Dave Renham | geegeez.co.uk

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.

-------------------

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

-------------------

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

Trainers and Run Style: Part 3

9 June 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the third article in a series in which I have been looking at run style bias in relation to trainers, writes Dave Renham. In this piece, I'll drill down looking specifically at trainer data from two-year-old (2yo) races. As with the previous articles (read them here and here) I have looked at 8 years' worth of data (1/1/14 to 31/12/21) and included both turf and all weather racing in the UK.

The focus is all race types (handicaps and non-handicaps) and all distances. I have not used a 'field size' restriction this time as around 95% of 2yo races had six or more (my usual cut off) runners anyway. I have explained the phrase 'run style' in the first two articles of the series but for new readers here is a very quick recap.

Run style is concerned with the position a horse takes up early on, usually within the first two furlongs of the race. Here on geegeez.co.uk run style is split into four categories as follows:

Led (4) – essentially those runners that get to the lead early
Prominent (3) – horses that track these early leader(s)
Mid Division (2) – horses that settle mid pack in the early stages
Held Up (1) – horses who begin their race near, or at the back of the field

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

Run style is often linked with the word 'pace' because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Hence, the words 'run style' and 'pace' are often used essentially meaning the same thing, though some commentators feel 'pace' is more associated with speed than racing position: this is why we differentiate. Each Geegeez racecard has the last four run style/pace figures for each runner within a table on the 'Pace' tab. That looks like this:

2yo horses may often have fewer data as some would not have run four times (indeed Clear Day in the example above has run only three times). This, hopefully, is where the trainer run style data shared below will prove its worth.

To help with this piece I have primarily used the Geegeez Query Tool – a tool that is available, and potentially game-changing, for all Gold subscribers. I then used my Excel knowledge to help crunch and interpret the data gathered.

Which trainers' two-year-olds led early most often?

To begin with, let us look at which trainers saw their 2yos take the early lead the most (in percentage terms). I have included trainers who have had at least 200 such runners over this 8-year period:

To offer some sort of comparison, the average percentage of all 2yo's that lead early stands at 14.6%. The trainers with the highest percentages are certainly worthy of further analysis.

(Charlie &) Mark Johnston

It is no surprise for regular readers to see Mark Johnston at the top of the pile, as we've previously discovered his modus operandi is typically to send horses forward. Nevertheless, it is an incredible statistic that more than 40% of his 2yos have led early. Mark is training with his son, Charlie, from the current season so it will be interesting to see if anything changes. I doubt it, but it is a good idea to keep an eye on such things. [Editor's note: at time of writing, the father/son Johnston team have led with 25 of 49 two-year-old runners, 51%, so little has changed at this stage]

Let's look at the Johnston stable breakdown in terms of percentage distribution across all four run styles:

Almost four out of every five of their 2yos either race prominently early or lead. To show how this bucks the general trend, compare Johnston’s stats to the overall 2yo run style stats for all trainers:

The real differences lie either end in the ‘led’ and ‘held up’ sections. This clearly illustrates how differently Johnston thinks about run style. If we look at individual years, we can see the percentage of his runners that lead has been consistent throughout:

The range, 36.1% to 46%, shows his methods have changed little over time.

In terms of race distance, we can see that in general it does not matter too much in terms of how likely a Johnston 2yo will lead. The breakdown is as follows:

It is only when we get to races beyond a mile that we see the percentage drop; even then, it is still very high when compared to other trainers.

The following table, sourced from the Pace Score section on the Query Tool, shows perhaps why the Johnston stable tend not to hold their 2yo (or indeed any age) runners up:

Hold up horses have been successful for the Johnston team just 5.5% of the time, with losses equating to just under 67 pence in every £1. That's not good for punters and, more materially from a training perspective, not good for owners. Meanwhile, early leaders won 26% of the time (incredible for owners) and would have made a profit if we had successfully decided upon which of his 2yos would actually lead (awesome for clairvoyant punters).

Archie Watson

Archie Watson is second in the standings when it comes to percentage of 2yos that took the early lead during the sample period. The most striking stats I found were when I looked at his record with 2yos that started favourite or second favourite (see below):

The differences are quite mind blowing. When we combine his 2yo's sent off in the top pair in the betting and that were held up or raced mid-division early, they produced just six winners between them from 62 runners; this equates to less than 1 in 10 winning. Watson's 2yos which led early and were top two in the betting won on average more than four times as often, at a 43% clip.

Which trainers' two-year-olds led early least often?

As we have seen earlier in this series, not all trainers are keen for their runners to take an early lead. Below is a list of the trainers with the lowest percentages in terms of horses that led early:

The eye is immediately drawn to James Fanshawe: just 1 of his 203 2yos have led early. It should be noted that Fanshawe has a relatively small crop of 2yos each year but, even so, this is remarkable. It is also worth noting that if a 2yo Fanshawe runner has raced prominently they have won 18% of the their races; compare this to the 4% win strike rate for his held up 2yos.

Some other well-known trainers appear in this table: the likes of Marcus Tregoning, Roger Varian and Roger (joined now by son Harry) Charlton to name but three. The Charlton data is worth expanding upon. Firstly let me breakdown his 2yo runners in terms of percentage of run style across all four run styles, as we saw earlier for Johnston:

A huge chunk of his 2yos tend to be held up, and nearly 65% of them have not been pushed up with or close to the pace early. Now look at the strike rates for each run style category:

It is the pattern we should all expect by now, but it begs the question why does Charlton hold up 43.8% of his 2yos when only 8.5% of them go on to win? Likewise why does he send just 8.4% of his 2yos out into an early lead when a huge 32.7% of them win? In general, it is likely to be that the Charlton runners may be incapable of getting to the front early, or that they are raced with at least one eye on the future; but the pattern is clear. Perhaps further schooling at the starting stalls might be beneficial.

Trainer run style averages

In order to give us a more complete picture, I have produced trainer run style averages, in exactly the same way that I did in the first article. To recap, I simply add up the Geegeez pace points for a particular trainer's two-year-olds and divide the total by the number of runners. The higher the average the more prominent the trainer’s horse tends to race. I have looked at overall pace averages rather than breaking down by handicap v non-handicap figures. The reason for this is that 79% of all 2yo races are non-handicaps. Also it saves some space!

For the record, the trainer run style average for all 2yos is 2.29. Have a look for your favourites below.

I have mentioned before that how you deploy these averages is personal choice. In 2yo races, especially when the horses have not run many times before, I believe the data can prove very useful. Let me give an example of a 2yo race run in April of this year.

As can be seen from the Geegeez PACE tab, only three of the horses had previously run and only once each. If we look at the trainer run style averages it looks likely that the Johnston runner will lead:

As the result below shows below, the Johnston runner Beautiful Eyes did lead, and also went onto win:

It is interesting to note that Karl Burke had the second highest number in the run style average table for this race, and his horse raced prominently and came second. Of course, the run style of all 2yo horses are not always going to correlate with the trainer averages. However, these averages can help us build up the most likely scenario of how the early stages of a race are going to be run even when horses have never raced before.

Here is a second example of a race from earlier this year, again it occurred in April:

Once again there was very limited run style/pace data from previous races to help form a picture of how the race may pan out in the early stages. The trainer run style averages for this contest were as follows:

Archie Watson comfortably had the highest run style average at 2.98, with David Evans earning the second highest. As it turns out the runners from these two trainers disputed the early lead and finished 1^st and 2^nd.

As I mentioned earlier this ‘prediction’ method won’t always work, but it is a useful starting point, particularly in 2yo races (or other race types where there is little no previous form).

Run style and market rank

To finish with I want to combine market rank with run style for the 2yo data from 2014 to 2021. The following graph looks at the percentage of runners that took the early lead in relation to their market rank:

What is clear from this strong correlation is that either market factors influence the running style of certain horses, or the running style of certain horses influences the market. Favourites led early in nearly 27% of all 2yo races in the eight year study period, almost double the average figure for early leaders of 14.6%. Horses occupying the next two places in the betting led in just over 20% of races but, as can be seen, once we get to horses outside of the top six in the betting, getting to the early lead was not easy for this group (less than 8% of them managed it).

This should come as no surprise. Less fancied horses in general are going to be slower than fancied horses, certainly over the full race distance; so it makes sense that this scenario is quite likely to occur early in the race as well as at the finish line. Of course, there will be occasions when an outsider is ahead of the favourite in the first furlong because trainer habits will have an effect or because the market has simply miscalculated the ability of a horse. Sometimes those horses will remain in front at the end of a race: shocks happen! But those are the exceptions.

Combining trainer run style data with market rank looks a potent combination. All Geegeez Gold users have the opportunity to dig even deeper than I have by looking at individual trainer run style statistics combined with market rank inside the Query Tool. To give you a taster, here are the top ten trainers in terms of percentage of runners which led early when sent off favourite (to qualify - 30 favourites minimum):

So Robert Cowell and (Charlie &) Mark Johnston favourites led more than half the time: that could be useful to know!

That's all for this episode. Please leave any comments, questions or thoughts below.

- DR

p.s. the next instalment of this series contains some of my most detailed research ever - stay tuned!

Trainers and Run Style: Part 2

1 June 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

This is the second article in a series in which I will be looking at run style bias, writes Dave Renham. The first article was quite a general piece, although it did drill down into some of the key stats of three trainers – Eric Alston, Mark Johnston and Tom Dascombe. This follow up piece looks at success rates for trainers with front runners including breaking down the data by distance. Once again I have looked at the last eight full calendar years of data (1/1/14 to 31/12/21) including both turf and all weather racing in the UK. The focus is all race types (handicaps and non handicaps) and all distances, races with six or more runners.

Run style is all about the position a horse takes up early on in the race, normally within the first 100-200 yards. There are four basic positions a horse can adopt in a race and these are categorised on the Geegeez website as Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section.

Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:

Led – horses that get to the front early or horses that dispute for the early lead often simply called (front runners);

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

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack or just behind the mid-point;

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

Run style is often linked with the word pace because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Hence for many the words run style and pace are interchangeable.

On this site you can find plenty of run style data in both the Pace Analyser and the Query Tool. These can be found from the Tools tab anywhere on site. Additionally, each racecard has the last four run style/pace figures for each runner. Inexperienced horses may have less data as they may not have run four times.

Benchmarks: Overall strike rates for run style

These raw stats illustrate why run style is so important and why it staggers me that some trainers are clearly averse to sending out their runners to try and lead early.

Front runners do best at shorter distances as the graph below shows. (It should be noted that the small number of 6½f races, just 43 in total, were included in the 7f-1m data):

The advantage to front runners is very strong in sprints (5-6f) and quite potent at races up to a mile, also. The advantage is less pronounced over longer trips but those on the lead still win more often than any other of the overall run styles shown in the first chart (13.91% for leaders over 1m1f+ vs 12.3% for all prominent racers).

Data for hold up horses, as you may expect, shows the reverse. The longer the distance the more chance horses from the back of the field have of coming thorough to win:

Still, even the best strike rate for hold up horses is lower than those racing midfield overall, much lower than the prominent racer superset, and more than half as low as the early leader overall group. More materially, perhaps, the just better than 8% hit rate for hold up horses in 1m1f+ races compares highly unfavourably with the nigh on 14% rate for early leaders in the same races.

Best Front Runner Trainers: All Races

Moving on, let us look at the trainers who had the highest strike rates with their front runners in ALL races of 6+ runners (minimum 80 runs / top 30 trainers):

This table really knocks the eye out! There are some seriously impressive figures here with 14 trainers having strike rates of 25% or higher, five of them hitting 30%+.

The Win PL figures show how profitable front runners are, and that trying to find the best way of predicting them is something all punters should want to achieve.

Saeed Bin Suroor tops the list, and combining a front runner of his with a fancied runner is a potent combination as this table further illustrates:

As the table shows, bin Suroor front running favourites score nearly 54% of the time, while the top four in the betting all have good strike rates and would have produced excellent returns. Remember, all such returns shown on Geegeez are to SP. Using BOG and/or Betfair would see these figures looking even more impressive.

Best Front Runner Trainers: Non-handicap Races

Now let's drill down a level and look at the top trainer strike rates in non-handicap races only (minimum 60 runs / top 20 trainers):

There are few surprises here, with 18 of this top 20 having already appeared on the ‘All Races top 30’ list. Just David and Nicola Barron and Richard Fahey new names to the party.

Best Front Runner Trainers: Handicap Races

Onto the top 20 trainers in terms of front running strike rates in handicaps only (minimum 70 runs) and the key players are as follows:

Here we see slightly lower strike rates, but this is to be expected in handicaps where field size is generally larger (9.85 runners versus 9.26 runners in non-handicaps during the study window).

This time, there are some new names to be aware of - Chris Wall, John O’Shea, Malcolm Saunders, Julie Camacho, Stuart Kittow, Ismael Mohammad and the Coles father and son team (research based on father, Paul Cole, only).

Best Front Runner Trainers: By Race Distance

In this next section, we are going to look at different race distances; specifically, the top 10 front running trainers in terms of win strike rate in each division:

5f / 6f races

Simon Crisford, now training with his son, Ed, is the king of front-running sprinters, his speedballs that go forward immediately winning a whopping 40% of the time. Crisford is one of the more active trainers at the breeze up sales and tends to specialise in two-year-olds generally; perhaps that early education for his runners is a material component. Regardless, many of them clearly know their job from the starting stalls.

Crisford used to be racing manager for Godolphin, and the next three entries in this table are all Godolphin trainers, two of them on the payroll plus John (and Thady) Gosden.

7f / 1m races

Those familiar names appear again when the race distance ramps up a touch, though there are interlopers in the top five now. Sharing top honours with Messrs bin Suroor and Appleby, C. is William Haggas, the trio all winning at this range with around 39% of their front runners.

1m1f or longer races

As we get towards the longer distance races, the strike rates curtail somewhat - to be expected based on the overall data I shared in my introduction; and yet Saeed bin Suroor still managed to achieve a better than one-in-three win rate with early leaders in races of nine furlongs-plus. He's well clear of the wily Sir Mark Prescott and the quietly excellent David Menuisier.

Front Runner Trainer/Jockey combinations

As well as how a trainer likes his horses to be ridden, a key consideration must be the actual rider!

Here, I have collated a list of the top 50 trainer / jockey combos with front runners. For this table I have not added profit/loss data (minimum 40 races), though the A/E column may be used as a proxy (where a number above 1 implies future potential profitability).

As you might expect, there are some very strong stats here with many of the very top trainers and jockeys combining. However, perhaps of more interest are a few combinations that may have sailed under the radar, such as Channon and Bishop, Osborne and Currie, Quinn and Hart, Griffiths and Allan, Midgeley and Lee to name but five. Feel free to do your own sleuthing in the table above!

Front Runner Trainers: Led Win Rate compared with Held Up Win Rate

To finish, I would like to compare individual trainer strike rates for their front runners with the percentages for their hold up horses. Earlier in the piece we saw the average win percentage for front runners was 17.02% between 2014 and 2021 in 6+ runner flat races, while for hold up horses it was just 7.16%.

The aim of this exercise, then, is to create a 'led to held up ratio' (L:H for short) using individual trainer percentages. So, for example and using the overall figures, I divide the led percentage of 17.02 by the held up percentage of 7.16 to create the benchmark trainer L:H ratio of 2.38. From there, we can see which trainers differ markedly from the average figure.

Trainers with a high 'led to held up ratio'

This first table shows those trainers with a much higher L:H ratio. I have also included both win percentages (SR%) to aid the comparison:

Adrian Nicholls tops the list mainly due to his dreadful record with hold up horses – just 1 of the 102 such runners have won. It is also worth noting that Nicholls has a 14.3% strike rate with prominent racers which, considering his overall record, is a real stand out figure.

Phillip Makin’s stats are interesting as he has saddled 21 winners from 84 front runners (25%); compare this with his record with the other three run styles combined which has seen 31 wins from 648 runners for a strike rate of only 4.8%. It might be worth scouring the daily racecards to find potential front runners from the Makin yard.

I also will keep an eye out for other potential front runners from the following stables - Jedd O’Keeffe, Sir Mark Prescott, William Stone, Staurt Kittow, Richard Hughes, John Quinn and Karl Burke.

Trainers with a low 'led to held up ratio'

Let’s now look at the trainers with the lowest L:H ratios:

One trainer worth mentioning here is Lucy Wadham. Her flat race win strike rate across all run style categories is remarkably even:

Not many trainers whose overall SR% exceeds 10% have figures like this.

There is plenty to digest in this article and I hope it has given you plenty of food for thought. The next piece in the series will look at run style data for two-year-olds. Until then, and as always, thanks for reading.

- DR

Trainers and Run Style: Part 1

25 May 2022/in Dave Renham/by Dave Renham

In this article I will be looking from a different angle at run style bias, which regular readers will know is an area of research in which I have a deep interest, writes Dave Renham. As I have discussed in previous articles on the subject, knowing how a race is likely to play out in terms of a potential running style angle is useful for us as punters. It might point us in the direction of a value bet or, just as importantly, help us swerve a losing bet that we would have otherwise backed had we not realised there was a negative in terms of run style.

I have written several run style articles to date on Geegeez covering numerous angles, but as yet I have not looked at trainers in any depth. This article, then, will start to address that omission as I will look at some general stats for trainer regarding the run styles of their horses.

The reason I have decided to look at trainer data is that a good proportion of handlers will tell their jockeys how they would like them to position their horses early in the race as part of their general instructions; hence past trainer run style data could be informative.

I have looked at eight calendar years' worth of data (2014 to 2021) including both turf and all weather racing in the UK. As a starting point I have looked at all races (handicaps and non handicaps) with six or more runners (all distances).

Before delving into the nitty gritty, for new readers especially, allow me to 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, which often defines its running preference. geegeez.co.uk has created some powerful resources to look at run style in the Tools tab. Specifically, either the Pace Analyser or the Query Tool can be used to do this type of research. Running style is often linked with pace because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Thus, for many, the words run style and pace are synonymous.

The stats I am using for this piece are based on the site’s pace / run style data. These data on Geegeez are split into four sections – Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score assigned to each section. These are really helpful as you can drill down into them to help build a picture of how important run style can be.

Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:

Led – horses that lead early, horses that dispute the early lead. I refer to the early leader as the front runner;

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

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack or just behind the mid-point;

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

Which trainers' horses lead early the most?

As a starting point let us see which trainers saw their horses take the early lead the most (in % terms). I have included trainers who have had at least 200 runners over this 8-year period:

As a useful comparison, the average percentage of all horses that lead, or share the lead, early is around 13.2%. The trainers with the highest percentages are leading up to and more than twice as frequently as average and, as we've previously established, an early lead is a general advantage; so these men and women are definitely worthy of further investigation. Let's consider some of them.

Eric Alston

Eric Alston trains a smallish string near Preston, Lancashire. His breakdown in terms of percentage of run style across all four run styles looks like this:

We can see Alston is a big fan of horses running close to or up with the pace – over 70% of all his runners have either led or raced prominently. To show how unusual this is let us review Alston’s figures against the overall numbers for all trainers:

There is a clear disparity here, with only 20.3% of Alston's runners having been held up, compared with 36.6% for trainers generally.

Being handily placed is all well and good, but only if horses are capable of winning from there. Alston’s front runners have done well when fancied, generally if they have been in the top six in the betting. We might expect fancied runners to fare best, of course, as a general rule of thumb. Below is a breakdown of Alston's front running performance by odds rank:

As can be seen from the table above, just two wins from 96 runners were when his front runners have been ranked 7^th or higher in the betting market.

The final Alston stat I wish to share in this article is his record with front runners in 5f races. He has an extremely good record as you can see:

More than one in four of Eric's five furlong front runners have won which is a very positive situation. Of course, we know that we cannot easily predict front runners pre-race but we also know that this trainer's horses typically run from the front - and, further, we have the excellent Geegeez Gold pace maps to show how much contention there might be for the early lead - so it's perfectly possible to find likely front runners most of the time. Racing, and betting on it, is an inexact science, as we all know.

Charlie & Mark Johnston

Mark Johnston now shares the licence with his son Charlie, a partnership which started on Jan 1^st 2022. So, when using Geegeez’s Query Tool for races before 2022, you need to remember to include M Johnston. Firstly, in relation to this powerhouse yard, let's take a look at the breakdown in terms of percentage of runners across all four run styles:

There's a very similar profile to our first trainer, but with a slightly higher combined percentage for front runners and prominent racers as a single group. No fewer than 73% of all Johnston runners showed one of those two run styles in 6+ runner races over an eight year period! The following table, taken from the Pace Score section on the Query Tool, shows perhaps why the Johnston stable tend not to hold their runners up:

Hold up horses have been successful for the Johnston team just 6% of the time, with losses equating to a huge 60p in the £1. Returns drop steadily from top to bottom as you can see.

Below is a breakdown of front runner performance by track for the Johnstons. As can be seen, there is a big difference when we compare the courses at the top of the table with those at the bottom:

No surprises to see Ascot and Newcastle low down, with neither course particularly suiting front runners. Thirsk at the bottom is a surprise, however, although only 30 runners is a smallish sample and hence the figures may be skewed a little. There are some very strong figures at the top of the table: if a potential Johnston front runner appears at any of Beverley, Southwell, Brighton, Catterick and Carlisle we need to take note! [N.B. Southwell performance was based on the previous fibresand surface, so a degree of caution is advised on the new tapeta layout for now]

Tom Dascombe

A quarter of Tom Dascombe’s runners took the early lead in the study period and the first table to share illustrates the difference in success for these early leaders by gender:

In general male horses slightly outperform female ones when it comes to front running stats but the difference is marginal. However, this is a significant difference, which is hard to explain without knowing whether there are any idiosyncrasies when it comes to training fillies. The prices of the male runners were a bit shorter on average, but not enough to make such a big difference to the bottom line. It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues in the coming years, especially with Dascombe having relocated from his Cheshire yard and essentially restarted in Lambourn.

Looking at Dascombe front runners broken down by age we see something interesting when examining their strike rates:

2yos have the best strike rate by some margin. Considering how inexperienced 2yos are this is an impressive performance. When we analyse what would have happened if we had backed all Dascombe front runners, the 2yos would have produced the best returns across the age groups:

Find a Dascombe 2yo that will take the early lead and the stats are nicely in our favour, such runners having returned just over 38p in the £.

Before moving on, it is also worth noting that Dascombe’s front runners across all age groups have performed exceptionally well in sprints with a 23.2% win SR% for races from 5f to 6f; for 7f or further the win percentage diminishes to 14.8%. That's still pretty good considering the shorter the distance the easier it is to lead from pillar to post.

Which trainers' horses lead early the least?

Not all trainers are keen for their runners to take an early lead. Below is a list of the trainers with the lowest percentages in terms of horses that led early in UK flat races of six or more runners between 2014 and 2021:

If you are looking for a front runner, it is unlikely to come from any of these stables.

Trainer Run Style Averages

In order to give us a more complete picture, I have produced some trainer pace / run style averages, using exactly the same methodology that I have previously created course and jockey pace / run style averages in the past. I simply add up the Geegeez pace points for a particular trainer and divide it by the number of runners. The higher the average the more prominent the trainer’s horses tend to race. I have also not only given each trainer an overall pace average, but separate non-handicap and handicap averages, too. To qualify for the list, trainers needed to have had saddled at least at least 100 horses in non-handicaps and 150 in handicaps. As a baseline figure, it is worth knowing that the average pace / run style average for all trainers stands at 2.23.

Most trainers have similar figures but a few - such as Shaun Harris, Sir Mark Prescott, Ed De Giles, Mark Walford, Neil Mulholland, and Christine Dunnett - demonstrate quite a difference between the two. Go figure! 😉 The right hand column shows the difference in average run style score between non-handicap and handicap runners. A negative score implies trainers whose horses that are campaigned more forwardly in handicap races than non-handicaps (say, while working towards an opening rating, for example)...

The list below is extensive!

How, or indeed if, one uses the information in this article to aid personal betting is, naturally, down to the individual; for me, as someone who is often looking to predict the front runner in a race, this trainer run style data is extremely informative. Previous run style articles have noted that huge profits could be made at certain distances if you could consistently predict the horse that is going to take the early lead. Adding trainer data to other factors such as the recent run style profile of each horse, a longer term horse run style profile, the draw and the jockey will all assist in building up the best pace and positioning profile of a race that we can.

In the next article in this series I will delve deeper into trainer run style data. Until then, thanks for reading.

- DR

Membership Login

Dundalk Trainers

Dundalk Racecourse Jockeys

Gender bias at Dundalk?

Dundalk Racecourse: Market factors

Sires at Dundalk

Horses for courses at Dundalk

Running Style at Dundalk

Dundalk Racecourse 5f Run Style Bias

Dundalk Racecourse 6f Run Style Bias

Dundalk Racecourse 7f Run Style Bias

Dundalk Racecourse 1m Run Style Bias

Draw Bias at Dundalk Racecourse

Dundalk Racecourse 5f Draw Bias

Dundalk Racecourse 6f Draw Bias

Dundalk Racecourse 7f Draw Bias

Other Dundalk Draw Observations / Conclusions

Handicap biases

Non-handicap biases

Running Style (Pace) Bias at Chelmsford

Draw Bias at Chelmsford

Chelmsford City Racecourse 5 furlong Draw Bias

Chelmsford City Racecourse 6 furlong Draw Bias

Chelmsford City Racecourse 7 furlong Draw Bias

Chelmsford City Racecourse 1 Mile Draw Bias

Top Trainers at Chelmsford Racecourse

John Gosden at Chelmsford Racecourse

Richard Hughes at Chelmsford Racecourse

Trainers to Beware at Chelmsford Racecourse

Gender bias at Chelmsford Racecourse?

Market factors at Chelmsford Racecourse

Who Are The Best Sires at Chelmsford City Racecourse?

Chelmsford Racecourse Horses for courses

General trainer performance with 4yo runners

Individual Trainer Performance with Four-Year-Olds

Individual Trainer Performance with Five-Year-Olds and upwards

All 3yo runners in handicaps

Handicap races broken down by distance

3yos in handicaps over 5 to 6 furlongs

3yos in handicaps over 7f to 1 mile

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

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

Distance comparison – individual trainers

All 3yo runners

Non-handicaps versus handicaps

Non-handicaps races broken down by distance

3yos in non handicaps over 5 to 6 furlongs

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

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

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

Final Words

Course statistics (All 2yo races)

Charlie & Mark Johnston 2yo Course Stats

Karl Burke 2yo Course Stats

Trainer Annual Breakdowns of Win Strike in 2yo races

2yo handicaps (nurseries)

Ralph Beckett in 2yo Handicaps

2yo Handicaps by Race Distance

2yo nursery handicaps over 5-6 furlongs

2yo nursery handicaps - 7 furlongs to 1 mile

Distance comparison in nursery handicaps – individual trainers

Trainer Performance in all 2yo races

Charlie Appleby's 2yo record

Aidan O'Brien's 2yo record

Non-handicaps versus handicaps

Non-handicap performance by race distance

2yo non-handicaps over 5-6 furlongs

2yo non-handicaps over 7f to 1 mile

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

Individual trainers: comparison by distance

Horse run style averages

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

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

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

Closing thoughts

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Debut runs

Two-Year-Old Run Style: Second career start

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

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

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