Dave Renham | geegeez.co.uk

All-Weather Analysis: Newcastle Racecourse

24 October 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

For this fifth track in my all-weather series, we are heading north to Newcastle. Once again I will be using racing data from 1^st January 2017 to 31^st August 2022 in line with previous pieces. My data collection has been again been taken solely from the Geegeez Query Tool and therefore all profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. We know that we can improve upon the baseline figures of SP and I will share Betfair SP data when appropriate.

I have written about Newcastle before in regards to running style, so I will be sharing just the data from the past 11 months as well as comparing with the long term figures. I have not analysed the draw in any depth before so I will start off by looking at those long term stats (2017 onwards) and take it from there. For both sections on running style and draw, my focus will be handicaps of eight or more runners only. This is in line with previous research in those areas.

Newcastle's Gosforth Park circuit uses a tapeta surface rather than the polytrack researched so far at Chelmsford, Kempton and Lingfield. Hence there may be some subtle differences especially when it comes to sires and gender bias. Anyway time to crack on and see what we can find out...

Running Style at Newcastle

Newcastle 5f Run Style Bias

Let’s start with the minimum trip of 5f. Here are the run style splits in 8+ runner handicaps covering the time since my last article (1^st Oct ’21 to 31^st Aug ’22):

In this recent time frame there have only been 29 qualifying races so this is a smallish sample The front running stats (L) are slightly stronger than the long term figures – from 1^st Jan 2017 to 30^th Sept 2021, front runners were successful around 16% of the time, compared with 19.5% since; so not a huge variance. If we compare all run style win percentages over the two time frames we get the following:

Essentially similar stats across the board so we can be fairly confident the run style bias to front runners is still there. As 5f biases go, it is not as strong as at some courses, but it is still significant. I would prefer to see my horse on or close to the early lead than taking up any other position in the field. What is more unusual about the overall stats is that prominent racers are not clearly second best: at most 5f trips they outperform midfield and hold up horses.

Now we know predicting the front runner in a race is far from an exact science, but assuming we had a crystal ball and had predicted all front runners since 2017 in 5f handicaps (8+ runners), we would have seen a profit to SP of £161.51 to £1 level stakes which equates to returns of just over 66p in the £.

Newcastle 6f Run Style Bias

Onto 6f now and the run style splits from 1/10/21 to 31/8/22:

A slight edge to front runners in the last 11 months. These front running stats are virtually identical to the long term data going back to 2017 where front runners have won 13.77% of the time. The mid-division runners have performed a little bit above their long term norm but this is probably a small statistical blip. For the record, here are the stats going back to the beginning of 2017:

As we saw over 5f, the stats for prominent racers, midfield and hold up runners are in the same sort of ballpark in terms of success rate.

Hence this 6f distance gives front runners a tangible edge, but nothing overly earth-shattering. It should be noted that front runners in the top three of the betting have been quite a potent combination winning nearly 30% of the time (63% win & placed).

Newcastle 7f Run Style Bias

Once we get to 7f the front running edge is minimal as these long term stats show:

As we can see hold up horses are becoming more competitive and although front runners still do best, this not something as punters we can really make count.

Newcastle 1 Mile Run Style Bias

Moving up one more furlong to 1 mile we get a change of ‘leadership’.

Front runners start to struggle and hold up horses have become the most successful group from a win strike rate perspective. In fact if you had backed all 1140 hold up horses over 1 mile you would have made a very small profit to SP. This is unusual, to say the least. It should also be mentioned that with races of 13 or 14 runners (max field size over 1 mile is 14) hold up horses seem to perform marginally better.

To conclude the run style section, front runners have a decent edge over 5f, a solid one over 6f, while once we get to 1 mile races preference is to be on a hold up horse.

The Draw at Newcastle

From 5f to 1 mile at Newcastle, the straight track is used (see below).

Hence if there was a draw bias at one of the distances you would hope that it would be replicated over the other three. Distances of 1m2f, 1m4f and 2m are run on the round course.

Newcastle 5f Draw Bias

A look at the minimum trip first. Here are the draw splits going back to 2017 for 8+ runner handicaps. There have been close to 200 races in this time frame so a very decent sample:

High draws seem to have the edge from a win perspective. However if we look at the percentage of rivals beaten (PRB) it appears extremely even.

I would trust the PRB figures more, as they give a score to every runner in every race. Ultimately, perhaps one would marginally prefer to be drawn higher than lower. For the record, stalls 1 and 2 both have PRB figures of 0.45 so it seems very low draws may be at a disadvantage. It will be interesting to see whether the remaining straight course draw stats correlate in any way.

Newcastle 6f Draw Bias

There have been 231 races at this track/trip combination since 2017 so another huge sample. Here are the draw splits in terms of win percentage:

Highest draws again come out on top in terms of win percentage. However, again if there is a high draw bias then it is a modest one. How about the PRB figures?

Middle draws nudge it here but, again, low draws fare worst. Combining both stats I would say that perhaps low draws are at a slight disadvantage over six furlongs here. Hence the 5f and 6f figures correlate quite well.

Newcastle 7f Draw Bias

Up another furlong now to seven-eighths of a mile. Will we see low draws the worst of the three sections once more? There are even more races over this distance since 2017 – up to 258:

Win percentages again correlate with 5f and 6f with high looking best and low looking worst. PRB figures now:

Low draws with the lowest value but middle once again edge high. Again the 7f stats do seem to suggest that lower draws are at a very slight disadvantage on the straight course although there is little in it across all three distances in terms of percentage of rivals beaten by draw third.

Newcastle 1 Mile Draw Bias

The final distance raced on the straight course is a mile. There have been 258 races over this distance, exactly the same number as over 7f!

High comes out marginally best for the fourth time in terms of win percentage. A look at the PRB figures now:

Low once again are marginally the worst; as with the previous three distances.

A final draw snippet to share about the mile distance is that the two lowest draws on the straight course (all distances) have PRBs of 0.46 and 0.47; the two highest draws are at 0.51 and 0.52. With this info, coupled with the data across each individual distance, it does seem that low draws are at a slight disadvantage on the straight course. It is going to be tough though to make this pay.

The chart below shows the rolling three stall average of percentage of rivals beaten for all 8+ runner handicaps on the straight course (5f to 1 mile):

Newcastle 1m4f Draw Bias

When it comes to the draw it is rare to find a potential draw bias when the distances extend past a mile. However, the 1m4f stats at Newcastle surprised me on two counts.

There have been 119 qualifying races going back to 2017 – here are the splits:

Comparing the top third to the bottom third we see roughly double the success rate in terms of wins. What makes this even more head scratching initially, is that lower draws are positioned next to the inside rail. Hence you would have thought if there was any bias here it may play to lower draws especially with the first left turn relatively early in the race. The PRB figures back up the win percentages as you will see:

When thinking more about this I wondered whether it was down to the fact that lower draws expended too much energy trying to maintain a position close to or up with the early pace. However when we combine the draw and run style map (PRB) any ‘pattern’ like that remains unclear – to me at least.

It is the 0.54 and 0.55 for prominent racers from middle draws and high draws that really scupper my theory. If those were both below 0.50 then there may be some mileage in my idea. Essentially this leaves me with no confident explanation. However, the following graph makes me think something is going on and that high draws do enjoy a draw edge over low draws:

As we can see, each year high draws have outperformed low draws from a Percentage of Rivals beaten (PRB) perspective. Only 2020 saw a relatively ‘close contest’, but high still came out on top. My conclusion is that I would rather be drawn higher than lower, even though I have no good explanation for what seems to be consistently happening. Draws 1 to 4 do have a poor record over 1m4f, both individually and as a group.

OK, time to move away from the draw. For the remainder of this article I will be looking at data for ALL races, not just 8+ runner handicaps (from 1^st Jan 2017).

Trainers at Newcastle

This is my first look at a northern course in this series so I am hoping that some trainers who have not previously appeared will show themselves. Below are the trainers who have secured a win strike rate of 15% or more from a minimum of 100 runs (ALL race types included):

We see many of the usual all-weather ‘suspects’ – the Gosden stable, William Haggas and Roger Varian have appeared in all previous top AW trainer lists, while all bar one of the rest have appeared at least once. The new name here is Marco Botti. Botti’s overall win% across the six UK all weather courses stands at 12% whereas his Newcastle hit rate is 19%, so this is potentially a track he targets.

I am now going to share data for trainers who have saddled at least 350 runners at the course, in order to provide a broader trainer outlook for this course.

There are some well known northern trainers in this list with a couple actually sneaking into profit: Karl Burke and Jim Goldie. Goldie also has an A/E index of just over 1.00.

Here are some interesting trainer facts I’ve come across:

Several trainers are in profit if you focus on their runners from the top three in the betting, including Charlie Appleby, Robert Cowell, Archie Watson, William Haggas, Saeed bin Suroor, Charlie Hills, Michael Dods, James Bethell, Michael Wigham and Richard Fahey.

The Gosden stable has run 59 2yos of which 21 have won, equating to an impressive strike rate of 35.6%. It has not been a profitable avenue, however, losing a small percentage to SP. For the record you would have broken even backing to BSP.

For profitable 2yos you need to look no further than Andrew Balding whose ten 2yos have provided six winners (SR 60%) for a profit of £14.33 (ROI +143.3%). (Note from editor: he has had three 2yo runners since this article was collated and two more have won, making it 8 from 13; the other one ran 2nd at 11/1).

William Haggas has made a profit with his 3yo runners; his non-handicappers have marginally out-performed his handicappers producing returns to SP of 13p in the £ (win SR% 36.2%).

In class 5 or 6 contests, Haggas has had 89 runners of which 31 have won (SR 34.8%) for an SP profit of £16.25 (ROI +18.3%).

Roger Varian’s record with 3yo non-handicappers virtually mirrors Haggas - a 35.7% win SR% producing returns of 12p in the £ to SP.

When Hollie Doyle has ridden for Archie Watson they have combined to secure 16 wins from 46 (SR 34.8%) for a profit of £21.83 (ROI +47.5%).

Jockeys at Newcastle

I'm not going into great detail about Newcastle course jockeys, but I thought it would be worth sharing the riders who have secured an A/E index in excess of 1.00 at the course (100+ rides):

It is not surprising to see Hollie Doyle in there considering her record when riding for Archie Watson, but some of the other names are less predictable perhaps. These are jockeys that seem to ride the track well and I would see it as a positive if they were riding a horse that I fancied at this course, especially considering the pace judgement needed at longer distances on the straight course (seven furlongs and a mile).

Newcastle Gender bias

I have noted a gender bias at each of the all-weather courses I have studied thus far. Here are Newcastle’s comparative figures:

The three Polytrack courses I looked at in previous articles indicated that, when considering the top three in the betting, females and males seem to compete on a level playing field. Once we got to 4^th to 6^th in the market, males started to dominate; likewise with bigger priced runners (7th+ in the betting). At Newcastle on this different (tapeta) surface, we see a similar pattern with the top three in the betting and 7+ in the betting, however the 4^th to 6^th figures are more even:

It seems therefore we need to generally wary about longer-priced female runners as previous AW course data has shown. Also don’t be put off if a female runner is near the head of the betting.

Newcastle Market factors

Let's now take a look at the win strike rates for different ranks in the betting, starting with favourites and moving down to position 7th or more:

This is a pattern we would expect and mirrors other courses. Favourites have lost just over 13p in the £ to SP (8p loss to BSP), which is the poorest return of all the courses seen so far. Losses are similar in both non-handicap and handicap races for these favourites.

A look at market rank A/E indices next:

Third favourites and fifth favourites have good figures and this has probably impacted on the 4^th in the betting A/E index. However, with favourites as a rule being a little weak at Newcastle, there may be some value elsewhere. Even allowing for the relatively poor record of 4^th favourites with 3^rd and 5^th favourites, these three groups combined would have yielded a 5p in the £ positive return to BSP.

My focus as ever would be on the top five in the betting in most races, and I would try to look for races with a favourite that looked vulnerable. From there I would hope to find a horse 2^nd to 5^th in the market that might offer up some value.

Sire Performance at Newcastle

Here are the top 20 sires in terms of strike rate since 2017. (To qualify – 100 runs or more; and must have had runners somewhere in the UK during 2022):

There are, of course, many well known sires in the list, but it is interesting to note Shamardal not making the cut after he had appeared in all three previous UK AW articles. Obviously little surprise to see Dubawi with a good strike rate; likewise Frankel. However, Frankel progeny have been very poor value losing 44p in the £.

In terms of damsires, Shamardal does make the top 10 by strike rate and here is the full list:

All ten damsires have A/E indices over 1.00, which is a rare sight. This winter it might be worth noting any runner whose damsire appears in this table: I would see it as a positive.

Newcastle Horses for courses

Our final port of call, as always, is to look at some horses that have excelled at the course since 2017. To qualify for the list each entry must have won at least four races at the track with a strike rate of 25% or more. Further, they must have raced somewhere in the UK in 2022. Here are the horses that qualify, listed alphabetically. I have included a PRB column, too:

19 horses make the list so keep an eye out for any of these over the coming months. They clearly like the track and, if some other factors are in their favour, they are definitely worth close scrutiny.

Newcastle Takeaways

But before winding up, let's review the ‘main takeaways’:

Over 5f, front runners have a fair edge; over 6f, front runners also have a small edge;
Over 1 mile hold up horses have the best record of all running styles;
Low draws seem at a slight disadvantage on the straight course (5f-1mile). High draws look marginally best overall;
Over 1m4f higher draws seem to have the edge; draws 1 to 4 have a relatively poor record overall;
Andrew Balding 2yo runners are quite rare but they have an excellent record;
Note if Archie Watson books Hollie Doyle to ride;
Male horses have the edge over female ones when it comes to bigger priced runners;
Favourites have performed a little below par. Horses 2^nd to 5^th in the betting seem the group on which focus;
Dubawi has a decent record as a sire and a damsire.

And that's all for this Newcastle All-Weather Analysis. I hope after reading this, your punting at Gosforth Park will be a little more profitable than perhaps it was before. Good luck.

- DR

All-Weather Analysis: Lingfield Racecourse

17 October 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

It’s time for the fourth course in this all-weather series, this time focusing on Lingfield Park. I have used data from 1^st January 2017 to 31^st August 2022 which gives us a decent chunk of races to get stuck into. As with the previous pieces my data collection has been solely from the Geegeez Query Tool and therefore all profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. We know that we can improve upon those baseline figures with exchange prices or Best Odds Guaranteed and, where appropriate, I will share any useful Betfair SP data.

Running Style at Lingfield

I have written before about Lingfield in regards to running style, so I will be sharing the new data from the past 11 months as well as looking at the long term figures. I have also touched upon the draw at Lingfield in two general AW articles around 2½ years ago, but this article will give a more detailed analysis. For both sections on running style and the draw my focus will be handicaps of eight or more runners only. This is in line with previous research in those areas.

Lingfield 5f Run Style Bias

Let’s start with the minimum trip of 5f. Here are the run style splits in 8+ runner handicaps covering the time since my last article (that is, from 1^st Oct ’21 to 31^st Aug ’22):

In this recent time frame there have been only 22 qualifying races so this is a limited sample. The front running stats (L) are not as strong as were the long term figures: from 1^st Jan 2017 to 30^th Sept 2021 front runners were successful around 24% of the time. However, with a small sample size it is easy to see this type of variance. If we compare the each way stats for front runners over the two time frames we see near identical percentages:

I am confident the run style picture in 5f handicaps at Lingfield is the same as ever in that the data points to the 5f trip at Lingfield giving front runners the edge; prominent racers are next best, while horses that take a mid pack or further back position early, are at a disadvantage. If you had your crystal ball working in tip top order and had predicted all the front runners going back to 2017, you would have made a profit of £121.88 to £1 level stakes. This equates to a remarkable return of 77p in the £. If on the other hand you had backed all mid div and hold up horses you would have lost £285.42. For every £1 bet on these runners you would have lost 48p. Ouch.

Lingfield 6f Run Style Bias

When writing about this course and distance previously, I noted the following ’dip’ in front running performance in 8+ runner handicaps:

*up to 30^th Sept 2021 only

Prior to 2017, the front runners' win percentage had been consistently over 20% (2014 – 28%; 2015 – 22%; 2016 – 23%). That seems to be quite a staggering change from the start of 2018. So how do the last 11 months stack up for front runners in 6f handicaps (8+ runners)?

These data are much more in tune with the pre-2018 findings, certainly in terms of win percentage. But where does that leave us? To be honest, I’m not sure. Essentially we need to take a longer term view so let me share all run style data stretching from 1/1/17 to 31/8/22:

Looking over this longer time frame, there does seem to be a run style bias in play here, specifically that front runners and prominent racers have a combined edge over horses that race mid pack, who in turn have the advantage over held up horses. However, the old front running bias that was potent a few years back seems to have dissipated.

Lingfield 7f Run Style Bias

Looking firstly at 7f handicap run style data going back to 2017 (8+ runners), the graph below shows win and win & placed (each way) strike rate:

The win and each way lines correlate neatly adding confidence to a perception of bias towards the front rank of runners early. Front runners edge it over prominent runners in a pattern we are generally used to seeing at shortish trips. If we look at the more recent data from only the past 11 months we get this:

The sample size is 42 races and, although the front running win stats are below the long-term norm, the each way figures suggest that nothing has really changed.

In essence, this is a track and trip where the closer to the pace a runner is, the better. Hold up horses really do struggle, and in bigger fields they struggle even more so. In 7f handicaps with 12 or more runners (going back to 2017), hold up horses have a win rate of under 3% and and a win & placed (EW) rate of under 15%.

Once we hit races of 1 mile the bias levels out and, from 1m2f upwards, front runners as well as hold up horses are at a disadvantage compared with prominent and midfield racers.

Draw at Lingfield

If we look at the racecourse map for Lingfield, with its sweeping downhill home bend and relatively short straight, one may expect lower draws (those drawn on the inside) to hold an edge over the shorter distances:

Let's see if that is the case.

Lingfield 5f Draw Bias

A look at the minimum trip first. It should be noted that field sizes for this distance have a maximum of just 10 runners. Here are the draw splits going back to 2017 for 8+ runner handicaps (124 races):

Essentially, this is very even and, clearly, lower draws have not had more success from a winning perspective. Bizarrely horses from the highest third of the draw have come out on top here. Looking again at the course map, perhaps those drawn highest are able to run at a tangent to the crown of the bend. If we look at the win and placed stats (EW) we do get a slightly different picture:

This maybe is a better indicator that in fact a lower draw is preferable, and these stats also correlate with the percentage of rivals beaten (PRB) data. These figures are as follows:

Taking these three ‘measures’ into account I would say that the draw here is not crucial to the outcome of the race. However, if pushed I would prefer a lower draw given the option.

Lingfield 6f Draw Bias

Over this extra furlong the maximum field size increases to 12 and this trip sees horses encounter two left turns. There have been 180 races since 2017 so a strong sample size, relatively at least. Here are the draw splits in terms of win percentage:

Very level figures once again. So let’s examine the win and placed (EW) data to see if that sheds any more light on proceedings:

Lower draws are now edging ahead as we saw with the 5f stats. How about the PRB figures?

A similar pattern to 5f it seems. Nothing mind blowing, but essentially a lower draw is almost certainly a small advantage.

If we combine draw and run style we get the following 6f handicap heat map when looking at PRB figures:

This shows the difficulty hold up horses have from any draw and also, for horses that race mid-division, a wide draw is a definite negative. This is a key take away in terms of both run style and draw over this trip.

Lingfield 7f+ Draw Bias

As we have seen at the shorter distances, draw bias is not going to be a defining feature like it can be at somewhere like Chester, or even some of the other all-weather course/distance combinations. Once we get to 7f and beyond the draw becomes even less of a factor. Hence it’s time to move on and check out some other areas.

For the remainder of this article I will be looking at data for all races (from 1^st Jan 2017), not just 8+ runner handicaps.

Trainers at Lingfield

Top Lingfield Trainers

With data going back nearly six seasons we have a good amount of info into which to drill down on the performance of trainers at Lingfield. Below are those handlers who secured a win strike rate of 15% or more from a minimum of 100 runs (all race types included):

Just one trainer has recorded an SP profit: step forward, Roger Varian. Varian has had one winner at 33/1, however, so taking that away he has essentially broken even to SP. To BSP his overall record is +£65.31, while even without the outsider winner this drops to +£15.26. All in all, his record is very solid. Let’s look at some positive angles (none of which include this 33/1 winner which would skew the stats somewhat):

Results when Andrea Atzeni has been Varian’s jockey have been excellent. 12 wins and 5 placed from just 26 runners in total for a profit of £27.70 (ROI +106.5%)
With very short priced runners (evens or less), Varian is 14 wins from 16 (SR 87.5%) for a profit of £6.46 (ROI +40.4%)
His 3yo fillies have secured 11 wins from 39 (SR 28.2%) for a profit of £21.73 (ROI +55.7%)
His 2yo runners have won around 27% of the time returning 15p in the £
He has 9 wins from 16 runners (SR 56.3%) when his runners are top rated by Peter May’s Speed Ratings. These runners have returned just over 38p in the £

Onto A/E indices now – looking for trainers who have exceeded the magic figure of 1.00 which suggests their horses as a whole have been value to follow:

Four of these trainers appeared in the original table, nine others have joined them. As a general rule, I would suggest these 13 trainers are worth close scrutiny when they send runners to the track.

Caution Advised Lingfield Trainers

A look now at the trainers who have struggled at Lingfield in terms of win percentage:

These trainers are probably worth swerving at Lingfield unless you have a compelling reason to think otherwise. Indeed, looking at all 14 together, their combined record with favourites at Lingfield is a middling 20 wins from 104 (SR 19.23%) for a hefty loss of £41.17 (ROI +39.6%).

Lingfield Gender Bias

I have noted a gender bias at each of the all-weather courses I have studied to date. Here are Lingfield’s figures:

These figures are very similar to those we have seen before. However, a pattern we saw at Chelmsford and Kempton where the gender bias levelled out as horses reached the age of five is not repeated here. What I did notice, however, was that there seems to be a market bias in play at Lingfield. The graph below uses A/E indices to help show this.

As you can see, female runners from the top three in the betting are very competitive with their male counterparts (F 0.91; M 0.89). However, males start to outperform their female counterparts when we get to 4^th to 6^th in the betting market (F 0.74; M 0.86), and this continues to 7^th or bigger in the market (F 0.61; M 0.71).

It made sense for me to back check Chelmsford and Kempton to see if there were similar findings for this angle, and this is what I discovered.

Kempton’s were:

And Chelmsford’s stats were:

Essentially both courses followed a similar pattern to Lingfield. Looking at all three in a chart may make the pattern easier to view so below I've created an A/E ratio of female performance against male performance (dividing the female A/E figure by the male A/E figure in each segment).

There is roughly parity when looking at the top 3 in the market; then a strong edge for males as we move away from the sharp end of the betting lists. This is something to check out with other courses in future articles.

Lingfield Market Factors

Keeping with the market it is time for a look at the win strike rates for different market ranks, starting with favourites and moving down to position 7th or more:

This pattern is what we would expect. Favourites have lost around 8p in the £ to SP (a 4p loss to BSP), second favourites have lost 10p in the £ (just 1.3p loss to BSP). As a side note, favourites have actually broken even in non-handicap races which is interesting (+4.6% if using BSP).

A look at market rank A/E indices next:

Lingfield is not a course for outsiders it seems. Horses 7^th or bigger in the betting would have lost you 45p for every £ bet to SP; and around 21p at BSP.

Therefore I would personally focus on the front end of the market, more especially the top four in the betting.

Before moving away from the market I thought it would be interesting to see which jockeys have ridden the course well when riding a horse near the top end of the betting. Hence if focusing solely on the top four in the betting, here are the jockeys with an A/E index of 0.95 or more (100 runs minimum to qualify):

Five jockeys were in profit to SP - Messrs. Keenan, Fanning, Levey, Probert and Marquand - which is impressive considering only three of the winners from all jockeys combined were a bigger price than 10/1. All five are jockeys I would be happy to see on board one of my horses at the track.

Darragh Keenan’s figures are particularly impressive and, of the 29 trainers he has ridden for under these circumstances, he has won for 16 different ones. Of the 13 trainers he has yet to win for, he has ridden just once for eight of them and no more than three times for any of them. Of all the other jockeys in the table, only Ryan Moore has managed to win for more than half the trainers he has ridden for (24 from 44).

Keenan had just one qualifying ride at the track in 2017 and only four in 2018 (2 wins); since then here are his win / win & placed (EW) percentages:

These are very decent looking figures and his A/E indices for each year are equally impressive:

To have achieved an Actual vs Expected figure in excess of 1.20 for each of the past four years is a record not to be sniffed at. I feel Keenan is definitely a jockey to keep on the right side of at Lingfield, especially when riding a horse near the head of the market.

Sire Performance at Lingfield

In this section we'll examine some sire data. Here are the top 15 sires in terms of strike rate since 2017. (To qualify - 150 runs or more or more; and must have had runners somewhere in the UK during 2022):

Some of the usual suspects as one would expect. Dansili, Sharmardal and Dubawi all appeared near the top of the Kempton strike rates as well. Frankel did not make the cut due to having only 108 runners in total but with a strike rate of over 19% he, too, should be mentioned.

In terms of damsires I am going to share just the top four performers in terms of strike rate (you’ll see why):

Dansili, Sharmardal and Dubawi are right to the fore once again – as punters, we should keep an eye out at Lingfield when a horse or its dam is sired by one of that top trio.

Lingfield Horses for Courses

My final port of call is, as always in this series, to look at some horses that have excelled at the course since 2017. To qualify for the list a horse must have won at least four races at the track with a strike rate of 25% or more. Also, each must have raced somewhere in the UK in 2022. Here are the horses that qualify, listed alphabetically. I have included a PRB column too (Percentage of rivals beaten):

18 horses make the list so keep an eye out for any of these horses over the coming months - perhaps add them to your Query Tool Angles (Horse Name = [these 18], Course = Lingfield, Race Code = Flat AW). They clearly like the track and if some other factors are in their favour they should be regarded as potentially good betting propositions.

Lingfield All-Weather Conclusions

There is plenty to take from this article as we have covered several different areas. The main takeaways for me are:

There is a run style bias at distances ranging from 5f to 7f. Over 5f, front runners have a fair edge; at 6f and 7f, front runners and prominent racers combined have a decent advantage
There is little in the draw at any distance. Low may have a tiny edge at 5f and 6f
Roger Varian is a trainer to keep an eye on
Jockey Darragh Keenan has an excellent record when riding a horse from the top four in the betting; also look out for Fanning, Levey, Probert and Marquand under these conditions
Male horses have the edge over female ones; it seems this is much stronger as we get beyond the first three in the market
Market wise, favourites and second favourites are worth a second look; generally speaking, this is a course to stick to the front end of the betting lists
Look out for Dansili, Sharmardal and Dubawi both in terms of being a sire or a damsire

So there we are. There will be plenty of meetings at Lingfield over the coming months and I hope this piece has given you some useful pointers.

- DR

All-Weather Analysis: Kempton Racecourse

11 October 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

After looking at Chelmsford and Dundalk, it’s time to go to Kempton Park, to the west of London. I will be using all-weather data from 1^st January 2017 to 31^st August 2022 when analysing the Surrey track, giving us the opportunity to examine over 2500 races. I have used the Geegeez Query Tool for all the data collection, and hence all profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. However, as I have mentioned numerous times before we will be able to improve upon these figures by using either BOG, early prices or the exchanges.

I have written about Kempton before in regards to running style and also I have shared draw data too. I will look again at both of these here, but there are plenty of other areas that I will be covering in this piece as well. However, let's start with running style.

Running Style at Kempton

When looking at run style, my focus is handicaps, and specifically handicaps with fields of eight or more runners. In an article published on Kempton early this year I looked at run style data up to 30^th September 2021. Hence I will be sharing the latest data from the intervening eleven months.

There has only been one qualifying race over 5f so nothing new to share there. Front runners traditionally have a big edge over this minimum distance and, on the rare occasions 5f handicaps are run, this is worth knowing. Time therefore to move to 6f handicaps.

Kempton 6f Run Style Bias

Here are the run style splits in 8+ runner handicaps (1^st Oct ’21 to 31^st Aug ’22):

The sample size of 41 races is reasonable and these recent figures correlate well with the long term data, as this graphical comparison below confirms:

This gives us confidence that in 6f handicaps at Kempton front runners do have a good edge; prominent racers in turn have a small edge over horses that race further back early. For any remaining sceptics, let us look at the win and placed percentages across both time frames:

The front running stats for both time frames have virtually identical win & placed percentages standing at 47.83% and 47.9% respectively. Likewise, the other three groups have virtually identical percentage figures. This data implies therefore that we can expect roughly half of all front runners over six furlongs will hit the frame.

Kempton 7f Run Style Bias

Long-term past results had seen front runners enjoying an edge at this trip also, with a win strike rate of 16.8% from 1/1/17 to 30/9/21. The more recent data (47 races since then) has actually seen this figure drop markedly to 12.1%. Is this is a shift in bias to a more even playing field in terms of run style over 7f at Kempton? I personally don’t think so. A couple of near misses in modest samples can easily see this type of percentage drop.

Also, there are two more numbers to share that suggest the front running bias is essentially the same as it has always been. Firstly, the win & placed percentages for both time frames are very similar at 38.8% and 37.9%. And secondly, I looked at the PRB figures (Percentage of Rivals beaten) – these again were virtually the same over the two time frames:

PRB figures are generally a good indicator to see if certain biases exist. Figures on or above 0.55 tend to suggest there is a bias in play.

Traditionally, once we get past 7f, the run style bias at Kempton starts to even out, although even at a mile a front runner is a better betting proposition than a hold up horse.

The Draw at Kempton

Onto to draw now. For this area, I will again be sticking to 8+ runner handicaps, I have split all initial data into three equal thirds in order to compare the win percentages within each group. I will dig deeper from there where appropriate. The racecourse map below shows the course is right-handed and that there is an inner and an outer course. Only 5f and 1m2f races are raced on the inner course; all other distances are raced on the outer one.

Kempton 5f Draw Bias

It was noted earlier in the article that there has been just one 5f handicap with 8+ runners in the past year. There seems to be a general policy at the track to move away from 5f races with the tight inner loop making it very difficult for later running types. I will share the third of the draw splits going back to 1/1/17:

There is a small edge to lower drawn horses according to these figures. Another measure of draw bias is to look at the percentage of rivals beaten (PRB). These figures are as follows:

These figures suggest the bias may be stronger than first thought. However, with so few races these days we will need to be patient to try and utilise any bias, if indeed we can at all. [Editor's note: this is a 5f handicap carded next Tuesday, 18th October]

Kempton 6f Draw Bias

Six furlong handicaps are abundant at Kempton. We can expect around fifty 8+ runner handicaps a year so we have plenty of data to play with. Detailed draw bias stats at this course and distance appeared in an article I wrote earlier this year, where in it I placed Kempton over 6f as being the 6^th strongest draw bias in the UK/Ireland. What I did not do in that piece though was look at the actual draw splits by thirds so here they are now:

Low draws are definitely best here and higher drawn runners struggle. The PRB figures correlate strongly as we can see:

These 6f races are ones I often get involved in as we have potential draw and a run style biases to utilise.

Before moving on I thought it prudent to look at the 2022 data to check the low draw bias is still in play. It certainly seems that way with the PRB figure for the bottom 'third' at 0.58 with 12 of the 22 races (54.5%) going to that section. A final stat to share is that, in 2022, horses drawn 9 or higher are 0 from 44 with just 5 placed runs.

Kempton 7f Draw Bias

The 7f distance also appeared in the same top 10 biases article, in 8^th place. However, in 2022 the bias has appeared less potent for whatever reason. In the 33 qualifying races so far in 2022, only ten have been won by the bottom third of the draw, with 12 wins for middle and 11 for high, en extremely even split. The PRB figures are also more even at 0.51 (low), 0.52 (middle) and 0.47 (high). The long term PRB figure for lowest drawn horses is 0.55 so the question is, has there been a slight change going on? I am guessing probably not: race samples of 33 are relatively modest when digging into the draw. It will be interesting to see how things pan out over 7f in the run up to Christmas, but I would suggest a little caution for the time being, just in case a change is afoot.

Kempton 1 Mile Draw Bias

Here are the draw splits for mile trip (2017-2022):

Higher drawn horses look to be at a very slight disadvantage. The PRB figures suggest this disadvantage is definitely there, and maybe stronger than the win% draw splits imply:

All in all, this is not a Kempton distance where the draw plays a big part for me personally when analysing a race. However, there is a red flag over any horse I’m keen on when it is drawn in double figures.

Kempton Draw Conclusions

As far as draw conclusions go, the 6f trip is one to get stuck into draw-wise with low draws best; hopefully the 7f one will revert to ‘type’ also this winter. Keep an eye out for any of those rare 5f handicaps where low draws should be advantageous, and over a mile be a little wary of very high drawn horses.

For the remainder of the article I will be using ALL race data, not just 8+ runner handicaps. Time now to look at trainers.

Trainers at Kempton

With data going back to 2017 we have an excellent bucket into which to drill down on the performance of trainers at Kempton. This first table shows the trainers who have secured a win strike rate of 15% or more from a minimum of 100 runs (ALL race types included):

Charlie Appleby tops the list but, despite his outstanding win rate - better than one in three - he has still made a loss to SP of over 18 pence in the £. Ouch.

Three yards are in profit and I want to look at the record of one of those, namely that of the Charltons'. Their record at Kempton is excellent; only one big priced winner (33/1) and looking at their bigger priced runners as a whole, those priced 16/1 or bigger have secured that solitary win from 92 attempts. This equates to a loss of £58.00 (ROI -63%). At the pointy end, Charlton runners priced 14/1 or shorter have provided 57 winners from 212 bets (SR 26.9%) for a healthy profit of £90.19 (ROI +42.5%).

The stable has been relatively consistent over the years, too, as these next two graphs show. Firstly a look at winning data:

Other than the blip in 2018, the remaining years have been very solid in terms of win strike rate. The A/E indices for each year correlate well too:

Five of the six years are above the magic 1.00 Actual vs Expected (A/E), suggesting Charlton runners have been good value in every year bar 2018.

Here are some additional Kempton facts for Harry and Roger Charlton:

The handicap win strike rate is over 24%; their non handicap figure stands at just under 15%.
His male runners have comfortably outperformed females with a win rate of 22.2% compared with 14.3%. Males have secured returns of 21p in the £, while fillies/mares have lost just under 6p in the £.
Charlton favourites have won 51% of races (25 wins from 49) for a profit of £14.06 (ROI +28.7%). Second favourites have also been profitable to the tune of 14p in the £.
From a run style perspective 31% of front runners have won, 29% of prominent runners have won, but there has been just 7.6% success for hold up horses. (Mid div horses won 15.6%).

All Charlton stable runners deserve close attention, especially those who race in handicaps. Look out for male runners, too, and steer clear of any big prices: they do occasionally win but have been expensive to follow overall. One final Charlton fact to share is that 24 different jockeys have had at least two rides for the stable at Kempton and 19 of them have registered at least one win.

Before moving on let us focus on horses from the top three in the betting and the trainers who have had the best A/E indices with those fancied runners (50 runs or more to qualify):

It's good to see Mick Appleby, John Butler, Simon Dow and William Knight in there amongst some bigger names; and it is worth noting that eight of the ten trainers from the group above made a profit to SP.

This type of article can only scratch the surface when it comes to trainer angles so for readers interested in digging further into Kempton trainer performance, the Geegeez Query Tool that I have used here is simple to use and very powerful. Not only that, you can test numerous angles very quickly. It is accessible from the menu link under the 'tools' menu item at the top of this - and almost every - page.

Kempton Gender bias

Research I undertook for the Chelmsford and Dundalk articles pointed towards a slight bias toward male runners over females. We know this bias tends to be slightly stronger on the all-weather, but it does exist on the turf, too. Here are the splits for Kempton:

Again, there is a definite edge here to male horses, similar to what we have seen at previous all-weather tracks.

Let's look at whether the age of horse has any relevance when it comes to the gender of the horse:

What is interesting is that we have a virtually identical age bias pattern to the one we saw at Chelmsford. There, males outperformed females at 2, 3 and 4 years old, but as the horses got older it seemed to level out. It happens, or at least has happened, at Kempton too.

The A/E indices react in the same way as the graph below shows:

Just because two courses portray a similar looking age/gender bias we cannot be sure this is a pattern that will repeated at other all weather courses. Indeed Dundalk’s stats did not really correlate with these two UK tracks. However, maybe the exact nature of the individual surface is the important factor here. Unfortunately, as with some research findings, I currently cannot give you an answer that I’m fully satisfied with. I will be keeping an eye on the results over the next few months to see whether same pattern continues or dissipates.

Market factors at Kempton

It's time for a look at the win strike rates for different positions in the betting, starting with favourites and moving down to position 8^th or lower in the market:

The chart shows the kind of sliding scale we'd expect to see, and the win percentage for favourites is around the average for all UK courses. Favourites have lost roughly 8p in the £ to SP which equates to a loss of 3p in the £ to BSP; second favourites have lost around 10p in the £ to SP which reduces to a 2p in the £ loss to BSP. The top two in the betting therefore have a pretty decent record at Kempton and this is reflected in the A/E indices:

Favourites have the highest A/E index at 0.94; second favourites the joint second best at 0.90.

All favourites that were also top rated on the Peter May speed ratings (published in the 'SR' column on geegeez racecards) actually made a profit to SP, recording 256 wins from 654 runners (SR 39.1%) for a profit of £1.85 (ROI +0.28%). OK, essentially this is a breakeven situation but, even so, that is still very impressive from a ratings set. One definitely needs to note horses top rated by the SR figures when they happen to be favourite at Kempton.

Sire performance at Kempton

Here are the top 20 sires in terms of strike rate at Kempton since 2017 (150 runs or more to qualify; and must have had runners in 2022):

Dubawi led the Chelmsford stats in terms of sire strike rates, and has repeated the feat here; but, despite winning over 20% of races, losses have been steep at 44p in the £.

Two sires that I am immediately drawn to in the table above are Lethal Force and Dutch Art. Both sires had good A/E indices at Chelmsford and they have repeated the dose here with Lethal Force at 1.20 and Dutch Art at 1.02. Not only that, both have edged into SP profit. There are nine other sires in the table that have A/E indices of 1.00 or more and these sires are also worth keeping an eye on.

I did look briefly at damsire data and noted that Singspiel currently has the best win strike rate at 15.5% and with an A/E index of 1.13. Only three other damsires have A/E indices of 1.00 or above: Royal Applause (1.04), Red Ransom (1.00) and Selkirk (1.00).

Kempton 'Horses for courses'

My final port of call was to look at some horses that have excelled at Kempton since 2017. To qualify for the list they must have won at least four races at the track with an overall course strike rate of 25% or more. Further, they must have raced somewhere in the UK in 2022. Here are the horses that qualified. I have included a PRB column too (Percentage of rivals beaten):

Eight-time course winner Soar Above is an interesting horse because he clearly loves Kempton, but away from the Sunbury track his record is poor. Kempton is a right-handed track and we can see how successful he has been there – he has also been placed five times along with those eight wins. Away from Kempton, he has raced only on left-handed or straight tracks and, combining these results, he's had just one win and two placed efforts from 18 starts. This includes 0 from 7 on other all-weather tracks (all left-handed). Perhaps Soar Above is an example of a horse that simply prefers running right-handed. Some horses definitely are more suited to turning one way than the other, though I have generally seen it more in National Hunt racing: probably the most famous example was Desert Orchid, who also had a preference for right-handed turns.

So there we have it. Kempton is a course with betting possibilities across the board:

- Favourites have quite a solid record, especially when top rated by Peter May’s SR figures.

- There are also a few stables to potentially keep on the right side of, perhaps notably the Charlton yard.

- Male horses should generally take preference over female ones as is the norm on the sand.

- There are some distances with an edge to lower draws (6f especially).

- There are some distances where front runners have a good edge (5f-7f).

- The 6f trip is the main one to concentrate on from a draw and run style perspective.

Let me finish then by sharing a PRB heat map overlaying draw thirds and run styles for 8+ runner 6f handicaps at Kempton since 2017:

This neatly demonstrates the strength of both biases. A low drawn horse has a definite edge unless it is held up; front runners enjoy huge success regardless of draw position. These heat maps can be found in the Draw Analyser and for each individual race in the daily racecards. It is a really useful tool to get a feel for any such biases. (Be careful, though, when looking at the Draw Analyser with all-weather courses – you need to change the going setting to incorporate not just ‘standard’ but cover all required going options).

- DR

All-Weather Analysis: Dundalk Racecourse, Part 2

19 September 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This series on all-weather tracks continues with the second of two articles looking at the Irish course of Dundalk. The first looked at run style and the draw, and can be viewed here; this piece delves into a variety of other areas in relation to the sole Irish all-weather loop.

The track was resurfaced in April 2020 and reopened in July 2020, so for this article the focus will be on the races run after the renovation work, from 12^th July 2020 to 31^st August 2022. I will occasionally compare the new data with some past data to try and gauge whether there are any significant differences compared to the results from the old surface. That past data will be covering a similar period in terms of elapsed time and volume of races – 1^st January 2018 to March 31^st 2020.

I have used the Geegeez Query Tool for all the data collection, and hence all profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. However, as I have noted many times before, we will be able to improve upon these figures by using either early prices and best odds guaranteed (BOG) or the exchanges.

Dundalk Trainers

The first port of call in this part two is to analyse the most recent trainer performance (12/7/20 to 31/8/22). One shy of thirty trainers have saddled 75 or more runners in races at Dundalk over the past two and a little bit years and so I have included them all.

Dundalk Trainers: Record of those saddling 75+ runners since the new track was laid (up to 31st August 2022)

It is perhaps no surprise to see just six trainers in profit; in terms of A/E index, seven trainers are above the magic 1.00 figure. It may be helpful to compare this most recent data with that from the pre-renovation sample period to see if any major changes have occurred. Below are all the trainers that had at least 75 runners in both time frames and I have compared their win strike rate percentages. The green column are the most recent:

Trainer comparison of Dundalk form before and after the course renovation

In terms of these win percentages the figures for each trainer generally correlate; it seems that Johnny Murtagh and Richard O’Brien have seen the biggest downturn in results. However, in reality, the sample size is still quite small in trainer terms, so we should be careful not to read too much into it, well not just yet anyway.

One trainer who did make the list due to not quite having enough runners is the Ballydoyle maestro, Aidan O’Brien. However his recent figures since the resurfacing work are worth sharing: 17 wins from 59 runners (SR 28.8%) for a profit of £32.86 (ROI +55.7%). His A/E index stands at a solid 1.06, too. He had a similar overall strike rate prior to this at 27.1% (1/1/18 to 31/3/20), although he made a small loss during that period.

Going back to the original table, Ger Lyons is the only trainer to secure a strike rate in excess of 20%, and he has a couple of worthwhile stats to mention:

In handicap races, Lyons' record reads 13 from 62 (SR 21%) showing a profit of £24.30 (ROI +39.2%).

Horses that wear NO headgear (blinkers, tongue tie, cheek pieces etc) have provided 24 wins from 97 runners (SR 24.7%) for a profit of £16.65 (ROI +17.2%).

Before moving away from Lyons it is worth sharing his run style data in terms of win %:

Ger Lyons runners by run style: Dundalk Racecourse 12th July 2020 to 31st August 2022

As can be seen, Lyons horses taking the lead early have fared exceptionally well, securing 11 wins from the 23 runners that adopted that position. It is also worth noting that a further eight of these were placed, meaning 19 of 23 either won or were placed. The racing performance of Lyons' prominent racers has also been excellent, scoring once in every four runs on average. His record with hold up horses / mid pack runners is less good, however, both registering at under 10%.

Another trainer worth noting is Michael Halford. He has shown a small blind profit overall and his best time of the year seems to be October to December where he has secured a strike rate of 18% (23 wins from 128 runners) and returned a profit of £54.72 (ROI 42.7%). Halford's handicap runners have provided his most profitable results with a return of 33p in the £ across all such runners. It does look best to avoid his older runners, though: those aged six-plus have triumphed just once in 32 attempts.

Dundalk Racecourse Jockeys

It's time now to look at the record of jockeys riding Dundalk over the past two years or so. The minimum number of rides to qualify is again 75, and here are the top ten in terms of win strike rate:

Dundalk Jockeys: Record of those riding 75+ times since the track was renovated (up to 31st August 2022)

The percentages even for the most successful course jockeys are relatively modest, but Dundalk often has big fields which is naturally going to affect the figures. Indeed the non-handicap average field size is 11.4 runners per race and the handicap average field size is 12.6. Over 53% of all races in this period saw a maximum field size of 14 runners.

Let's again compare this most recent data with that from 1/1/18 to 31/3/20 to see if there are any marked differences in jockey success. Here I am listing all jockeys that had 75 or more rides in both the time frames (most recent data again is in green):

Jockey comparison of Dundalk form before and after the course renovation

With modest sample sizes you would expect the odd significant fluctuation due to luck or statistical variance, but in general nothing stands out too much. Conor Hoban is a jockey who seems to have enjoyed the new surface with a fairly decent uptick in his win strike rate. He is the only jockey in fact to have had A/E indices of over 1.00 during both timeframes. The stats suggest to me that he rides this course as well as anyone. Hoban has a very good record with horses nearer the top end of the market: since the re-opening, Hoban's record on horses priced 8/1 or shorter is 11 wins from 37 (SR 29.7%) for a profit of £20.41 (ROI +55.2%). For the record, in the similar timeframe prior to the renovation his mounts made a profit in this same odds group. I do feel Hoban is a jockey that would be a good one to have on side at Dundalk.

Gender bias at Dundalk?

I have noted before that there has always been a small but significant gender bias when it comes to flat racing, with male horses outperforming female ones. On the all-weather this bias tends to be a bit stronger and the recent Dundalk stats (12/7/20 to 31/8/22) are an example of this:

Performance by sex of horse at Dundalk, 12th July 2020 to 31st August 2022

As can be seen, males have a better strike rate by around 2.5%; better returns (6½p in the £) and higher Actual/Expected and Impact Value indices. They may look relatively modest differences but should still be factored into your betting in my view.

The figures for male and female runners from before the resurfacing (1/1/18 to 31/3/20) are very similar:

Performance by sex of horse at Dundalk, 1st January 2018 to 31st March 2020

We can see similar differences in strike rates and returns; likewise, the figures for A/E indices and IVs are virtually the same.

When I looked at Chelmsford data previously, there seemed to be a strengthening in the gender bias in the 2yo to 4yo age groups and a levelling off in horses aged 5 and above. This pattern is not really repeated here although 4yo females have really struggled winning just 5.4% of the time (A/E 0.65; IV 0.71).

Dundalk Racecourse: Market factors

With Dundalk generally enjoying big fields the overall market data was interesting to dig into. I mentioned earlier that 53% of all races have a maximum field size of 14; furthermore, over 80% of all races have been contested by 12 or more runners.

Firstly let's take a look at the win strike rates for different ranks in the betting; starting with favourites and moving down to betting position of 9^th or more:

Dundalk performance by market rank, 12/7/20 to 31/8/22

In general we see a sliding scale although the sixth and fifth in the market are out of synch: this is almost certainly one of those rare statistical anomalies. The win percentage for favourites is relatively low with the average field size the driving factor behind that.

A look at the A/E indices now:

Actual vs Expected by market rank: Dundalk racecourse 12th July 2020 to 31st August 2022

The sixth market rank figure of 1.00 is a statistical anomaly as mentioned above. Ignoring that, the most interesting number for me is the 0.82 one for those 9^th or lower in the betting lists. This group of runners (roughly 3000 of them) have actually broken even to Betfair SP. It is also worth noting that second favourites have broken even to Betfair SP.

A quick look now at combining trainers with market rank – I have looked at trainer performance with horses from the top three in the betting (minimum 50 qualifiers). Here are my findings:

Trainer performance when saddling one of the top three in the betting, 12th July 2020 to 31st August 2022

To offer some context, all trainers have combined to produce a win strike rate of 20.2%, an ROI of -14% and an A/E index of 0.86. In that light, Jessica Harrington and James McAuley have performed significantly below the norm which is worth noting, while Eddie Lynam and Ado McGuinness are the top performers.

Finally in this section on the betting market I want to look at handicap races with 12 or more runners, and consider the market splits. There have been 371 such races which gives us a large swathe of market data to examine. I have split the market into three as I do with draw data to investigate the percentage of winners within each ‘third’ of the market. Hence in a 12 runner race the market position splits would be as follows:

Low 1/3 – top 4 in the betting

Mid 1/3 – 5^th to 8^th in the betting

High 1/3 – 9^th to 12^th in the betting

I have made some statistical adjustments to render these figures as accurate as I can, but there are occasions when ‘joint’ market positions exist; and, further, 13 and 14 runner races do not quite divide perfectly by three. However, I am confident these percentage splits are as near to ‘spot on’ as is possible:

Approximately two-thirds of 12+ runner handicaps are won by the most fancied third of the runners. As punters we are always looking for value, but we must operate within the generally extremely efficient confines of the market.

Sires at Dundalk

Let us know turn our attention to the performance of winners at Dundalk based on their sire. Below is a table of all sires to have had at least 100 runners at the track in the sample period (ordered by strike rate):

Sire performance at Dundalk, 1/7/20 to 31/8/22 [100+ runners to qualify]

I think we need to wait another year, perhaps two, before we make any sweeping conclusions about the performance of individual sires on this new surface. Horses that race regularly here will skew the sire stats a little especially when the sample size is around the 100 to 130 mark. Once we get more sires with 200+ runs it will be a good time to re-examine the data in more detail. For example, the Canford Cliffs figures look vastly inflated to me when I compare his progeny record at Dundalk with long term performance across similar surfaces in the UK and Ireland. Likewise, Holy Roman Emperor is not a sire that tends to produce a win strike rate of just 1.67% - what we know of his record more generally is that he is nearer the 10% mark.

As a researcher and indeed a punter one needs to be aware that statistical analysis can have some limitations. In racing, sample size is often one such limitation, and appreciating where and when this is a potential limitation will help us in our quest to make a long term profit from horse racing. Gathering stats is one thing; understanding their relevance/importance is even more key.

Horses for courses at Dundalk

In closing, I'd like to look at some horses that have excelled at Dundalk since the resurfacing work. To qualify for the list they must have won at least four races and possess a strike rate of 25% or more at the track. Further, they must have raced at least once in Ireland or the UK in 2022. These are the horses to qualify. I have included a PRB column too (Percentage of rivals beaten):

Course specialists at Dundalk racecourse, 1st July 2020 to 31st August 2022

Most of these runners deserve close scrutiny whenever they run at Dundalk, if past performance counts for anything. The five runners with PRB figures of 0.80 or higher are particularly noteworthy.

Whatharm has had a relatively poor time of it on the turf this year so his handicap mark has dropped. It will be interesting to see if a return to Dundalk will spark a return to form.

Dundalk is a track that will have plenty of racing this Autumn and Winter. From now until 16th December they will be racing every Friday, and for eight consecutive weeks from the start of November up to Christmas they will be racing on Wednesdays, too. Hopefully this article and its predecessor, part one, will help us all to be (more) profitable at Dundalk and potentially give us some pennies to spend over the festive period: it's not that far away now!

- DR

All-Weather Analysis: Dundalk Racecourse, Part 1

12 September 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

My series on all weather tracks continues with the first of a two-parter looking at the Irish racecourse at Dundalk, writes Dave Renham. This is my first detailed piece of research on Dundalk and I am hoping to find some credible angles which will help us all when having a bet there. The track is 1m2f in circumference and left handed and as you can see in the picture below the 5f distance starts from a chute which joins the round course at the penultimate bend.

Dundalk was resurfaced in April 2020 and reopened in July of that year. So, for this article, the focus will be on races run from 12^th July 2020 (the first fixture after the renovations) to 31^st August 2022. I will at times be comparing the new data with past data to try and gauge whether there are any significant differences compared to the results from the old surface.

I have used the Geegeez toolkit - Query Tool, Pace and Draw Analysers - for all the data collection: these can be accessed from the home page from the Tools dropdown menu.

Running Style at Dundalk

For regular readers of my Geegeez articles, they will know that I believe the run style of horses at certain distances is important and is still an underused approach when taking into account all punters as a whole. For the new readers, I will briefly discuss what is meant by run style before doing some digging. In essence, run style is the position a horse takes up very early on in the race. These are split into the following four categories:

Led (4) – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent (3) – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division (2) – horses that race mid pack; Held Up (1) – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section. These numbers can be a useful tool for crunchers like myself as they can be used to create different numerical representations.

When analysing Dundalk run style, and indeed later when analysing the draw, I will be looking at individual distances – mainly the shorter ones with the main focus being 8+ runner handicaps. The shorter distances are more prone to ‘bias’ both in terms of run style and draw.

Dundalk Racecourse 5f Run Style Bias

Let's look at the shortest trip first. Below are the run style (pace) figures taken from the Query Tool for the period since the resurfacing (12/7/20 to 31/8/22):

Early leaders / front runners have had a strong advantage it seems, albeit from a relatively modest sample. This is a pattern that we have seen over the minimum trip of 5f at several courses, both on the all weather and on turf, especially on turning tracks; so, despite the sample size, the chances are that this front running bias is likely to continue. The A/E (Actual vs Expected) indices and Impact Values (IV) also correlate strongly which gives more confidence to the findings*. Combining win and placed percentages (each way) also seems to confirm the bias:

*For more on A/E and IV, as well as PRB, see this post

Hold up horses have a dreadful record in handicaps over five furlongs at Dundalk: a front runner is roughly four times more likely to make the frame than any individual hold up horse.

I looked back at the 5f data before the resurfacing of the track, going back as far as I could to 2009, and the front running bias existed then, too. The win percentage of 16.1% and the win / placed percentage of 40.3% are slightly below the more recent figures posted by front runners, but they were still much stronger than any other run style category during that time frame.

My conclusion is that the surface change has not made it more difficult to win from the front in 5f handicaps, indeed it has perhaps made it easier. The next year or two will help to confirm or deny this early view.

Before moving onto to 6f handicaps, I decided to dig a bit deeper into the more recent 5f stats and I looked at the performance of front running handicappers in terms of percentage of rivals beaten (PRB). This is a measure to help with determining the strength of a bias, and it helps by awarding every runner in every qualifying race with a 'score' based on the number of rivals they beat. The winner will have a score of 1.00 (100% of rivals beaten) and the last placed horse will have a score of 0.00 (0% of rivals beaten). The fifth horse home in a nine-horse race, for instance, will have beaten four rivals (6th, 7th, 8th and 9th) and lost to four rivals (the first four home) for a PRB of 0.50 (50% of rivals beaten).

A score of 0.55 or higher is considered a good advantage, while 0.45 or lower can be viewed as a negative.

Getting back to Dundalk five furlong handicaps, I found that front runners over this trip had a PRB of 0.64. This is further proof of the advantage front runners have. I did the same calculations for hold up horses, too, and their PRB stood at a lowly 0.40.

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SIDEBAR: How I calculated PRB for this article

PRB figures can be found on Geegeez in different areas. For example if you click on the record of a horse you will see something like the following:

Here we have not just the win, placed, profit, prize money data, but also the PRB figures. In this case the turf PRB (0.62), all-weather PRB (0.52) and the overall PRB (0.57). You can get this PRB info also when clicking on the records of trainers, jockeys and sires.

PRB figures are also shared in the Draw Analyser:

In this example (taken from Chester) we see the PRB figures back up the win% data showing a strong low draw bias and, particularly, a negative bias for high-drawn horses.

The PRB figures shared earlier for front runners and hold up horses in 5f handicaps at Dundalk were not taken directly from a page on the site; rather, I manually calculated them. It was not difficult to do and I’ll now offer a quick explanation of how I calculated that front running figure of 0.64 (in case you want to examine this type of idea yourself).

Firstly, in the Query Tool I looked for all horses that had gained a 4 pace rating in 5f 8+ handicaps:

This generated the following results:

These are the figures seen at the start of this article is the very first table. From here I clicked on the qualifier tab, thus:

With 20 qualifiers per page, there were 3 pages of qualifiers in total. I copied each page of data and pasted into Microsoft Excel. I then created two new columns using a simple formula – ‘Rivals beaten’ and ‘Rivals Not Beaten’:

I then totalled up the Rivals Beaten column (286) and the Rivals Not Beaten column (161). To calculate the PRB figure you add together the two totals (447) and divide the Rivals Beaten number into this total (286 divided by 447). This gives us the 0.64 figure shown earlier.

I personally will do these run style PRB calculations for other courses now unless the data set is too big. Copying and pasting a few pages of qualifiers is relatively quick; however, doing it, say, for 100 pages is probably going above and beyond!

SIDEBAR ENDS

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I have also looked at the 5f non-handicaps stats – data is limited as there have only been 17 qualifying races (with 8+ runners). However, the win / win & placed (each way) stats suggest a strong front running edge here too:

All the stats I have shared do seem to point to a strong front running bias over 5f at Dundalk regardless of race type.

Below is a PRB heat map overlaying draw thirds and run styles for 8+ runner handicaps at Dundalk since 2020:

It is clear that low and led/prominent, or indeed almost any led/prominent position is hugely more beneficial than being waited with further back.

Dundalk Racecourse 6f Run Style Bias

Up a furlong now to six furlongs, and a look at the handicap run style stats over this distance since the resurfacing work; again 8+ runner races only to qualify:

At first glance these stats suggest that front runners have a slightly stronger edge over this extra furlong. The IV for front runners of 2.7 is high; as is the 1.79 A/E index.

Here are the win and placed percentages (each way):

There is a strong correlation here when comparing the each way stats with the win only stats – they paint the same picture.

Looking at the data from before the resurface (all the way back to 2009), front runners won just over 16% of races so the bias was evident but maybe not quite as strong. Hold up horses had a win percentage of 5% which is a bit below the more recent figure.

A look now at the PRB figures for front runners versus hold up horses since July 2020. Front runners have a huge PRB of 0.68, while hold up horses are down with a PRB of 0.43. These are similar to the 5f figures as one would probably expect. (These were calculated using Excel as outlined above).

It makes sense to share the non-handicap stats as I did over 5f. Here is a graphic of the win / win and placed (each way) run style percentages for non-handicap races over 6f:

In terms of win percentages, prominent racers have nudged ahead of front runners, but when we look at the win & placed (each way) figures, front runners lead once more. The strongest aspect of these data, it seems, is the quite dreadful win record for horses that race off the pace either in mid-division or held up: both run style win percentages loiter below 3%. This from 34 races giving us a small but probably satisfactory sample size.

All the 6f handicap statistics point to the fact that front runners have a very strong edge. This advantage looks even more potent than over 5f. If this is the case, then perhaps it is down to the fact that over 6f the full turn comes into play; over 5f, because of the chute, there is effectively only a half turn (see first image at the top of this post). This is just conjecture, but it feels like a plausible suggestion. In non-handicaps, prominent racers and front runners combine to have a monster edge over those midfield and hold up horses in the first quarter mile or so.

When reviewing the draw / run style heat map we again see the difficulty slow starters face in getting competitive:

Dundalk Racecourse 7f Run Style Bias

Let's move on to 7f now (12/7/20 to 31/8/22):

Front runners are not the most successful group over this range; over seven furlongs, the accolade goes to prominent racers. There is still a run style bias in play here with runners close up or on the pace early having an edge over those further back. What is noticeable at most tracks is that the front-running win percentage tends to drop as the distance increases past the shortest races distances of five and six furlongs. This is mainly because the horses behind the early leader have more time to make their challenge and can eventually get to the front themselves.

Looking at the long term data going back to 2009 up to the time the course was resurfaced, front runners won 11.8% so they were slightly more successful during that period. However, a change of one percentage point is not statistically significant. It looks like the 7f run style picture has not really changed much since the renovation work.

7f non-handicaps have a similar spread of results since the resurfacing occurred – front runners have an edge with a 13% success rate; prominent racers 11%; midfield 9% and hold up horses were worse off again at just 4% (though there is some selection bias in the latter cohort due to horses of very limited ability, or those not yet ready or able to show their full ability, sometimes running in non-handicaps).

This time, the PRB heat map overlaying draw and run style is less conclusive, but it does suggest middle to high and not held up could be beneficial.

Dundalk Racecourse 1m Run Style Bias

The stats are similar over a mile with regards front runners – those most forwardly placed have won 11% of races in the past two years. Their A/E index stands at 1.13 and Win Impact Value at 1.48 suggesting a small edge still. Having said that, it is not a course/distance combination where I would looking to use run style bias as a key part in my selection process.

In conclusion, looking at run style as a whole across the shorter distances, front runners have a clear advantage over sprint trips (5f-6f) in handicaps. In non-handicaps this is true over 5f and to a lesser extent over 6f. Having said that, hold up horses and horses that race mid-division early really struggle over five and six furlongs regardless of race type. Over 7f (both handicaps and non-handicaps), horses that front run or race prominently have had the edge over horses that race mid-pack or at the back early. Once we get to 1 mile and further it becomes a relatively even playing field.

Draw Bias at Dundalk Racecourse

With the draw I like to compare recent time frames of a similar length. This is because draw patterns can (and do!) change at any time. Also, at Dundalk they have adjusted the rails on the home turn, putting in a false rail which potentially has ramifications for the draw. This change occurred more than five years ago so it makes sense not to include races before the false rail was introduced. Hence I will be looking at 8+ runner handicap draw data from July 12^th 2020 to August 31^st 2022, which is clearly the key data, but then comparing it with the prior two years before the resurfacing and after the false rail addition (going back to the start of 2018). Still with me? Good!

When I look at the draw my first port of call is to split the starting stall numbers into three roughly equal thirds and compare win percentages; percentages of around 33% across the board give us a completely level playing field in terms of the draw, deviations from that may imply an advantage or disadvantage.

Dundalk Racecourse 5f Draw Bias

Since the resurfacing in 2020 here are the draw splits over 5f (8+ runner handicaps):

There looks to be a clear edge to lower drawn horses here with those drawn very high struggling commensurately. Let us look now at the data in terms of percentage of rivals beaten (PRB).

This backs up the win% breakdown showing good correlation, though perhaps not as striking as in pure win percentage terms. Another snippet worth sharing is that horses drawn five or lower have won 69% of the races from just 44.5% of the total runners.

Time to compare the win percentages from this post-renovation period with data from the two years or so prior, specifically 1st January 2018 to 31st March 2020:

The results are very similar and the sample sizes are virtually identical. It could be that the new surface has slightly strengthened the low draw bias; it will be interesting to monitor the results of the next 12 months to see if this is the case.

As far as the draw is concerned I rarely look at non-handicap data unless I have a huge sample size. Here we have less than 20 races and so it is probably not a worthwhile proposition to dig into the numbers.

Dundalk Racecourse 6f Draw Bias

Below are the 6f draw data by thirds:

There have been nearly 60 races so we have a decent sample size with which to work; low draws seem to have a strong edge, but my initial enthusiasm is tempered by the PRB figures:

This is a good example of why digging deeper into data is important and why we need to be cautious of small samples, even when they're relatively large in the context of horseracing analysis. The figures here suggest a slight lower to middle bias exists but nothing more. We need to be wary of that 50.8 win% for the bottom third of the draw, which is almost certainly inflated. The each way figures for each third are also virtually identical, which lends more credence to the PRB figures.

Looking at the data from 1^st Jan 2018 to 31^st March 2020, I would suggest a strong low draw bias was in existence as the win percentages and the PRB data correlate strongly this time. Win percentages first:

These are the equivalent PRB figures:

0.59 is a huge PRB figure for the lowest section of the draw. Hence my reading of the draw at Dundalk over 6f is that the new surface has some an effect in nullifying a previous low draw bias. Given the choice I’d still prefer to be drawn low, but it is marginal. Essentially I would not see the draw as a major factor over 6f at Dundalk.

Dundalk Racecourse 7f Draw Bias

Below are the 7f data and the draw splits since the course was resurfaced are as follows:

It's relatively even this time, although middle draws have won a shade more often than the other two sections. The PRB figures are as follows:

These figures correlate with the win stats suggesting if there is any edge, it lies with the middle draws. Previous to this (1/1/18 to 31/3/20), the PRB split had been similar with 0.54 for middle draws once again, but the 0.47 and 0.50 were reversed with low draws at 0.50 and high at 0.47. It seems therefore that a middle draw looks to have a small advantage over 7f but it does not look strong enough to easily exploit.

Other Dundalk Draw Observations / Conclusions

I have looked at draw data for a mile and beyond but the thirds are very even and essentially it looks like only the 5f distance is of real interest here in terms of a usable draw bias. At the minimum range, a low draw does seem to have a tangible edge and is something we should factor into our selection process.

If you, like me, are interested in exotic ‘draw based’ bets, note that a profit could been secured in 8+ runner 5f handicaps (12/7/20 to 31/8/22) combining the five lowest drawn horses in full cover tricasts: this would have provided four winning payouts and returned a profit of 52p in the £. It should be noted that a five-horse combination tricast/trifecta bet involves 60 bets so it can become a costly wager during a long losing run. Of course the beauty of tricasts is that payouts can be massive, which is why punters like me are lured into them!

That concludes part one of this Dundalk analysis and it’s time to research part two. My study to date suggests that, in terms of run style and draw, we have the following biases to work with this winter:

Handicap biases

5f – front running bias; low draw bias

6f – front running bias

Non-handicap biases

5f – front running bias;

6f – front runners/prominent racer bias

Dundalk, as a track, does not offer as wide a range of biases as, say, Chester, but over five and six furlongs the run style edge in particular should give us a leg up over the uninformed.

PART TWO OF THIS ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE >

- DR

All-Weather Analysis: Chelmsford Racecourse

5 September 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

As we move into September, the weather is starting to change, and my mind is drawn to the autumn and winter racing programme, writes Dave Renham. I will be looking at National Hunt racing in the near future but, before that, what follows is the first article in a new series focusing on the all-weather tracks. In it, I will dig into numerous key stats at the six UK all-weather tracks, as well as looking in detail for the first time at Dundalk in Ireland.

I will be using all-weather racing data from 1^st January 2017 to 31^st August 2022 when analysing the UK tracks, giving us the opportunity to examine a plethora of stats and angles. I have used the Geegeez Query Tool for all the data collection, and hence all profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. However, as I have mentioned before we will be able to improve upon these figures by using either BOG, early prices or the exchanges.

I have shared stats about Chelmsford racecourse before in regards to running style, and also I have looked briefly at the draw, too. I will update both of these here, and there is a number of other areas I am going to look into as well. Let's start with running style.

Running Style (Pace) Bias at Chelmsford

When looking at run style, I have always focused on handicaps, and handicaps with fields of eight or more runners. In an article published in autumn last year (2021), the data strongly pointed to a front-running bias in races staged between 5f and 7f; the strongest bias was at the minimum trip, then seven furlongs, and then six furlongs. I have decided to share only the new data since I collated that article, which gives eleven months of results to analyse. Below are the win strike rates for front runners over these three trips in 8+ runner handicaps (1^st Oct ’21 to 31^st Aug ’22):

The figures correlate well with the longer term data, so in these types of races whoever leads early does have a clear edge. The A/E indices show a similar picture:

The 7f figure is slightly above the long term average figure, but that can happen with smaller samples.

What is clear is that there is a sliding scale in these races when it comes to run style – front runners have the advantage; prominent racers are next best and those mid division or held up are definitely at a disadvantage.

Before moving on, here is the long-term run style picture in terms of win strike rate across all distances at Chelmsford going back to the start of 2017 (8+ runner handicaps):

There's a strong correlation between race distance and front end advantage: generally, the shorter the distance the stronger the front-running bias; once we get to a mile and 1m2f the bias is minimal. At 1m 5f or further, front-runners are at a disadvantage.

Draw Bias at Chelmsford

Onto to the Chelmsford draw now, and for this area I will again be ignoring smaller fields and sticking to 8+ runner handicaps.

The racecourse map below shows the course is left handed and the lowest draws are positioned closest to the inside. Hence, over the shorter distances one would expect an advantage of some sort for lower drawn runners.

Chelmsford City Racecourse 5 furlong Draw Bias

When I look at the draw, my first port of call is to split the field into three thirds and compare the win percentages. Here are the relevant five furlong draw data for this distance going back to 2017:

An edge to lower drawn horses would have been expected (see above) although, considering the course configuration, it is a relatively modest one. These are the types of percentages one would have expected given that lower draws are closest to the inside rail and, therefore, have the least distance to travel around the turn. Another measure of draw bias is to look at the percentage of rivals beaten (PRB) from each stall position. These figures correlate with the win percentages as you will see below:

Those drawn 1 or 2 have a clear edge over the rest of the stall positions. Between those two berths, they have accounted for 40 winners from 128 races (31.3% of all races). Further, their PRB figures are a very high 56% (horses drawn 1) and 58% (drawn 2). Finally on these two draws, they have combined to make a small profit to SP of £23.09 which equates to nearly 10p profit for every £1 bet.

Chelmsford City Racecourse 6 furlong Draw Bias

Moving up a furlong to six furlongs, the win percentages across the three thirds are very even (low 36.1%; middle 30.7%; high 33.2%). However, the PRB figures suggest the lowest third does retain some sort of an edge:

Likewise combining win and placed results suggest this small edge does exist:

All in all, given the choice, I’d rather be drawn very low than middle to high over 6f.

Chelmsford City Racecourse 7 furlong Draw Bias

The low third come out slightly better at this distance, too, with the PRB for the low third (inside draws) standing at 0.53 (53% of rivals beaten) versus the high third’s figure of 0.46 (46%). Anything above 0.55 is a material positive bias while anything below 0.45 is a negative bias.

Chelmsford City Racecourse 1 Mile Draw Bias

In my recent series of articles on draw bias, this mile trip was highlighted as having a relatively strong bias. Here are the draw splits in terms of win percentages:

Perhaps it's because mile races start in a chute and they race almost directly into a dogleg bend that figures are similar to the 5f statistics at this range, as are the PRB figures:

It seems therefore that over 5f and 1m - the two distances where the field races very quickly into a bend - we have a playable draw bias, albeit perhaps not of Chester proportions. Essentially over these two trips (and to a lesser extent over 6f and 7f), we would prefer a lower draw than a middle or high one. And especially if combined with a forward going run style.

For the remainder of this article I will be using all race data, not just 8+ runner handicaps.

Top Trainers at Chelmsford Racecourse

I have delved into trainer stats quite a lot recently and the advantage of all-weather tracks, from a punting perspective, is that each year there is a huge number of meetings. This gives a bigger data set and, when it comes to trainer stats, I think that is very important. There are 93 trainers who saddled 70 or more runners during the study period and here are the top 15 in terms of win strike rate. As I mentioned, this incorporates ALL races, both handicaps and non handicaps:

John Gosden at Chelmsford Racecourse

Five of the 15 trainers in the table have been profitable to SP. Seven have A/E indices in excess of 1.00, indicating that their runners have offer bettors some value. It is worth looking at a couple of these handlers in more detail, starting with the Gosden stable. Here are John's (and, more recently, with his son Thady) most noteworthy stats:

Older horses (aged 4+) have provided ten winners from 22 (SR 45.5%) for a small profit of £5.17 (and a large ROI +23.5%).
Horses priced 5/1 or shorter have produced a win% strike rate of 33.7% thanks to 67 winners from 199 runners. Backing all such runners would have yielded a small profit of £13.26 (ROI +6.7%). Compare this to horses 11/2 or bigger in price, where only two of the 79 runners won, producing disastrous losses of nearly 80 pence in the £.
Frankie Dettori on Gosden runners at Chelmsford has won on 13 of his 26 mounts. How often they'll combine this winter remains to be seen, however.
Gosden’s front runners have won 36.5% of their races, while those held up have won just 15.6%.

Richard Hughes at Chelmsford Racecourse

Richard Hughes has a very solid looking record with a one-in-five win ratio and an A/E index of 1.22. In fact, Hughes has been extremely consistent and this can be illustrated by comparing his A/E indices each year (see graph below):

All six years have been above the magic 1.00 figure. He looks a trainer to potentially follow at the course. Here are some of Hughes's strongest snippets:

His record in handicaps is very good – 39 winners from 169 (SR 23.1%) for a very healthy profit of £73.29 (ROI +43.4%).
Hughes is happy to put a claiming jockey on board his runners and they have performed marginally better than professional jockeys, with 19 wins from 84 (SR 22.6%) producing returns of 36p in the £.
His biggest priced winner was 22/1 and he has had an even spread of winners across the price ranges. Horses priced 5/1 or shorter have been a good group for him, as with the Gosden stable; 36 wins from 117 runners (SR 30.8%) for a profit of £21.36 (ROI +18.3%).

Trainers to Beware at Chelmsford Racecourse

Before moving on, here are the trainers with the poorest win strike rates ( all below 7%). It is always worth being aware of trainers that struggle under certain circumstances:

It is interesting to see Richard Fahey in this list. Fahey is not usually a trainer seen this low down the pecking order, and it is not a short trip from North Yorkshire to the Essex showgrounds. Worryingly, he has had 56 runners that started in the top four of the betting and only six of them won. These runners would have produced losses of over 56 pence in the £.

Other notable names in the list are George Boughey and Robert Eddery, both of whose A/E figures are very weak.

Gender bias at Chelmsford Racecourse?

There has always been a slight gender bias when it comes to flat racing with male horses out-performing females. This bias has traditionally been slightly more pronounced in all-weather racing as compared to the turf. For whatever reason, it may not be as strong now as 15 to 20 years ago, but it does still exist, including at Chelmsford, as the table below indicates.

The differences may look relatively modest, but they are significant enough that we, as punters, should be aware of them. A lower strike rate would be forgiven in exchange for a higher ROI but, as can be seen, all data are less appealing than the male cohort. Additionally, when we break this data down further by age group we get the following:

Colts and geldings clearly outperform fillies at 2, 3 and 4 years old but, as the horses get older, it seems to level out.

The A/E indices back this up with excellent correlation with the strike rates:

It will be fascinating to see if any of the other courses display a similar pattern when it comes to age and gender.

Market factors at Chelmsford Racecourse

As we know the betting market is extremely efficient and favourites, for example, have a similar strike rate across all courses. Having said that, there are some differences that will become apparent over this series of individual racetrack articles. Let’s examine Chelmsford in more detail from a market perspective.

Firstly let me take a look at the win strike rates for different positions in the betting; starting with favourites and moving down to position 8^th or lower:

A sliding scale, as one would expect, but the win percentage for favourites is slightly higher than the average for all flat courses (34.21% compared with an overall average of just under 33%). This graph also shows how rare it is for outsiders to be successful: those outside of the top five in the market have collectively won less than once every nine races; or, put another way, the top five in the betting win eight out of every nine races at Chelmsford on average.

A look at the A/E indices now:

The value clearly lies with the top two in the betting at Chelmsford, or has done so during the period of study at least. Favourites lost just 4p in the £ to SP and actually made a small profit to Betfair SP.

Two-year-old favourites have the best strike rate of all age groups at just under 41% and they have made a small profit of 4p in the £ to SP, though this may simply be coincidence. That said, if you singled out 2yo favourites that were also top rated on the Peter May speed ratings (published here on geegeez and available to research in Query Tool) you would have had 102 qualifiers, of which 48 won (SR 47.1%) for a healthy profit of £24.33 (ROI +23.9%). For the record, all 300 2yos that topped the speed ratings (regardless of market rank) also made a small blind profit which is impressive.

Before leaving the market / price data section, it should be noted that huge prices have a dismal record at the course. There have been 1969 horses priced 50/1 or bigger and just eight have won. Losses of £1445 would have occurred if backing them, which equates to over 73p in every 3 bet.

Who Are The Best Sires at Chelmsford City Racecourse?

A look at performance by sire at Chelmsford now. Here are the top ten sires in terms of strike rate since 2017 (150 runs or more to qualify):

The top two in the list, Dubawi and Lope De Vega, edged into profit but both have had a big-priced winner which has skewed their stats (Dubawi at 40/1 and Lope De Vega at 33/1). Three of the ten have A/E indices above 1.00, with four more just below that figure. These seven sires - Lope De Vega, Oasis Dream, Dark Angel, Lethal Force, Mastercraftsman, Dutch Art and Showcasing – are worth scrutinising when researching a race at Chelmsford. One other sire, not listed in the table above, has an A/E index of over 1.00 and that is Swiss Spirit. His figure of 1.02 is clearly decent (overall win strike rate stands at 10.7%) and he's another worth looking out for.

A sire that did not make the list due to insufficient progeny runs is Frankel. His record, though, is also worth sharing as he has hit a strike rate of 21.3% thanks to 27 winners from 127 runners.

I also looked briefly at the damsire data and remarkably, and perhaps significantly, Dubawi had the highest strike rate there, too (at 15.9%). Only two damsires have A/E indices of over 1.00 and they are Rock of Gibraltar (1.28) and Danehill (1.11).

Chelmsford Racecourse Horses for courses

Let me finish by looking at some horses that have excelled at Chelmsford since 2017. To qualify for the list they must have won at least four races at the track with a strike rate of 25% or more. Also they must have raced somewhere in the UK in 2022. Here are the horses that qualify. I have included a PRB column, too (Percentage of rivals beaten):

Krazy Paving, who heads the list, has also been placed a further three times at the track. Furthermore, he has the highest PRB figure, an impressive 0.81. Any horse in that list appearing at Chelmsford in the next few months is definitely worth at least a cursory glance, especially those with the highest PRB figures.

We all know racing is not a simple game – there is no easy shortcut to making long term profits. But I hope the statistics shared in this piece of research will be an aid to you when tackling races at Chelmsford in the near future. Please share any big successes with us in the future – my cut is only 25%! 😉

- DR

Trainers with older runners (4 and up)

29 August 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

In this sixth and final piece in the trainer performance by age jigsaw, I will be looking at the how trainers have fared with their with older runners, specifically those aged four and upwards. As with the previous articles in the series I have used UK flat racing data from 1^st January 2016 to 31^st December 2021 giving us six full seasons to examine. The results include turf and all weather racing.

I have used the Geegeez Query Tool once more for all data analysis, and all profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price, although as we know these figures will be improved using either BOG, early prices or the exchanges.

Let us start by specifically looking at trainer performance with four-year-olds only.

General trainer performance with 4yo runners

Many top trainers lose their stable stars at the end of their 3yo campaign, usually to stud or to race overseas, but a few top quality animals continue domestically into their fourth year. Here are the top 20 trainers in terms of strike rate with their 4yo runners (minimum 150 runs). The data include both handicap and non-handicaps. It should be noted that the vast majority of races that 4yos compete in are handicaps:

There is a smattering of profitable trainers here; six to be exact. This includes the Gosden stable, and they have also secured the highest win strike rate. Nine of the 20 have achieved an A/E index of 1.00 or more suggesting that their runners have been good value as a whole. While on the subject of A/E indices, here are the remaining trainers who have achieved an A/E index of over 1.00.

That's another 15 trainers, making 24 in total. The chart includes several names we have not seen too often before and I would put many of these in the underrated trainer category.

Before digging into some of the individual trainers in more detail I want to look at a different measure of 4yo performance. To wit, I am going to focus on the top ten trainers in the table and look at the percentage of their runners that won at least one race as a 4yo. The reason for doing this is that some trainer figures can be skewed a little if they have winners of multiple races in their yard. To calculate this we take the number of a trainer’s 4yos that won at least once as a 4yo and divide it by all the horses that ran as a 4yo; that gives a decimal and then we multiply it by 100 to give the percentage. Here are the findings:

Four trainers have secured percentages in excess of 50% with Chris Dwyer hitting a very impressive 75%. It should be noted Dwyer has only had 24 individual 4yo runners in total but for 18 of them to win at least once is very impressive. Of the six that didn’t manage a win as a 4yo, five made the frame at least once. William Haggas is close to the 60% mark which, considering he has saddled 126 four-year-olds in the study period, is impressive. At the other end of the scale, Charlie Appleby’s and Team Crisford’s figures are lower than expected.

Now, of course, these figures could also be skewed if several 4yos in a stable have run just once or twice in the season. However, looking at the overall data, most trainers have similar spreads when it comes to number of runs for their horses.

Individual Trainer Performance with Four-Year-Olds

Moving back to individual trainers and their overall performance, let me drill down first into the performance of John and Thady Gosden. Here are some key stats:

If you had backed all Gosden 4yo runners at Betfair SP the profit would stand at £73.24 equating to returns of 18p in the £.
Their female 4yo runners have performed exceptionally well with 36 wins from 126 runs (SR 28.6%) for a profit of £54.97 (ROI +43.6%).
In Group 1 races, the Gosdens have saddled 12 winners from 48 for an excellent 1 in 4 strike rate; in Group 2 contests this improves to 15 wins from 43 (SR 34.9%) showing a profit of £32.66 (ROI 76.0%).
The best performances have been at distances of 1m2f or more where they have secured a 26% strike rate and returns of 9p in the £.

The Gosden stable has shown good consistency with their 4yos and this is illustrated when looking at their performance at different courses. Their win SR% are shown below (minimum 15 runs):

All tracks bar Newmarket have figures of 20% or higher. Chelmsford is a clear leader thanks to 7 wins from 16.

A look at William Haggas now and his strongest stats:

Amazingly, his male and female runners have hit exactly the same win strike rate% of 21.4%.
4yos that have started favourite for Haggas have delivered with 65 wins from 174 runners (SR 37.4%) for a profit of £21.77 (ROI +12.5%). His second favourites have also proved profitable returning just under 15p in the £ from a 23.5% strike rate.
Haggas is not one for sending 4yo runners to the front that often but when he does they have won 34% of their races (17 wins from 50).
He has struggled a little at the very elite level with 0 winners from 19 in Group 1 races, although five did place. He has a better record when the level drops to Class 3 races or below; here he has secured 56 wins from 176 (SR 31.8%) for a healthy profit of £37.41 (ROI +21.3%).

Onto a few of the other trainers now and their strongest stats:

Grant Tuer is an impressive 24 from 44 (SR 54.5%) with favourites. Backing all of them would have seen a profit of £26.97 (ROI 61.2%).
Sir Michael Stoute has an excellent record on the all weather – 26 wins from 70 runners (SR 37.1%) producing returns of 24p in the £.
Saeed bin Suroor has made a small 5p in the £ profit with horses priced 8/1 or shorter. Longer priced runners (above 8/1) have lost over 64p in the £ due to just 2 winners from 88.
Chris Dwyer has saddled 12 winners from 46 runners when using 3lb claiming jockeys. They have produced a profit of £43.88 (ROI 95.4%). Also it should be noted that seven different 3lb claimers have secured at least one win. Hence these figures are not skewed by one jockey.
William Knight has a decent record on the all weather hitting a win rate of slightly better than 1 win in 5. He is 8 from 18 at Wolves and 5 from 11 at Newcastle.

Individual Trainer Performance with Five-Year-Olds and upwards

Moving up in age now let's look at all runners aged five and older. Only trainers with 200+ runs have been considered. Here are the top 20 in terms of win strike rate:

As we get into the realms of more exposed and generally less elite horses, we see quite a few new trainers on the list when compared to previous tables in this series of articles. Making a profit however, is hard to come by as one would expect. Just two trainers were in profit at SP across the six year period, and both were barely in profit at that. It is, however, good to see ten trainers with A/E indices of 1.00 or more, implying they might offer value.

Roger Varian leads the table but he has made significant losses of around 32p in the £.

John Quinn has the best record as far as returns are concerned and these are some of his stronger stats:

Quinn has made all his profits in turf races (returns of 16p in £). In all weather races he has had losses of 30p in the £.
Shorter distances of 7f or less have produced the best overall performances with 48 wins from 256 runners (SR 18.8%) for a profit of £71.62 (ROI +28.0%).
He has a 23% strike rate in non-handicaps; 11% in handicaps.
Jockey Jason Hart has ridden over half of Quinn’s older runners securing a return of 16p in the £ over 260 rides.

It needs to be appreciated that horses aged five and older, especially handicappers, are typically not going to be the most consistent animals. Although if we look at Quinn’s yearly win strike rates they are all similar except for 2021, where his runners probably over-performed compared with previous seasons:

I thought it may be interesting to compare trainer performance when we split the older runners into two age bands – 4yos & 5yos, and 6yos and older - comparing Win% (SR%), A/E indices and Impact Values. To qualify a trainer needed at least 100 runners in each age band.

The right hand columns compare the 4 & 5yo Win% data with the 6yo+ Win% data by creating a ratio of one to the other. The greater the number above 1.00, the more 4 & 5yos are favoured; the smaller the number below 1.00, the more 6yos and older are favoured. Any A/E value of 1.00 or more has been highlighted in blue. I have also highlighted any win ratio of 1.4 and above or 0.7 and below. These ratios help to highlight where there is a significant difference in the Win SR%:

It is worth noting that both Derek Shaw and Rebecca Menzies have achieved A/E indices of 1.00 or more in both age bands. That is high achieving in this context. William Knight was close also with figures of 1.1 and 0.99. Meanwhile, Jane Chapple-Hyam’s strike rate for four- and five-year-olds is double that of her six-year-old and up group. She is the only trainer to attain a win ratio% of over 2.

And that brings the final curtain down on this trainer series. Hopefully you have found some nuggets within the six ‘episodes’ that will aid your betting and produce some additional profits. For me, it’s time to start some new research on a different aspect of racing. Until then, you'll find links to the other five articles below; and may I wish you the very best of luck with your punting.

- DR

Trainers with Three-Year-Old Runners, Part 2

22 August 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the fifth article in a series where I have been digging into the performance of trainers' runners of specific ages over the past few seasons, writes Dave Renham. I have used UK race data from 1^st January 2016 to 31^st December 2021 giving us six full seasons to examine.

My focus in this second part of the series is on three-year-old (3yo) runners and, following on from my previous piece, I have used the Geegeez Query Tool for all of the number crunching. All profits / losses have been calculated at Industry Starting Price. I appreciate most punters do not use SP these days as many (quite rightly) take advantage of early prices, Best Odds Guaranteed and / or the exchanges.

I looked in depth at non-handicap data last time; this time the focus is three-year-old runners in handicap races. Note, these could be three-year-old only or three-year-old and up handicaps.

All 3yo runners in handicaps

To start with let us overview all 3yo runners in handicaps before breaking the data down.

Here are the top 20 trainers in terms of strike rate with their 3yos in handicaps (minimum 150 runs):

Many of the usual suspects appear in the list but there are a few names - such as Chris Wall, Ron Harris and Heather Main - we have not seen prominently before. Eight of the 20 are in profit, which is surprising, but it will be interesting to see which of the profitable trainers have skewed figures due to one or two big-priced winners. In order to see whether this has been the case, the below table shows these eight trainers when their runners returned 8/1 or shorter. This takes any outliers out of the equation. Here are the figures:

Four of the eight have remained profitable, while three of the others were profitable to Betfair SP, with only Clive Cox remaining in the negative. Here are some individual highlights:

Owen Burrows has a good record with his 3yo handicappers who are in the top three of the betting – 39 wins from 124 runs (SR 31.5%) for a profit of £39.73 (ROI +32.0%).
Sir Mark Prescott has a decent record when using claiming jockeys. 13 wins from 43 (SR 30.2%) for a small profit of £9.94 (ROI +23.1%). His 3yo handicappers that wear cheekpieces have a surprisingly good record, too. 46 wins from 154 runners which equates to a win strike rate of just under 30%. They have returned an impressive 25p in the £.
Marcus Tregoning has performed considerably better with male 3yo handicappers as compared to female ones. His male runners have won over 21% of their races; his female runners have won less than 10%. The each way figures are equally skewed (42% versus 27%). Tregoning has also done well with favourites, scoring 21 times from 51 (SR 41.2%) for a profit of £18.54 (ROI 36.4%).
It looks best to ignore Charlie Fellowes if he is using a claiming jockey as only 2 of 37 such runners have won. On a more positive note, in the better handicap races of class 2 to 4 he has hit a 20.8% win strike rate for a profit of £137.48 (ROI +94.5%).
Ron Harris and front runners have been a potent combination thanks to 27 wins from 81 runners. Compare his win strike rates for the different run style groups below:

A 3yo front-running handicapper for Harris is a horse we ought to be on!

In terms of A/E indices there are 19 trainers who have managed a figure of 1.00 or more (150 runs or more). They are shown in the graph below:

A/E, actual versus expected, is a measure of the value proposition of a 'thing', with a figure greater than 1 considered a plus. You can read more about it (and all the geegeez metrics) here.

These trainers have offered good value over the past six seasons with their 3yo handicappers. 11 of the 19 have secured profits to Industry SP; 14 were profitable to BSP. Ron Harris has the highest A/E value, at 1.31, followed by Roger Teal (1.26) and George Margarson (1.25). It's always good to see some new trainers, especially less familiar ones, on this list. Teal has a notably good record with favourites (8 wins from 19) for a 56p in the £ return, while Margarson, when teaming up with jockey Jane Elliott, has secured 14 wins from 62 for an outstanding return of 144p in the £.

Handicap races broken down by distance

Now let's break down trainer 3yo handicap runner performance by distance. I am going to look at sprint distances first.

3yos in handicaps over 5 to 6 furlongs

In the table below I have restricted it to trainers who have had a minimum of 75 runs or more, with the top ten in terms of strike rate shown:

Ed Walker tops the table so let's start with him in terms of some additional sprint handicap stats to share:

All bar one of Ed Walker’s winners have returned single figure prices. His record therefore with horses priced 9/1 or shorter has been impressive – 38 wins from 146 (SR 26.0%) for a profit of £52.93 (ROI +36.3%).
Ron Harris has secured a 22.5% win strike rate over 5f, but this drops markedly to 13.3% over 6f. Nevertheless, he has been profitable to follow over both sprint trips.
Amy Murphy has an outstanding record with her fillies (female runners). She has had 12 wins from 48 runners (SR 25.0%) for a profit of £56.37 (ROI +117.4%).
Andrew Balding’s runners have done well when they have been fancied. Combining his favourites and second favourites has produced 21 winners from 65 runners (SR 32.3%) for a healthy profit of £29.86 (ROI +45.9%).

3yos in handicaps over 7f to 1 mile

Onto 7f to 1 mile races next – here is a bar chart showing the trainers with the highest win strike rates:

At these Classic type distances, we're back to some of the biggest hitting trainers here and there are some strong individual stats to mention:

The Gosden team have visited Yarmouth a dozen times with their 7f-1m 3yo handicappers and a remarkable eight have won.
All 28 of Charlie Appleby’s winners were priced 8/1 or shorter. He is 0 from 18 (2 placed) from runners bigger than 8/1. Also his higher weighted runners (9st 1lb or more) have done well, with 27 wins from 84 (SR 32.1%) and a profit of £17.49 (ROI +20.8%).
William Haggas has made steady returns of 9p in the £ with horses first or second in the betting.
Andrew Balding has done well with his shorter priced runners. Those priced 3/1 or shorter have seen 41 wins from 108 (SR 38.0%) for a profit of £13.35 (ROI +12.4%).
Clive Cox has an excellent record with favourites – 30 wins from 74 (SR 40.5%) for a profit of £20.61 (ROI +27.9%).

3yos in handicaps of 1m 1f to 1m 2f

Let’s check out the stats for 9 and 10 furlong handicap races now. A look at the top ten trainers in terms of win strike rate:

There are some impressive strike rates for handicap races with all ten trainers in the table hitting at over 18%. Four of the ten are in profit including the big guns of Stoute, Charlton and bin Suroor, while six have A/E indices of 1.00 or more.

It is worth noting that the Charlton stable has been profitable in five of the six seasons which shows excellent consistency. They have also managed a yearly strike rate of 19% on five occasions. Despite Saeed bin Suroor’s positive record, the last two seasons have been poor for him with just a single win from 20 starters in this distance range.

There are three trainers (Johnston, Hannon and Fahey) that have had over 400 qualifiers but their strike rates were not good enough to make the top 10. For the record here are those volume trainers' figures:

All three are well off overall profitability. However, Richard Fahey has done well with fancied runners over these trips. His first and second favourites have produced 27 winners from 82 (SR 32.9%) for a profit of £28.17 (ROI +34.3%).

3yos in handicaps of 1m 3f to 1m 4f

The final distance group to check out is 1m 3f to 1m 4f, as races of 1m 5f or more offers only a modest dataset with which to work. The top ten are shown below along with their strike rates:

A bigger proportion of these trainers are in profit with seven managing positive figures and it's good to see Marco Botti, William Knight and Alan King getting into the top 10 to freshen things up a little. A look at their A/E indices and Impact Values now:

Seven of the ten have A/E indices over 1.00 which is excellent, and with reasonable correlation, too.

Distance comparison – individual trainers

I thought it would be useful to end this article by comparing individual trainer strike rates across the four distance groups. To qualify for a figure, each trainer needs to have had at least 60 3yo handicap runners in the relevant distance group. Trainers that have had enough runners in at least three of the four distance ranges are shown. Hence any gaps simply mean that trainer did not have 60 or more runners in the distance group. The table is also colour coded with strike rates of 20% or more in red (hot); strike rates of under 10% in blue (cold) :

William Haggas is the only trainer to have secured a strike rate of over 20% in all four distance groups. Sir Mark Prescott has achieved that in three of the groups.

It is interesting to compare trainers in this way with some very consistent figures across the board (for example, Charlie Hills and Michael Bell); others vary quite a bit – William Knight, Alan King and Marco Botti being three who have both red and blue figures.

Few handicap races are easy puzzles to solve, and many 3yo runners are still developing and looking for their optimum distance. I hope the trainer statistics in this article help to point you in the right direction.

The final piece in this series will look at trainer performance with older runners. Until then...

- DR

Trainers with Three-Year-Old Runners, Part 1

15 August 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the fourth article in a series where I have been examining the performance of trainers with certain age groups of horses over the past few seasons, writes Dave Renham. Data for these articles have been collated from 1^st January 2016 to 31^st December 2021 giving six full seasons to examine (UK racing only).

For this piece my focus will be three year old (3yo) runners and I have used the Geegeez Query Tool as the sole tool to gather the data. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. Of course, as punters we should be able to significantly improve upon these figures by using early prices, Best Odds Guaranteed and / or the exchanges.

3yos have a special place in UK flat racing as this is the age in which they contest the ‘Classics’: the 1000 & 2000 Guineas, the Oaks, the Derby and the St Leger. Hence, one of the primary focuses for several trainers is their 3 year old battalion. As a result, one might expect trainers to use similar methods, strategies and plans each season with their 3yos. Thus, as punters, we may - I hope! - be able to exploit some patterns.

All 3yo runners

First, let me look at all 3yo runners before breaking the data down. Three-year-olds may race in 3yo only races and also in 3yo+ races where they will typically take on older, more experienced runners. Both race types are included in the data below.

Here are the top 20 trainers in terms of strike rate with their 3yos (minimum 150 runs):

It is worth noting that 16 of these twenty trainers were in the top 20 strike rates for their full 2yo race records during this six -year period (see article 1). Moreover, if I had ordered the table by Impact Value, 19 of the twenty would have remained in the list; only David Simcock would not have made it. Just two of the twenty have made a blind profit to SP but, considering how many runners they have had, this should come as no surprise. If we consider Betfair SP, then nine of the twenty would have been profitable to follow.

Charlie Appleby tops the table in terms of strike rate, just as he did with his 2yos. The Godolphin operation, for whom he works, continues to be such a powerful entity, churning out quality runners year in year out. Let's dig down into his 3yo data set:

Every year has seen a win strike rate of better than 20%, with the last four seasons all above 25%. There's good consistency there, and when we look at his yearly A/E indices we see a similar pattern:

Figures of 1.00 or more indicate good value selections and in three of the six years Appleby has managed that.

We saw in the first two-year-old article that, in terms of the sex of Appleby’s 2yo runners, he has been more successful with male runners than female runners. This has been replicated with his 3yos as the table below shows:

It should be said that the master of Moulton Paddocks has run many more male 3yos than female ones but, even so, the figures show that his male runners are the ones on which to concentrate: a return of 9p in the £ to SP is excellent.

It is also worth looking at the records of the three jockeys who primarily ride for Appleby:

William Buick is the main jockey used and his record is outstanding with a win strike rate edging towards 30%, and decent returns of 18p in the £ to boot. Buick has been amazing from the front on Appleby 3yos: when he has gone into an early lead he has won an incredible 36 races from just 73 rides, just shy of a 50% strike rate!

Adam Kirby’s record is also impressive; indeed last season (2021) he had 19 rides of which 10 won (SR 52.6%). James Doyle’s figures are a little below the other two, but are still extremely solid.

Sir Mark Prescott comes into his own with his 3yo runners. His overall strike rate with the Classic generation is more than three times higher than with his 2yos, the younger age group having a win SR% of a measly 7.3%. Similar to Charlie Appleby, there is a big difference between his male and female runners. In fact, it is even more stark as the table below shows:

A strike rate differential of over 10% between the two is enormous: in relative terms Sir Mark's colts and geldings perform 55% better than his fillies.

Prescott’s 3yos also have a good record when they front run, recording a 37% strike rate overall. It is interesting to note that this Win SR% increases to over 42% with 3yo front runners racing over distances of a mile and half or more. Here, he has secured 32 wins from 75 starters. We know from previous articles that win percentages for front runners are higher at shorter distances so these figures for horses racing at long distances are quite remarkable.

Anyone who knows about Sir Mark Prescott will not be surprised by the following comparison between his handicappers and non-handicappers:

Prescott’s three-year-old handicap runners win more than twice as often as his non handicappers - 27% vs 13% - and there is a similar pattern when you compare the each way strike rates. His handicappers have essentially broken even at starting price and would have returned just under 10 pence in the £ if using BSP.

Another stat which I am very impressed with is that 57% of all Prescott’s 3yo horses that have raced in handicaps won at least one race. Further, 13 horses managed to win four or more times! Prescott is the undisputed master at getting multiple wins out of his 3yos.

Before moving on here are some other 3yo stats for individual trainers which caught my eye:

William Haggas has an excellent record at the distance of 1 mile 4 furlongs. He has saddled 226 runners over this distance of which 82 have won (SR 36.3%). Backing all runners would have secured a tidy £55.41 profit (ROI +24.5%). His A/E index in this context stands at a hugely eye-catching 1.26.
Owen Burrows has a good record with 3yos in handicaps with horses near the top of the weights. Those carrying 9st 4lb or more have produced 28 winners from 103 runners (SR 27.2%) for a profit of £37.15 (ROI +36.1%).
Clive Cox and William Haggas are the only two trainers from the top 20 who have secured a profit with their runners sent off as favourite.
Saeed bin Suroor is not one to back at bigger prices. His runners priced 12/1 or bigger have produced just one score from 105 runners.
The Gosden stable has secured a 20% win strike rate in Group 1 races, which is excellent considering this is the top level of racing. If you restrict Gosden runners to those that started 8/1 or shorter, the record improves to 14 wins from 44 (SR 31.8%) for a profit of £9.71 (ROI +22.1%).

Non-handicaps versus handicaps

Up to this point I have not split the data between non-handicaps and handicaps. In my next article, I will look at some of the 3yo handicap data, so for the rest of this piece I will concentrate on non-handicap races only.

Non-handicaps races broken down by distance

As we saw back during the first article in the series, 2yos have a ceiling in terms of the maximum distance over which they can race in the UK. However, with an extra year on their backs, 3yos are able to run further than 2yos, although - in overall terms - they rarely run further than a mile and a half. In fact, a mere 2% or so of all 3yos race in non-handicaps of 1m5f or more. Around 85% of all 3yo non-handicap runners race at 1m2f or less, with the highest proportion of these over 7 furlongs and 1 mile.

It's time to break trainer 3yo non-handicap performance down by distance. I am going to look at sprint distances first.

3yos in non handicaps over 5 to 6 furlongs

In the table below I have restricted it to trainers who have had a minimum of 60 runs or more, which actually only gives me 26 trainers in total. Hence with this number of trainers it makes sense to give the data for all of them:

It is interesting that Irish maestro Aidan O’Brien lurks at the bottom of the list with a win SR% of below 5%. Additionally, there are a few different trainers from those who normally appear in our 'top xx' lists which is good to see. Specifically, none of the following trainers had enough runners to qualify: Charlie Appleby, Saeed bin Suroor, Sir Michael Stoute, and/or the Gosden and Charlton stables. These trainers tend to target bigger prizes with their 3yos which are generally contested over longer distances.

When we look at the A/E indices, 12 of the 26 trainer have hit 1.00 or bigger – these trainers have essentially been good value to follow over this six year period with their non handicap sprinters.

Roger Varian tops the table in terms of strike rate, recording an impressive 35.79%, and he has made a decent profit with them, too. Varian is six from ten at Salisbury and six from 11 when sending these runners to Doncaster. He has also secured a win strike rate of better than 25% in five of the six seasons. In terms of starting prices, Roger has had only one double digit winner (12/1) while 28 of his 34 winners have been priced 5/2 or shorter.

David Simcock is second on the list in terms of win% and, when his horses start favourite, they have performed extremely well – 12 wins from 20 starters (SR 60%) for a profit of £10.63 (ROI +53.2%).

Before moving on, there are some interesting Running Style snippets to share with you. As regular Geegeez readers will know, I am a big fan of front runners, especially over the shorter distances, and certain trainers have excelled with such runners in 3yo non-handicaps over 5 and 6 furlongs. This is especially true when we compare performance to their record with hold up horses in the same cohort of races. The graph below shows a group of trainers and compares the two strike rates – the blue bar is SR% for front runners (early leaders); the orange bar is the SR% for hold up horses.

There are some massive differences here; yes, the sample sizes are modest but the figures are striking nonetheless. Clearly if one of these trainers saddles a 3yo in a 5-6f non handicap, you would prefer it to go straight to the front. If it does, its chances of winning seem to be massively increased.

3yos in non-handicaps over 7f to 1 mile

Let's now move on to 7f and 1 mile contests; this is the biggest data set we have in terms of the distance splits. This time, I have used 75 runs as a minimum to qualify and these are the top 15 trainers by strike rate first:

Some of the bigger stables now begin to show their hand although, as can be seen, it has been hard to make a profit to Industry SP. Just the two trainers (Saeed bin Suroor and Archie Watson) have exceeded 1.00 with their A/E indices. As a consequence, there are not that many positive trainer stats to dig up with this top performing group's miler(ish) 3yo non-handicappers, but here are a few that I thought were notable:

The Gosden stable has secured a 46.5% win strike with front runners in 7f-1m non handicaps – 53 winners from 114 runners; they have also managed a 1 in 3 win rate in all-weather races producing a small profit of £2.75.
When William Haggas has booked the services of jockey Jim Crowley, they have combined to win 19 out of 36 races (SR 52.8%) for a profit of £14.35 (ROI +39.9%).
Saeed bin Suroor has a good record with favourites in these races; 41 wins from 74 (SR 55.4%) for a small profit of £5.70 (ROI +7.7%).
Charlie Appleby has saddled just one winner sent off bigger than 7/1 from 35 runners. As ever it seems best to stick to his more fancied runners.

3yos in non-handicaps of 1m1f to 1m2f

Let’s check out the stats for nine- and ten-furlong three-year-old non-handicap races now. First a look at the top ten trainers in terms of win strike rate:

Charlie Appleby edges over the 30% wins to runs mark which is mightily impressive. His runners have made a good profit to Industry SP, returning nearly 14 pence in the £. He is the only one of the top 10 in profit, though the Gosden, Johnston and Varian stables would have sneaked into the black using Betfair SP.

A look at their A/E indices and Impact Values now:

The Impact Values correlate well with strike rates as you would expect; in terms of A/E indices, only Hugo Palmer has a poor figure at 0.79; Charlie Appleby hits the magic 1.00 mark, while Messrs. Gosden, Haggas, Varian, and Balding are all above average (over 0.90).

3yos in non-handicaps of 1m3f to 1m4f

The final distance group to check out is 1m3f to 1m4f, because - as previously mentioned - races of 1m 5f or more offers very little data with which to work. At this distance group (around a mile and a half), the data set is relatively modest so in the table below I am sharing all trainers that have saddled at least 70 3yos in these non-handicap events. They are ordered once again by win strike rate:

The records of the Haggas, Appleby and Gosden stable are particularly impressive at first glance. For the record, Hugo Palmer’s bottom line is skewed somewhat because he saddled a 66/1 winner (Morning Beauty at Haydock in 2018). He has also had big winners at 20/1 and 25/1.

Charlie Appleby has made huge profits and, with no winners returned greater than 16/1, his record is not badly skewed like Palmer's. Meanwhile, the longest priced winner for William Haggas was just 7/1; he is 0 from 22 with runner 15/2 or bigger. With horses 7/1 or shorter his returns stand at 34p in the £ which is highly impressive. The Gosden stable has struck with close to 55% of their favourites in 3yo non-handicaps over 1m3f-1m4f and produced a very small profit; furthermore, their record on the all-weather again sees Team Gosden hit an impressive win strike rate, at 38.3%.

Final Words

There is quite a bit of detail in this article to sink your teeth into. More than that, I hope it has given readers the incentive to personally dig deeper into different trainer records in 3yo non-handicaps. By using the Geegeez Query Tool you can extend this research to look at more specific ideas within the initial parameters that I have looked at. Once you've added the basic rules to the QT filters, see image below, it will take you literally seconds to check your ideas.

Please post any useful findings in the comments below. For me, it is time to research the follow up to this piece.

- DR

Trainers in Two-Year-Old Races, Part 2

25 July 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the second in a new series of articles where I will examine the performance of trainers over the past few seasons, writes Dave Renham. Throughout the series, I will be using data from 1^st January 2016 to 31^st December 2021 giving us six full seasons to examine (UK racing only). All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price using £1 level stakes. Therefore these figures could be readily improved by using early prices, Best Odds Guaranteed and / or the exchanges.

In the first article of the series I looked at trainers in two-year-old (2yo) races, drilling down into non-handicaps and looking at how the distance of the race affected the results of individual trainers. In this piece I am going to examine course stats and annual breakdowns across all 2yo races, and then I will look specifically at 2yo handicaps. Once again I have used the Geegeez Query Tool as the sole tool for my data crunching.

Course statistics (All 2yo races)

First, then, let's delve into some 2yo trainer course stats. Below is a table of trainers who have achieved a strike rate of 20% or more and produced a profit to Industry SP. To qualify they needed to have at least 35 runners in the six-year period:

There is a good mix of trainers here; in fact we have 19 different handlers in total. Two appear three times each, the Johnstons and Karl Burke. There were a few other trainer course stats that were close to making it on the main list but just missed out. This was due to either not having quite enough runners, or the strike rate was just below the 20% benchmark I had set. However, I felt these were still worth sharing in a secondary table:

As can be seen, Archie Watson has made a decent profit at Lingfield on the turf course as well as on the all-weather strip. The Johnston stable appears for a fourth time so let's drill down into the course data in more detail for those most frequently listed trainers:

Charlie & Mark Johnston 2yo Course Stats

What follows are some extra nuggets regarding three of the four 'hot Johnston' courses that have been highlighted already:

At Chelmsford, their favourites have done particularly well with 21 wins from 38 (SR 55.3%) for a profit of £12.50. This equates to returns of just under 33p in the £; A/E index also a strong 1.29; IV is 4.03;

2yos (any odds) that took the early lead at Chelmsford have won 32% of their races (23 wins from 73);

At Bath over 1 mile or further the stable has 7 wins from 20 (SR 35%); over 5 & 6f it is a relatively poor 2 from 19 (SR 10.5%);

Over 1m1f at Epsom the Johnstons (either in tandem or just Mark) have only saddled nine runners but six have won;

Also at Epsom Francis Norton and Silvestre de Sousa both have five wins a piece from just ten and nine Johnston rides respectively.

The Johnston stable race all over the country so I thought it worthwhile looking at their 2yo A/E indices and Impact Values at each course (minimum 30 runs). The graph is split into two separate ones so they don’t get too cluttered:

One of the best things about using graphs like this is that you can judge how well the A/E indices and Impact Values correlate. In this case there is a very strong correlation. Also we can see that the courses that were highlighted earlier (Bath, Chelmsford, Epsom and Yarmouth) are four of the eight courses where the A/E index has exceeded 1.00, the others being Ascot, Newbury, Nottingham and Redcar.

The lower parts of the graph for both A/E indices and IVs show that the Johnston record is less good at Carlisle, Chester, Newcastle, Sandown and Thirsk.

These graphs are relatively easy to produce if you have Microsoft Excel as the data generated from the Query Tool can be copied straight into an excel spreadsheet. Hence you could do this with other trainers and their course stats if you had the inclination. In fact you can compare lots of different data from the Query Tool in this way, which is one of the many reasons why I personally use Geegeez so much.

Karl Burke 2yo Course Stats

We noted earlier that Karl Burke had good enough two-year-old course stats to make the ‘cut’ at three different tracks, so let us look at his ‘all courses’ data; again I am using graphical form but this time sharing Win Strike Rate percentages and Return on Investment. These can be charted in exactly the same way as per the video above but selecting the 'Win %' and 'ROI' columns. Firstly Win SR%s (again using 30 runs minimum to qualify):

There are some considerable course fluctuations, which is the case with the majority of trainers. We know already about Burke's excellent record at Carlisle, Nottingham and Pontefract, but on the flip side he seems to have struggled at Haydock, Newmarket and Redcar in particular. Let’s see how the ROI% graph correlates:

In general the correlation is sound, but the odd big-priced winner does tend to skew the ROI% when compared with the Win SR%. Doncaster has the highest ROI% by far but this is in part due to a 50/1 winner; the Newcastle returns have also been boosted somewhat, this time by a 66/1 winner.

What the Johnston and Burke course data tell us is that performance can vary considerably depending on the course.

Trainer Annual Breakdowns of Win Strike in 2yo races

In the first article in the series I compared Charlie Appleby’s annual 2yo runner breakdown in terms of strike rate. Here I am going to extend this to a further 14 trainers. To qualify, these trainers must have had at least 900 2yo runners in the past six seasons with at least 100 runs per season. This gives us a really solid data set to look at.

I will display the data in two ways; firstly in tabular form to display exact strike rates, and secondly in graphic form.

A look at the table first with the numerical strike rates displayed:

In general these figures look relatively consistent. It is usually easier to discern that by looking at the stats graphically, which I have presented below. Here I have published three trainers on four of the graphs and then two on the final graph.

Each trainer has a relatively level line although Andrew Balding had quite contrasting fortunes in 2016 compared to 2017 (19.72% dropping to 7.94%). Since then he has been much more consistent. We have to remember that each season the trainers get a different crop of 2yos and quality can fluctuate. So, while trainers are likely to have similar ‘types’ that cost similar money, 2yo crops can vary in class and ability.

The Johnston stable have had a couple of lean years by their own high standard in the past two seasons. That said, I’ve just checked this season’s figures to date (up to 18^th July) and their strike rate for 2022 year is currently just under 23%. There seems to have been a small dip in Mick Channon’s results in the past three seasons and the A/E and IV figures back this up. He's currently hitting around the 10% mark in 2022.

Once again the figures for this trio are quite similar year on year. Roger Varian's and Ralph Beckett’s performance is similar but it is worth knowing that Beckett tends to offer punters more value.

It is also worth noting that Richard Fahey is having an outlier of a year to date in 2022. His strike rate, at the time of writing, is up nudging 18% and he has been profitable to the tune of 52p in the £. It will be interesting to see if he maintains this uptick for the rest of this season; statistically, it seems unlikely.

Tim Easterby has plenty of 2yo runners but success has proved hard to come by as can be seen by the green line in the chart above. William Haggas, meanwhile, generally hits close to the 20% mark; 2017 was above average for him whereas 2020 was below par. Tom Dascombe has been a solid performer who could be relied upon to hit around one win in seven on average, but his training career has essentially been reset by the loss of the Manor House Stables retainer - now with Hugo Palmer - and a relocation to Lambourn. He needs to be on the watch list only for the time being.

Richard Hannon and Karl Burke have figures that correlate closely with each other. They are both currently striking at around 14% for the first half of the 2022 season which is the type of performance level one might expect given the graph.

2yo handicaps (nurseries)

2yo handicaps, known as nurseries, begin annually in July and run until the end of the year when, of course, two-year-olds - like all horses - age by a year. Nurseries account for around 20% of all 2yo races in the UK. On average there are approximately 240 such races each year.

Let us first look at all trainers who have had at least 100 runners in nurseries in the past six seasons. I have ordered them by strike rate:

Ralph Beckett tops the list with an excellent overall record. He is close to scoring once in every four nursery races which is top drawer. Messrs. Dascombe, Ryan, Cox, Hills, Dunlop and Tinkler are the only other trainers to be profitable out of the 30 in the list.

Ralph Beckett in 2yo Handicaps

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the Beckett 2yo handicap stats. Here are my key findings:

In five of the six seasons Beckett has achieved a strike rate in excess of 20%, thus showing excellent consistency overall;

He has a much better record with male horses compared to female ones. Male 2yos have secured a strike rate of 29.5% which is roughly double that of his female nursery runners (SR 15.3%);

All Beckett's winners have returned 9/1 or less. Hence we have no big prices skewing these stats. Runners 10/1 or bigger have provided 0 winners from 29 with only two managing to place. Clearly it is best to focus on his more fancied runners;

Keep an eye on the official rating of his 2yos. Those rated 75 or higher have won 26 races from 73 runners (SR 35.2%) for a healthy profit of £43.37 (ROI +59.4%). Those rated 74 or lower have won 9 races from 74 (SR 12.2%) for a loss of £22.67 (ROI -30.6%);

Three courses where he has done particularly well in nurseries are Kempton (7 wins from 23), Newmarket (6 wins from 21), and Lingfield (6 wins from 13).

2yo Handicaps by Race Distance

Lastly, I will break trainer 2yo nursery handicap performance down by distance. I am going to split the distances into two – 5 to 6f (including 6.5f), and 7f to 1m.

The data for 1m 1f or more is too limited to give us anything concrete as only two trainers have had more than 25 runners in the time frame we are looking at. Having said that, it is worth mentioning that Richard Hughes has saddled 12 runners over 1m 1f+ and six have won!

2yo nursery handicaps over 5-6 furlongs

Sprint trips first, those being nurseries over five to six furlongs. In the chart below the top ten trainers in terms of strike rate are shown. I have restricted it to trainers who have had a minimum of 50 runs or more:

Archie Watson is the only trainer to get above the 20% mark although Tom Dascombe, Clive Cox, William Haggas and Kevin Ryan are not far away. Seven of the ten were in profit which is more than I would have thought – Haggas, Karl Burke and Mick Appleby showed losses.

Onto A/E indices now for these ten trainers which helps to show which trainers have proved the best value:

The trainers with the three lowest A/E indices are the three mentioned above that had incurred overall losses. We can see good A/E indices as a group here, however, with eight of the ten hitting over 1.00. Nigel Tinkler's and Rod Millman's figures are particularly impressive – they have proved exceptional value over the past six years in these races.

2yo nursery handicaps - 7 furlongs to 1 mile

Again a look at the top ten trainers in terms of strike rate; again 50 runs is the minimum to qualify:

We can now see more specifically where Beckett excels from a distance perspective. He has made a blind profit of £26.00 (ROI +26.8%) in nurseries over seven furlongs to a mile. Five of the other nine trainers in this cohort have proved profitable also – these being Charlie Hills, Ed Dunlop, Marco Botti, Team Johnston and Keith Dalgleish (who, incidentally, learned his trade as a jockey at Mark Johnston's yard). To be fair, Haggas and Hugo Palmer have lost under 2 pence in the £ which probably still equates to a profit at exchange or early best odds guaranteed prices.

The A/E indices are shown below:

Beckett (1.48) and Hills (1.37) stand out, while Dunlop, Botti, Dascombe and Dalgleish also are above the magic 1.00.

Distance comparison in nursery handicaps – individual trainers

I thought it would be useful to end this piece in a similar way to the first article by comparing the data for all trainers who have had at least 50 2yo runners in both 5-6f nursery handicaps and 7f-1m nursery handicaps. This time I am focusing just on the strike rates. I have included once again a Win% Ratio which can be seen in the right hand column. This is derived by comparing the short trip Win% with the longer trip Win% by creating a ratio of one to the other. The greater the number above 1.00, the more sprints are favoured; the smaller the number below 1.00, the more 7f-1m races are favoured.

Just 21 trainers have had enough runners to qualify for this table but it does give us the odd juicy titbit. Karl Burke, for example, has done significantly better in sprints (Win% Ratio of 2.34); likewise David Evans, Rod Millman, Archie Watson and Clive Cox seem to perform better with horses in the shorter distance nurseries. John Quinn and Tim Easterby also fall into that category but both their percentages are very low which makes it hard to profit from this knowledge. A couple of trainers have the Win% Ratio strongly favouring the longer trips, namely Charlie Hills (0.64) and Keith Dalgleish (0.67).

There are plenty of stats, graphs and tables to digest in this article and I hope they will point you in the right direction if betting in these types of races.

Until next time...

- DR

Trainers in Two-Year-Old Races, Part 1

19 July 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the first in a new series of articles where I will examine the performance of certain trainers over the past few seasons, writes Dave Renham. I will be using data from 1^st January 2016 to 31^st December 2021 giving us six full seasons to examine (UK racing only). For this piece my focus will be two-year-old races and I have used the Geegeez Query Tool as the sole source to gather the initial data. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. Therefore one would expect that we could significantly improve upon the figures by using early prices, Best Odds Guaranteed and / or the exchanges.

Many punters latch on to specific trainers or groups of trainers as trainer patterns are quite a popular strategy for trying to beat the bookies. And there's logic in this: like all of us, trainers are creatures of habit, and follow a similar path year in year out. They generally stick to the same training methods, have favoured jockeys that they use where possible, know which races to target, and so on. This offers at least a reasonable chance that future results will correlate with prior ones. Let’s dig into the stats.

Trainer Performance in all 2yo races

First, let's look at all 2yo races. Below is a table for the top 20 trainers in terms of win strike rate (minimum 150 runs across the six seasons):

These are ordered by strike rate and it is no surprise to see that a good proportion of the top trainers in the country are present. Only five of them have made a blind profit to SP, which is to be expected. For the record, yards of the Crisfords, Beckett, Palmer and the Charltons also nudged into profit if using Betfair SP.

Charlie Appleby’s record stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of strike rate, his 30% strike rate with 2yos over six years being remarkable.

If we order by the A/E index, a measure of the perceived sustainability of profitability, then we get the following top 20:

Six of the trainers in the top 20 two-year-old strike rate table appear here as well. However, we have a much more mixed bag of strike rates as A/E indices focus on ‘value’. Any A/E index higher than 1.00 indicates the trainer gets more winners than expected which is why 10 of the 20 trainers in the list have been profitable to SP. 17 of the 20 would have been profitable using BSP.

Charlie Appleby's 2yo record

Time to drill down into a couple of individual trainers starting with that man Charlie Appleby. Firstly let us compare his strike rate performance by season:

These figures are relatively consistent considering the type of races we are dealing with. Appleby made a profit at SP in 2017 and 2020 – the years with the highest strike rates. Also in those two years the A/E index went over 1.00 both times.

In terms of the sex of Appleby's 2yo runners, he has been more successful with males as the table below shows:

A higher strike rate by about 18% relatively and 5% in absolute terms, and much better returns - losing just 2.5 pence in the £ - on male runners is noteworthy. The A/E index and the IV figures also give male runners the edge. Why this is I am not sure; what is interesting though is that I had a quick look at Appleby's three-year-old data and males out-perform females there in virtually identical fashion. I am always hoping for these supporting elements when performing this type of research.

Appleby’s runners tend to start on the short side, in other words near the head of the betting market. This pie chart illustrates this neatly:

Nearly half of his 2yos - 396 runners out of 813 (49%) - have started favourite. Just 96 runners (12%) started 4^th or bigger in the betting. The breakdown of top three in the betting versus 4^th or bigger is also worth sharing with you:

It looks prudent to avoid any Appleby 2yo that starts 4^th or bigger in the betting, with significant losses of nearly 60p in the £ having been incurred. Conversely, the Godolphin trainer has gone close to breaking even at Industry SP with horses that started in the top 3 of the betting lists.

The Shadwell Stud sire Dubawi is a popular one when it comes to Appleby 2yos. This stallion has been responsible for 121 of the 2yos in Moulton Paddocks stable over the past six seasons. These 121 horses have run 254 times for Appleby in 2yo races, registering an impressive 89 victories, a 35% strike rate. Backing all Appleby Dubawi 2yo runners would have seen a break even situation at Industry SP. For the record, when we look at these 121 individual horses, 70 of them managed to win at least one race (58% winners to runners).

Aidan O'Brien's 2yo record

Let’s dig down a bit into the Aidan O'Brien stable next. Remember, we are looking only at UK form and, clearly, O'Brien sends over from Ireland many of his better 2yos, the majority of which race at either Newmarket or Ascot. Indeed, Newmarket runners account for more than half of his 2yo runners on these shores. What caught my eye the most was his record when contesting the top two tiers of race, namely Group 1 or Group 2 prizes. His record in both read as follows:

These are eye-catching strike rates considering the competitiveness of such races, and there is a commensurately excellent return on investment in both.

I also looked at O'Brien's performance in terms of market rank. His favourites have done extremely well, but what was interesting is that when comparing 2^nd, 3^rd favs etc, there is not that much in the figures:

By way of comparison, the second favourite strike rate for ALL trainers is close to 21%. O'Brien's is down at 15.15%, whereas I would have expected it to be nearer 25%.

Before moving on, I would be wary of backing any O'Brien 2yo that had any type of headgear (blinkers, tongue tie, etc). 39 of his runners raced in headgear in the six years of study but only five won. Backing all of them would have yielded a loss of just over 38 pence in the £.

Non-handicaps versus handicaps

So far I have not split the data into non-handicap and handicaps. This is mainly due to the fact that non-handicaps account for roughly 80% of all 2yo races. Also, for many of the top performing 2yo trainers, this 80% figure tends to be higher. For example, 93% of Charlie Appleby 2yos have run in non-handicaps; and others at 90% or more include Roger Varian (93%), Sir Michael Stoute (95%) and John Gosden (94%). Hence for the remainder of this article I will be narrowing my focus only slightly to focus on the large non-handicap subset.

[The second article in this series will look at some of the 2yo handicap data]

Non-handicap performance by race distance

Juveniles have a ceiling in terms of how far they can race in Britain, the reason being that they are young horses in their first season of racing. They generally have not built up the necessary stamina to tackle longer distances. Here is a graph showing the breakdown of 2yo non-handicap races in terms of distance – it looks at the percentage of races run at each distance:

This shows us that 83% of all 2yo non-handicaps are contested over seven furlongs or shorter. A mile and a quarter, ten furlongs, is generally the longest distance 2yos have to race, but there has been a race at Kempton in December of the past two years over 1m3f. One of the pair was won by a 100/1 shot and the first four home in the other were priced at 22/1, 50/1, 9/1 and 50/1!

It should also be noted that for the first two full months of the two-year-old season (April and May) races are primarily over the sprint trips of 5f and 6f. Indeed there have been just five 7f races run in May over the past six seasons. Races of a mile-plus don’t properly kick in until August.

It's time to break trainer juvenile non-handicap performance down by distance now. I am going to split the distances into three: 5 to 6f (including 6.5f); 7f to 1m; and 1m 1f or more.

2yo non-handicaps over 5-6 furlongs

So, sprint distances first. In the chart below the top 15 trainers are shown, in terms of strike rate. The data is restricted to trainers who have had a minimum of 70 runners in the sample period:

Charlie Appleby tops the list once again and his runners actually made a tiny profit at Industry SP (ROI 1.25%). Others trainers to make a blind profit were Owen Burrows, Clive Cox, Andrew Balding, Martyn Meade and Ralph Beckett. Let's now look at the A/E indices for these 15 trainers, which will help to show the trainers who have proved the best value:

Six trainers have exceeded the 1.00 value benchmark, while three trainers have low figures - Saeed bin Suroor (0.79), Roger Varian (0.81) and Hugo Palmer (0.8). In ROI terms, bin Suroor runners lost 36 pence in the £, Varian’s lost 26p in the £, and Palmer’s runners lost 29p for every £ staked.

When examining most racing statistics we need an overall view – strike rate, ROI%, A/E indices and Impact Values need to be used in conjunction with each other.

2yo non-handicaps over 7f to 1 mile

In general, these longer distances are contested by better 2yos so it will be interesting to see how individual trainers fare. Again I have used 70 runs as a minimum threshold to qualify. Let’s look at the top 15 trainers by strike rate first:

In terms of profitability, only the Charlton stable have made a blind profit and barely at that. Perhaps this shows the overall competitiveness of 7f-1m races. Moreover, just two have hit over 1.00 in terms of the A/E index (the Charltons and David Simcock).

Sticking with the Beckhampton Stables yard of Harry and Roger Charlton for a moment there are three further statistics I want to share. Firstly, when saddling the favourite in these races they have won an impressive 22 races from 40 (SR 55%) for a profit of £12.37 to £1 level stakes (ROI +30.9%); secondly, when his runners start second favourite they have also made a profit thanks to 10 wins from 28 (SR 35.7%) for a profit of £7.50 (ROI +26.8%); and thirdly, 2yos that race at Newbury in 7f-1m non handicaps have done well winning 12 races from 45 (SR 26.7%) for a profit of £35.41 (ROI +78.7%).

Of course, it is extremely useful knowing which trainers have the best records, but it is also worth looking at those trainers with the poorest records. Here are the trainers with the lowest strike rates in 7f-1m 2yo non-handicaps:

Although a couple of these trainers have made a profit, this is down to a random big priced winner or two; in general, the figures for these trainers are very poor. Hence I personally would avoid them in such contests.

2yo non-handicaps of 1m 1f or longer

With these races making up less than 4% of 2yo non-handicap races in the UK, it means we have limited data to work with. Indeed, only seven trainers have had 40 or more runners at these longer distances in the past six seasons. For the record here are their stats:

That man Charlie Appleby is impressive once more, while the Gosden and Johnston stables have had the greatest number of runners but neither has been profitable to follow.

Individual trainers: comparison by distance

I thought it would be interesting to end this article by comparing the data for all trainers who have had at least 50 two-year-old runners in both 5f to 6f non-handicaps and 7f to one mile non-handicaps. It should be noted at this point that 7f-1m races have a slightly bigger average field size: 9.3 runners on average compared with 9.0 for 5-6f races. Hence this will have a small effect on trainer strike rate comparisons. For that reason, I will not only compare strike rates, but A/E indices and Impact Values too.

The right hand three columns compare the short trip data with the longer trip data by creating a ratio of one to the other. The greater the number above 1.00, the more sprints are favoured; the smaller the number below 1.00, the more longer races are favoured. For example, Andrew Balding won 1.35 times as often with his five- to six-furlong juvenile non-handicappers as he did with his seven furlong to mile ones; while David Simcock won 0.87 times as frequently (i.e. his 7f-1m non-handicap runners won at a higher strike rate than his 5f-6f equivalents).

Taking these distance data into account may assist when analysing 2yo non-handicaps races in the future.

There are some trainers who clearly perform better in 2yo non-handicap sprints as compared to 7f-1m races. A handful stand out to me when it comes to having a real edge in sprints compared to longer races – they are Jane Chapple-Hyam, Paul & Oliver Cole, Marcus Tregoning, Owen Burrows, Clive Cox, Ismail Mohammed, Stuart Williams, Jedd O’Keefe and David O’Meara. In terms of an advantage in the longer races there is not too much to go at: perhaps Sir Michael Stoute would be one to note but it is a marginal preference rather than a very strong one.

I hope this article will prove useful when evaluating 2yo races in more detail. My next piece will share more facts and figures relating to trainers and two-year-olds. Until then...

- DR

Past Run Style as a Profitable Indicator, Part 2

11 July 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

In this article I am once again revisiting one of my favourite areas – the run style of horses, writes Dave Renham. As with the last article I am focusing on the run style profile of specific horses, using data from 2021 initially and then looking at 2022 results up to the time of writing. Initially, though, we will look at a bigger data set in order to set the scene.

For new readers let me explain run style. Essentially, run style is the position a horse takes up very early on in the race, normally within the first furlong or so. Run styles on this website are split into four categories, as follows:

Led (4) – front runners; a horse that takes an early lead (occasionally more than one horse disputes the lead, in which case we can have more than one ‘front runner’); Prominent (3) – horses that race directly behind the early leader(s); Mid Division (2) – horses that race mid pack or 'in touch' with the leaders; Held Up (1) – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each category. These numbers are extremely useful and I will again be using them later to create what I call ‘horse run style averages’.

Each race within the Geegeez racecards has a PACE ‘tab’ from where we can view some past run style data for the race in question. The word ‘pace’ is often used as an alternative to run style as the ‘early pace’ shown by each horse determines the position they take up soon after the start of the race. A maximum of the last four runs is shown as we can see below in this race taken from Epsom in July:

The latest run (LR) shows the run style in the most recent race, 2LR in the second most recent race, and so on. The last four runs are totalled for members (Total), and an average figure (Ave) is calculated also. In this race the most likely early leaders according to totals/averages were Toussarok and Pablo Del Pueblo. As it turned out, the opening furlong saw Pablo Del Pueblo lead with Toussarok racing in second place. Concierge, who had by far the lowest run style/pace total, conformed to past run style data also by racing at the back early.

And so it is that these pace/run style figures are useful in trying to determine beforehand how a race is likely to be run early on. They are of course not fool proof, but then, what is? Horses are animals, after all – they cannot tell us how they are going to run - and trainers and jockeys will potentially have an influence also (they, like us, are animals, too!)

If you have read any of my previous run style articles, you will know that early leaders generally have a solid edge in races; and particularly in races over shorter distances. For that reason, I am always looking to find means of improving my ability to predict a race's front runner / early leader.

It's time to give you some stats: as you probably know, we tend to call five- and six-furlong races ‘sprints’ due to the fact they are the shortest two distances in flat racing. Looking at all 5f and 6f races in the UK from 2017 to 2020 gives us the following run style strike rates:

These raw strike rates show a significant run style bias. One in every five wins was for the race early leader, while hold up horses only won around 1 in 16 of such sprint races. In essence, leaders in 5f or 6f races are over three times more likely to win than any individual horse up horse.

If we examine the A/E and IV values too we can see that these correlate strongly with the overall strike rates above:

The bias to front runners occurs in both handicap and non-handicaps over these sprints trips; and, while the win SR% is higher in non-handicaps, this is mainly due to the average field size being smaller. A/E and IV values are strong regardless of race type for these front runners.

So there is the background to the article and hopefully the graph above backs up what I mentioned earlier in terms of always looking for ways to improve our chances of predicting the front runner, more especially in sprint races.

Now to the meat and bones of my latest research where the focus is, not surprisingly, going to be UK races over 5 and 6 furlongs. There are also strong links to my previous article in terms of comparing two recent time frames, as you will see.

My initial dataset looked at all such races in 2021. To begin with I focused on all horses aged three or older that had raced at least four times in sprints. I used 3yos and older horses because I wanted to look at more experienced runners who, I contend, would be more likely to have developed a run style preference.

Horse run style averages

My first port of call was to produce run style averages for each horse, in exactly the same way that I have created run style averages in the past. To achieve this, I added up the Geegeez pace / run style points for each horse over the 2021 season and divided it by the number of races. The higher the average the more prominent the horse tends to race. The averages ranged from 4.00 (horses that led in every race they contested in 2021) to 1.00 (horses that were held up in every race they contested in 2021). Remember, I was exclusively using races over 5 and 6 furlongs to create my averages, so some of these horses may have run over further at some point in the season; those longer races have been ignored in order to allow for a 'pure' sprint dataset.

Once these figures were recorded, I then looked at the 2022 run style data (up to July 8^th 2022) so as to create equivalent run style averages for 2022. From there, I wanted to compare the two averages – my hope being that the 2021 run style averages correlated with their 2022 counterparts.

To qualify, each horse needed to have run at least four times in each season. Of course, many of the horses would have run considerably more times, especially in the full 2021 season. In theory, the more the horses run, the more ‘accurate’ their run style average should be in terms of predicting future run style.

488 horses had enough runs in both seasons so it was a decent number of horses to examine. In order to compare the two averages I decided to create six run style/pace average ranges. I used the following groupings - 3.50 to 4.00, 3.00 to 3.49, 2.50 to 2.99, 2.00 to 2.49, 1.50 to 1.99 and 1.00 to 1.49 - then I assigned a letter to each creating six run style ‘categories’ as follows:

Doing it in this way made sense as I felt it was an easier way to compare the data and hopefully easier for you to understand my finding. To begin with I looked at category ‘A’ horses in 2021, those with run style average 3.50 or above, and compared them with their run style category in 2022. There were 30 category ‘A’ horses from 2021 and these are the categories in which they resided as of 8th July 2022:

As we can see 13 of the 30 horses have repeated their extreme front running style of racing in 2022. Eight others are still at the upper end of the run style bracket (category B) with figures of 3.00 to 3.49. Meanwhile, just one of the 30 has averaged under 2.00 this year (categories E / F) meaning just one horse has totally reversed his/her run style from the previous year.

For all that it would have been great to have seen all 30 horses in category ‘A’ for 2022, these remain very pleasing figures.

At the other end of the scale I wanted to look at the performance of genuine hold up horses from 2021 – those in category ‘F’ (average 1.00 to 1.49) to see how their 2022 run style splits compared:

The results are positive once more, with 19 of the 45 horses again landing in the lowest run style category (F). A further 18 are in category ‘E’, the second lowest grouping. These findings so far are the type of figures I was hoping for, but I had expected them also based on previous research in similar areas.

From here I wanted to look at ALL 2021 run style categories, not just ‘A’ and ‘F’, and make a comparison with 2022. For this I wanted to see what percentage of horses from each 2021 category landed either in the same category or the ‘next door’ category in 2022. To help make sense of what I mean by that sentence (as it is a bit ‘wordy’), my findings are in the following table:

This table shows very clearly that the run style of a high percentage of sprinters does not alter that much. It is fascinating to note that horses which primarily race nearer the back than the front (categories E and F – average 1.00 to 1.99) have very high consistency percentages (87.64 and 82.22 respectively).

It is also worth sharing that almost two-thirds (313 of the 488 horses, 64.1%) have 2021 and 2022 run style averages within 0.50, or half a run style grade, of each other; that's another indication of how useful and accurate run style averages can be.

I want to leave you with the horses whose run style averages from 2021 to 2022 (to date) have a difference of just 0.30 or less. We should be fairly confident that this group of horses have a definite run style preference:

Horse	5-6f 2021	2021 RSA	5-6f 2022	2022 RSA	Diff
Alcazan	4	3.25	4	3.25	0
Bungledupinblue	13	2	4	2	0
Chipstead	6	2.5	4	2.5	0
Equitation	8	2.25	4	2.25	0
Glorious Charmer	10	2	13	2	0
Grandads Best Girl	5	2.4	5	2.4	0
Hope Springs	6	1.5	6	1.5	0
King Of Stars	10	3.8	5	3.8	0
Nellie French	6	1.17	6	1.17	0
Newyorkstateofmind	15	3	6	3	0
Recall The Show	9	2.89	9	2.89	0
Rhubarb	10	2.6	10	2.6	0
Steelriver	9	1	11	1	0
Strike Red	10	1.4	5	1.4	0
Red Walls	18	2.94	14	2.93	0.02
Stone Circle	7	2.14	6	2.17	0.02
Zargun	13	2.69	6	2.67	0.03
Orchid Rose	9	1.78	4	1.75	0.03
Ustath	15	3.53	6	3.5	0.03
Shallow Hal	9	2.33	10	2.3	0.03
Amazing Amaya	8	1.13	11	1.09	0.03
Wentworth Falls	11	1.64	5	1.6	0.04
Enduring	14	3.64	5	3.6	0.04
Endowed	11	1.55	6	1.5	0.05
Qaaraat	37	3.11	13	3.15	0.05
Dapper Man	17	3.35	5	3.4	0.05
Second Collection	14	1.21	6	1.17	0.05
Helvetian	6	2.33	7	2.29	0.05
Mashaan	4	2.75	5	2.8	0.05
Ascot Jungle	9	2.56	4	2.5	0.06
Some Nightmare	9	2.44	4	2.5	0.06
Be Proud	18	1.56	10	1.5	0.06
Buniann	14	1.5	9	1.44	0.06
First Verse	9	1.56	4	1.5	0.06
Jawwaal	9	1.56	4	1.5	0.06
James Watt	14	2.14	5	2.2	0.06
Our Man In Havana	13	2.31	4	2.25	0.06
One Hart	6	2.67	5	2.6	0.07
Ginato	10	1.6	9	1.67	0.07
Tathmeen	17	1.53	13	1.46	0.07
Aberama Gold	11	3.18	8	3.25	0.07
Come On Girl	10	1.5	7	1.43	0.07
Dream Composer	7	1.43	8	1.5	0.07
Al Simmo	7	3.57	4	3.5	0.07
Cuppacoco	7	3.43	4	3.5	0.07
Koropick	14	2.36	7	2.29	0.07
Lord Of The Glen	14	2.07	5	2	0.07
Spring Bloom	7	3.57	4	3.5	0.07
Gullane One	11	3.73	5	3.8	0.07
Gustav Graves	5	2	13	1.92	0.08
Soul Seeker	17	2.59	6	2.67	0.08
Jack Ryan	8	1.25	9	1.33	0.08
Rainbow Mirage	9	1.33	4	1.25	0.08
Thaki	12	1.75	6	1.83	0.08
Gherkin	12	2.58	4	2.5	0.08
Havagomecca	9	2.33	4	2.25	0.08
Lethal Blast	12	3.92	5	4	0.08
The Tron	8	2.25	6	2.17	0.08
Mrs Bagerran	7	3.29	5	3.2	0.09
Muatadel	11	2.09	4	2	0.09
Mutabaahy	22	1.91	9	2	0.09
Twice Adaay	11	1.91	6	2	0.09
Million Reasons	7	1.57	9	1.67	0.1
Under Curfew	10	2.7	5	2.8	0.1
Della Mare	5	3.4	4	3.5	0.1
Elland Road Boy	5	2.4	4	2.5	0.1
Elzaal	10	2.4	8	2.5	0.1
La Roca Del Fuego	10	3.5	5	3.6	0.1
Many A Star	5	2.4	6	2.5	0.1
Peachey Carnehan	10	1.9	6	2	0.1
Shamshon	20	2	10	2.1	0.1
Venturous	13	1.23	6	1.33	0.1
Rathbone	11	2.18	7	2.29	0.1
Swell Song	7	3.14	4	3.25	0.11
Dark Side Prince	11	3.09	5	3.2	0.11
Swiss Pride	9	2.22	9	2.11	0.11
Tenaya Canyon	9	1.89	5	2	0.11
Youllovemewheniwin	9	2.22	6	2.33	0.11
Absolute Dream	8	2.13	4	2	0.13
Aish	8	3.13	7	3	0.13
Amnaa	8	2.63	4	2.75	0.13
Chairmanoftheboard	8	1.63	4	1.75	0.13
Makanah	8	1.63	4	1.75	0.13
Point Of Woods	8	1.38	4	1.5	0.13
Prospect	4	2.75	8	2.88	0.13
Singe Anglais	8	1.13	6	1	0.13
Sound Of Iona	16	1.88	6	2	0.13
Triggered	9	1.56	7	1.43	0.13
The Gloaming	14	1.93	10	1.8	0.13
Jordan Electrics	11	2.73	7	2.86	0.13
Boogie Time	9	3.67	5	3.8	0.13
Edessann	10	1.2	6	1.33	0.13
Kapono	9	1.33	5	1.2	0.13
Look Out Louis	6	3.33	5	3.2	0.13
Mansfield	18	2.67	10	2.8	0.13
The Thin Blue Line	10	2.3	12	2.17	0.13
Wade's Magic	15	2.47	5	2.6	0.13
Count D'orsay	15	1.53	5	1.4	0.13
Bergerac	7	3.14	7	3	0.14
Copper Knight	14	3.14	6	3	0.14
Ey Up It's Maggie	10	3	7	2.86	0.14
Lothian	7	2.86	7	2.71	0.14
Miss Nay Never	4	3	7	2.86	0.14
Whittle Le Woods	5	3	7	2.86	0.14
Twilight Heir	4	2.75	5	2.6	0.15
Freedom Flyer	11	2.18	6	2.33	0.15
Silent Flame	9	2.56	5	2.4	0.16
We're Reunited	14	3.36	5	3.2	0.16
Miss Bella Brand	11	1.91	4	1.75	0.16
Lethal Angel	11	2.36	5	2.2	0.16
Mid Winster	11	3.36	5	3.2	0.16
Blazing Hot	10	2.5	9	2.67	0.17
Bossipop	18	3.17	6	3	0.17
Company Minx	12	2.67	4	2.5	0.17
Penombre	5	2	6	2.17	0.17
Burrows Seeside	6	1.5	6	1.33	0.17
Glamorous Force	18	1.83	8	2	0.17
Moveonup	9	2.44	13	2.62	0.17
Igotatext	5	2.4	7	2.57	0.17
Internationaldream	7	2.57	4	2.75	0.18
Scale Force	14	2.43	12	2.25	0.18
Ventura Express	11	2.18	4	2	0.18
Dark Shot	23	2.78	10	2.6	0.18
High Security	13	2.38	7	2.57	0.19
Sparkling Diamond	6	1.33	7	1.14	0.19
John Kirkup	8	2.38	7	2.57	0.2
Redrosezorro	5	2.6	5	2.8	0.2
Diamond Cottage	7	2	5	1.8	0.2
Lost My Sock	15	1.87	6	1.67	0.2
Seneca Chief	10	1.8	5	1.6	0.2
Abate	12	3	5	2.8	0.2
Airshow	10	3.7	12	3.5	0.2
Apollo One	5	3.2	5	3	0.2
Dave Dexter	4	3	5	2.8	0.2
Khulu	4	2	5	2.2	0.2
Rhythm	5	2.8	5	3	0.2
Rolfe Rembrandt	4	2	5	2.2	0.2
Silver Diva	10	2.2	8	2	0.2
Storm Over	10	2.7	4	2.5	0.2
Ubahha	8	1.75	11	1.55	0.2
Phoenix Star	17	1.76	9	1.56	0.21
Eeh Bah Gum	10	3.1	9	2.89	0.21
Good Listener	4	1.5	7	1.29	0.21
Nacho	14	1.79	8	2	0.21
Expert Opinion	18	2.5	7	2.29	0.21
Tanasoq	16	1.44	9	1.22	0.22
Lihou	19	2.84	8	2.63	0.22
Hurricane Alert	18	2.28	8	2.5	0.22
Rory	10	1.6	8	1.38	0.23
Storm Melody	21	2.48	8	2.25	0.23
Nomadic Empire	11	2.27	4	2.5	0.23
Mokaman	6	3	13	2.77	0.23
Pivoting	7	2.57	6	2.33	0.24
Yukon Mission	11	2.91	6	2.67	0.24
Global Warning	9	1.56	5	1.8	0.24
Abduction	4	1.5	4	1.75	0.25
Atyaaf	12	3.25	4	3	0.25
Ballintoy Harbour	8	3	4	2.75	0.25
Blissful Song	10	2	4	2.25	0.25
Chocco Star	6	1	4	1.25	0.25
Cottam Lane	8	3	4	2.75	0.25
Dakota Gold	6	3.5	4	3.25	0.25
Due A Win	7	2	4	2.25	0.25
Iesha	12	2.75	10	2.5	0.25
Isle Of Lismore	8	2	4	1.75	0.25
Lady Nectar	6	1.5	4	1.25	0.25
Mohareb	4	2.25	7	2	0.25
Papas Girl	8	1.38	8	1.13	0.25
Prince Of Abington	8	1.75	5	2	0.25
So Grateful	8	3.5	4	3.25	0.25
Surewecan	6	1.5	4	1.25	0.25
Pettochside	11	2.45	5	2.2	0.25
Hey Ho Let's Go	9	2.67	13	2.92	0.26
Count Otto	5	2.6	7	2.86	0.26
Sir Gregory	6	2.17	11	1.91	0.26
Primo's Comet	11	1.45	7	1.71	0.26
Fine Wine	6	3.17	14	3.43	0.26
Mondammej	17	1.24	8	1.5	0.26
Brandy Station	15	3.07	6	3.33	0.27
Cool Spirit	13	3	15	2.73	0.27
Griggy	5	2.6	6	2.33	0.27
Show Me A Sunset	15	2.27	5	2	0.27
Toussarok	5	3.6	6	3.33	0.27
Rebel Redemption	17	3.35	8	3.63	0.27
Temple Bruer	11	1.73	4	2	0.27
Stallone	8	1.88	5	1.6	0.28
Mister Bluebird	9	2.78	4	2.5	0.28
Gowanlad	9	2.11	6	1.83	0.28
Good Earth	17	1.47	12	1.75	0.28
Portelet Bay	12	2.58	10	2.3	0.28
Refuge	12	2.92	5	3.2	0.28
Excessable	13	2	7	2.29	0.29
May Remain	7	1.71	6	2	0.29
Thegreyvtrain	24	3.58	8	3.88	0.29
Ghathanfar	13	2.54	12	2.83	0.29
Liberty Bay	10	3.3	6	3	0.3
Stroxx	5	2.6	10	2.9	0.3
Classy Al	4	1.5	5	1.8	0.3
Polam Lane	6	1.5	5	1.8	0.3
Strong Power	11	2	10	1.7	0.3

There are 201 horses in this list and I am confident they will show a similar running style for the rest of this season. When one of more of these horses contest a five- or six-furlong sprint, the easier it should be to predict how the early run style/pace is going to look. Whilst I have only applied these run style comparisons to 5-6f races, the concept could be easily expanded to horses that race primarily in other distance groups, too.

Good luck.

- DR

Past Run Style as a Profitable Indicator

4 July 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

In this article, I continue to look into run style and its impact on the outcome of horse races, writes Dave Renham. This piece focuses on the run style profile of individual horses and initially examines data from 2021, before comparing with results from the first part of the 2022 flat season, up to June 24^th.

Before divulging my findings, for new readers I will briefly discuss what is meant by run style. Essentially, run style is the position a horse takes up very early on in the race. These are split into four categories as follows:

Led (4) – front runners; horses or horses that take an early lead; Prominent (3) – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division (2) – horses that race mid pack; Held Up (1) – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section. These numbers can be a useful tool for number crunchers like myself and they will be used at certain points in this article.

If we look at any Geegeez racecard and click on the pace ‘tab’ we get some past run style data for the race in question. Here is an example from April of this year – a 5f handicap at Windsor:

As can be seen, the run style figures from each horse's previous four races are shown (LR, 2LR, 3LR, 4LR). These figures are quite tight / close and hence it is difficult to be confident about predicting the order in which the field is likely to order itself early in the race.

The most important run style prediction is always which horse is most likely to front run and that is tricky here too. La Roca Del Fuego topped the list, just, on 14 points, so was marginally the most likely front runner, and as it turned out did lead from start to finish.

However, pre-race, one could not have been confident that La Roca Del Fuego was going to lead. In an ideal world when trying to predict the front runner, we would prefer a horse to be well ahead numerically of the rest of its field. For example, Horse A has 16 points (the maximum possible for a four-race sample), and Horses B, C, D, etc all have scores in single figures. Even then we cannot guarantee Horse A will lead but all things being considered, the chances are very likely he/she will.

Some less regular readers at this point may be asking themselves why trying to predict the front runner is a useful thing to try to do. The answer is simple: front runners are the best value at most distances on the flat; and many distances over the sticks, too. For example, in 5f handicaps in the UK from 1^st Jan 2018 to 31^st Dec 2020, if you had predicted who would front run pre-race and place a £1 bet on every single horse you would have won nearly 20% of all your bets for an impressive profit of £619.46 (ROI +32.7%).

Now to the article proper as it were:

My focus today is on UK handicaps of 5 furlongs to 1 mile; I am using these races as there is a strong front running bias in general at shorter distances. The bias is strongest over 5f (see example above), but it is still potent up to a mile on most courses. My initial dataset looked at all such races in 2021.

To start with I focused on all horses that had raced at least 4 times in 5f - 1 mile handicaps in 2021. From there I wanted to check a few different things.

Horse run style averages (UK turf flat handicaps, 5f-1m, 2021)

First stop was producing run style averages for each horse: this was performed in exactly the same way that I have created trainer, jockey and course run style averages in the past. I simply added up the Geegeez pace / run style points for a particular horse over the 2021 season and divided it by the number of races. The higher the average the more prominent the horse tends to race. The averages ranged from 4.00 (horses that led in every race they contested in 2021) to 1.00 (horses that were held up in every race they contested in 2021). Just 12 horses had run style averages of 4.00, which will come as no surprise as I was looking at ALL their runs in these handicaps over the year.

There was a horse that raced 37 times in 2021 – yes, 37! The horse in question was Qaaraat. Qaaraat had a run style average for the year of 3.11 thanks to leading 11 times, racing prominently 21 times, mid-division three times, and being held up just twice.

Here is a selection of horses with their run style averages for 2021. I have chosen those with some of the highest run style averages, and those with some of the lowest – the number of races they contested in also shown:

Horse	2021 races	2021 run style average	Horse	2021 races	2021 run style average
How Bizarre	5	4.00	Diffident Spirit	4	1.25
Isla Kai	4	4.00	Elmejor	4	1.25
Master Matt	4	4.00	Hope Springs	4	1.25
Pinnata	6	4.00	James Park Woods	4	1.25
Tomouh	5	4.00	London Palladium	8	1.25
Ventura Rascal	7	4.00	Maysong	8	1.25
Lethal Blast	12	3.92	Munificent	4	1.25
Motawaazy	11	3.91	Natchez Trace	4	1.25
Asad	8	3.88	Nick Vedder	12	1.25
Rains Of Castamere	7	3.86	Otto Oyl	4	1.25
Grandfather Tom	6	3.83	Pentimento	4	1.25
La Roca Del Fuego	6	3.83	Rectory Road	12	1.25
Show Yourself	6	3.83	Rooful	4	1.25
Destroyer	5	3.80	Mondammej	17	1.24
Eye Of The Water	5	3.80	Eyes	13	1.23
King Of Stars	10	3.80	Treacherous	13	1.23
Mejthaam	5	3.80	Imperium Blue	9	1.22
Siam Fox	5	3.80	Mutanaaseq	14	1.21
Toussarok	14	3.79	Second Collection	14	1.21
Araifjan	13	3.77	Aiguillette	5	1.20
Twilight Madness	4	3.75	Amazing Amaya	5	1.20
Kraka	15	3.73	Cairn Gorm	5	1.20
Gullane One	11	3.73	Celsius	5	1.20
Ornate	11	3.73	Edessann	10	1.20
Howzak	7	3.71	Engles Rock	5	1.20
Just Glamorous	7	3.71	Our Little Pony	5	1.20
Zulu Girl	7	3.71	Power On	10	1.20
Airshow	10	3.70	Snazzy Jazzy	5	1.20
Fangorn	10	3.70	Urban Highway	5	1.20
Thaayer	10	3.70	Jewel Maker	11	1.18
Harrogate	16	3.69	Lady Alavesa	11	1.18
Al Simmo	6	3.67	Air To Air	6	1.17
Alcazan	9	3.67	Billian	6	1.17
Autumn Flight	12	3.67	Fantasy Believer	6	1.17
Boogie Time	9	3.67	La Rav	6	1.17
Enduring	15	3.67	Power Player	6	1.17
Global Esteem	11	3.64	True Mason	12	1.17
Gometra Ginty	11	3.64	Duke Of Firenze	19	1.16
Antagonize	8	3.63	The Cola Kid	13	1.15
Bankawi	8	3.63	Fauvette	7	1.14
Blackcurrent	8	3.63	Magnetised	7	1.14
Charming Kid	8	3.63	Papas Girl	7	1.14
Just Frank	8	3.63	Surprise Picture	7	1.14
Air Raid	5	3.60	Alba Del Sole	8	1.13
Alba De Tormes	5	3.60	Clashaniska	8	1.13
Animal Instinct	5	3.60	Desert Land	16	1.13
Forest Falcon	5	3.60	Otago	8	1.13
Hieronymus	5	3.60	Canoodled	9	1.11
Langholm	10	3.60	Bronze River	10	1.10
Wings Of A Dove	5	3.60	Libby Ami	11	1.09
Bowman	12	3.58	Venturous	11	1.09
Thegreyvtrain	24	3.58	De Vegas Kid	12	1.08
Gobi Sunset	7	3.57	Golden Apollo	12	1.08
Healing Power	7	3.57	Van Dijk	14	1.07
Spring Bloom	7	3.57	Alicestar	6	1.00
Bezzas Lad	9	3.56	Biplane	4	1.00
Mountain Brave	9	3.56	Catch My Breath	14	1.00
Militia	11	3.55	Chocco Star	6	1.00
Goddess Of Fire	13	3.54	Divine Messenger	6	1.00
Late Arrival	15	3.53	Dundory	4	1.00
Ustath	17	3.53	Eligible	6	1.00
Bert Kibbler	6	3.50	Fastnet Crown	6	1.00
Big Bard	4	3.50	Inaam	7	1.00
Captain Corcoran	10	3.50	Marselan	7	1.00
Della Mare	4	3.50	Mayson Mount	5	1.00
Firepower	6	3.50	Nellie French	4	1.00
Louie de Palma	6	3.50	Raatea	7	1.00
Marnie James	8	3.50	Sanaadh	13	1.00
Modular Magic	6	3.50	Sin E Shekells	5	1.00
Punchbowl Flyer	8	3.50	Steelriver	5	1.00
Rhubarb Bikini	6	3.50	Stone Of Destiny	6	1.00
Secret Handsheikh	10	3.50	Sunset	5	1.00
Sir Titan	6	3.50	Tangled	9	1.00
Wrenthorpe	6	3.50	Wicklow Warrior	4	1.00

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how relevant looking at run style averages from a longer period of time (rather than the four most recent races) would be; but I use longer term data for trainers and jockeys so felt there was some logic to justify analysing it.

Now I had the run style averages for 2021 for each horse, I grouped them as follows:

1.49 or below

1.50 to 1.99

2.00 to 2.29

2.30 to 2.59

2.60 to 2.99

3.00 to 3.49

3.50 to 4.00

From there I looked at the performance of each of the groups in terms of 2021 results. Here is what I found – I looked at strike rates first:

As the graph neatly shows, horses with higher run style averages based on the 2021 season were more successful in terms of strike rate. Horses that had an average of at least 3.5 for 2021 scored nearly 20% of the time. If we now do a comparison of return on investment (ROI%) we can see a clear correlation:

I used a line graph here as it is slightly easier to see than if using a bar chart. There was a huge return on investment for horses with an average of 3.5 or more – more than 40p in the £.

Horse Led Percentages (UK turf flat handicaps, 5f-1m, 2021)

I did the same type of analysis but using 'led percentages' rather than run style averages. In order words, I worked out in what percentage of races each horse led early during 2021. For instance, if a horse ran ten times and it led early in four of these, its figure would be 40%. As with run style averages, I grouped the led percentages to ensure acceptably sized datasets:

The chart shows a very similar pattern to what we saw with run style averages: this time, horses that led the most in percentage terms were the most successful.

Here are the figures in terms of return on investment:

Again, there is excellent correlation with both graphs; in fact all four graphs correlate strongly. Horses that led in 50% or more of their races in 2021 were extremely profitable – a return of £1.28 for every £1 bet. It should also be noted that these returns are based on starting prices, so with early prices, BOG or Betfair SP one would expect to improve markedly on this baseline figure.

Let's stop using history to predict the past...

Now statisticians will tell you, quite rightly, that using past data from one particular year in this way is going to produce slightly skewed results. This is because we are looking retrospectively at horse performances; we know horses that lead early win more and so looking at horses that led the most often in 2021 should produce the kind of positive results we have seen.

However, there are two points I’d like to make. Firstly, these data prove the point once more about how important early speed is, and secondly it shows that creating horse run style averages seems to be a worthwhile project. Indeed, the run style averages actually outperformed the led percentages, at least at the business end of their respective spectrums (the highest run style averages versus the highest led %’s).

At this point in my research I decided to use the 2021 run style averages I had created and apply them to races in 2022 – up to June 24^th. Of course, these run style averages are based on the previous year with no new runs in 2022 taken into account. However, I was hoping to demonstrate that the higher run style averages would still outperform the lower ones. This is what I found.

The strike rates are much more even as you might expect, but still there is a positive edge when we get to a run style average of 3 or more. Conversely, the two lowest strike rates also occur for the two lowest run style groups. The best part, naturally, is seeing the profit/loss figures – profits for those averaging 3 to 3.49 and 3.5 to 4; and the commensurate losses for horses averaging 2.59 or lower are quite steep when viewed as a group.

As we have done to this point, let us again overlay the 2021 led percentages on the 2022 results hoping for a similarly upbeat picture:

It is gratifying to see similar results here. Specifically, horses that led 20% or more in 2021 have outperformed lower 'led percentage' groups both in strike rate terms and in returns on investment. Meanwhile, a 2021 'led percentage' of 33.3% to 49% produced a small profit from 2022 runs, with considerably bigger profits generated by the 50% or more group.

Closing thoughts

The main takeaway from this research into 5f to 1mile handicaps is that horses which led more often (in percentage terms) over a recent period of time are more likely to be profitable to follow than horses which have led less frequently. The same can be said for horses with higher run style averages.

The million dollar question, however, is how many races should we use? The four currently published in the 'pace' tab on the Geegeez racecard is a great starting point. We know from earlier research that horses which led at least once very recently are more likely to lead early than horses that have not. Likewise a last-four-race run style average is useful too (also shown in the 'pace' tab under the column ‘Ave’). The higher the average, again, the more likely it is that a horse will lead.

In answer to the question, my best guess is that anything between four and a dozen races would be optimal. In this piece, for example, some horses had run style averages based on their last four runs, and some had an average based on a lot more than four runs. One could argue this is not perfect and I'd have some sympathy with that argument; but, for me, the time it takes for data collection is important.

Using this more flexible approach (a minimum of four runs) meant it took me less time to create all the data I needed to start writing the article. I shared nearly 150 individual horse run style averages earlier; in total I had to calculate nearly 6000. If I had tried to create ‘last eight runs averages’ for example for all horses I probably would still be trying to do that at Christmas, and probably Christmas 2025! Research is just that, research. It will never be perfect, but for me it is a fun way to learn more about racing and to help me share ideas with the wider geegeez.co.uk audience.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

- DR

Trainers and Run Style: Part 5

27 June 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

For this final article in my trainers' run style series I am going to share with you some extremely detailed analysis from 2yo races during the 2021 season, writes Dave Renham. It may be only one season, but it covers more than 1100 races and over 10,000 runs, so there is plenty of data to dig into.

Before delving into the stats, for new readers let me quickly explain what is meant by run style. Essentially, run style is the position a horse takes up early on in the race, normally within the first furlong or two, which often defines its running preference. geegeez.co.uk has created two excellent resources to look more closely at run style. These are the Pace Analyser and the Query Tool which can both be found in the in the Tools menu. Running style and the word 'pace' are often linked because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Therefore some punters and indeed pundits see run style and pace as interchangeable.

The stats I am using for this piece are based on the site’s pace / run style data. This data on Geegeez are split into four sections –

Led (4) – front runners; horses or horses that take an early lead;

Prominent (3) – horses that race close behind the leader(s);

Mid Division (2) – horses that race mid pack;

Held Up (1) – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section.

OK, onto the flesh and bones of the research. To start let us look at 2yo debutants – juveniles having their first ever racecourse run.

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Debut runs

Here is the breakdown for 2yo debutants in terms of percentage distribution across all four run styles:

As the chart shows, nearly half of all two-year-olds making their debut are held up, either by accident or design, with less than 6% taking an early lead. This is perhaps what one might expect as on debut horses are inexperienced and 'green', and it may take time for the 'penny to drop' on that first racecourse outing. Further, many debutants will be racing against horses with previous race experience which will have an effect.

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Second career start

Juveniles on their second career starts produce a completely difference picture compared to the debut stats:

The chart highlights the vast difference in running style when we compare second career start stats to debuts. Over 16% of all runners now got to the front early and more than half, 53.5%, led or raced prominently. Compare that to 2yo debut figures noted earlier – just 5.6% for horses that lead on 2yo debut and only 29.6% for combined lead / race prominently horses.

The third start figures correlate closely with the second start ones as can be seen below.

When looking at data from fourth career run onwards, the run style splits don’t really change much, with the groups as follows: led 16.5% of the time; 33.7% for prominent racers, 20.3% for mid pack runners and 29.5% for hold ups.

What we need to take from this data is that juvenile run style shape remains similar from second career start onwards; however debut data is completely different; that's something we must take into account when trying to predict how a 2yo race will pan out in terms of run style (assuming the race includes one or more debutants).

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Debut run style – does it influence follow up run?

Let us now consider whether the run style shown by a 2yo on debut influences their second run in any way. Looking at juveniles that led on debut in 2021 (eg. gained a 4 on the Geegeez pace tab) gives the following:

If a horse has the speed to lead on debut, which we know is relatively rare from previous data, their chance of leading next time is high at 36%; in fact exactly 75% of horses that led on debut, led or raced prominently on their second career start. Those are much higher figures for front runners than the average we saw earlier – on average remember horses led on their second ever run 16.3% of the time, and led or raced prominently around half the time; here the led figure is more than double that, and the prominent figure 1.5x. Keep that in mind when assessing debut leaders.

So what happens on the second run if a horse has either raced prominently, midfield or been held up on debut? I have combined the stats on one graph for ease of comparison. The key parts of the graph are at either end – showing what percentage of horses led on their second start (on the left), and the percentage of horses that were held up on their second start (on the right).

The debut run style has a clear bearing on second start run style. As we can see, 2yos that were held up on debut led just 11.6% (about once every nine starts) in their second race, whereas 32.4% were held up once again.

The chances of leading on second start reduces from 36.4% where the horse led on debut, to 22.1% where it raced prominently on debut, to 15% when it raced mid-division on debut, down to that held up debut figure of 11.6%.

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Led on both of their last two runs

I next wanted to explore the run style figures for 2yo runners that had led on both of their previous two starts. This included all occasions when this occurred so it includes horses that led on debut and their second start; likewise it includes horses that may have led on, for instance, their fourth and fifth starts as a 2yo in 2021. Here are the findings:

Almost nearly 42% of 2yos have gone on to lead when they had led in both of their prior two races; and more than 80% led or raced prominently – given what we know from earlier articles about the value of a front rank position, that's powerful insight.

This ‘led’ figure increases to an impressive 56% when we focus on 2yos that had previously run at least five times (and led in last two starts prior).

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Held up on both of their last two runs

We have looked at the run style data for horses that led twice in a row; now a look at 2yos that were held up in both of their last two starts.

Predictably enough, perhaps, there is a complete reversal of what we saw with those juveniles which had led on both of their last two starts. Horses that were held up in consecutive runs saw just 45 of the 591 runners lead next time (7.6%) while 261 horses (44.2%) were held up once again.

I think all the data we have looked at so far shows that past run style data for 2yos is an important indicator of what a horse's future run style will/could be. Ultimately, the run style stats gathered already for this article validates why Geegeez shares past run style/pace data on their racecards.

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Individual trainer performance

I want to expand this research by looking at some 2021 run style data for individual trainers in 2yo races.

In some cases the sample sizes are relatively modest, but there are arguably still enough data for each trainer to build up a potential profile to how they handle their 2yos from a run style perspective in their early races.

There are three tables I wish to share. The first shows the 2021 data for two-year-old debut runs, focusing on run style breakdown by percentage:

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Debut run (2021), trainer run style breakdown

[minimum 30 runs on debut]

As might be expected given the debut stats we looked at earlier, the ‘led’ column has very low percentages generally. It is only really Mark (and Charlie) Johnston and Archie Watson who seem to drill their debutants to go to the front on a regular basis (Johnston had 25 of his 98 debutants go to an early lead, Watson 7 of 30).

Five trainers, on the other hand, have percentages under 3% namely Hills, Gosden, Fahey, Varian and Easterby. Of course, a number of those trainers are playing a longer game of nurture and education with what might be valuable three-year-old prospects down the line; nevertheless, it is highly instructive for us as punters to be aware of - and able to put a number on - the differences.

Two-Year-Old Run Style: 2nd career run (2021), trainer run style breakdown

This next table shows the run style percentages by trainer of two-year-olds on their second starts:

Horses learn a lot from that first racecourse run, and that is reflected a big change here for most of the trainers. However, a few trainers still seem to be averse to allowing their runners too much front end speed latitude. The Charlton stable is one, not surprisingly (see article 3 of the series for further details), but Roger Varian and Richard Fahey also rarely send a two-year-old to the front on their second start.

Two-Year-Old Run Style: 3rd career run (2021), trainer run style breakdown

Earlier in the article we saw that second and third career starts had a very similar statistical breakdown in terms of run style breakdown; let’s now examine if that has been the case for individual trainers:

The Johnston stable on both second and third career starts sent over half of their runners into an early lead (50.6% on second run, 59.2% on third) during the 2021 season.

At the other end of the scale, the Charlton yard have seen nearly 60% of their runners race mid-division or at the back of the field early in their third starts. Patience is a virtue for this team.

In general, when it comes to a two-year-old's third career start, this cohort of trainers is more likely to send their charges to the front early. Richard Fahey, however, is still not that keen (from a decent sample size of 53 runners). Michael Bell and Richard Hughes have low percentages also but in truth they have relatively small sample sizes of 18 and 24 respectively; that said, they are also both fine exponents of handicap first-timers, and it may be that it doesn't suit the plan for these runners to be too handy early doors on their final mark-qualifying run!

Those three tables should be excellent starting points for anyone interested in trying to predict trainer run style in a 2yo race (assuming it is the horses’ first, second or third career start). However, for those of you who would like to compare the chances of an individual trainer’s horse leading in any one of their first three starts as a 2yo, I have combined the led percentages in two graphs thus:

The remaining trainer figures are shown below (it would have been far too crowded to put all the trainers on just one graph).

And that concludes this fifth and final part of the trainer run styles series. What I hope the series has demonstrated is that different trainers really do have different approaches when it comes to the likely run style of their horses. This article in particular has also shown that past pace data when taken ‘generally’ is a decent indicator of future run style. And you can get this all on the Geegeez racecards - if you're not a subscriber already, here's a link to get a £1 trial month >

To close, here are five more stats that I uncovered from the 2yo data taken from the 2021 season:

2yos that led LTO (any career start) led again next time 33.2% of the time;

2yos that were held up LTO (any career start) were held up again in their next race 36.9% of the time;

Horses that were held up on their first three career starts led on their 4^th start just twice from 61 qualifiers (34 were held up again which equates to nearly 56% of runners);

Horses that were held up on three consecutive starts (at any time as a 2yo) saw just 6 of 149 lead next time (4%);

Trainers Hugo Palmer, Simon Crisford and Sir Mark Prescott did not have enough individual data to appear earlier, however they sent out 80 2yo debutants between them in 2021, none of which took the early lead!

Good luck, and thanks for reading.

- DR

Trainers and Run Style: Part 4

21 June 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the fourth article in a series in which I have been looking at run style bias, writes Dave Renham. This piece follows on from the previous one with focus once again on two-year-old races. As with the rest of the series, the data for this article cover the last eight full seasons from 2014 to 2021 (UK racing only). Every 2yo race during this time frame has been collated.

For those of you who have read my previous articles, you may want to skip the next few lines as I will be explaining run style for any first time reader. Run style is concerned with the position a horse takes up early on in the race. 'Early' in a race normally means within the first furlong, sometimes the first quarter mile or so.

We split these early positions into four groups:

Led (4) – horse that gets to the front early (known as front runners). Usually you get one early leader, but occasionally you get more than one horse disputing the lead;

Prominent (3) – horses that race close to the front; right behind the leader(s);

Mid Division (2) – horses that settle mid pack in the early stages;

Held Up (1) – horses who begin their race at, or near the back of, the field.

The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section. These numerical scores help with certain types of analysis.

Each Geegeez racecard has full run style history on the Full Form tab, and the last four run style figures for each horse on the Pace tab. Pace and run style are often used to mean the same thing. This gives us useful past data with more experienced runners. Obviously some 2yo horses will have less data as they may not have run four times. This hopefully is where the trainer run style insights shared in this article will prove their worth.

I have used the Geegeez Query Tool once again to get the data and then used the power of excel to analyse it in more detail.

In my previous article the primary focus was seeing how often 2yo runners of individual trainers took the early lead (in % terms). This time I am looking, to begin with at least, at the success rate of trainers when their 2yo runners take an early lead.

Benchmarks: Overall 2yo strike rates by run style

To begin with I want to look at the average win percentage strike rates for all trainers / runners in terms of run style. In other words what percentage of front runners / early leaders win on average, what percentage of prominent runners win etc. Here is the breakdown:

These raw strike rate percentages show a striking run style bias. A huge 23%, almost a quarter, of 2yos win when they take the lead early; and early leaders are over four times more likely to win than any individual hold up horse, who barely win at more than one in 20. The average UK two-year-old field size across the period was a touch greater than nine runners per race, which equates to an average winning strike rate of about 11%.

If we examine the A/E and IV values too we can see that these correlate strongly with the overall strike rates above:

The message is clear, and one that we have seen consistently during this series of articles – early leaders comfortably outperform prominent runners, who in turn outperform midfield runners, who outperform hold up horses.

Run Style Performance by Race Distance in Two-Year-Old Races

Front runners

Generally we have seen in the past that the shorter the distance the better the performance of front runners. This is the case here, too, but the difference between sprints (5-6f) and races over 7f-1m is smaller than I had expected. As we get to 1m1f+ the overall success rate does drop off a bit, but it is still high compared to the average win chance of each runner.

Strike rates, returns on investment, A/E values and Impact Values all show a correlation as the distance increases. There are far fewer longer distance races and it seems that front runners do not offer a profitable avenue once you get past a mile.

Hold Up Horses

As we now know, 2yo runners that are held up have poor strike rates, but their chance of success improves a little when we get to 1m1f+:

As a collective, though, hold up 2yos are ones we should avoid like the plague regardless of race distance.

Best Front Runner Trainers in Two-Year-Old Races

Let us now look at the trainers who had the highest strike rates with their 2yo front runners during this eight-year time frame (minimum 40 runs / top 25 trainers):

This table illustrates why I am doing so much research into run style. The Win PL figures once again show how profitable front runners are, and that trying to find the optimum way of predicting them is something all punters should aspire to.

Saeed Bin Suroor tops the list with a very impressive strike rate from his front runners, and that improves furthre to 53.2% (33 wins from 62) with horses priced 3/1 or shorter. bin Suroor's front runners at Newmarket have won eight from 14 with another four runners placed: that's limited data but was interesting to me, nevertheless.

The other main Godolphin trainer, Charlie Appleby, has also seen great success with fancied runners – his front running favourites have won 78 from 141 (SR 55.3%). He’s been less successful with 2yo front runners priced 13/2 or bigger with just 1 win from 30 runners.

And the Gosden stable coupled with a certain Frankie Dettori on board is a potent 2yo front running combo with 20 winners from 36 (SR 55.6%).

Best Hold Up Trainers in Two-Year-Old Races

Overall, as one would expect, the best hold up records are poor in relation to the front running stats. However, here are the trainers with the best 2yo strike rates for hold up horses (minimum 80 runs / top 15 trainers):

Only three of these 15 trainers made a profit with their hold up horses, and generally the returns are very poor and the strike rates modest at best. Compare that with all bar three of the top 25 front-runner trainers making a profit!

It is worth noting that many of these trainers are associated with horses expected to show more at three years of age and, as such, are more likely to be quality animals racing over the longer two-year-old distances and on a learning curve - and therefore not rushed from the starting stalls.

Best Front Runner Trainers with favourites in Two-Year-Old Races

It was noted in the third article in this series that favourites were more likely to lead than any other market position in 2yo races. Nearly 27% of all 2yo favourites led early in the study period. Hence the performance of favourites when they led early is worth noting, especially when linked to individual trainers. Below is the list of the top trainers in terms of win strike rate with front running 2yo favourites (minimum 25 runs / top 20 trainers):

There are some very high strike rates as you might expect, but it is pleasing to note that all bar one trainer would have proved profitable at starting price with such runners.

So if you can find a 2yo favourite from one of these trainers that you think may lead early, then you potentially have a great bet. Of course the horse is not guaranteed to lead – always the tricky part, that!

However, at least we know that, as favourite, the chance of this happening is around the 27% mark without using any other factors to help with our decision.

In fact, my previous article did highlight two of the trainers above in terms of the chance of their favourites leading. To remind you, favourites from the Johnston stable led 53.1% of the time, while favourites from Archie Watson’s stable led 46.9% of the time.

It makes sense to offer a much longer list of trainers in terms of the percentage chance of their favourites leading. So, painstakingly hand cranked (but worth the effort, I feel), here they are:

For me, the more statistics I am aware of, the better. And there are huge differences in the frequency of front-running favourites by trainer, as can be seen.

Being aware of how successful a trainer is likely to be with a front running two-year-old is one thing, but if the horse's chance of actually leading is low then this obviously reduces the chance of a successful front running bet! Roger Varian, Richard Fahey, Ed Dunlop, Ed Walker, Aidan O’Brien, the Charltons, David Simcock, Stuart Williams and the Meades are trainers that rarely send favourites out to the front, so this may be noteworthy when any of these saddles a 2yo market leader.

Front Runners by Race Class in 2yo races

To finish with I want to look at 2yo front running data in connection with class of race. Firstly an overview of front running strike rates in two-year-old races by race class:

The figures are fairly uniform with the exception of the highest level, Class 1 races, where it has been harder for front runners to win. This makes sense in that the quality of opposition is as good as it gets, and the edge front runners typically enjoy at lower class levels is likely to be eroded by the ability to accelerate of their top tier rivals.

A quick look at the Impact Values now as this helps even out any anomalies connected with potential differences in number of runners per class group:

Class 1 races again come out as the least successful for front runners, which is not surprising based on the previous chart. The drop in Class 3 Impact Value is also which is worth noting, such races often having a smaller average field size (slightly fewer than eight runners per race, compared with an average of between 8.7 (Class 4) and nearly 10 (Class 1 and Class 6) for other race classes). The other class groups have very similar figures.

I have shared a huge amount of data in the first four articles in this series, all of which is important to help us have a greater appreciation of the importance of run style, and a stronger motivation for trying to predict run style. Each set of data has its own merit, but combining them all is where the edge over other less informed punters is likely to occur.

In the final part of this series looking at trainers and run style, I will be doing some laser-focused research on the entirety of the 2021 season.

Until then, happy punting.

- DR

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