Uttoxeter 3m Handicap Chases: Deep Dive

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3-mile handicap chases at Uttoxeter: a deep dive

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

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

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

Race Distance

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

 

 

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

 

Betting market

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

 

 

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

 

Age

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Course form

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

 

 

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

 

Distance change

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

 

 

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

 

Weight carried

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

 

 

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

 

Recent form

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

 

 

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

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

 

Run Style

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Ratings

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

*

 

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

 

Bangor 3-mile handicap chases

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

 

Exeter 3-mile handicap chases

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

 

Perth 3-mile handicap chases

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

 

 

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

Until next time...

- DR

Miscellaneous Jump Racing Angles

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Four Micro Research Angles

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

Trainers with NH Runners on Debut

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

 

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

 

Trainers with NH Runners on 2nd Start

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

 

 

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

 

Trainers with NH Runners on 3rd Start

On to start three:

 

 

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

**

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

- DR

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

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

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

Rationale

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

Handicap vs non-handicaps

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

 

 

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

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

 

Race Class

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

 

 

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

 

Last time out race position

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

 

 

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

 

Jockey change?

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Odds Last Time Out

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

 

 

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

 

Age of horse

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

 

 

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

**

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

- DR

A Look at Favourites in All-Weather Races

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Favourites in All-Weather (AW) Racing in 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites Overall

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Race type

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Course

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Time of Year

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Class of Race

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Days since last run

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

 

 

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Headgear

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Draw

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

 

 

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

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

 

All-Weather Favourites by Trainer

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Conclusion

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

 

 

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

- DR

Kempton 7f Handicaps: Deep Dive

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An in depth look at 7f handicaps at Kempton Park

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

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

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

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

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

Betting market

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Course LTO

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

 

 

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

 

Sex of horse

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

Change in distance

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

 

 

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

 

Course form

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Run Style

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

 

 

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

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

Draw

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

 

 

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

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

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

The five strongest positives

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

*

 

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

- DR

Boxing Day: To Bet, or Not To Bet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: BSP Market Data

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

 

 

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

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: Favourites by Course

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

 

 

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

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: Market Movement

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

Boxing Day Racing: Trainers

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

- DR

Topspeed Ratings on the All-Weather, Part 2

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Overall Performance of TS in All-Weather Handicaps

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

Top Rated TS Runners in AW Handicaps

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

*

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

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

- DR

Topspeed Ratings on the All-Weather, Part 1

/in /by

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

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

 

Introduction

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

Topspeed All-Weather Performance by Ordinal Rank

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

Topspeed All-Weather Performance for TS Top Rated Runners

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

 

 

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

Annual strike rates – TS top-rated runners

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

 

 

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

 

Market Rank – TS top-rated runners

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

Handicaps versus non-handicaps – TS top-rated runners

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

  

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

*

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

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

- DR

Thinking Out Loud: Trainer ‘P’ Form

/in /by

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

Nicky Henderson

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

Olly Murphy

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

 

 

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

 

Paul Nicholls

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

 

 

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

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

 

Dan Skelton

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

 

 

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

 

Nigel Twiston-Davies

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

*

 

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

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

- DR

 

 

 

NH Trainers: Short vs Long Distance Travellers

/in , /by

NH Trainers and distance travelled

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

40 miles or less

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

175 miles or more

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

Short vs Long: A Comparison

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

 

 

 

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

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

- DR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack.

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

OK, let me kick on starting with number five.

 

5 Kelso 2m5½f-2m6½f

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

Having started in Scotland we now travel south to Cheltenham.

 

4 Cheltenham 2m4f–2m5f

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

Onto the PRBs (all going conditions):

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

3 Tramore 1m7f-2m

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

2 Killarney 2m4f-2m5f

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

And now for my number 1...

 

1 Uttoxeter 2m4f-2m5f

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

 

 

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

The PRBs confirmed the pattern:

 

 

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

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

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

 

*

 

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

Until next time...

- DR

Top 10 Front Running Biases in Handicap Chases, Part 1: 10 to 6

/in , /by

The Top 10 front running biases in handicap chases Part 1 – 10 to 6

Over the next two articles I will share what I believe to be the Top Ten current run style handicap chase front running biases in the UK and Ireland, writes Dave Renham. In this first half, I will reveal positions 10 down to 6; and next week I'll reveal my top five. Of course, I appreciate that there will be people who disagree with my hierarchy but, ultimately, all ten biases have shown themselves to be profitable to deploy alongside more traditional form reading. As a bonus, today I will also share three near misses that narrowly failed to make the top ten.

Introduction

To compile my top picks, I have used data for handicap chases only as they are not so prone to distortion by the ability range of the horses competing. Data are from 2018 to 2024 with no minimum runner consideration.

I mentioned in a recent offering that Gold members of Geegeez have so many benefits and one of these is access to the Pace Analyser. This allows users to dive into run style / pace biases at any racecourse in the UK and Ireland. The data can be filtered based on going, field size, distance and race type. There is also the option to separate hurdles and chase (and NH Flat) data at jumps courses; and across all courses the data can further be filtered by year to allow for possible changes in any bias. The Pace Analyser is ideal for research such as this, and it was the main source that I used to produce what follows.

The run style data on Geegeez is split into four groups - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. A quick refresher of which type of horse fits each profile:

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

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

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack.

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

 

Near Misses

In general, the ‘led’ group has an edge in most handicap chases. Some courses offer a stronger edge than others and hence let me start by looking at the C&Ds that were near misses:

 

Exeter 2m3f

To get this distance on Geegeez we need to use the 2m4f distance figure on the Query Tool / Pace Analyser as distances are grouped every two furlongs. It should be noted, too, that some race distances at a track change slightly sometimes due to rail adjustments. This happens more and more these days, or at least it is more accurately reported these days!

Let me share the Exeter figures taken from the Pace Analyser:

 

 

This is a good time to note that not all run style groups have the same number of runners; there are always going to be far more hold up horses than front runners / early leaders. However, despite the ‘led’ group having just 82 qualifiers compared with the held-up group of 161, they have still won 20 races compared with 15. The Win%s in the table show the strike rate within each run style group, and for this article that is how I will quantify ‘win strike rate’.

The ‘led’ group produced by far the highest percentage at 24%. That is, 24.39% of the horses that led early went on to win their races. (They actually won 31.25% (20/64) of all races in the sample).

Leaders' place percentage was comfortably the best too, with 47.6% of early leaders still in the frame at the finish line; while their A/E index of 1.39 indicates that front runners were very good value.

If we considered favourites only in these races and their performance by run style, we have seen the following win strike rates splits (I have combined favourites whose run style was either Mid Div or Held Up):

 

 

Front runners / horses that contested the early lead had an outstanding record when favoured by the market. However, it's a different story for those favourites that raced mid pack or at the back early. As can be seen, the bias over this course and distance has been very strong indeed, but still it wasn't quite enough to make my top ten. Exciting times ahead, then!

Before moving on, in terms of what has happened in 2025, of the eight races to date, five have been won by front runners.

 

Sedgefield 2m5f to 2m5½f

Using the Geegeez tools we use the 2m6f distance.

 

 

Front runners have hit a win rate in excess of 30% and the only reason this track/trip did not make the list is due to the relatively strong stats for horses that raced in midfield early. Also, the 2025 stats to date have seen horses racing mid-pack early doing well and winning three of the six races to date.

 

Lingfield 2m

The stats were as follows:

 

 

Strong figures again for front runners, although this is another course and distance (C&D) where qualifying races were relatively infrequent (only four races per year on average). Indeed, at the time of writing there has been just one qualifying handicap chase in 2025, but it was won by the early leader as we can see:

 

 

It is also worth noting that he was projected as the 'probable lone speed' in the race:

 

 

OK, near misses shared; onto position ten in my list.

 

Top 10, 10 to 6

#10 Chepstow 3m

Some readers may expect front runners to be at a disadvantage over longer distances in handicap chases: surely for a horse to lead from start to finish in a 3-mile race would not be any easy assignment, right? However, looking at the Chepstow breakdown I suspect might change a few minds!

 

 

Front runners have bossed these races over the past few seasons, while prominent racers have been clearly second best with much better stats than horses which raced off the pace. 68 of the 96 winners raced close to the pace or at the front - that's 71% of the winners from 47% of the runners. And a front runner has been over four times more likely to win than a hold up horse when analysing the win percentage within their respective groups (25% versus 5.7%).

Now, as stated earlier, we get more hold up horses than front runners in most races and there were just over twice as many hold up horses compared to front runners between 2018 and 2024. That means therefore that when talking purely about race wins, front runners have won just over twice the number of races than hold ups.

There have been seven races this year so far with two being won from the front.

 

#9 Sandown 2m4f

It is time to head to Surrey now, and specifically Esher, to look at the 2m4f stats from Sandown. The run style splits for this time frame were as follows:

 

 

It's a similar story to Chepstow’s 3-mile trip but front runners have had a better place record here, hitting over 53%. There have not been that many qualifying races per year (roughly five to six) but keep an eye out for confirmed front runners when they race over this C&D. Those on the early lead have had an even stronger edge on soft/heavy ground as can be seen below:

 

 

From Sandown we head up country to Haydock.

 

#8 Haydock 2m3f-2m5f

Haydock seemed to have 'played around' a little with the usual 2m4f trip occasionally adding or dropping a furlong. Hence, I have combined results together a furlong either side of two and a half miles. Let me share the run style stats:

 

 

There has again not been a huge number of races each year, but the front running numbers were extremely strong over the period of study. 11 of the 29 races were won from the front and that cohort also had an outstanding place record. Hold up horses really struggled in terms of winning, though they fared better from a placed perspective.

Haydock, like Sandown, has seen the front running bias strengthen on softer ground. On soft or heavy the run style win strike rates were as follows:

 

 

It should be noted the sample size stands at only 17 races. The A/E indices correlate strongly as the graph below shows:

 

 

All in all, Haydock over 2m4f has strongly favoured horses racing at the front end.

 

#7 Carlisle 2m4f

Staying north for number seven, as we head to Carlisle next. The run style splits were:

 

 

It could be argued that both Haydock and Sandown should be positioned higher than Carlisle in the list; but Carlisle’s overall sample size was bigger and that swung it for me, along with an outstanding A/E index of 1.57 and excellent IV of 2.4. The figures for both of these metrics were the highest of the four C&Ds shared to date, and comfortably so.

In terms of underfoot, once again we have seen a strengthening of the bias on softer ground. I will share the win strike rate percentages and the A/E indices once more. Firstly, the win stats:

 

 

Clearly, as with the 2m4f trips at Sandown and Haydock, on soft or heavy it has been hard to make up ground from further back. 21 of the 27 races were won by front runners (12 wins) or prominent racers (9). Hold up horses had a win rate of under 3% within their run style group which is the lowest figure seen to date.

The A/E indices positively correlate with the win SR%s as we would have expected:

 

 

A ‘led’ figure of 1.79 suggests huge value; not so for the 0.26 hold up A/E index.

One final front running stat to share for this track and trip combination is connected with those early leaders that were in the top three of the betting market. This collective won 16 races from 36 qualifiers which equates to a win rate of over 44%.

This year, at the time of writing, there have only been four qualifying races over this C&D (all going conditions), and three of the four have been won from the front.

 

#6 Doncaster 2m3f to 2m4½f

Onto Donny now to close out the first half of my top ten. They have races over similar distances from 2m3f to 2m4½f so all races within that distance band are included (2m4f for all on Geegeez Pace Analyser):

 

 

Front runners have won 20 of the 51 races and have an excellent placed record to boot. The ground is rarely testing at Doncaster, but on good to soft or softer the bias does seem to get even stronger:

 

 

11 of the 25 races, which equates to 44% of all races, were won from the front under these conditions.

If we considered favourites only at Doncaster and their performance by run style, we have seen the following win strike rates splits (I have once again combined favourites whose run style was either Mid Div or Held Up):

 

Favourites that led early have been far more successful than other run style groups.

And that rounds out the lower half of my top ten. Next time it will be the top five, some even stronger biases than these! Until then...

- DR

 

 

 

 

 

An Irish National Hunt Trainers Analysis

/in /by

An exploration of Irish National Hunt trainers using the Geegeez Query Tool

Gold members of Geegeez have so many benefits and for the first part of this article I am going to discuss how I used one of these, the Query Tool, to obtain a wealth of trainer data, writes Dave Renham. The second part of the piece will crunch some of those numbers.

My focus was Irish racing and hence Irish trainers in National Hunt races. Data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 30th September 2025 with profits and losses calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets.

 

Setting Up With Query Tool

So, the starting point for using the Query Tool was straightforward: by inputting the date range, then going to the RACE menu where, on the Country tab, I ticked ‘Ire’ and then, going to the Race Code tab, I ticked all of the NH code boxes. The screenshot below shows the filters used:

 

 

So, this gave me all the Irish data I was looking for so – over 11,000 races as can be seen from the 'Wins' column:

 

 

 

Next I went to the RUNNER menu and then clicked on the ‘Trainer’ radio button, which groups the criteria by the selected variable (in this case, trainer), and then I clicked 'Generate Report'. This gave me the records for every single Irish trainer who had had a runner during the period of study. The first few trainers in alphabetical order are shown below:

 

 

From here I wanted to focus only on the trainers who sent out the most runners in order to have big enough sample sizes to drill down into other areas. I ordered the trainers by runs in the Query Tool and decided on 800 runs or more as my cut off point. This gave me 29 trainers to review. By ticking the ‘+’ sign to the left of each of these 29 trainers' names (and, when doing this, the plus sign became a minus sign meaning the trainer had been selected), I added them to my shortlist. Once all were ticked, I generated a new report with only these 29 trainers shown:

 

 

I then went back to the SUMMARY tab (top of the main part of the page) and used the 'COPY' button to paste all of the trainer data into a Microsoft Excel file I had already opened. With the 29 trainers logged in the Query Tool, I then went about generating numerous reports by changing the Query Tool variables or options. Once generated, new reports were pasted into a worksheet and I added an additional column with the specific variable for that report. I created 30 different reports, all copied across to my Excel worksheet. This took no more than 20 minutes tops, and I now had all the data I needed to analyse and number crunch.

 

Irish NH Trainers, by Win Strike Rate

The rest of this article will take a more familiar format for regular readers, although I may discuss some Excel methods I used along the way, in case you want to do some digging for yourself!

First things first, let me share the results for each of the 29 trainers over the timeframe (trainers ordered by win strike rate):

 

 

One immediate point to share is that Irish racing has had bigger average field sizes when compared to the UK in recent years, and that helps to explain why the trainer strike rates are generally lower than we are be used to seeing when looking at UK trainer data. The maestro that is Willie Mullins was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of win strike rate having hit a touch more than one win in every four. His runners, if backed ‘blind’, made a very small profit to BSP. The second and third listed trainers, Henry de Bromhead and Joseph O’Brien, were also profitable to BSP. A handful of other trainers made a profit to BSP, but all of these had at least one massive BSP priced winner to skew their bottom line somewhat.

 

Irish NH Trainers, by 'Favourite' performance

One advantage of copying the 30 different reports into Excel meant I could create a Pivot Table to easily compare the data sets and see if there were any significant patterns or angles that were worth sharing. Pivot tables are an extremely useful way to number crunch data in Excel. For those interested in finding out more about them there are plenty of easy to follow YouTube videos around.

I started off by analysing some betting market stats beginning with trainer data for favourites. In order to have a big enough sample, I decided that a trainer must have saddled at least 100 or more favourites during the period of study. I wanted to start by comparing their overall win strike rate for 'All favs' with their strike rates for market leaders specifically in chases or hurdle races. The sample size for NH Flat favourites was too small for most trainers, so I have opted not to show that. The splits were thus:

 

 

Don’t be too put off by the huge variance in strike rates between, say, Mullins and Rothwell, because 88% of market leaders for Mullins were in non-handicaps, and 84% of Rothwell’s were in handicaps. Non-handicap favourites start at much shorter prices on average than handicap jollies, so Mullins was always going to have a much higher strike rate when comparing the two of them. Talking of handicaps and non-handicaps it makes sense for me to share and compare their win strike rates to help illustrate my previous point:

 

 

Most trainers conformed to the pattern of much better win rates in non-handicaps, although a few did buck this trend. Declan Queally, for example, had virtually the same strike rate in both race types and when we analyse his results in full, we see the following:

 

 

Favourites in handicaps produced excellent returns for Queally and anyone following his market leaders in these contests would have been counting their money. Philip Rothwell has fared far better in handicaps than non-handicaps with favourites, but the vast majority of his market leaders were in handicaps (only 18 in non-handicaps).

It's time to narrow down the research a little by looking at a handful of the most successful trainers.

 

Irish NH Trainers: Specific Handlers

Willie Mullins

I called him the ‘maestro’ earlier and he has been in a different league to his peer group in recent years. Clearly, he has the backing of some huge owners and gets many of the best horses, but one still needs to deliver. I have shared some of his market leader stats already, and below is a graph sharing his ROI percentages (BSP) in more specific race types – handicap chases, handicap hurdles, non-handicap chases, non-handicap hurdles and NH Flat races.

 

 

As can be seen, Mullins produced excellent returns when saddling the favourite in non-handicap chases. The full stats read 316 wins from 536 (SR 59%) for a profit of £116.47 (ROI +21.7%). He also showed a blind profit with market leaders in non-handicap hurdle races thanks to 540 wins from 1028 runners (SR 52.5%) for a profit of £75.68 (ROI +7.5%). He was less successful in handicaps, making a loss in both chase and hurdle race types. His worst record with favourites was in NH Flat races where losses were close to 9 pence in the £.

Switching to all runners rather than just favourites, Mullins had some powerful stats during the period of study when we analyse the run style of his runners in chase contests. Regular readers of my articles will know that chases tend to offer front runners a solid edge over all other run styles. Mullins conformed to this pattern in such races going back to the start of 2018 as the graph below, which shows his win strike rate across the different run styles, highlights:

 

 

Mullins’ horses that have taken the lead at the start of their chase races went onto win nearly 45% of their races. If we had known pre-race which of his horses would front run and backed them accordingly, we would have been in profit to the tune of £185.78 (ROI +36.1%). Compare this to the potential returns of midfield and held up runners, which would have lost 18p and 30p in the £ respectively.

Moving on to the very best contests, Class 1 events. Here, Mullins produced a blind profit and, considering he had 2536 runners in them, this was an impressive performance, even more so considering every Irish (and British) punter knows what this trainer has achieved. His record in Grade 3 races produced the best results: 117 wins from 457 (SR 25.6%) for a profit of £74.58 (ROI +16.3%).

Henry de Bromhead

Henry de Bromhead had some amazing wins in the UK during this timeframe, especially at the Cheltenham Festival, but here I will drill into his Irish record in more detail. His overall record showed a blind profit equating to over 6p in the £ and his yearly splits are shown in the graph below:

 

 

2021 was a poor year from a returns’ perspective, and 2020 showed a small loss, but the other six years all returned a profit. Hence, de Bromhead has been extremely consistent over this timeframe.

Like Mullins, de Bromhead has some interesting stats connected with run style but his most interesting numbers have been in hurdle races. His win strike rate splits have been as follows:

 

 

Horses that have led early have been the most successful by far and, if our crystal ball had been in tip top working order, backing these runners pre-race would have yielded a very healthy return of nearly 70p in the £.

From a personal perspective it will be sad that we will not see the iconic Rachael Blackmore riding for him in the future. They have been one of the best trainer/jockey combos of recent years and gave racing fans some great memories.

Gordon Elliott

For Gordon Elliott I would like to share his record with favourites in NH Flat races. Each year Elliott has had numerous runners in NH Flat races of which roughly 28% of them have started favourite. His record with these market leaders was as follows:

 

 

For favourites to return over 30p in the £ across a good number of bets is rare, so Elliott has performed well above the norm with this cohort of runners.

Elliott is another trainer who produced some very interesting run style stats during this time period. The stats for hurdle races were as follows:

 

 

As we know, the run style each Elliott horse employed was only known after the start of its race. Hence, the profit figures for leaders and prominent runners were not something we could have achieved in reality. However, what it does show once again is that for the majority of races the importance of being up with the pace rather than off the pace.

Geegeez Gold members interested in run style research can investigate further by using the Pace Analyser if wishing to dig into specific courses and/or distances. The example screenshot below shows some Carlisle data:

 

 

Parameters of race code, course, distance, going, number of runners, handicap/non-handicap and time frame can all be tweaked. Also we can check out both Irish and UK courses.

Members can also use the Query Tool for run style research like I have done for this article exploring other areas such as trainers, jockeys, etc.

Joseph O’Brien

Jospeh O’Brien, like Gordon Elliott, has produced positive stats when it comes to NH Flat races. The table below shows his overall record in these races, his record with favourites, and his record with horses that were in the top three of the betting:

 

 

O’Brien has clearly excelled in these races, and it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming season.

Like the other trainers discussed, O’Brien has worthwhile run style stats to share. Below is a graph showing the win percentages for each run style group in both chases and hurdle races:

 

 

Once again, we see front runners from his stable had a huge edge over prominent racers who in turn had a significant edge over horses that were held up or raced in midfield.

 

**

 

I hope this article has served two purposes. Firstly, I wanted to show that research can be undertaken very quickly to generate useful stats and across a variety of areas; and secondly, I have shared some data relating to the highest volume Irish trainers which we should be able to use to our advantage this coming winter and beyond.

Finally, I hope some members will be tempted to use the content here to inspire your own research using Query Tool, Pace Analyser and the other tools in the Geegeez Swiss Army Knife.

Until next time...

- DR

 

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 5: National Hunt Flat

/in /by

Prepping for the Jumps - Part 5, Bumpers

 This the fifth and final article in a series which has been looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the previous piece I discussed handicap hurdles, while for this one, National Hunt Flat races, often called Bumpers, take centre stage.

For convenience, the previous articles are here:

Part 1: Novice Hurdles        Part 2: Novice Chases       Part 3: Handicap Chases       Part 4: Handicap Hurdles

Introduction

As throughout the series, data have been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profit and loss calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched, so this does not include Irish racing. Most NH bumpers are run on turf, but there have been a few races contested on the all-weather (roughly 20 every year). I will include both in the breakdowns.

Bumpers are not the type of races I bet in regularly, although I have had some bets in the past in the biggest races held at the Cheltenham and Aintree festivals. Hence, this was a piece of research I was looking forward to because of my limited past knowledge of such contests.

We have had a reasonable number of qualifying races per year, the average being around 270 over the past few years. So, over the time frame this equated to just over 2000 races. I will start as I have done for the previous four articles by examining the betting market.

Market factors

I used Betfair in terms of market rank and this was what I found:

 

 

 

Favourites performed solidly, losing only a small amount (1.5 pence in the £). The value has seemingly been with horses that started third in the betting. However, before we get too carried away, 2024 and 2025 combined proved a poor period for third favs as they lost £69.52 to £1 level stakes incurring losses of 18 pence in the £. As with some data I have shared in the past, I believe the overall profit for third favs was down to variance. Essentially the market has not been giving us great clues.

Let's move on then and, as with previous articles in the series, I have imposed a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower for the remainder of the number crunching, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line. It still included nearly 40,000 runners so the sample size remained huge.

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females but in bumpers the disparity is less stark than in other disciplines. The splits were:

 

 

Males edged it in terms of strike rate, but overall, all the key metrics were very similar. It should be noted that losses on the Betfair Place market have been far worse for female runners.

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now. Below are the A/E indices across different ages:

 

 

The sweet spot seemed to be with five-year-olds in terms of these figures. The below table covers a broader set of metrics:

 

 

Five-year-olds

As can be seen, five-year-olds had the best figures across all metrics. Not only that, this age group was profitable on the Betfair place market as well, to the tune of £82.12. Compare this to four-year-olds who would have lost us £176.80 on the place market. Overall, horses aged three or four seemed to be at a slight disadvantage, which may simply be down to lack of experience or physical maturity in general.

Five-year-olds were very consistent, which can be seen when viewing their yearly win strike rates:

 

 

In the last five seasons their strike rate has been virtually the same, with figures between 19.1 and 19.8%. Not only that, when we compare their A/E indices across the eight years, they have all been over the magic 1.00 figure suggesting good value in each year:

 

 

Sticking with five-year-olds, it does seem that experience counted for something because if we focus on runners in this age group who had at least two previous racecourse starts their record was 250 wins from 1123 runners (SR 22.3%) for a profit of £147.37 (ROI +13.1%). Meanwhile, five-year-old male runners outperformed their female counterparts, winning 633 times from 3160 runners (SR 20%) for a healthy profit of £221.47 (ROI +7%).

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at some data focusing on the country of breeding. The main country's break down as follows:

 

 

We see similar strike rates for the three main countries of Britain, Ireland and France which often is the case. German-bred runners were far less common but had the highest strike rate. French-bred runners proved relatively poor value overall, while the Irish-bred results were a notch above the rest from a betting perspective. This Irish-bred edge was replicated in the Betfair Place market as the table below shows:

 

 

It should also be noted that Irish bumper runners aged five and up produced a return in the win market of just over 7p in the £.

Older French-bred runners have been quite rare, but when aged six or older their record has been poor thanks to 19 wins from 123 (SR 15.4%) for a loss of £36.64 (ROI -29.8%).

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look next at some LTO data focusing on the most recent run of the horses in question looking a position the horse finished last time out.

 

 

LTO winners made a small loss, while all other groups somewhat surprisingly all proved profitable.

At this point I would like to share the results for horses who had not previously run and hence were making their racehorse debut. This cohort was obviously a big one with 5620 runners in total. Of these, 881 were successful for a strike rate of 15.7%. Losses to £1 level stakes stood at £231.80 (ROI -4.1%); A/E 0.96.

Trainers

Trainer data is always a favourite of racing fans so let’s see what we can find. In the table below all trainers who had at least 60 runners in the study period are shown. The trainers have been ordered alphabetically:

 

 

18 of the 43 trainers made a blind profit during the timeframe, while nine managed A/E indices of 1.10 or higher.

From this initial starting point, let me breakdown some of the data, starting with a look at trainer performance when the horses have started favourite. Below is a graph sharing the ROI%s where to qualify a trainer must have saddled 40 or more market leaders.

 

 

There are some real fluctuations regarding these figures. Harry Fry has had an excellent record with favourites. His ROI of +32.3% came from 21 wins from 46 (SR 45.7%) for a profit to £1 level stakes of £14.87, A/E 1.29. Jamie Snowden was another to have excelled when it comes to market leaders - 25 wins from 50 (SR 50%) for a profit of £11.19 (ROI +22.4%); A/E 1.29. In contrast, Fergal O’Brien has had a poor record with his bumper favourites losing over 19p in the £. His strike rate of 29.1% (35 wins from 119) was lowest of all the trainers shown in the graph. Nicky Henderson’s stats for bumper favourites have also been relatively poor. His record reads 57 wins from 161 (SR 35.4%) for a loss of £15.87 (ROI -9.9%); A/E 0.93.

Debut vs 2nd start

I would like to look now at individual trainer performance comparing horses making their racecourse debuts with horses that had run once previously. To help give us a benchmark, the overall figures for all trainers were as follows:

 

 

As we can see from these figures there was a clear improvement for second starters compared to debut runs so we would expect most trainers to conform to that type of pattern.

I have put the individual trainer data in a table comparing win strike rates, ROI percentages and A/E indices. Anything highlighted in ‘blue’ is a positive, anything in ‘red’ a negative. My criteria for each, was as follows:

 

 

By colour coding it helps us to compare the data sets a little more easily.

 

 

There are few trainers I would like to comment upon.

- Harry Fry had an excellent overall record in bumpers over this period and performed extremely well with debutants so keep an eye out for those.

- Alan King’s profile is similar to Fry with his debutants clearly outperforming those having their second start.

- The trainer combo of Lucinda Russell and Peter Scudamore (and now with Michael Scudamore) had an excellent record with debutants, producing returns of close to 32p in the £; A/E 1.14. Second starters, though, struggled losing 36p in the £; A/E 0.70.

- Chris Gordon’s second starters improved markedly in terms of win rate. Their strike rate went up from 15.7% to 28.6%. Second starters proved extremely profitable, too, with returns of 84p in the £.

- Nicky Henderson’s debutants had a decent win rate, but they were overbet based on losses equating to nearly 20p in the £. His runners definitely improved for the experience, and his second starters broke even.

- Messrs. McCain, Murphy, Pauling and Snowden are four trainers to note with second time starters; their runners seemed to come on a lot for the debut run.

Trainer Track Stats

To finish off, there are a handful of trainers who have produced impressive bumper stats at specific courses. They are listed below (ordered by number of runs):

 

 

There are some very impressive numbers in this table, although we need to be aware that some of the sample sizes were quite small. Having said that, I will be keeping an eye out for these trainer/course combos this winter.

**

And that concludes the fifth and final article in this series. It's another one chock full of stats that should point us in the right direction in terms of potential bumper bets over the coming months.

Good luck!

- DR

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 4: Handicap Hurdles

/in /by

Prepping for the Jumps - Part 4, Handicap Hurdles

This the fourth article in a series looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the opening part, linked to below, I discussed novice hurdle races, and today I am going revisit the hurdle theme but this time we'll be looking at all other handicap hurdle races. Essentially this will include all handicap hurdle races without the term ‘novice’ in the title.

As throughout this series, data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profit and loss calculated to the Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched so this does not include Irish racing.

The previous articles are here:

Part 1: Novice Hurdles        Part 2: Novice Chases       Part 3: Handicap Chases

On average there have been just over 1000 qualifying races per year, so we have a good sample size to review. I will start by examining the betting market.

Market factors

Betfair's market rank data shows the following:

 

 

Favourites made a small profit across the time frame, and it is interesting to see the A/E index broken down by time of year/months. Grouping months in pairs (e.g. January & February, March & April, etc) revealed this:

 

 

From September to April, the A/E indices were strong across the board. In the summer months, when there is less NH racing, the figures were low in comparison. [Readers may note that Peter May's SR figures are not produced on site between June and August because the data is considered less reliable at this time]

The betting returns (ROI%) correlate with the A/E indices as the following graph shows:

 

 

 

Anyone backing favourites from September to April over the period of study would have ended up doing quite well. If we had backed handicap hurdle favourites blind in the eight months 'non-summer months' from 2018 onwards profits accrued to £286.92 from £1 level stakes.

Having looked at the market, it is time to move on to other areas. As with the first three articles, I am going to impose a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower from now on, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line.

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females and the ratio in handicap hurdle races was around 3:1 over the period of study. The findings are shown in the table:

 

 

Both sexes achieved similar win rates but, overall, female runners offered better value. However, fillies - female runners aged three or four - struggled, albeit from a modest sample. 597 fillies raced in these contests with 58 winning (SR 9.7%) for hefty losses of £202.20 (ROI -33.9%); A/E 0.68.

 

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now. We saw that younger female runners struggled and, overall, that has been the case for both sexes as the table below shows:

 

 

Male runners aged three or four lost over 16p in the £, not as much as the fillies but still a steep loss. Horses aged five made a small blind profit and, looking across all metrics, five and six-year-olds showed a solid record.

The older brigade, those aged ten and up, made a fair profit with a decent A/E index of 1.09. Backing all these older runners to place on Befair was profitable also. Perhaps some punters ignored their chances based on age and hence they started slightly higher prices than their true price point. Sticking with the 10-year-olds, they performed even better over shorter distances of 2m4f or less. Their record with this distance requirement was 176 wins from 1328 runners (SR 13.3%) for a healthy profit of £204.62 (ROI +15.4%); A/E 1.13. On the place market the profit was also solid at £85.07. Based on this recent evidence, 10-year-olds may offer some value in the months to come.

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at some breeding data next with focus on the country of breeding. The splits were as follows:

 

 

American bred runners were rare and their record was poor. There was not too much in it in terms of the three main countries of Britain, Ireland and France, although the Irish figures read slightly better. German breds made a very small blind profit, as they did on the Betfair Place market, too (£18.78).

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look next at some LTO data focusing on the position a horse finished last time out. Here is the breakdown:

 

 

I feel Position LTO is a factor that I should always share but, on many occasions, there has been limited value to be found. Based on these stats horses running third LTO offered punters a minute profit but, in my view, this was likely coincidence and ultimately the finishing position last time offers no real clues to handicap hurdle races during the timeframe.

Days since last run (DSLR)

A look next at how long handicap hurdlers have been away from the track between runs. The ranges are necessarily a little arbitrary, and below is how I've broken them down:

 

 

It is rare for me to share these DSLR stats because usually there is nothing clear-cut to note. However, on this occasion there were some strong pointers which the table above shows clearly. Horses returning to the track within three days did really well, albeit from a smallish sample; and those who returned within four to seven days essentially broke even, so quick returners could be an area to keep a close eye on this season.

At the other end of the 'time off' spectrum, horses that were absent from the track for four months or more also turned a fair profit, so I am assuming a similar thing happened here as it did with the 10-year-old and older stats we saw earlier. My guess is that these runners started at prices that were marginally higher than their true price due to a possible ‘fitness bias’.

Trainers

Trainer data is always a favourite of racing fans so let’s see what we can find. In the table below I've listed all trainers who saddled at least 250 handicap hurdle runners during the study period. The trainers are ordered alphabetically:

 

 

23 of the 55 trainers made a blind profit during the timeframe, while 12 managed A/E indices of 1.10 or higher. Any of these 12 can be deemed to be trainers that performed well above the average.

On the flip side, a handful of trainers struggled, including Alan King, Martin Keighley, Seamus Mullins and Ian Williams. These handlers look over-bet in such races as a general rule.

From this initial starting point, I wanted to examine trainer performance across different BSPs. To do this I split their results into six price bands:

 

 

I wanted to compare A/E indices across said price brackets over the review period. Each trainer needed to have at least 60 runners within each individual price band to qualify and, to appear in the table, the trainer must have achieved that in four or more of the six price bands. Any price band where they sent out fewer than 60 runners was left blank.

Any entry highlighted in ‘blue’ was a positive, anything in ‘red’ a negative. My criteria for this was:

 

 

By colour coding it helps us to compare the data sets more easily. Here were the splits:

 

 

If we look back at Chris Gordon’s overall record, we can see that it was extremely positive with an overall A/E index of 1.08 and returns equating to just over 20 pence in the £. Hence, it is no surprise perhaps to see him with three ‘blues’ out of five, and indices of 1.00 and 0.93 in the other price segments. Likewise, Tom Lacey, whose overall strike rate was above 23% with returns of 28.9% and a 1.26 A/E index, had four ‘blues’ out of five with the other A/E index above 1.00 at 1.03.

Seeing that type of positive consistency across different price bands makes Lacey’s overall stats even more impressive. Rebecca Menzies, another trainer who had excellent overall stats, achieved four ‘blues’ out of five. She, along with Gordon and Lacey were trainers to excel during this timeframe and it will be interesting to see if they can replicate this over the coming months. If we combine the results of these three trainers and look at the yearly ROI% returns we see the following:

 

 

Seven winning years out of eight – I wonder if system punters might consider combining the three this year and backing all such runners?

Neil Mulholland attacks handicap hurdles on a regular basis so his overall figures are impressive. In terms of the price bands, he had three ‘blues’ out of six, with the other three indices being 1.00, 1.09 and 0.94. Again, over the past few years he has been a trainer to keep on the right side of, so I am expecting his runners to go well once more this year.

Other positives worth noting are that both the O’Neill stable and the Hobbs/White yard did exceptionally well with shorter prices runners (BSP 3.5 or less). The O’Neill stable had 49 winners from 109 (SR 45%) for a profit of £19.11 (ROI +17.5%); the Hobbs/White had a 50% strike rate thanks to 43 winners from 86 for a BSP profit of £24.86 (ROI +28.9%).

In terms of negatives, Alan King’s overall figures were quite poor, showing losses of over 27p in the £. That manifested as four ‘reds’ out of five. He is not typically a trainer to offer value in handicap hurdles based on these findings.

Summary

Let me finish by placing my interpretation of the main positives and negatives highlighed above in a table, as a sort of handicap hurdle ‘ready reckoner’:

 

 

That’s it for this 'NH Prep' deep dive. Next week I'll be taking a look at bumpers, or National Hunt Flat races to give them their full title. Until then...

- DR

 

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