ball by any means, but it's a pretty good start. Being able to eliminate horses confidently from races we are analysing means we start to move the odds in our favour. As Matt also indicated in his ‘hacks’ there are not just negative angles which will help us but positive ones too.
Combining positive draws with positive run styles moves the odds even further in our favour. From there, it should be easier (note, easier not easy!) to find value selections which is the route to long term profit.
I guess I should plan another article in the near future looking at the C&Ds with the highest draw/run style combo PRBs. Until next time...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Catterick_Sprint.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-04-28 17:31:412026-04-28 17:31:41The WORST Draw / Run Style Tracks in 2026
Back in early February, I wrote a piece about 3-mile handicap chases at Uttoxeter, writes Dave Renham. This was the third time I had looked at a specific course and distance and diving deeply into past statistics. I will again revisit this idea today, delving forensically into Musselburgh's 7 furlongs trip, focusing on handicap races only. And, as a ‘Brucie Bonus’, I will also look at the key stats in Windsor 1-mile handicaps. Two for the price of one!
I have noted before in the earlier articles that looking for patterns and pointers for races from a specific course and distance (C&D) is a type of trends-based approach. Using past race trends remains very popular – for example, for every race I bet on at the Cheltenham festival this year I first studied past race trends in an attempt to gain some extra insight into how the races may pan out this year.
For this article I have taken handicap data from 2017 to 2025. Profits are calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission. It should be noted that for all areas other than the draw and run style I have ignored 2yo handicaps. For the record there were only nine such 2yo races at Musselburgh.
Firstly, there have been on average 21 qualifying races a year over seven furlongs at Musselburgh (handicaps only), so a decent number. Just over 40% of the races were Class 6 races, the lowest tier, while around 65% were either Class 5 or 6. Let’s start the digging process.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Betting market
I am going to look at the betting market for our first main set of stats and specifically market rank. I have used the Betfair market for this:
The value has been with those second and third in the market, while favourites have been over bet. There were no ridiculously priced winners over the past nine seasons with the highest two being 50.0 and 58.93. Horses priced BSP 60 or more were 0 from 94 with just four placing.
It is interesting when we analyse favourite performance in more detail as there has been a big difference when we split their record by Class of Race.
At the lower levels favourites have done OK. In better class races (4 and above) their record has been very poor indeed.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Sex of horse
Time to see whether the sex of the horse has made a difference. I have restricted races to mixed sex races (which was still a decent sample of 146 races), and below shows a comparison between the win and each way strike rates:
The blue bars show there has been a definite edge to male horses, and the full splits were thus:
Males accounted for many more of the runners but made a blind profit to BSP. Of course, we need to double check these bottom lines have not been skewed by winners at huge prices, so here are the splits using a price cap of BSP 18.0 or less:
We still see a clear difference between the sexes in these Musselburgh contests with males doing best.
I have said many times before, especially when using BSP for profit and loss, it often makes sense to use a price cap to avoid skewed findings. Therefore, for the remainder of the article, bar the run style and draw stats, I will be using the BSP 18.0 price cap.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Age
I am going to split the age stats into two – firstly I will look at 3yo+ handicaps, after which I will look at 4yo+ handicaps. So, 3yo+ handicaps first. Roughly half of all the handicaps over this C&D were open to 3yos and older:
There was a strong overall performance by the youngest age group, 3yos. Not only did they make a profit to win bets, but they would have made a small profit on the Betfair Place market as well. The 7yo+ group had the lowest win rate, as we would probably expect, but nudged into profit. However, four of their nine winners were priced between BSP 13.0 and 15.0 which helps to explain that.
A look at the 4yo+ handicaps now and the age splits. There were 64 such contests across the period of study:
We see a similar pattern here with the youngest horses, in this case 4yos, having performed best, and comfortably so. These 4yos have offered good value and their A/E index (BSP) backs that up with an impressive figure of 1.20.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Course form
Previous course winners have scored 15.4% of the time (57 wins from 365) for a small loss of £2.46 (ROI -0.7%).
Horses that had never raced at Musselburgh before saw 69 of them win from 471 (SR 14.7%) for a profit of £39.47 (ROI +8.4%).
Horses that had raced at the track before but had failed to win won 47 of 347 (SR 13.5%) for a loss of £31.02 (ROI -8.9%).
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: LTO Course
I am going to look now at where horses that contested these Musselburgh 7f handicaps ran last time out. There are four LTO venues that have provided at least 75 runners priced 18.0 or less. These have been:
Positive returns emerged from three of the four. Clearly it was a positive to have run at Musselburgh last time, while Catterick, like Musselburgh a sharp track, also shows positive figures during the review period.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Recent runs
Next stop is to look at the horses’ best finishing position over the past three runs to see whether anything can be gleaned. The splits were:
It was a positive for horses to have won at least once in their previous three starts, such runners making a small gain of close to 6p in the £. Likewise, ‘out of form’ horses, those whose best finishing position in the last three runs had been 5th at best, also proved profitable when priced BSP 18.0 or less. Indeed, returns increase to 30p in the £ if focusing solely on male runners.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Trainers
Trainer data is limited for most handlers in this context, but two names shone.
Richard Fahey had an 18.7% strike rate (14 wins from 75) for a profit of £12.32 (ROI +16.4%).
Grant Tuer enjoyed an even better record with 13 wins from 39 (SR 33.3%) for a very healthy profit of £39.60 (ROI +101.5%).
For the last two Musselburgh sections I will be ignoring the price cap and including all runners once more. This is because I am not focusing on profit/loss for the draw and run style analyses.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Draw
For a potential draw bias to exist we need bigger fields to analyse, so I have focused on races with at least eight runners. Let me share the raw data first, splitting the draw into the three sections I normally do – low third, middle third and high third, giving the win percentages for each third of the draw.
As we can see these stats suggest that there has been very little favour to any specific third. However, if we look at the PRBs (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) we see there may have been a small bias after all.
Low have had an edge over high (0.53 versus 0.47) and if we restrict races to good to firm or firmer, we see something quite interesting:
On firmer going the PRB numbers are indicating that high draws have been at a real disadvantage under such conditions. Indeed, high draws have managed to ‘win or place’ just 21% of the time on good to firm or firmer, well below the expected figure on a perfectly fair track of 33.3%.
On soft or heavy ground low draws have performed extremely well, winning 12 of the 20 races. This was quite a small sample but with a PRB of 0.56 I would expect low draws to continue to enjoy a decent edge when the ground comes up soft or heavy in future.
Musselburgh 7f handicaps: Run Style
Finally for this course and distance I will review the run style PRB splits.
As we can see there has been a significant edge to horses that led early, and the nearer the front they were in the first part of the race the better. Hold up horses performed poorly.
By using the Geegeez Pace Analyser we can see the remaining metrics in full:
More evidence of the strength of the front running bias over this C&D. Oh, for a crystal ball that could predict the early leader!
**
It is now time to switch our attention to 1-mile handicaps at Windsor. Again, 2yo handicaps have been ignored except when looking at draw and run style.
Windsor 1m handicaps – an overview
There have been slightly more Windsor 1-mile handicaps compared to Musselburgh 7f ones with an average of 22 qualifying races a year. Before looking at the numbers in more detail let me share what Class of race we tend to get when racing this C&D. The graph below shows the splits:
Roughly two thirds of all races have been class 5 or 6, with just 10% of races in either Class 2 or 3. Time for some digging.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Betting market
Let me take a look at the Betfair betting market and the performance of different ranked positions.
Here we see the front end of the betting market has dominated, with both favourites and second favourites making decent blind profits. The 5th+ group was also profitable but essentially this was down to two winners at big prices – BSP 107.08 and BSP 116.69. Removing those two outliers meant the remaining 1089 runners made a loss of 8 pence in the £.
Sticking with favourites and second favourites, if we combine them and look at the returns achieved in 3yo+ races, 3yo only races and 4yo+ races we see positive figures for all three:
It seems that the top two in the betting have performed consistently well over the past few years.
Again, in the next few areas I will only include data regarding horses priced BSP 18.0 or less to avoid skewed bottom lines.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Sex of horse
The advantage males had over females in mixed sex races at Musselburgh over 7f has not been replicated here, but males still enjoyed a small edge. In terms of strike rate males won 15% compared to females on 12%, and they posted better returns, albeit only by around 3p in the £.
However, the value metric, the A/E (BSP) index, does indicate that males have been far better value with males on 1.05 and females on 0.87.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Age
I am going to look at the age splits in 3yo+ handicaps, as such races have occurred most often (86 races). The breakdown was thus:
We see a similar and arguably stronger 3yo edge here to the one in the Musselburgh research. 3yos won far more often than all other age groups and produced a tidy profit. Horses aged 7 and older also made a profit but the sample size was small, and three of the six winners were priced BSP 12.00, 14.00 and 16.30 so I would not see this age group as a positive over this C&D.
The 4yo+ handicap data covered only 31 races so this has been too small a sample to drill down into and find anything meaningful.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Course form
Previous course winners have scored 18.3% of the time (30 wins from 164) for a profit of £13.97 (ROI +8.5%).
Horses that had never raced at Windsor before saw 86 of them win from 643 (SR 13.4%) for a significant loss of £90.12 (ROI -14%).
Horses that had raced at the track before but had failed to win, won 59 from 379 runners (SR 15.6%) for a profit of £18.54 (ROI +4.9%).
It does seem that past experience at the track has been useful regardless of whether a horse won there previously.
Windsor 1m handicaps: LTO Course
It is time to look at where the horses ran last time out. There are four LTO venues that have produced positive stats from at least 50 runners priced 18.0 or less. These have been:
I mentioned in the course form section above that the stats were indicating that a previous run at Windsor had been a positive. We have now had an even stronger positive if they had raced at the track last time out. The figures for horses coming from Newmarket have also been exceptionally good.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Recent runs
I could not find any worthwhile patterns when analysing the last three runs, but in terms of LTO winners, they performed poorly losing £31.37 from 170 qualifiers showing negative returns of over 18p in the £.
It is also worth noting that last time out winners actually did very well when sent off as the favourite (a 36%-win percentage coupled with returns of 28p in the £), but if they did not start favourite their record was dreadful: just 11 wins from 120 runners (SR 9.2%) for a loss of £45.49 (ROI -37.9%).
Windsor 1m handicaps: Trainers
Trainer data is again very limited and only one trainer, Richard Hannon, saddled more than 30 qualifying runners in the review period. He ran 68 horses, of which 10 won (SR 14.7%), for a small loss of £1.85 (ROI -2.7%).
Clive Cox is worth a mention as he has had eight wins from just 25 runners (SR 32%). Profits were £24.94 (ROI +99.8%). For the record he saddled six different horses to win, so it was not a case of one or two horses skewing the stats.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Draw
As earlier I will be concentrating on races with at least eight runners when looking at the draw (2yo handicaps included). Here were the win percentage splits for the bottom, middle and highest thirds.
Once again, we have had a very level playing field. This has been backed up when looking at the PRBs:
Essentially, I think we can disregard the draw at this trip.
Windsor 1m handicaps: Run Style
Finally for this article I will be taking a look at the run style PRB splits over this C&D.
As with the Musselburgh findings we can see there has been an edge to horses that have led early, and the nearer the front a horse was early in the race, the better. The bias was not as significant here, but it was still strong. The Geegeez Pace Analyser below shares the other key metrics:
These stats correlate strongly with the PRB figures and confirm the front running bias.
**
That's it for this week – two for the price of one and it’s not even Christmas! I hope we will be able to exploit these findings across the 40 or so qualifying races we will have this season.
Last week I looked at some draw biases over 5 furlongs in 7+ runner handicaps, writes Dave Renham. In this follow up I will examine ‘negative draw bias’, or NDB for short. I discussed NDB four years ago in a piece (here), but this one will take a slightly different slant. Or at least it will be highlighting NDB horses in a slightly different way.
Russell Clarke, who has written several excellent articles on geegeez.co.uk, was the first person I saw discussing NDB back in the 1990s in Odds On magazine. Ever since then it has been something I have kept a close eye out for.
Negative draw bias highlights a horse or horses that ran well from a poor draw and, hence, in theory have performed much better than their finishing position initially indicated. From there, we would have a horse to keep an eye on, hoping that a good opportunity to bet this horse may come up soon afterwards given more favourable circumstances.
As with many things in racing, negative draw bias is not quite as simple as it sounds. There are problems with the idea – for example, once we have found a horse that has run well from a poor draw, we have the tricky decision of how long to continue supporting the horse in the future? One run? No more than three runs? Until it wins? What if it loses four or five races? There clearly is no ‘correct’ answer to this question.
We also need to think about under what circumstances we back the horse. Should we back it blindly? Or only under similar conditions? What if it is drawn poorly again, and so on .
A third question to consider is, can we be completely sure the horse has actually run well against a draw bias? In my 2022 article, when looking for examples of NDB I focused on individual races that had seemed to show a significant draw bias. These were primarily big field affairs, often on a straight course where one side of the draw seemed to be strongly favoured over the other. There is a case to say that biases that occur like this can be down to a pace bias (i.e. the fast horses were all congregated on one side of the track and therefore made that 'mini race' quicker) rather than a draw bias, but my educated guess is that it is often a combination of the two. How important one is over the other though is anyone’s guess and not something I want to dwell on here.
Approach
For this article I am going to take a different approach to highlighting NDB horses. It is essentially a systematic approach, and the starting point is last week’s draw bias article. System-based ideas are rigid and not for everybody, but the big plus is that we can find system qualifiers without having to do any serious legwork. Because, for this ‘system’, I’ve done the legwork for you.
Last week I highlighted a variety of courses that had shown an apparent draw bias over 5f in handicaps between 2021 to 2025. From this initial group of courses, I wanted to try and establish those with the strongest biases. I did this using two rules. The first rule was that the disadvantaged third of the draw needed to have a win percentage of below 25% coupled with a PRB figure of 0.48 or lower. The second involved a simple calculation of multiplying the win strike rate percentage of the disadvantaged third of the draw by its PRB with only the lowest scoring courses making the cut. I felt this was a fair way to do it and, essentially, I needed to use some sensible parameters to establish what were likely to be the strongest biases.
The courses that qualified were:
Ascot, Ayr, Bath, Chester, Musselburgh, Redcar and Thirsk.
Now I had the courses with the strongest 5f draw biases against my calculation, I planned to use them within my NDB method like this:
I wanted to see how horses that had run well from the poorest section of the draw at these course/distance combinations fared on their next run.
The system I came up with, then, was thus:
Last run at one of Ascot, Ayr, Bath, Chester, Musselburgh, Redcar or Thirsk
Last run in a 5f handicap with 8 or more runners
Finished second or third when drawn in disadvantaged section of the draw.
Not many rules, which I think makes the best kind of system.
I do need to clarify what I mean by disadvantaged section of the draw. Specifically, I wanted to try and find the very worst drawn runners; so instead of including all stall positions within the ‘worst’ third of the draw, I set things up like this:
Essentially, I was trying to concentrate on horses berthed in the lowest quarter of the draw as best as possible. Clearly, because all field sizes are not divisible by four, I could not do that perfectly, so the draw positions in the table clarify which stalls qualify as being in the ‘disadvantaged’ section.
It should also be noted that the draw positions have been adjusted for when there were non-runners. For example, if the horse drawn 3 was a non-runner, then the horse drawn 4 was now effectively drawn 3, draw 5 became 4 and so on.
Baseline Method Qualifiers
Before moving on to the nitty gritty, let me quickly give two last time out (LTO) run scenarios, one where a horse would qualify under this NBD system and one where a horse would not.
LTO run at Redcar 5f where the field size was 14 runners. The horse drawn 12 finishes in third place. This horse qualifies under the NDB system, as draw 12 counts as a disadvantaged stall.
LTO run at Thirsk 5f where the field size was 10 runners. The horse drawn 3 finishes second. This horse does not qualify under the NDB system, as draw 3 does not count as disadvantaged stall (with 10 runners only stalls 1 and 2 qualify).
An issue with this system is that we are only going to get a small amount of qualifiers because not many runners finish second or third from a very poor draw. Indeed, over the five years I studied there were only 109 qualifiers across all LTO C&Ds. How they fared is shown in the table below:
So, the good news is that they made a fair profit with a solid strike rate, but the less good news is that the system has averaged out at around 22 qualifiers per year.
Here are the course LTO splits:
As we can see, six of the seven tracks were individually profitable, with Redcar having a shocker! Of course, these individual course sample sizes are extremely small, but it is pleasing to see that it is not just one course or one big priced winner that has been responsible for the profits.
One quick caveat at this juncture: when I researched the original draw bias piece, I used handicap races with 7+ runners. For this NBD system I tweaked it slightly and am using 8+ runners. There was nothing sinister going on like trying to improve upon the results, it was simply to make it easier for me to split the draw in four. I did back check the results for LTO races with 7 runners and the overall results would have actually improved matters! However, I was not going to change to 7+ runners LTO just to get better figures. Back-fitting is not a good option.
Broadening the Search
After this promising start I decided to look for other strong track and trip biases to test the NDB system. The distances I wanted to check next were the other ones along with 5f where the draw bias tends to be strongest – namely 6f, 7f and 1-mile races. Let’s start with the longest trip and work backwards.
1 Mile
Over the 1-mile trip the C&Ds that passed my two earlier rules were Hamilton, Pontefract and York. Their draw third win splits for qualifying 1m handicaps (7+ runners) were as follows:
And the PRBs
All three courses saw high draws really struggle during this recent timeframe and below are the overall stats when combining all NDB system qualifiers that ran over these C&Ds last time out.
It's another smallish sample despite combining three more courses, but also another very profitable one. There was a winner priced BSP 35.44 so after commission that effectively accounted for half of the profits but even taking that out of the equation the figures would have been excellent.
Here are the individual LTO course splits:
All three in profit, albeit again the sample sizes are very small. One course over 1 mile that just failed to pass my two rules was Redcar. For the record, applying the NDB system to this LTO C&D would have yielded five winners from 25 producing a return of 26p in the £.
7 Furlongs
When I switched to look for courses over 7f with a strong bias only one course passed the two NDB system tests: Goodwood. High draws have struggled there with just 16.3% of the top ‘third’ winning (PRB 0.47). Subsequent NDB system qualifiers from here would have amounted to 20 runners with the following results next time out:
Another small profit which keeps things moving along in the desired direction.
6 Furlongs
Finally, I looked at the strongest 6f biases to see which C&Ds qualified for the NDB system. Four passed my rules namely Kempton, Leicester, Yarmouth and York. For all four it was the higher draws that performed poorly. Here are their top third win percentages and PRBs:
It’s amazing that three of the four had exactly the same win percentages. The chances of that happening was extremely unlikely shall we say!
Combining these four LTO C&Ds together, NDB qualifiers would have produced the following results:
It is yet another group of courses combining to make a profit, and a bigger sample here due mainly to Kempton’s LTO qualifiers accounting for more than half of the total. (The advantage of a lot of races over a specific C&D). Here are the individual LTO course splits:
Three of the four would have been profitable, with Yarmouth just missing out.
There were a couple of other courses over 6f that were close to qualifying across my two rules, namely Chelmsford and Pontefract. As it turns out both would have proved extremely profitable if I was able to apply the NDB system rules to their potential qualifiers. Unfortunately, though they cannot be added to the overall totals. As I said earlier NO BACK-FITTING! In any case, Chelmsford has now unfortunately been mothballed, at least for the foreseeable future.
Combined Total
Ok, it is time to share the combined totals for all LTO C&Ds qualifiers (5f-1m).
That's not too shabby, if I do say so myself!
For anyone interested in following this NDB system this year, below is a list of all of the qualifying LTO courses used in the article. I have essentially replicated the earlier ‘number of runners’ table but added all the C&Ds (6f to 1 mile) to the relevant columns:
This research has seen a good deal of legwork from yours truly, and it was also extremely hard to put together coherently in an article, but it is hopefully an interesting piece. As can be seen, there's a lot of milage in negative draw bias angles - so keep your eyes peeled!
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Summerghand.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-04-08 08:27:112026-04-08 08:27:11Negative Draw Bias in 2026
I must admit that this is my favourite time of the year for two reasons, writes Dave Renham. Firstly, I am starting to think about the sunnier and warmer weather to come in the next few months; and secondly, the flat turf season is now upon us.
From a betting perspective I prefer the flat because traditionally I have had a better betting record in flat racing compared to National Hunt. The flat also has a special place in my heart because the first book I published was a flat racing one. That book was about draw bias and back then, in the late nineties, draw bias offered astute punters a real edge. Nowadays that edge has diminished somewhat.
Primarily, that is because there are fewer biases due to either better course management or rail movements, or indeed both. Also, draw information is more accessible these days so it can be difficult to find an angle that is not widely understood. However, having said that, up to date accurate bias data is still important because biases are constantly evolving; we must not blindly stick to what we have known in the past.
One of the beauties of Geegeez is that we have the Draw Analyser tool which means we can check all course and distance combinations in terms of recent draw bias changes. In this article, then, I will share the most up to date draw bias information for UK racecourses over the 5-furlong distance, concentrating on those tracks where the statistics seem to indicate there has been a recent advantage to one part of the track or another. Data have been taken from 2021 to 2025 with the focus being handicap races as they give us more reliable draw data. I am also ignoring races with very small fields so only including those with seven runners or more.
When analysing each individual race, I have split the draw into ‘thirds’ - those drawn in the bottom third (low), those drawn in the middle third, and those drawn in the top third (high). It should also be noted that the draw positions are adjusted when there are non-runners – for example if the horse drawn 3 is a non-runner, then the horse drawn 4 becomes drawn 3, draw 5 becomes 4 and so on.
On a completely fair course the winning percentages for each "third" of the draw should be around 33% each. The differences in the percentages will help to determine the strength of the bias. I’m also going to share the PRBs (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) when there seems to be a potential bias to help give us a more accurate overall view.
In my experience, I consider there to be two types of draw bias. One is a clear bias towards a specific section of the draw; this is the strongest possible bias. The other is a bias against a specific section of the draw.
I will work through the qualifying courses in alphabetical order.
Ascot 5f
The round course at Ascot sees horses run right-handed so on the straight course where 5f races are run, the highest stall is drawn closest to the nearside stands’ rail. There have been 40 qualifying races, and the draw third splits have been as follows:
Low draws seem to have struggled a little in terms of wins over the past five years. That is at least partially because the centre of the course tends to ride a little slower than the ground closer to the stands rail. A look at the PRBs now:
The PRBs suggest that higher draws have an edge. My own experience is that lower draws have indeed been at a disadvantage, and the highest draws have a very slight edge over the middle. However, biases can change at Ascot throughout the year, so we need to keep an eye on developments.
Ayr 5f
To the west coast of Scotland now and Ayr's five-furlong strip. Like Ascot there have been 40 qualifying races over the past five years. The draw splits in terms of wins are as follows:
High draws have really struggled from a win perspective. Let me share the PRB splits:
The PRBs correlate extremely well with the win third percentages, corroborating that high has been at a considerable disadvantage over this 5f trip in recent years.
Bath 5f
Bath has two 5f distances, and we are concentrating on the shorter of the two - the bare minimum. This C&D has plenty of races annually and in the past five years there have been 57 qualifying contests in total.
Horses drawn low seem to have enjoyed a solid advantage, winning twice as many races as those drawn high. Will the PRBs correlate? Let’s see:
The PRBs also indicate that lower draws have enjoyed quite a decent edge. If we had backed every single low drawn runner blind over the past five years we would have secured a BSP profit of £85.53 (ROI +51.5%).
Beverley 5f
Thirty years ago, Beverley over 5f had one of the strongest draw biases in the country. That is no longer the case, but it is still perceived that horses near to the far rail (low) retain a slight edge.
There have been 99 qualifying races over the past five seasons - an excellent sample size - and low draws have enjoyed a small edge in terms of wins. High draws continued to get the worst of it. The PRB figures suggest that the bias is a little stronger than the raw win third percentages suggest, and largely against high:
It is well worth noting that 28 of the 99 races have been won by one of the two lowest drawn horses. Moreover, horses drawn 11 or higher have really struggled, winning just five races from 98 with losses equating to 57p in the £.
Catterick 5f
There have been plenty of qualifying sprints at Catterick – 83 to be precise, and the breakdown was thus:
Based on the win stats, middle draws seem to have been at a slight disadvantage. This is also reflected in the PRB figures:
The key, though, to Catterick is the ground. On better ground lower draws have an edge; on softer ground that reverses and high draws often prevail, as when there has been plenty of rain the near side rail seems to possess the fastest strip of ground.
On good or firmer ground 19 of the 42 races have been won by horses drawn in the lowest third (45.2%), and their PRB has been clearly best at 0.55 (middle was 0.46, high 0.49). There have been 21 races on soft or heavy of which the top third have won 10 (47.6%). The PRB figure for the top third of the draw was 0.54.
Chepstow 5f
Over to Chepstow now starting with the win strike rates:
The numbers suggest that higher draws may have a small edge. Do the PRBs correlate?
The PRBs back up the likelihood that there is a small advantage to being drawn high. This has been especially true on good or firmer ground as 17 of the 32 races (53.1%) were won by horses drawn high, with a PRB of 0.55. Overall, if given the choice, one would prefer to be drawn higher than lower, especially on better ground.
Chester 5f (& 5½f)
Chester has traditionally had one of the strongest sprint biases in the country. However, in recent years, with the introduction at some meetings of a false rail at the top of the short home straight, the bias has been less potent and the strike rates back that up.
High draws still struggle a lot, but middle draws have been almost as successful from a win perspective as low draws over the past five years. The reason for this is almost certainly due to course officials moving the inside rail for some races. In fact, two thirds of these races saw rail movement of some distance or another.
The PRBs correlate well with the win stats:
In the past five years, the value has been with those drawn in the middle. Backing all middle draws ‘blind’ would have produced a small profit to BSP of £13.67 which equates to 10p in the £. The middle third A/E index also stood at a healthy 1.13 indicating good value.
This is an example of what I discussed earlier: that we need to be aware of recent changes and not assume a historical draw bias remains as strong as it was previously. I suspect that the market is yet to fully adjust to these changes so, for the foreseeable future, middle drawn runners should continue to offer the best value.
Goodwood 5f
Down to the South coast next and my favourite track from which to watch racing. There have been 30 qualifying races over the past five years which is one of our smaller samples. The win percentages for each third were as follows:
17 of the 30 races were won by horses berthed in the lowest third of the draw. Based on this alone the bias looks strong. Let’s see what the PRBs have shown:
This is one of the reasons it is always good to focus on more than one statistic, especially with smaller sample sizes, as we should reasonably have expected a PRB of around 0.57 or 0.58 for the low third based on the win stats. Here, we have 30 races and hence only 30 winners – a relatively small sample. However, the PRB figures give some sort of score to all 310 runners – providing a much broader, and potentially more accurate, set of numbers.
So where does that leave us with Goodwood’s 5f trip? Well, I think low drawn runners do have an edge. The ground tends to ride quicker in the centre to far side than it does near side where the high drawn runners are positioned. Also, there have been some clear examples of low draw bias in certain races – one such being the Buccellati handicap run at the Goodwood Festival meeting on 1st August 2024. The first five home were:
As can be seen, in this 16-runner race, low draws dominated the finish with four of the lowest five draws occupying the first four finishing positions. The trifecta paid nigh on £3,600 for £1.
Overall, I’d take low over high again this year.
Musselburgh 5f
Back into Scotland and to the Edinburgh shores for Musselburgh's minimum. There have been 102 qualifying races over the past five years. The win percentage breakdown for each third of the draw was as follows:
Horses drawn high have been virtually twice as successful as those drawn low from a win perspective. High draws are located close to the nearside stands’ rail, so it seems the ground has generally been riding quicker nearer to that rail than out in the centre if the win stats paint a fair picture. There is also a slight dogleg on the straight which kinks away from the lower drawn horses on the flank.
Let us see if we get better correlation with the PRBs than we did with Goodwood given to the much larger 102-race sample:
The PRBs correlate strongly with the win figures and, therefore, it seems that there has been a decent high draw rail bias in play over the past five years. This result from early last season is a good example of this:
High draws dominated this one with those drawn one to five nowhere to be seen. Ideally, then, any horse we feel has a strong chance here should be drawn high.
Pontefract 5f
Pontefract next. With the 5f track turning left one would assume lower draws might have some sort of edge. The splits for the 46 races were thus:
There definitely seems to have been an advantage to horses drawn low and hence near the inside rail. Let’s look at the PRBs:
The PRBs confirm that lower draws have indeed held sway. It is also worth noting that horses drawn right on the inside (stall one) have won 10 of the 46 races showing a BSP profit of £30.15 (ROI +65.5%). Very high drawn runners, those exiting stall 11 or higher, have really struggled with 0 wins from 26 and only one of those 26 making the frame.
Redcar 5f
There have been 49 qualifying races over the minimum trip at Redcar with the following win strike rates by draw third:
Nearly half of the races have been won by horses drawn in the lowest third. Let’s look at the PRBs to see if they corroborate this possible low draw bias:
These figures confirm we have one of the strongest biases seen to date. 21 of the 49 races were won by one of the two lowest drawn horses. Backing both stall 1 and stall 2 ‘blind’ would have secured similar returns for each at around 60p in the £. My advice: keep an eye out for 5f handicaps here as the draw might help us find some value selections.
Ripon 5f
46 races to analyse at Ripon with the following splits:
A strong edge it seems for middle draws which is surprising considering how horses tend to gravitate to the near rail (high). Do the PRBs show a similar pattern?
The PRB figures back up the win stats to some extent, although with a 50%-win rate I would have expected a higher PRB for the middle third. This course and distance is a tricky one for me; I am not convinced there is a strong bias here, even though the stats point to middle draws having the edge. Maybe the ground a few horse widths away from the rail rides slightly quicker. Not sure.
Thirsk 5f
Back in the 80s and 90s the Thirsk high draw rail bias was as strong as any in the country. That is not the case any more, but do higher draws retain an edge? Here is what the 60 race sample threw up:
High draws have performed best, albeit not by much. Lower draws, however, have really struggled from a win perspective. Onto the PRBs:
These figures suggest the high draw edge is slightly stronger than the win stats implied. They do also confirm that lower draws have been at a disadvantage. One more nugget to share is that on good to soft or softer ground the PRB for the lowest third was just 0.41. It seems the bias against lower draws strengthens as the ground eases.
Yarmouth 5f
42 races at Yarmouth to dissect now; firstly, with the win splits:
Lower draws may have a slight edge based on these figures, and the PRBs confirm that there has been a bias in play over of the past five years:
0.56 for low draws is a solid number. It seems that if betting at Yarmouth over five this year, we should definitely prefer to be drawn lower than higher.
York 5f
Finally, we come to York. There were 58 races with 7+ runners on the Knavesmire over the past five seasons with the following breakdown:
The lowest third of the draw has accounted for half of the winners. Do the PRBs correlate positively with the above numbers?
Yes, the low PRB of 0.56 confirms the advantage low draws (far side) have enjoyed here.
I should also mention that this low draw edge has looked even stronger in bigger fields. Races with 15+ runners saw the winner emerge from the lowest third of the draw 19 times in 31 races (61.3%). Further, horses drawn 15 secured just one win in 31 attempts, while horses drawn 16 or higher have won 0 races from 90! Very high draws are definitely best avoided.
*
Draw bias in 2026 is not as prevalent or as strong as it once was. However, in this piece I have reviewed 15 tracks at the minimum distance where post position does seem to make a difference; and, in some cases, a significant difference.
Before closing, I need to flag the impact that the run style of a horse will have on any potential draw bias. Normally the combination of a good draw and early speed increases the win rate and, looking across the five-furlong handicap front-running stats from 2021 to 2025 for these courses, that has been the case more often than not.
Beverley, however, has been a course where low drawn front runners actually underperformed, and that has been the case with low drawn runners at Chester, too. My guess is that some drawn low have gone off too quickly at these courses as jockeys try to take best advantage of their stall position at what have historically been renowned draw bias tracks. For the record, there were 27 low drawn front runners at Chester of which only three have won.
There were two tracks where front runners drawn in the best ‘third’ have absolutely excelled. Firstly, low drawn front runners at Pontefract won 9 times from just 18 qualifiers (50%); while at Thirsk, of the 11 high drawn front runners, 8 won (72.7%). Two other tracks also saw well drawn front runners perform extremely well and they were Redcar (8 wins from 23; 34.8%) and York (10 wins from 28; 35.7%).
I hope this article has demonstrated that, while perhaps not the same as in the golden years around the turn of the century, draw bias can still make a real difference in 2026.
- DR
p.s. for much more in depth commentary on draw biases in the UK and Ireland, see our 'Articles' archive here.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DavidProbert_newGeegeezLogo_2000x400.jpg4002000Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-03-31 09:51:522026-03-31 09:51:525f Draw Bias in 2026
This article is slightly different from what you might be used to from me, and I will be reviewing the changing face of flat racing in the UK, writes Dave Renham.
Comparing different sets spanning the period from 2010 to 2025 I will consider how the racing programme has changed, what has been happening to field sizes, whether there have been any significant changes in the jockey community, and so on. My analysis covers all flat racing in the UK, turf and all-weather.
We are less than two weeks from the start of the 2026 turf season, so I would like to start by comparing the number of flat meetings that were scheduled in 2010 with 2025.
There is only a small difference of 17 meetings, which equates to roughly one every three weeks.
Composition of Turf vs AW Race Meetings
What has changed is the split in terms of turf flat meetings versus all weather meetings. Firstly, let me share the division for between the surfaces in terms of the number of meetings across each of these two years:
Over these 15 years there has been a 5.7% decrease in the number of turf fixtures and, therefore, a 5.7% increase in AW meetings. While I do not have the schedules for all years in between, I do have yearly data in terms of the number of turf flat races and the number of AW races run.
Below is a graph showing the percentage of turf flat races each year compared with the percentage of AW ones. I have not included the splits for 2020 due to the disruption caused by Covid, hence the lack of a blue and orange dot above 2020 on the graph.
As expected, given the ‘number of meetings’ evidence, the general trend has been for the gap between the two to narrow. In 2010 turf accounted for 64.1% of all flat races with 35.9% on the AW. By 2025 this read 57.3% turf and 42.7% AW.
Average field size
A look now to see what has happened to field sizes over the past 15 years, comparing the 2010 average with the 2025 one.
The average number of runners per race has dropped by exactly three-quarters of a runner over the past 15 years. Another noptable change can be detected when we compare turf field sizes with AW ones:
As the graph shows, there has been a much bigger drop in the average field size in turf flat races (roughly one runner per race on average). The AW figure has dropped a little, and in 2025 we had bigger fields on average on the AW compared with those running on turf.
Average field size by course
I now want to look at what happened at each course in terms of field size when comparing 2010 with 2025. In the table below the averages for each individual track are shown along with a column calculating the percentage difference between the two. Any percentage figure in green indicates an increase in the average number of runners, whereas percentage figures in red indicate a decrease. For the record Chelmsford and Wetherby are not included as they did not race on the flat at either venue in 2010.
Only six courses have seen an increase in their average field sizes, which will come as no surprise based on the previous data shared. The average field size at Southwell has increased by 10% which is the most by any of the courses. I wonder if that might have something to do with the change of surface. Impossible to say for sure, but that feels to be the most likely reason. Conversely, there have been some significant drops, most notably at Salisbury, Nottingham, the Rowley course at Newmarket and Chepstow. All four have seen field size decreases of more than 20%.
It should be noted that average field size decline may have been affected slightly by courses which decide to split more handicap races into two divisions than was the case previously. I don’t have any hard data here, so it is more an observation of a potential mitigating factor.
Field size and each way betting
One impact of smaller field sizes is reduced opportunities for savvy each way bettors. In 2025, 33% of all flat races had seven or few runners: a third of all races.
If you have not yet read Russell Clarke’s excellent article where he discusses whether win bets or each way bets are optimum in terms of the number of runners in a race, I suggest you take a quick look before reading on. The link is here: www.geegeez.co.uk/money-without-work-5-bookmaker-concessions-each-way-betting/
Essentially, in 5, 6 and 7-runner handicaps, and in 6 and 7-runner non-handicaps, the percentages favour win betting over each way betting. It is only 5-runner non-handicaps where each way punters have an edge over win punters.
A mere 2.7% of all races in 2025 were 5-runner non-handicaps. In contrast, 5, 6 and 7-runner handicaps coupled with 6 and 7-runner non-handicaps accounted for 26% of all races in 2025 which is a huge number of races where each way bettors were at a disadvantage. To give further context, as well as to show reduced opportunities for each way bettors, in 2010 these races equated to 21% of all races.
Another impact of smaller field sizes is an increase in shorter priced favourites. This, for many - me included, presents a much less appealing product.
And a further impact of smaller field sizes is more limited opportunities for jockeys, which brings me on to...
Women jockeys
Horse racing is a rare sport in that women compete against men on a completely level playing field. However, for many years the sport has been dominated by male jockeys and despite some excellent lady riders coming along – Hayley Turner, Hollie Doyle and Saffie Osborne to name but three - has anything really changed? Let’s see.
Firstly, below are the annual percentage of rides for male jockeys versus females.
In general, there has been a slight uptick in the percentage of female rides over the timeframe, but it is disappointing to see the figure drop back under 10% in 2025. Moreover, if we look at the better races, just 2.6% of riders in Class 1 events in 2025 were female. Indeed, only four female jockeys from 2010 to 2025 had 50 or more rides in these contests: Hollie Doyle, Saffie Osborne, Hayley Turner and Josephine Gordon.
Combining their performances in Class 1 events during this period, they recorded a profit at BSP of £104.31 to £1 level stakes which equates to returns of over 13p in the £. Not only that, if we had backed all of their mounts on the Betfair Place Market a profit of £21.13 would have been secured. Clearly, female jockeys continue to be something of a blind spot in both owner/trainer and bettor sectors.
I have more bad news for fans of female riders because 173 different female jockeys rode at some point during the year of 2010, but in 2025 this had dropped to 134. On a personal note, I find this whole situation sad, disappointing and wrong. As a whole, female sport in the UK is booming thanks in part to the success of the England Lionesses, the World Cup winning England rugby team and the exposure of ladies’ cricket at international level and in ‘the Hundred’. However, this is not being reflected in horse racing, and something needs to change soon.
Apprentice jockeys
How about apprentice jockeys? Are there more or fewer apprentices riding now as compared to 2010? The answer is emphatic: there were far fewer apprentice jockeys riding in 2025 compared to 2010. Specifically, there were just 244 last year compared to 377 in 2010.
This is also reflected when we see the total number of rides apprentices had – there were 9941 in 2025 compared with 13948 in 2010. If we look year on year comparing open races - that is, races for both professionals and apprentices - we can see that the percentage split for apprentices has generally been on a downward trajectory.
2025 saw the biggest difference between the percentage of professionals riding in open races and the percentage of apprentice riders riding of any year going back to 2010 – 85% against 15%. With apprentice jockeys being the future of the sport this trend is a little worrying.
I would like to say that from a punting perspective some apprentice jockey data have been extremely positive in recent years. For example, the most successful apprentices, those claiming 3lb in open races, have performed extremely well in the last few years when riding shorter priced horses.
From 2018 to 2025 when riding horses priced BSP 4.0 or less, these 3lb claimers in open races have produced the following figures:
A tidy profit with returns of over 6 pence in the £. Not only that, but the yearly stats also show how consistent these performances have been:
There have been seven winning years out of eight with only a small reverse of 2.2p in the £ in the one losing year of 2022.
Another positive apprentice angle is when apprentices claiming the full 7lb allowance ride over the minimum distance (5f) in turf handicaps. They have made a decent blind profit across all price bands (around 18p in the £), but two big-priced winners have skewed the bottom line somewhat.
However, when restricting qualifiers in these handicap sprints to horses priced BSP 12.0 or less the record reads 131 wins from 678 rides (SR 19.3%) for a profit of £70.44 (ROI +10.4%). Despite their inexperience, it seems that over the shortest distance, when I guess fewer mistakes can be made due to the time the races take, apprentices claiming 7lb have offerred good value.
Changes in Race Type Topology
There have been some significant changes since 2010 in the flat racing schedule when it comes to race types. For example, in the UK in 2010 there were 277 claiming races on the flat. By 2018 this had dramatically reduced to 81, and in 2025 there were just six!
Sellers have suffered a similar fate although there were still 30 such races in 2025, compared with 237 in 2010. I know for punters as a whole these two race types can be a bit ‘marmite’ but personally I have always liked claimers and sellers as betting mediums.
Another seismic switch has been that of maidens (non-handicap) versus novice races. In 2010 there were 1326 non-handicap maiden races and 45 novice races. By 2025 there were more novice races than maidens – 765 against 630.
Finally, while looking at race types, we can see that there are more handicaps and fewer non-handicaps now than there were in 2010:
In percentage terms, handicap races have increased from 63.1% of all flat races in 2010 to 70.75% of flat races in 2025, a relative increase of 12% in the last 15 years. As a rule, I personally prefer handicaps, so for me this is a ‘win’, but I appreciate there will be punters with other points of view and for some this would not have been a good development over time.
Headgear / tongue ties
When talking headgear I am excluding tongue ties, so blinkers, cheekpieces, hoods, eye-shields and visors. There has been a 47% increase in the number of horses wearing headgear in races between 2010 and 2025.
Just under 18,000 runners in 2025 ran in headgear; that is 18,000 runners in total rather than 18,000 individual horses, as most horses wearing headgear will have had the equipment deployed more than once across the year. This equates to 31% of all runners. For the record, horses that wore headgear were poorer value than those which did not. The difference from 2010 to 2025 was around 3.5p in the £ in favour of horses that did not wear headgear.
Regarding tongue ties, the numbers of runners wearing them have more than doubled since the 2010 flat season: 2,927 runners wore a tongue tie in 2010, and it was up to 6,090 in 2025. Horses wearing tongue ties have some very interesting stats which I wrote about recently so check out that piece here if not done so already.
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There have been a lot of changes in flat racing over the past 15 years. Change always has the potential to affect betting performance and punters need to be prepared to adapt to such new challenges.
Until next time...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/DeauvilleLegend_GreatVoltigeur_2022.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-03-17 08:33:512026-03-17 08:35:28Changes in UK Flat Racing: 2010-2025
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.
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Cookie_Ascot_2022.jpg387830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-03-03 09:19:442026-03-03 09:19:44Topspeed Ratings in UK National Hunt, Part 2
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.
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.
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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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SureTouch_SummerPlate2024.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-02-24 14:51:082026-02-24 14:51:08Topspeed Ratings in UK National Hunt, Part 1
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.
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):
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!
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.
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%).
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%).
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:
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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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Rex_Jepeck_830x320.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-02-18 08:55:382026-02-18 08:55:38NH Jockeys: Home or Away?
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.
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:
It helps to prevent upper airway obstruction.
It can stop a horse from getting their tongue over the bit, increasing the jockey’s control.
It can help prevent the horse from potentially swallowing its tongue.
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coquelicot_tonguetie_Sandown.png319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-02-10 22:50:252026-02-10 22:50:25Measuring the impact of a Tongue Tie
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.
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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
As with Uttoxeter there were no winners priced BSP 35.0 or bigger.
Favourites lost over 10p in the £.
Amazingly, just like Uttoxeter, horses that finished fourth LTO made a decent profit of 48p in the £ from an 18% win percentage!
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 £.
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.
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
Favourites really struggled here, winning just 19.8% of the time (21 wins from 106) for hefty losses of £38.58 (ROI -36.4%).
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%).
11yos and up enjoyed just one win from 90 attempts.
Horses finishing first, second or third LTO all individually made a blind profit to BSP.
Exeter’s 3-mile trip favours front runners very strongly. They won 29% of all races from just 15% of the total runners.
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
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’.
There has been just one winner priced over BSP 18.0.
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%).
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.
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/welshnationalpreview_chasethespud.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-02-03 16:06:382026-02-03 16:06:38Uttoxeter 3m Handicap Chases: Deep Dive
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ConstitutionHill_FightingFifth2022.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-01-28 08:14:052026-01-28 08:14:05Miscellaneous Jump Racing Angles
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.
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.
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.
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hammergun2.jpg389830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-01-13 15:44:062026-01-13 15:44:06A Look at Favourites in All-Weather Races
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.
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
Horses priced 8/1 or shorter (esp. those 15/8 or shorter)
Ran over 7f LTO
Course winners
Mares (females, 4yo+)
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/kempton_runstyle_bias_pacebias_drawbias.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2026-01-05 17:19:012026-01-09 12:18:47Kempton 7f Handicaps: Deep Dive
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