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Roving Reports: Technical Issues, Please Stand By…

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Spring has well and truly sprung in May, writes David Massey. The winter jumper has (almost) been packed away, the shorts are back on and will be until September now, and the cereal has been changed. By this I mean, for eight months of the year my chosen breakfast is Weetabix with hot milk on. A malty delight, I'm sure you'll agree. But from May to August it's the summer cereals - take your pick from bog-standard corn flakes through wholewheat hoops to Special K with red berries in. Fairly sure the last named counts as one of my five a day, along with the two segments of Terry's Chocolate Orange I allow myself with a yoghurt each evening. Orange is the key word here, ignore the other bits. 

I have been to three of our most picturesque courses in the past few weeks. Newmarket for the Guineas meeting, followed by two days of Chester and, last week, three days of York. Newmarket and Chester also have something else in common, namely I have more wi-fi and connection issues there than anywhere else in the country, and that includes Fakenham, despite the Norfolk venue being in the middle of nowhere. 

Anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Newmarket saw myself and the wife head down for two days of quality Flat action, although not before I'd been at Cheltenham for the Hunters evening. "You just can't leave it alone, can you?" said Vicki to me on 2000 Guineas Day as she caught me looking at Worcester's Monday card at the time. She's right, it's an addiction. "Hello, my name is David, and I'd like to start by saying I can't stop looking at poor quality jumps cards between May and September." Sympathetic nods from the rest of the room. 

Vicki very much drives the Trackside bus during the Flat season and I take a back(ish) seat, although I'm more than happy to stick my oar in when it comes to the all-aged handicaps, as that's where I'm happiest. So the Saturday, for all we've a Group 1 on the card, backed up by some other class contests, is very much a game of two halves, Brian, with Vicki taking the first five and me the last four, as the World Pool want nine races today and by Jove they're going to have them. However, with the last four all being handicaps and Vicki doing other work on the day, I'm going to help out and cover as much as possible late on. But, those wi-fi issues. It means finding a sweet spot in the paddock and not moving, or I lose connection completely. Some repeaters around the paddock - as Cheltenham have done - might be nice. So not only am I struggling to relay information, it also means I can't get the live pictures from Uttoxeter. (There's no helping me. Save yourselves.)

The wife is having the same issues and is struggling to place a bet, so I'm pleased it isn't only me, in that respect. Newmarket's free wifi has all the signal strength of two tin cans and a bit of string, so that's of no help. I decide we're going into Newmarket tomorrow and I'm buying a dongle to solve our tech problems. 

Our Airbnb for the night is in Cambridge, and it's a strange one. Normally you take a room in someone's house for the night and to an extent that was true here, but there were about a dozen rooms and seemingly someone living in most of them. The room and place itself were almost new, to the point where the stickers hadn't been taken off the appliances (it's fine, I know how to use a bath, thanks for the help) but it's the first time I've ever known twelve flats within one house. Only issue was the bed was in a corner, so whoever slept next to the wall is pinned in for the night. Unlucky if you need the loo at three in the morning...

We head back to Newmarket for a fancy breakfast in the Tack Room, which is attached to the Racing Museum in town. If you've never been, I recommend it; a touch pricey and you're paying for a bit of theatre (you can gaze lovingly at the statue of Frankel as you wolf your locally-sourced sausages down) but the food and service are always top-notch. Bellies full, we head into town and the EE shop for my dongle. Turns out it's closed on Sundays, which means another day of intermittent signal issues. Oh well. At the moment that's less of a concern than the freezing cold weather. The wind has really got up and you'd not think it was spring. It was warmer than this at Cheltenham on Friday night. The winter jumper makes an unwelcome, if brief, reappearance as the day passes by without much incident, the signal barely holding up again. 

Chester is my next port of call. It's a lovely town, with beautiful Roman architecture, an incredible open-air theatre and, of course, those Grade 1-listed walls. What Chester isn't designed for is traffic, and God help you if you miss your turning in town, it'll add half an hour to your journey as you try and get back to where you were. But I finally arrive at the course with time to spare. I'm here for the first two days of the May meeting, and the sun is finally out. 

Much like Newmarket, Chester is a lovely track to visit as a punter, a more sociable day out you'll struggle to have; although the queues for the ChesterBet pitches tell me this isn't a crowd here for a serious wager. On one of the hottest days of the year so far, lunch is chicken curry. I decide to pass, and go in search of a sandwich. 

I'm not going to bang on about the wifi again, suffice to say Chester, in its own little valley, makes Newmarket seem like 5G Central. There are precisely three places I can stand and get a signal. Thankfully, standing still is very much a physical activity in my wheelhouse, so I get through the afternoon unscathed. Little Trackside hint here: I thought Aidan's Minnie Hauk, who won the Cheshire Oaks, would come on a ton for that, and she is most definitely top of my list for the Epsom version. 

I've left dining arrangements for the evening to "Scoop" Linfoot from the Sporting Life and he's found us a decent Italian, he says. Not only is he right, it's superb, but we have the best result of the day as we're informed it's the Wednesday Special - two courses and a bottle of wine (each!) for twenty notes. And they say you can't eat value. I disagree, if only for tonight. 

Having dined well, it's back to my digs, and I've lucked in here as well. Really comfy place and the lady that owns it is a photographer, and has loads of old cine equipment around the house. Also, a slight obsession with Monopoly memorabilia. She's also got a clapped-out TR7 on the drive she appears to be doing up. So, slightly mad, but in a lovely way, and I'll return here again. In fact, if it was twenty minutes nearer Aintree...

Finally, to York last week. Three days of top-class action and it does not disappoint. York was the first time Vicki and I have shared accommodation and the fact we're still speaking to each other tells you all went well. That, despite me forcing her watch the Eurovision semi-final on the Thursday night, which I think she secretly enjoyed (was all in the name of research, I'd volunteered to do the Eurovision preview for the Life and yes, I did put the winner up, thanks for asking). 

It was also great to bump into some old friends I hadn't seen in a while, and have a catch up on the Champagne Lawn. Not that I was, obviously, with work to do and a clear head needed. The strongest thing I had on the week was a Coke Zero, as I'm trying to be good and cut a little sugar out recently. However, that all went out the window when, on the Thursday night, Vicki discovered The Sweet Lab, a place where all your magical sugary dreams come true. My heart-attack-inducing Galaxy Brownie, slathered in whipped cream, contained about a million calories and ruined all the good work of the day, but hey, it tasted amazing. When are we back here for the Ebor? 😉 

- DM

An Analysis of Geegeez Pace Ratings in 5f handicaps

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In some recent articles I have extolled the virtues of the Geegeez Racecard for Gold members, for example, when looking at Dr Peter May’s ratings (the SR column), writes Dave Renham.

Introduction

Another huge bonus of these racecards is the pace tab. The pace tab shows the running styles of the horses for a maximum of their last four races. Each past running style is given a score of between four and one, as follows:

4 – Front runner / early leader

3 – Prominent racer

2 – Raced in midfield / mid division

1 – held up near or at the back early

Long standing Geegeez members will have read previous articles of mine emphasising the importance of running style / early pace in a race under specific conditions. Usually though I am looking at the performance of different run styles in certain races which is based on knowledge gleaned after the race has been run. For example, how well have front runners performed over a particular course or distance.

In this article I will examine the Geegeez pace figures to see if they can help in terms of giving us an edge pre-race. I have looked at a year’s worth of pace ratings data that was published in the Geegeez Racecards before each race. The focus is on 5f handicaps (excluding 2yo nurseries) as these races tend to accentuate any run style bias. To be clear, the words 'ratings' and 'rankings' are used somewhat interchangeably in what follows. Higher ratings generally equate to higher rankings.

Past number crunching has noted the edge early leaders / front runners have at this minimum 5f distance. [Type ‘sprint’ into the search box here for a five-part deep dive into 5f handicaps]

However, the problem of taking advantage of any front running bias is that we do not know which horse is going to take the early lead in any given race. If we did then most of us would have made enough money to retire by now! The one tool that should be able to help us is the Geegeez Gold pace tab. Logic dictates that the higher a horses’ pace rating total, the more likely it is to lead. Let me share an example of a 5f handicap race run last month focusing on the pre-race pace ratings:

 

 

The first point to note, before we look at the pace totals for each runner, is the performance of early leaders at Wolverhampton. We can see from the green box that they have won nearly 25% of the time and, if able to back them all, we would have made huge profit.

This goes back to what I said previously about how useful it would be if we knew the early leader pre-race. Looking at the pace totals we can see they range from 13 to 7 with Wedgewood the highest on 13.

Hence, we would expect Wedgewood to be the most likely early leader. This is the result, with some additional sectional data.

 

 

As we can see Wedgewood, under geegeez-sponsored jockey Marco Ghiani, did indeed take the early lead and was never headed. Of course, the top-rated runner is not going to lead all the time, and the top-rated runner is not going to win all the time. However, from some past 5/6f research I shared with readers back in January 2021 those with higher pace totals led more often than those with lower ones and therefore we would expect them to win more often.

The sample size in that article was far smaller than I am sharing now but it was big enough to suggest that horses with the highest pace totals of 15 or 16 would take the early lead around 45% of the time, whereas those with the lowest pace totals of 4 or 5 would take the early lead less than 3% of the time.

In this piece I am more interested in the performance of each horse based on their pace totals / positions in the racecard, rather than how many of the top-rated runners led. Essentially, as punters we want to make money and so I wanted to find out answers to questions such as, “has the top-rated runner made a profit?”, “is the top-rated runner better value than those rated say 8 or lower?”, “do horses with pace totals of 15 or 16 perform better than those with totals of 8 or less?”, and so on.

The 2024 5f handicap data I have crunched covers just under 600 races and that means 5200 horses with their individual pace totals. This, then, is a very decent sample, and one that took quite a while to collate! After all the leg work to input the data, I hoped that I would find something worth sharing! Let’s see…

 

Pace Rating Rank

To begin with let’s look at performance based on the ranking positions of runners from their four-race pace totals. In the earlier Wolverhampton example this would mean the following:

 

 

Horses with the same totals such as Four Adaay and Angle Land have been given the same ranking position. I have applied this idea across all the races in the study. On that basis, here are the win strike rates, with those rated 8th or bigger in one group:

 

 

This is the type of sloping graph I had hoped for with the top-ranked pace horse winning more often than the second ranked, who in turn has scored more than the third ranked and so on. However, I had not expected it to correlate so neatly.

Below are the Betfair SP profit and loss figures for the same pace rating ranks.

 

 

The top two ranked (inc. joints) have both nudged into profit which is obviously a clear positive. The 4th ranked runners have effectively broken even, but the 3rd ranked runners have let the side down for ‘the top four’ with quite steep losses. Once we get 6th and bigger in the rankings, we can see losses have started to mount up with those 8th or bigger losing nearly 20p in the £.

Looking in a bit more detail at the top two ranked (inc. joints) if we restrict races to those with 12 runners or less, we see the following results:

 

 

If, therefore, we had stuck to mid-range to smaller field sizes, then the figures improve further for the top two ranked pace runners. These are tidy ‘blind’ profits using nothing other than the Geegeez pace ratings.

 

Pace Rating Total

Let’s pivot now to the four-race pace totals covering each horse’s most recent four runs. The maximum total a horse can attain is 16 (four 4s), and the lowest is 4 (four 1s). I have looked at win strike rates first below to see if there is a similar pattern to the Pace Rating Rank graph shared earlier. I have grouped the individual totals up so have joined 15 with 16, 13 with 14 and so on. Here are the findings:

 

 

We see the same type of pattern as before, although the 4 to 6 group have just ‘spoiled’ my ideal pace score graph by winning slightly more often in percentage terms than the 7 to 8 group. Again, though, this highlights that horses which have shown more early speed in their most recent four races have a better chance of winning 5f handicaps than those which have not shown gate speed. As we know, higher strike rates do not necessarily mean bigger profits, so let’s see how the returns figures have panned out:

 

 

Those horses recording a four-race pace total of 15 or 16 have combined to make a sound profit equating to returns of over 16p in the £. The general pattern is that as the rating totals drop the losses start to increase, although the 4 to 6 group buck that trend.

Pace Ratings at Different Courses

I want to look at some course data now although with only races from one calendar year, several tracks have limited samples to potentially analyse. Hence, as Baldrick would say, “I have a cunning plan”. The first phase of this plan was to back check past pace/run style course data in 5f handicaps from a longer prior time frame. I chose 2017 to 2023, and I examined the course performance of early leaders / front runners. By using win percentages, placed percentages and A/E indices, I was able to order the courses from the most front-runner biased to the least.

From there I decided to group the 12 most biased courses together in one group (group A) and the 12 courses with the weakest front running biases in a second group (group B). The idea was simple: I wanted to compare the 2024 performance of top-rated runners across both groups, with the hope being that the Group A stats for front runners would be far superior to those for Group B. Here are my findings:

Group A

The 12 courses in this group are Ayr, Chelmsford, Chester, Hamilton, Kempton, Leicester, Lingfield, Redcar, Ripon, Thirsk, Windsor and York. Funnily enough, due to plenty of past course / run style number crunching, if I had been given the task to decide what I thought the strongest 5f course biases were without any past stats at my fingertips, I would have chosen 11 of the 12. Knowing that gave me good confidence in this past course data.

So, looking at the top-rated runners in the Geegeez Pace Ratings at Group A courses we see the following results:

 

 

These results are rather impressive both from a strike rate perspective (4% higher than the figure for all courses) and a bottom line one. Returns of over 41p in the £ are not to be sniffed at.

Group B

The ‘dirty dozen’ courses in this group are Ascot, Carlisle, Chepstow, Doncaster, Goodwood, Haydock, Newbury, Newcastle, Newmarket, Nottingham, Sandown and Yarmouth. When looking at the top-rated runner across all courses combined, we get the following:

 

 

Wow! This is an even bigger differential than I had expected. Returns at these 12 courses have created losses of over 26p in the £. It does seem that the 2017 to 2023 data was a very accurate reflection of the relative front-running biases at these courses.

One would hope that we witness a similar difference between the course groups when looking at horses that achieved a pace rating of 15 or 16 although the sample sizes are a little on the small side now:

 

 

Again, we have a significant difference between groups in both strike rate and returns. As previously mentioned, the sample sizes are smaller than ideal but with the correlation between the two data groups being so strong we can have more confidence as a result in these second set of figures.

 

 

Top Rated by Age Group

The final area I want to delve into today is top-rated pace runners, and the 15-16 pace score runners, across the three main age groupings. These are 3yo only races, 3yo+ races and 4yo+ races. Let’s first compare the strike rates for the top-rated:

 

 

I have to confess these figures surprised me. I expected the top-ranked to score more often in 4yo+ handicaps where the runners are more exposed. However, it is the complete opposite with the top-ranked winning more often in 3yo only races. It should be noted that the average field size for 3yo only races was slightly smaller than for both 3yo+ and 4yo+, but not enough to make any significant difference to these percentages. Of course, strike rate is only one piece of the puzzle and when we look at the overall figures for each in terms of top-ranked in the four-race pace totals we see things change around a little:

 

 

The 3yo only top-ranked pace runners did make a profit, but the 4yo+ top-ranked pace runners performed especially well on the profit front. It wasn’t such a good read for the 3yo+ top-ranked runners with losses edging towards 16p in the £.

Now it’s time to see if the horses with a pace rating of 15 or 16 have performed in a similar fashion across the different age ranges. Here are my findings:

 

 

The sample size for 3yo only races is small, but they once again have secured the highest strike rate, albeit only just greater than 4yo+ qualifiers. Once again though the best value by far has been in the 4yo+ races with some impressive profits and returns achieved.

*

Whilst this article has looked only at a single year's worth of 5f handicap pace rating data, the findings across the board have correlated positively. Moreover, with nearly 600 races in the sample we should be fairly confident in the data.

I for one will be keeping an even closer eye on 5f handicaps in the future as there seems to be value in the top two rated runners, and those that have totals of 15 or 16 points. Of course, all the horses with totals of 16 will be top-rated (or joint top-rated), while those scoring 15 will often be either top-rated or second top.

For those who have enjoyed this week’s offering the good news is I have a follow-up piece to share next week – and it’s got some excellent payoffs!

- DR

Monday Musings: Hegemony

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A friend asked me the other day, “If a bookmaker offered you even money about Aidan O’Brien winning the Derby this year, would you take it?”, writes Tony Stafford.

The question arose after the pre-York blanket dominance in the trials at Chester, Lingfield and Leopardstown and before the possibly temporary reputation tarnishing of The Lion In Winter, that one in the ruck behind Ralph Beckett’s Pride Of Arras in the Dante Stakes.

Amazingly, in view of the ease of the Ackroyd family’s horse’s victory on the Knavesmire, The Lion In Winter has hardened back in price after an initial ease by the bookmakers. In some places he’s a shorter price than his York conqueror.

Michael Tabor had suggested the day before that The Lion In Winter was running later in the piece than is normal for returning Derby candidates from the Ballydoyle stable but then, on June 7, the Derby is as late as it can be for a first Saturday in the month.

Anyway, the latest ante-post prices for the big race list the Leopardstown trial winner Delacroix as favourite at 5/2 ahead of Godolphin’s 2,000 Guineas hero Ruling Court (4/1), emphasised by trainer Charlie Appleby during York as firmly on target for Epsom Downs.

But after him and the two Dante protagonists, three of the next four are from the Coolmore team and their joint odds take out 66% so appreciably more than the requisite 50% for even money. And that’s not all their potential runners which, as we said last week, do not preclude an O’Brien win at long odds.

I was minutely involved with the win of Oath in 1999 and for me that seems not so long ago, recalling embarrassingly cavorting next to the unsaddling enclosure with his lad after his win for the Sir Henry Cecil stable and the Thoroughbred Corporation of Prince Ahmed Salman. It’s salutary to remember that Aidan hadn’t even won the race by that time.

Now he has – and how – with ten of the last 24 (or 42%) falling to him. Interestingly, until he starts getting different owners in the yard, he still won’t match either Sue (wife of John) Magnier and Tabor who have 11 thanks to the win of the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi in 2011 on top of Aidan’s ten.

By last year, they had all exceeded the nine of Lester Piggott, the foremost Derby jockey of all time. Piggott’s skill at riding the difficult Epsom track was only exceeded by the powers of persuasion he used to get on a feasible candidate when he didn’t have a retained ride (and sometimes when he did!) through his long career.

As I write on this Sunday morning, there are still 20 days remaining before the Derby and you can add another three since the Dante. In normal circumstances, 23 days between runs is rarely regarded as inadequate time to recover from the early exertions and build on that for an improved display next time.

Last year, City Of Troy had 28 days between an abject performance in the 2,000 Guineas and his dominating display in the Derby. What’s a few days when they are being managed by a genius? In the meantime, Delacroix is a solid enough flag-bearer having won as I said last week the significant Leopardstown Trial in such authoritative manner.

A closer look reveals O’Brien’s first two Derby wins in successive years, Galileo and High Chaparral, were the second and third of his 17 wins in the former Derrinstown, now Leopardstown, Derby Trial (talk about hegemony – it’s more like annihilation of his training colleagues). No Derby winner has come from the race since, although Dylan Thomas in 2006 won the Irish Derby and later the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Another superb winner of the race was subsequent peerless stayer Yeats who was scratched from the 2004 Derby for which he was the hot favourite at the time through injury a few days before. Four Gold Cup wins in succession guaranteed his place in racing folklore and was the crowning achievement for David and Diane Nagle’s Barronstown Stud, never mind its being responsible for 29 winners of 44 Classic or Group 1 races around the world.

All in all, I say to my friend, therefore, on the stats alone, evens would be a good price, if anyone would be daring enough to offer it. I do have a sneaking feeling though that Pride Of Arras, with only two –  both winning – career runs behind him, may have at least the potential improvement of the hitherto harder-worked Delacroix or even The Lion In Winter.

Then we always have the debate about which horse is the more likely to have progressed and will stretch out even further for trying 1m4f around Epsom. Usually, the class horses keep going and all the worries about stamina every year are dispelled in the two minutes and 40 seconds or thereabouts. Few, if any, of the O’Brien runners in the Derby have failed through lack of stamina. Normally, class tells.

The Coolmore boys like a little insurance and while they weren’t intimately involved in ownership at the business end of the 2,000 Guineas, it didn’t upset them too much that the Godolphin winner Ruling court is by their US-based stallion Justify, sire of course of last year’s Derby hero City Of Troy.

The 2025 Kentucky Derby a couple of weeks ago was a setback for Journalism, a horse they had bought into with a view of his standing as a stallion in their Ashford Stud in Kentucky alongside Justify and their other Triple crown winner American Pharoah when he retires from racing for the Michael McCarthy stable.

He had been outstayed at Churchill Downs by Godolphin homebred Sovereignty, but that horse was immediately declared an absentee from the next leg of the Triple Crown, the half a furlong shorter Preakness Stakes run at Pimlico last Saturday evening.

In his absence, Journalism, understandably, was the even-money favourite to get his name on the Classic honours board and, after a bit of a barging match, got up close home by half a length from Gosger.

In the old days, any interference in races in the US brought instant and inevitable disqualification. Not so now it seems, yet in France, as in everything else in that country, they have their own standards. I’ve had a few looks at the disqualification of Charlie Fellowes’ Shes Perfect after their 1,000 Guineas last weekend and declare it as legalised thieving.

Interference to Zarigana was negligible and Kieran Shoemark on the original winner was blameless, instantly correcting her leftward drift by changing his whip into his left hand. Zarigana did have a tiny inconvenience, mainly from the horse in the sandwich between the two fillies, and probably suffered the most difficulty when Mickael Barzalona dropped his whip a furlong from home. His negligence was rewarded with a promoted Classic winner. Shameful.

That coming eight days after Shoemark’s being outmanoeuvred in the 2,000 Guineas by William Buick on Ruling Court was a double kick in the teeth for the rider. Worse came in between, a public dressing-down by John Gosden, saying he and son Thady would now be choosing “best available” for their horses not already committed to retained owner arrangements.

The first painful effect of that came on Saturday in the Lockinge Stakes. Lead Artist, on his favoured fast ground, turned around Sandown form to edge out Dancing Gemini by a neck over the straight mile. In eight previous races, Shoemark had been in the saddle. Here he was supplanted on the Juddmonte-owned four-year-old by Oisin Murphy. Some transgressions are treated more leniently than others. Is that what two-tier justice is about?

The winner’s prize was £226k. Generally, jockeys receive around 8.5% of the winner’s prize, so I reckon Kieran’s ejection has already cost him £20k and the embarrassment that goes with it. That John Gosden! Some man!

- TS

Two-Year-Old Sires in 2025

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It is several years since I analysed two-year-old (2yo) sire data and so, early in the flat season, I felt now was a good time to revisit, writes Dave Renham. This article examines eight years of UK flat racing data (turf and AW) spanning from 2017 to 2024. I will be comparing win strike rates, as I usually do for this type of article, but for the first time in my sire research I will also share Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB for short) data. There is a strong argument to suggest that PRB figures are the most accurate metric, so I am excited to be able to include them. Further, I will include some A/E index calculations and these will be based on Betfair Starting Prices. (For more on A/E and other metrics used on geegeez, and why we use them - and why we think you should, too - check out this post)

If you have not read a sire article before, let me briefly set the scene. Sires are the fathers of the respective racehorses, and they typically have an influence on their progeny (offspring).  For example, if the sire was originally a sprinter there is a good chance that his progeny will perform better at sprint distances than over say marathon trips. Sires also vary in quality, which will generally influence the next generation in terms of inherent ability. Some sires, for example, achieve around one win in every five starts with their progeny, others are nearer one win in 20. Using sire data is particularly useful for 2yo races because the actual horse form can be sparse or indeed non-existent if the two-year-old is making its debut.

Sires: All Two-Year-Old Races

Let's begin by looking at some sire data for all 2yo races. To qualify a sire must have had at least ten progeny runs in 2024, and 275 or more in total over the eight years. In addition, to make the following list they needed to be in the top 50 in terms of win strike rate. I have ordered them alphabetically:

 

 

In terms of win strike rate, then, Dubawi heads the list at 23.26%, followed by New Bay (21.23%), Frankel (19.83%), Kingman (19.2%) and Night Of Thunder (18.15%). From a PRB perspective, Dubawi (0.65), Frankel (0.63) and Kingman (0.63) are the top three. They are followed by French sire Siyouni (0.62), Sea The Stars (0.61) and Lope De Vega (0.61).

From a betting viewpoint, however, Dubawi and Frankel have not offered particularly good value with Betfair A/E indices of 0.93 and 0.89 respectively. Backing Dubawi progeny blind would have yielded losses of over 9p in the £, and Frankel over 16p in the £, at Betfair SP.

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races by Distance

I want to look at some distance data now. I have split the full set into three cohorts: races over 5 and 6 furlongs, races over 7 furlongs or a mile, and races over 1m1f or more. For the record there are on average only 30 races per year for 2yos over 1m1f or more, so for some sires there is limited data there. If a sire has had 20 or fewer qualifying runs over the distance range, I have left that entry blank.

The table shows the win strike rates and PRBs for each distance range. Sires are listed alphabetically once more and any individual sire’s PRB distance range value which is 0.05 higher than one of their others has been highlighted in green:

 

 

Let me drill down into some of these sires in terms of distance performance/preference starting with New Bay.

New Bay stands at Ballylinch Stud for €75,000 which looks a bit of a steal based on his 2yo results to date. In terms of distance his offspring have run only 22 times at 1m1f or more so it is at shorter ranges I would like to concentrate. His progeny's strike rate over 7f to 1 mile is more than double that of his 5f-6f figure, and the difference in the PRBs is a very significant 0.10. The Betfair A/E indices show a chasm between the two also with an index of 1.01 for the shorter sprint distance and 1.53 over the longer 7f to 1m range.

New Bay had his first crop of 2yos in 2020 and the graph below shows the win and each way (win & placed) strike rates by year for the 7f to 1m distance:

 

 

The each way figures are all over 40% with 2024 nudging over 50. 2023 saw a slight dip in the win rate but, overall, this performance has been extremely impressive. Backing all qualifiers blind would have yielded a profit in every year to BSP with three of the five seeing ROI%s of over 80%. In terms of yearly PRBs and A/E indices we see the following:

 

 

These figures correlate well with each other and with the pure win strike rates. Over 7f to 1m, New Bay looks a sire to keep on side.

 

Havana Grey is a relatively new sire on the scene (first crop 2022), but his progeny have already shown a strong preference for sprint trips. Considering his runners over 7f-plus first, this group would have lost us nearly 60p in the £ if betting all 153 of them (14 won).

By contrast, switching to shorter trips (up to six furlongs) his issue have fared particularly well when strong in the market. Those starting in the top two of the betting have secured 74 winners from 204 (SR 36.3%) for a profit of £26.13 (ROI +12.8%). Additionally, Havana Grey progeny that have taken the early lead over these sprint trips have performed well above the norm, winning 38 from 108 (SR 35.2%) for a profit of £108.67 (ROI +100.6%).

 

For No Nay Never, the 6f trip specifically looks optimal. Below are the yearly win and each way strike rates for No Nay Never two-year-old progeny at six furlongs:

 

 

These are consistent figures and, in terms of yearly PRBs and A/E indices, we see the following:

 

 

Five of the seven annual PRB figures are above 0.60, while all bar one of the A/E indices are over 1.00 - excellent numbers.

No Nay Never is a fine 2yo sire worth keeping in our corner; and his record at distances other than six furlongs is solid, too. At 7f-plus his runners have secured a BSP profit in five of the seven years (five of the last five).

 

Soldier’s Call has only thrown two crops of racing age thus far - 2025 will be his third - but already there is a strong suggestion that the shorter the trip the better for his juveniles. That should come as little surprise given that Soldier’s Call was a top-notch sprinter himself (2nd in the Nunthorpe, 3rd in the King Charles III (formerly King's Stand), 3rd in the Abbaye). At a flat 5f only (thus, excluding 5½f) his strike rate was a tad above 16%, while at 6f it was 9.2%, and over 7f+ just 1.4% ( 1 win from 74).

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races by Going

The next area I want to look at is the going. I will share PRB figures for turf versus all-weather, as well as splitting the turf going into four subsets – good to firm/firm, good, good to soft, and soft/heavy. Any value within each sire’s groupings that I perceive to be strong or weak I have coloured green (positive) and red (negative). These are only my interpretations of the PRBs and that may differ slightly from how others may perceive them. Anyway, here are the splits:

 

 

This table offers a few useful sire pointers, four of which I'd like to highlight.

Firstly, returning to New Bay we see that his progeny PRB figure on good to firm or firmer has been poor in comparison with his figures for other ground conditions.

Mayson has performed far better on easier ground (good to soft, soft and heavy), while Acclamation has been better with firmer conditions (good to firm+).

Too Darn Hot has had excellent results on easier ground (good to soft or softer) hitting a strike rate of 23.5% (24 wins from 102 runners) for a profit of £38.50 (ROI +37.8%).

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races by Gender

The penultimate sets of 2yo sire PRBs I want to share are connected with the sex of the horse – in other words, whether the progeny was male or female. I have included the win strike rates as well as PRB and, again, I have colour coded some PRBs either positive or negative based on my perception of the specifics of the individual sire’s data:

 

 

Possibly the most powerful stats from this table come from Kodi Bear. Looking at the bare numbers it seems as though males have had a significant edge; this is further underlined when comparing the profit/losses, returns and A/E indices:

 

 

As the table above shows, there is a differential of around 37p in the £ in terms of returns; males have much better figures across the board.

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races when Betfair Market Leader

Finally in this piece I am going to look at the results when the 2yo has started favourite on the Exchange. In the table I have included the sires that had 50 or more runners start favourite during the eight year study period:

 

 

Just over half (19 of 37) returned a profit to BSP which is more than I was expecting. It is interesting to see Dubawi and Frankel again both making losses, with their high profile progeny typically wildly over-bet. The PRBs for the sires listed range between 0.83 (Harry Angel and New Bay) down to a very skinny 0.71 (Muhaarar).

There are seven sires that, based on these past stats, are worth noting when starting favourite in the future. They are Bated Breath, Harry Angel, Kodiac, Lope De Vega, New Bay, No Nay Never and Oasis Dream. All have been profitable, all have A/E indices of 1.10 or above, and all have PRBs of 0.80 or more in this context.

 

*

There were a few more tables than usual in this piece, but I felt that was necessary to convey the differences between sires under certain conditions. I hope this will help us when betting on 2yo races this season and beyond.

The fifty sires discussed have combined to father around 40% of all raced 2yos in UK between 2017 and 2024. That is not, of course, to say that we should ignore other sires but these are the most prominent.

It is important also to note that many sires imbue their progeny with no obvious preference for distance or going or whatever else. We must recognise the limitations of datasets, and that even neutral statistics have some utility in our betting, albeit probably less so than positive and negative ones.

- DR

Monday Musings: When You’re Luck’s Out…

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I haven’t seen a proper replay of the French 1,000 Guineas finish - after that stewards’ enquiry I can’t be bothered to call it by its actual name, writes Tony Stafford. It’s hard not to be sorry for trainer Charlie Fellowes, his group of owners known as Basher Watts Racing 2 and jockey Kieran Shoemark, the team associated with Shes Perfect.

Sky Sports Racing elected to show the entirety of the 4.10 race from Plumpton, a series final hurdle race for inexperienced riders, with the big race (4.05 at Longchamp) showing commentary-free in a small right-hand corner of the screen. They played it after showing a re-run of the finish of the Plumpton race – maybe they were frightened that Peter Savill might get the needle if they went over to a Classic while it was actually being run?

After going over the line narrowly in first, the local stewards turned the verdict over in favour of Zarigana, running in the colours of the late Aga Khan. Everyone will be commiserating with Shoemark after the abrupt sacking as number one for the Gosden team following his fast-finishing second place on Field Of Gold in the previous weekend’s 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket.

A quick riposte on the next available weekend would have been a massive boost for him, but my own sympathies are at least as much directed to the owners who paid €50k for the Sioux Nation filly (out of a Galileo mare, no less) at Arqana’s May Breeze-Up a year ago. It was at that auction that Ruling Court, the horse that denied Field Of Gold and Shoemark, went through the ring 18 lots later for €2.3 million.

It would have been a remarkable Classic double on the same day for the sales company. Fellowes had fancied his chances of avenging a neck defeat by Zarigana in the Prix De La Grotte (Group 3), over the same course and distance last month.

In that context her price of 18/1 about Shes Perfect against the 4/5 of the favourite was a real aberration. Sadly, the stewards decided to allow yet another Classic win for those famous Aga Khan colours, denying Charlie Fellowes a crowning glory to his training career.

Immediately after the race, the jubilant owners, all booted and suited alike, were probably working out what each of them would be collecting from the £269k first prize. Their sights and no doubt their excitement was modulated with just over 100 grand to divvy up for second.

With 4th, 6th, 11th and 13th in the fillies’ Classic, Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore had a fleeting opportunity to see how the other half lives.

Leading into the Newmarket Guineas weekend, the story going around was that the Ballydoyle horses were a couple of weeks behind where the trainer would have liked and the single runner in both the 2,000 and 1,000 finished out of the frame.

Things move swiftly though in the pre-Derby and Oaks segment of the season and, since last weekend, O’Brien has won three Derby/Oaks trials at Chester; the Derby and Oaks trials at Lingfield on Saturday and Leopardstown’s time-honoured eliminator yesterday too.

To those manoeuvring performances, there was the more meaningful one-three in the French 2,000 Guineas that immediately preceded the fillies’ race. Here, Moore on Henry Matisse got the better of Andrew Balding’s Jonquil with Camille Pissarro a fast-finishing third after a crazy early gallop.

Fellowes did well here too. He had also given Luther a bright chance beforehand, conceding that a wide draw didn’t help. He flew down the outside for fourth, a short neck behind the O’Brien second string, again under Shoemark.

That sequence of O’Brien winners inevitably will have the York bookmakers dreading what to expect from the one talking horse of the spring among Coolmore’s Derby candidates. The Lion In Winter, who had the 2,000 Guineas hero Ruling Court back in third place when they met in last year’s Acomb Stakes over seven furlongs of the course in August is primed for his re-introduction in the Dante Stakes.

It was in this race 12 months ago that we saw a Derby-level performance by William Haggas’s Economics, but he reckoned the colt was too immature for the Derby at that stage of his development, and he duly sidestepped the Classic.

There will not be any similar reservations this time I’m sure, especially if the Lion In Winter can cope with Ruling Court’s stablemate, unbeaten supplementary entry Alpine Trail, who made his tally three from three in the Newmarket Stakes at the Guineas meeting.

Now it’s ten and a half furlongs, a trip more commensurate with The Lion In Winter’s pedigree. He is by Sea The Stars, unbeaten champion and Derby winner in 2009 from a staying female family, with the broodmare sire Lope De Vega also a good stamina influence. I can’t see why they are questioning his stamina – but every year of course they do!

He too was a sales buy, from Goffs Orby Book 1 in September 2023. The only surprise apart from his having ability, is that he cost a relatively modest €375,000. Some may say, a cup of tea. This game gets you thinking that way sometimes.

To list the Derby bit-part players for Aidan – a wise enough policy granted the wins within the past ten years of 40/1 shot Wings Of Eagles and Serpentine, 25/1 in the “Covid” Derby. I wonder whether Boris Johnson ought to have sponsored it. Serpentine was sold to Australia after a dull end to his Ballydoyle career and has run 16 times there for one win. His last run on January 1, was one of his worst, 14th of 15 in a Group 2 handicap. Not all the Williams acquisitions turn to gold.

Delacroix, impressive in an admittedly thin Cashel Palace Hotel Derby Trial Group 3 over ten furlongs at Leopardstown is sure to be in the Epsom line-up. The race has had several titles over the years, but the finest of them was when Golden Fleece beat Assert in the 1982 edition before Golden Fleece won the Derby so stylishly and Assert the French and Irish Derbys.

Both carried the Robert Sangster colours, Golden Fleece trained by Vincent O’Brien and Assert by his son David.

I had a particular interest in that race as fourth was Duke Of Dollis, who had the unfortunate task of taking the pair on twice for two places, previously when third in the Ballysax Stakes.

He ended up coming over to the UK and, trained by David Elsworth, turned up in a seller at Windsor. In those days it wasn’t regarded as de rigeur to claim horses, so I sent my deputy Adrian Hunt to do the dirty work.

Elsie wasn’t delighted but to his credit Adrian was always one to keep things close to his chest – unlike me! Sent to Roddy Armytage, Marcus’s father and a very good trainer, he recorded a hat-trick over hurdles for a team of very nice people who we managed to put together as a syndicate.

- TS

Ad Hoc Almanac Race Preview

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It's Friday, there's lot of racing - much of it high quality - and so why not do a race preview, or three?

In the video below, I've tried to showcase a few of the more accessible components of Geegeez Gold and Lite, as well as throwing in a couple of the less well-trodden areas of what we have.

As ever with such videos, the main point is to showcase what's inside Geegeez racecards rather than to pick winners. Of course, I hope to hit one of those, too!

Before watching the video, a quick polite reminder that I'll be taking the Flat Track Almanac link down on Sunday so time is running out. You need to be premium (Gold or Lite) subscriber to see the Almanac download link on your My Geegeez page, and you can take a 30 day trial for £1 here.

 

 

Good luck

Matt

When Horses Change Stable: Part 2

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This is the second of two articles looking at horses that have switched stables on the flat, writes Dave Renham. The first article looked at horses’ first run for a new yard, while this one examines the second run from that new stable. We’ll call them TC2 (Trainer Change 2nd Start).

As I mentioned last time, the one stipulation is that the switch is from a horse that has been running on the flat and not National Hunt. This is mainly because there are some dual-purpose horses that switch yards each year from a dedicated National Hunt stable to a flat stable.

The data has been taken from the last ten full years (2015-2024) of flat racing in the UK (turf/AW) and all profit and loss has been calculated to Betfair SP with 2% commission applied on any winners. This is also the first article where the A/E indices (Actual versus Expected) will be based on BSP not Industry SP.

To recap, the last article noted that all horses that have had their first run for a new trainer having switched stables scored 8.2% of the time and actually made a blind BSP profit of £732.49. This equated to a 4.65% return on investment. Unsurprisingly, these overall figures included some horses winning at huge prices: there were 12 winners that paid 100.0 or bigger ‘on the machine’ with the majority lying between 100.0 and 200.0. The two biggest winners, however, were enormous at 429.02 and 503.82. Having said all that backing all 100.0+ qualifiers actually showed a loss of £279.72 (ROI -11.2%).

All TC2 Runners

So how about all horses having their second start for a new stable. Are the overall figures similar? Let’s see:

 

 

Despite a slightly better win strike rate, we see fairly steep losses. Most of these losses have been incurred by the genuine outsiders and, if we ignore the 2153 horses that started 100.0 or bigger at BSP we get much closer to parity:

 

 

The returns now show a small loss of just over 1½ pence in the £, and if we further restrict all qualifiers to those priced BSP 20.0 or shorter we hit profit:

 

 

These runners on roughly once in every six starts and returned a profit of just under 5p for every £1 staked.

TC2 Runners Sent Off Exchange Favourite

Sticking with the betting market let’s now focus on Exchange favourites.

 

 

These figures are very similar to the ones we saw for first-time switchers – but while those runners made a small profit of just under 2p in the £, the second start cohort produced a small reverse of a penny in the £.

Let’s next compare the annual performance of these BSP favourites by examining their ROI%.

 

 

As we can see there is a bit of a mixed bag, but this is to be expected based on an average of 130 qualifiers per year. There were three poor years (2018, 2019 and 2021), two profitable years (2015 and 2020), and five years that have been close to breaking even, albeit all showed a small loss.

There are a few angles where horses having their second run for a new trainer have made a profit when starting as favourite. These are:

  1. Favourites in non-handicaps won 90 races from 190 (SR 47.4%) for a profit of £27.55 (ROI +14.5%).
  2. 2yos when starting as market leader won 24 races from 54 (SR 44.4%) for a profit of £17.60 (ROI +32.6%).
  3. Favourites racing in Class 1 or 2 company won 25 of 79 starts (SR 31.7%) for a profit of £12.50 (ROI +15.8%).

TC2 Runners Sent Off Exchange 2nd or 3rd Fav

Next, let’s now combine second and third favourites to see how they fared.

 

 

As we can see a nominal profit has been achieved. It is interesting to note that 2yos sent off second or third favourite made a profit (as we saw earlier when 2yos started favourite). This cohort of runners won 23 races from 88 (SR 26.1%) for a healthy profit of £36.37 (ROI +41.3%); A/E 1.57. The profit was solid in both nursery handicaps and non-handicaps.

Before moving on, it should be noted that 2yos having their second start for a new trainer having switched yards perform really poorly when not in the top three in the betting. This group of runners won less than 3% of the time (12 wins from 421) for a hefty loss of £196.62 (ROI -46.8%); A/E 0.70.

TC2 by Last Time Out Finishing Position

Next, I would like to look at last time out (LTO) performance in terms of finishing position on most recent start. Here are the results for horses that finished in the first three LTO:

 

 

Horses that finished second on their most recent start (their first run for their new trainer) did particularly well, but LTO winners also nudged into profit. Horses that finished fourth or worse LTO scored just under 6% of the time and lost over 12p in the £.

TC2 by Gender

It’s time to review any impact the sex of the horse has on performance. In the last piece I showed how male horses tend to slightly outperform females when analysing all races, winning roughly 1.12 times as often. To create this figure, I divided the male win strike rate by the female win strike rate in all flat races over the past ten years. That was, and still is, our benchmark. When we looked at the figures for horses switching stables and racing for the first time this figure increased to 1.27. Do we see a similar widening of the gender gap with the second time start figures?

 

 

The male strike rate is nearly 2% higher than the female one and this equates to winning 1.22 times more often. This is still comfortably above the average figure of 1.12, but a little down on the 1.27 mark for first time switchers. It seems logical to assume that a fair percentage of female horses may still not have totally settled into their new surroundings.

Before looking at trainer angles, I would like to share some LTO Industry SP price data. Horses that started 6/1 or less LTO have produced solid looking figures:

 

 

A modest 2p in the £ loss for all such qualifiers. If we focus on those that had also raced within 30 days we get to a near break-even stuation.

TC2: Trainer Angles

Onto trainers now which may provide the most worthwhile findings for many readers. Below is a list of all trainers that have run at least 80 qualifiers:

 

 

Two trainers noted in the first article for having a decent record with horses having their first run for the stable have fared well again, namely Kevin de Foy and David Loughnane, although Loughnane has performed less well in the last few seasons. His record has tailed off since 2020. Of the other trainers, Iain Jardine, who made a profit from a low strike rate last time, has improved that strike rate to over 12% and hit a profit once again.

Two trainers that stood out positively last time, Mick Appleby and Archie Watson, performed less strikingly on second start for the yards, although both have still produced good strike rates.

Mick Appleby has done brilliantly with horses that finished second LTO – these runners won 18 races from only 46 runners (SR 39.1%) for a profit of £22.62 (ROI +49.2%).

Going back to Kevin de Foy he has hit an excellent strike rate of over 21% and his returns are not skewed by any horses winning at huge odds (his biggest priced winner was BSP 19.13). If you ignore his LTO winners (who did connections a favour obviously on their first start for the yard) his record improves slightly to 14 wins from 68 (SR 20.6%) for a profit of £40.22 (ROI +59.1%).

In the first piece it was noted that Richard Fahey had underperformed significantly with his new recruits on their first start. However, his record on their second start is much better. In that context, he improved the strike rate from just above 7% to nearly 13% and such runners edged into profit. However, as with David Loughnane, his record was better in the earlier part of the ten-year time span.

Jane Chapple-Hyam just failed to make the list in my first article as she did not have quite the required number of runners. Here she does make the cut and has a very solid overall record. However, she did have one huge-priced win which accounts for all of her profit figure. Having said that, horses that started in the top four of the betting performed well for her with 11 of the 33 winning (SR 33.3%) and a tidy profit of £24.89 (ROI +75.4%).

David O’Meara has a very similar record with horses having their first or second runs for him having switched stables. One positive stat to share with those having their second start is that horses which finished 2nd, 3rd or 4th LTO are worth noting. They won 19% of the time (23 wins from 121) for a profit of £41.28 (ROI +34.11).

Trainers to generally avoid with horses having their second run for the yard are Charlie Wallis and Philip Kirby: both have very poor records.

Trainers: TC1 vs TC2

I thought it would be useful to make a trainer comparison between horses having their first starts for a yard with their second, beginning with win strike rate. I have highlighted in green the better figure of the two unless they are within 1% of each other:

 

 

Taking this group of trainers as a whole, most of them have similar strike rates for both groups. Attwater, Fahey, G+J Moore, Watson, and Stuart Williams have the biggest differentials.

Now I am going to compare the A/E indices which helps to determine ‘value’. This time I will highlight in green any A/E index which is 0.30 bigger than the other figure which is a significant difference for this particular metric:

 

 

For six trainers, horses having their first run for the stable proved considerably better value than when making their second start. The six were Mick Appleby, Julie Camacho, David Evans, Ivan Furtado, David Loughnane and Archie Watson.

Five trainers enjoyed the reverse scenario with second runs for the stable producing much better value than first runs. This quintet comprised Michael Attwater, Mick and David Easterby, Gary and Josh Moore, Rebecca Menzies and Stuart Williams.

The final comparison I will make is with the PRB figures (Percentage of Rivals Beaten). I would expect these figures to positively align to some extent with the win strike rates. I have highlighted in green any PRB that is 5% (0.05) higher than the other. Here are the splits:

 

 

For most trainers the win strike rates and the PRB figures align quite well. For example, Watson’s figures of 0.57 and 0.51 highlight the much better performance with first time starters for the stable. Likewise, we have seen that the Moore stable has performed far better with horses having their second start for the stable having switched yards, and the 0.33 vs 0.44 PRBs back this up. There are several more good examples of this including for Caroll, Chapple-Hyam, M+D Easterby and Menzies to name but four. The one real outlier is David Evans whose PRBs are completely the reverse of his strike rates.

Using different metrics for comparisons for individual trainers does help us understand the numbers better and gives us a better overall feel for the data.

*

So that wraps this piece, and the two-part trainer change series, up. I hope they have been both useful and interesting. These two articles should give us plenty of pointers to help in our quest to make long-term profits from racing. Until next time…

- DR

Monday Musings: A Classic Weekend for Godolphin

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All those years ago when Sheikh Mohammed came across to the UK for the first time intent on buying a few racehorses, I doubt it would have entered his mind how his involvement in the worldwide racing industry would develop, writes Tony Stafford. More so, that in 2025, with himself nowadays a rare visitor to this country, he could ever have a UK/US quadruple big-race triumph over one weekend as he just did.

On Friday, he won the Kentucky Oaks, for three-year-old fillies at Churchill Downs; on Saturday the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket and the Kentucky Derby at Churchill; and yesterday the 1,000 Guineas back at HQ.

Equally, I doubt whether it even occurred to him that almost half a century on, he would have progressed from the number three of four horse-racing mad sons of the Dubai Ruler Sheikh Rashid. But first, his eldest brother Sheikh Maktoum died, and he had already supplanted next-in-line (by mutual agreement we believe) the more recently deceased Sheikh Hamdan, to become the Emirate’s undisputed boss.

The racing set-up he initially organised had as its principal advisors Robert Acton, John Ferguson and Simon Crisford. The horses were in top UK stables, such as (Sir) Henry Cecil, who trained Oh So Sharp to the filly equivalent of the Triple Crown (1,000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger) in 1985, a full 40 years ago. The last colt’s Triple Crown came from Vincent O’Brien’s Nijinsky eight years earlier.

It was around the time of Oh So Sharp when I experienced my close and personal moment in a car driven by the late Richard Casey, a superb jumps trainer but at the time the man who used to prepare the (Sir) Michael Stoute horses before they went into training.

John Leat was then the Sheikh’s inseparable (in the UK) personal assistant. He and I were with the other three gentlemen while we two conducted an impromptu interview in Richard’s car at Dullingham near Newmarket. The one phrase I remember from the conversation was, “People expect to build a breeding operation in five to ten years. I’m not sure you could do it in less than 30!”

For years, the development was patchy, for all the good horses they raced, often bought by Acton and Stroud, later by Ferguson. Acton and Stroud moved aside in a significant shake-up as, much later, did Ferguson, while Crisford turned to training with great success, now in concert with son Ed.

Now though, Stroud and another of the Sheikh’s former trainers, David Loder, is back at the helm of buying at auction while Simon Crisford is never too far away from the deliberations, so much so that he maintains a big satellite winter team in Dubai along with his powerful Newmarket yard.

Of course, the advent of Godolphin at around the turn of the century with local Dubaian Saeed bin Suroor taking centre stage coincided with a big explosion of success. Even when the very popular Saeed was seemingly demoted to a secondary role with the emergence of Mahmood al Zarooni, he kept smiling and continued to be the polite, readily accessible man he remains today.

I was pleased that in yesterday’s 1,000 Guineas, when interviewed beforehand, bin Suroor reckoned his filly Elwateen, a once raced 22/1 shot running for the first time on grass, would go well. She finished fourth and, considering her inexperience, the future looks bright.

The al Zarooni years ended abruptly with the finding of non-permitted substances in several of his horses. His Encke, which won the St Leger in 2012 and thereby denied the Aidan O’Brien-trained Camelot the Triple Crown after that one had already taken the 2,000 Guineas and Derby, was one of them, but his test ironically was clear when his St Leger sample was later analysed.

Al Zarooni’s banishment was the opening that led to Charlie Appleby’s promotion, and how he has taken it with both hands. Ruling Court’s win from the tactically outsmarted runner-up and short-price Gosden-trained favourite Field Of Gold and Kieran Shoemark was followed yesterday with another HQ masterclass by Buick on Desert Flower in the 1,000 Guineas.

In her case, it didn’t take a seven-figure auction bid to secure the daughter of 2,000 Guineas winner Night Of Thunder. She was a homebred and while there was no fluke about the result, the runner-up Flight almost ‘did a Night Of Thunder’, drifting from one side to the other, although contrastingly to Desert Flower’s sire, out to the right to join the main pack rather than the other way round.

I thought for a while she looked to have the race won, so easily did she go past the pacemaker on her wing, but she seemed to get lonely, hence the drift to seek the company of her companions.

Flight is trained by the emerging Ollie Sangster whose other runner, Simmering, stayed on to be third. It looked a very strong field beforehand and there is no reason to believe these fillies will not prove that to be the case time after time as the season progresses.

As I mentioned above, 40 years on from that meeting at Dullingham, a scan through the Charlie Appleby team of 225 reveals that having been sustained for so long in the unequal fight with Coolmore over the past two Galileo-blessed decades, by their champion Dubawi, newer stallions are moving in to help level up the playing field.

Well to the fore in Charlie’s list are former Horse Of The Year Gaiyyath, the top juvenile Pinatubo, Blue Point, and freshman sire Space Blues.

And yet, despite those new ‘home team’ blood lines, Saturday’s convincing winner of the 2,000 Guineas, Ruling Court, was a son of Justify, who stands at Coolmore’s US arm, Ashford stud in Kentucky. He twice eluded the attentions of the Coolmore team at auctions. Sold originally to the ultra-shrewd former jump jockey Norman Williamson for $150k at Keeneland in September 2023, he so impressed the attendees at the Arqana May breeze-up sale the following May that he changed hands for €2,300,000. Nice one Norman!

Scanning through the team, Ruling Court was the sole three-year-old Justify although three more colts by City Of Troy’s sire are among 110 juveniles. Wootton Bassett (300k a pop at Coolmore this year) also illustrates the more pragmatic approach by the present Godolphin management, with six. The first of them to run, Rising Power (€600k at Goffs Orby Book 1 last autumn) made a winning start yesterday at Newmarket, the final leg of an Appleby/Buick treble.

Friday’s Kentucky Oaks heroine, Good Cheer, mirrors Desert Flower as she is also unbeaten, in her case seven from seven, the latest three this year. She was also favourite (7/5) and came wide on the home bend to run past a quartet battling on the lead with extreme ease. Brad Cox has been very patient with her, moving her gradually up the grades. She has been favourite every time, and Friday’s winning margin of two and a quarter lengths was the narrowest, if you can say that about an overwhelming superiority. She too is a homebred, by Medaglia d’Oro.

It was closer in the Kentucky Derby. Sovereignty, a son of 22-year-old stallion Into Mischief, trained by veteran Bill Mott, won by one and a half lengths with a big stretch run to deny the favourite Journalism on a soupy track after heavy rain fell all day. The Coolmore team has made several shrewd in training deals in the US in recent years into careers like Justify’s. Journalism has also been the subject of an arrangement with his present owners to stand him at stud at Ashford when he retires. He has something to put right then over the rest of the season, while nearer to home evidence suggests the Coolmore runners from Ballydoyle seem to be a couple of weeks short of peak.

One that stayed in Ireland this weekend was The Lion In Winter, winner of last year’s seven-furlong Acomb Stakes at York when even-money shot Ruling Court suffered his only defeat in third. He is expected to turn out for the Dante Stakes. His owners will be hoping that the team quickly moves into top speed. Interestingly, The Lion In Winter is the 7/2 favourite for the Betfred Derby with Ruling Court next best at 4/1. More exciting times ahead.

- TS

When Horses Change Stable: Part 1

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In my next two articles I am going to look at horses that have switched stables on the flat, writes Dave Renham. This one will look at the first run for a new yard, and the next one will examine the second run for new connections. The one stipulation is that the switch is from a horse that has been running on the flat (i.e. not National Hunt). This is mainly because there are some dual-purpose horses that switch yards each year from a dedicated National Hunt stable to a flat stable.

The data has been taken from the last ten full years (2015-2024) of flat racing in the UK (turf/AW) and all profit and loss has been calculated to Betfair SP with 2% commission applied on any winners.

All Trainer Changes

Let's start by looking at all horses having their first run for a new trainer:

 

 

Overall, stable switchers made a profit to BSP but of course these figures are skewed by some very big prices going in. The strike rate is around one win in every 12 so we are relying on enough big prices winning for us to cancel out the numerous losing selections. Below I have shown how these figures have fluctuated year on year in terms of profit/loss to £1 level stakes to BSP:

 

 

The journey to the overall 732 unit profit has not been a smooth one, to say the least. It seems clear that we need to be far more selective in our approach.

Trainer Change: Market Factors

Let's now examine market factors in terms of the more fancied end of the market, starting with stable switchers that started favourite on their first start for a new yard. For market rank I am using Betfair Exchange prices, so the Exchange market leaders. Here are the results:

 

 

Favourites have just edged into profit which is always good to see. Splitting favourites into non-handicap versus handicap we get the following results:

 

 

There have been far more handicap switchers than in non-handicaps, and that group has provided the profits. Handicap favourites have also secured a decent A/E index of 1.00.

Next, let's combine second and third favourites to see how they fared.

 

 

We have similar figures here with a very small profit being achieved. It's worth breaking down by race type once more:

 

 

We again see a similar scenario here with second/third favourites in handicaps making a decent profit. The non-handicap results are actually quite poor with losses of over 16 pence in the £.

If we now combine the handicap results for those horses that started in the top three in the betting on their first start after switching stables, we get the following yearly splits:

 

 

The table shows seven winning years out of ten with the last six years all seeing a BSP profit.

Trainer Change: Last Time Out (LTO) Performance

I would like to look at last time out performance next in terms of a horse's finishing position on its most recent start. Here are the findings:

 

 

We have similar strike rates for those that finished first, second or third LTO. As you might expect, this drops considerably for horses that finished fourth or worse. LTO winners were profitable, but it is the bigger prices that have made this happen. Those LTO winners that were priced 18.0 or bigger at BSP produced 26 winners from 454 runners (SR 5.7%) for a profit of £377.15 (ROI +83.1%). Once again if we restrict things to just handicap races these figures improve to 24 wins from 385 (SR 6.2%) for a profit of £399.30 (ROI +103.7%).

Trainer Change: Gender of Horse

Time to compare the sex of the horse next. Male horses tend to slightly outperform female horses, winning roughly 1.12 times as often. To create this figure, I divided the male win strike rate by the female win strike rate in all flat races over the past ten years. That is the benchmark. The win strike rates for first time switchers are as follows:

 

 

When dividing these strike rates, we get a figure of 1.27. This suggests perhaps that male horses settle more quickly in their new surroundings compared with female horses.

There is also a big difference between the two in terms of profit and loss too:

 

 

Based on the figures, it does seem that male horses are a far better bet than females when having their first run for a new trainer.

It is also worth noting that female runners have performed better when having at least a month at their new yard before running again. Female stable switchers that returned to the track within 30 days lost 36 pence in the £ with an A/E index of 0.71; those which were rested 31 days or more would have lost you less than 2p in the £ with an A/E index of 0.91.

Trainer Change: Individual Trainer Records

I am sure the most interesting data for most readers will be the individual trainer results. Below is a list of all trainers that have run at least 100 qualifiers, ordered by win strike rate:

 

 

16 of the 27 in this list proved profitable to BSP and I would like to focus on a few of them, starting with Mick Appleby.

Appleby’s strike rate of close to 19% is exceptional considering his overall strike rate for all runners is just over 11%. He seems to have a knack of getting the best out of his new recruits first time out. Below is a graph detailing his profit and loss by year:

 

 

Seven winning years, two losing years and 2023 effectively hitting a break-even scenario. It should be noted that a good chunk of these profits occurred between 2015 and 2019. However, Appleby has still proved profitable overall in the past five years although to a lesser extent as the market cottons on.

Appleby is not one for turning his new recruits out again quickly after acquiring from another yard: only 11% of them have returned to the track within 30 days. This policy of having longer with the horse before its first run for the stable has proved to be a good one.

Do take note of Appleby runners that drop back in distance. This cohort has provided him with 35 winners from 161 qualifiers (SR 21.7%) for a profit at Betfair SP of £138.25 (ROI +85.9%). One key attribute in a trainer is being able to pinpoint the exact best distance that a horse should run: Mick seems very good at this.

Kevin de Foy is a relatively new trainer on the block but his figures are very solid, hitting close to one win in every five runs. He has done particularly well when his runners have started as favourite – 10 wins from 23 (SR 43.5%) for a profit of £8.74 (ROI +38%). Like Appleby he is not a fan of turning his new recruits out quickly, with just five of his 112 runners racing within the first month. Indeed, his record with those runners off the track for 150 days or more is highly impressive. They have won 10 of the their 43 starts (SR 23.3%) for a profit of £19.76 (ROI +46%).

David Loughnane has produced a solid 15% win rate with horses new to his yard, and they have performed particularly well when having their first stable start on the all-weather. This cohort won 16 of 89 starts (SR 19.8%) for a healthy profit of £35.15 (ROI +39.5%). That improves further if restricting runners to those that stick to the all-weather having raced LTO on a non-turf surface as well. These runners have scored 13 times from 53 (SR 24.5%) for a profit of £45.35 (ROI +85.6%). There has been one negative and that is horses aged five or older. They have won just twice from 33 starts (SR 6.1%) and lost 40p in the £. Loughnane has a far better record with his three- and four-year-olds who both have win strike rates of over 17%.

Archie Watson has secured the best strike rate of all the trainers in the table hitting close to 23%. He has been extremely consistent with his win percentage being 19% or higher in every year since 2017. For the record he was 0 from 6 in 2016 and had no qualifiers in 2015. He has been profitable in every year bar one since 2018 with the losing year (2019) producing only small losses of under 4p in the £.

One of the strongest stats Watson has is when he books Hollie Doyle to ride his new recruits. This combo has provided 16 winners from just 47 runners (SR 34%) for a BSP profit of £85.26 (ROI +181.4%). A second very strong stat, arguably even stronger than the Doyle one, is when his new runners race after a break in excess of 300 days. These runners have won an amazing 48% of the time (12 wins from 25) for a mouthwatering profit of £55.89 (ROI +223.58).

Below is a graph highlighting all trainers with 100+ runners that have secured an A/E index of over 1.00 suggesting their runners have offered punters value. Not surprisingly perhaps Appleby, de Foy, Loughnane and Watson are all there:

 

 

In terms of trainers with poor records, perhaps the most surprising is Richard Fahey. In fact, he has not had a winner on first switching to his yard since June 2020, a run of 36 consecutive losers. There are a few very poor stats for Fahey including his turf record of just 4 wins from 80, and his record with female horses which stands at 1 win from 32.

Other stables to be cautious about on first start after a switch seem to be Stuart Williams and the Moore's, Gary and Josh.

**

I think I've unearthed plenty of useful stats in the research to date. Some of my favourites include:

  1. Trainer change runners in the top three in the betting in handicaps have produced solid long-term profits
  2. Male horses running first time for a new yard have performed far better than female horses
  3. Trainers Mick Appleby, Kevin De Foy, David Loughnane and Archie Watson all have very good records with trainer switch runners
  4. Trainers Richard Fahey, Gary/Josh Moore and Stuart Williams have poor records on their first run for the yard

In part 2, I will be sharing my findings on how trainer change runners fare on their second starts for their new yards. See you next time.

- DR

Monday Musings: The Glory Trail

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Amid all the excitements supplied by the multi-century teams of Willie Mullins, Gary and Josh Moore and Olly Murphy, not to mention Dan Skelton, on Sandown’s National Hunt season finale, one name stood out as swimming against the tide, writes Tony Stafford.

Imagine you’ve been in the UK for just short of three years and built up a team from nothing into the 60’s at a new base in Newmarket, understandingly vacated at the end of 2024 by Newmarket doyen William Jarvis.

A score of one in his feet-finding debut campaign in late 2022, was followed by 16 and then 37 last year. Dylan Cunha, the South African Group 1 trainer in his home country and a pilot in his spare time almost, is already on 12 in the fledgling 2025 season.

But he was merely an intruder between the big boys’ free-for-all on Saturday with the only jumper he has in his yard. It’s a shame in fact that he did try the capable but inconsistent flat handicapper Ace Rothstein in one race over hurdles at Kempton in the 2023/24 season as his story in terms of jumping success would be even more remarkable.

The Ace proved more like a Joker on his hurdling appearance and is no longer part of the Phantom House Stables team, but one horse who is, Mahons Glory, has been showing that affable Dylan could train the stable cat if there were a suitable race in the Calendar.

A few weeks ago, as I mentioned here before, my friend Malcolm Caine organised a ticket for me at an upmarket Central London venue a few days before the Cheltenham Festival. It was enjoyable and quite amusing when shortly after those mostly perplexing races in Gloucestershire were concluded, Malcolm called. He said: “I took a note of every horse the panel mentioned on the day and none of them won!” I’ll take his word for it and in case you didn’t catch the roll-call last time, I’ll leave it out for now.

When you attend such an event, it’s Hobson’s Choice whom your immediate fellow-guests are. In my case it was a very nice chap called Seamus, not Irish except by pedigree. He said he and two other pals who were further around to his right were owners with Dylan Cunha.

He, and obviously they, were still buzzing from the victory at Leicester the previous day of Mahons Glory, a nine-year-old horse they had previously in training with Patrick Neville.

He had lost his form and become erratic, especially at the start, so they entered him for the January Online sale at Tattersalls – and he was unsold at 900gns. <I wonder if I’d have persuaded one of my pals to bid a grand whether they would have let him go?>.

Anyway, nobody did, and as owners with interests in a few horses with Dylan they suggested sending the 130-rated chaser to him. Quite a left-field idea, but an inspired one as it turns out.

At Leicester, as Seamus told me at the Preview, they were anxious at the start but Mahons Glory jumped off alertly under Lee Edwards, went to the front, and despite the tendency to jump to his left, he did so with rare exuberance and was never in danger of defeat, beating the Dan Skelton-trained Major Fortune by three-quarters of a length at a rewarding 16/1.

Dylan found a less taxing race for his following run, a three-horse affair at Stratford, this time going left-handed and again he made all, this time with The Wolf, in the stable of another of Saturday’s stars, Olly Murphy, and ridden by Sean Bowen a well-beaten second.

On Saturday, just another 3lb higher, Mahons Glory was again among the outsiders, but you wouldn’t have known it. In the morning, I had my regular pre-race chat with Dylan and he suggested Sandown’s track and fences would be to his liking. He loved the seven in a line down the back straight and it was only when he came to the Pond, three from home, that the tendency to jump left took its toll.

Shrewdly, Caoilin Quinn, already in the winner’s circle in the opener with 20/1 top-weight Give It To Me Oj in the novice handicap hurdle final, kept Mark Of Gold tight to the inside, and those wayward left-hand leaps, where Sandown’s finish edges to the right, were doubly costly to the front-runner.

Mark Of Gold got to the front before the last and looked sure to draw away but Edwards got Mahons Glory running again and was reducing the arrears all the way to the line, going under by less than a length.

On a day where some of the participants would have cost around £500k and even more, a 900gns chuck-out trained by a man with his sole proper jumper nearly stole the limelight.

Just for the record, when discussing his four other runners on the day, he singled out the previously unsuccessful Waistcoat in a handicap at Leicester as his pick. Reasoning that if Joe Leavy could hold on to him behind what he thought would be a headlong gallop, he could come through to win. He proved exactly right – at 8/1!

I was speaking to some people earlier in the week and one or two suggested that if Willie Mullins duly caught and passed Dan Skelton as the numbers in the right races suggested he must, he might be the object of booing from the Sandown crowd.

Anything but. His genial nature and refusal to claim victory even after South African-owned Il Etait Temps came from a long way back to swamp Jonbon for speed in the bet365 Celebration Chase with its £99k to the winner – he also picked up 18 grand for 3rd with Energumene – sealed the deal. Not a bad effort first time back in a Grade 1 with a top rival to catch, Jonbon losing for the first time away from Cheltenham.

But no, life today is all about winning and if you have overwhelming tools with which to achieve it, good for you. Mullins has worked for many years to build up such a superiority in Ireland, even over Gordon Elliott, and the fact he can come here as a late-season afterthought to beat the best of whatever we have to offer, has its obvious merits too. Especially to the sports fans of the 2020s!

Not even a Foinavon moment, say at the Pond fence, which Dan Skelton might have dreamt about, or indeed a void race as we’ve been encountering rather more often of late, would have mattered. Second to fifth behind the Olly Murphy/ Sean Bowen representative Resplendent Grey in the bet365 Gold Cup built up the lead almost to 200k, and the last race win where his Jump Allen saw off Dan’s Mostly Sunny lent an inevitable footnote to the season.

There was a television interview with Jump Allen’s rider, Harry Cobden, who reckoned that Bowen would be champion jockey for the next ten years, reasoning that he and Harry Skelton, the only other obvious contenders, according to him, were otherwise engaged – mopping up the massive prize money Skelton collected in this first season of the David Power Cup for points gained in big races.

Maybe it would have been wise for Cobden to keep his mouth shut. After his tour de force bringing home Resplendent Grey from a seemingly losing position behind Mullins’ Rachael Blackmore-ridden Lombron from the final fence, more big race rides will be coming his way from major stables.

*

With the two Guineas races coming up next weekend, it was salutary that Aidan O’Brien, seemingly out of form, nipped in with a Navan favourites hat-trick on Saturday, via Charles Darwin, impressively in the six-furlong maiden, Whistlejacket in the Listed three-year-old sprint, and Kyprios in his regular season-opener in the 1m6f Vintage Crop Stakes.

Watch out John and Thady. If you thought the 2,000 was at the mercy of Field Of Gold, Aidan’s Twain will have been tuned to the minute. Big John’s first 2,000 win is no gimme!

‘SR’ Ratings on the Flat (Turf)

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For this article I am revisiting the ‘SR’ ratings which can be found each day on the Geegeez Gold racecard for UK races, writes Dave Renham. I wrote a piece in February looking at these ratings on the all-weather and, as the turf season has been going for just over three weeks now, I thought it a good time to analyse the ratings on the turf flat. If you haven’t yet read the first piece allow me explain about these ratings in more detail. If you did read that piece feel free to skip the next two paragraphs.

The SR ratings figure is derived from Dr Peter May’s research. Peter is very well respected within the horse racing community and to have his ratings available daily on the Geegeez Gold racecards is yet another positive for subscribers. Matt wrote an article in September 2023 looking at the performance of the ratings in National Hunt racing. In that piece he explained that Peter’s ratings are not strictly ‘Speed’ ratings. He wrote,

Peter's numbers are derived from a neural network: he's been doing artificial intelligence (AI) since long before it became fashionable. And they're much more than a measure of speed; they include a number of form considerations making them a sort of composite of, in Racing Post terms, RPR (Racing Post Rating) and TS (Topspeed) - both of which we also publish on geegeez.”

Hence Peter’s ratings are unique.

As I stated in my opening salvo the focus for this article is turf flat racing. I have looked at a five-year time frame from January 1st, 2020, to December 31st, 2024. Any profit or loss has been calculated to Betfair SP less 2% commission on winning bets. When I refer to the ratings from now on, I will call them SR Ratings as that is how they appear on the racecards.

Now ratings are just that, a hierarchical set of numbers. The key to a good set of ratings is not whether the top-rated runners make a long-term profit or not. Of course that would be an added bonus but, essentially, to measure the effectiveness of ratings we need to look at the win strike rate. The top-rated runner should have the highest win percentage, the second highest should win next most often, and so on, gradually reducing for the other runners. Ideally there would be a significant difference in strike rate between, say, the top-rated and the fourth highest, and likewise with the fourth rated and the eighth rated, and so on.

Let’s start with looking at the win percentages (strike rates) for the ranked ratings. This covers all races on the turf flat over the period of study. The horizontal axis is labelled from 1, the top-rated runner, 2 the second rated, and so on:

 

 

The win strike rate for top-rated runners is 20% or one win in five. This figure correlates well with the AW top-rated figure noted in my first article which stood at 19.6%. The percentages correlate positively with the rating positions showing a sliding scale that we would hope to see. If we look at the Each Way (win & placed) strike rates, a similar pattern can be seen:

 

 

The top-rated runner is comfortably clear once more, and the sliding scale is replicated showing positive correlation with the win figures. The top-rated figure of 42.9% is just under the AW one of 44.6%.

Before moving on, it should be noted that there is a good proportion of horses that do not have an SR rating as they are either unraced or yet to race on flat turf in the UK. These unrated runners are far more prevalent in non-handicaps as you would expect.

Overall, 15% of all runners (non-handicaps and handicaps combined) do not have an SR rating. To give some context for their success, these runners have won 8.2% of races in non-handicaps and remarkably the same figure of 8.2% in handicaps.

Sticking with the SR rating ranks as a whole, I would like to share the A/E indices for different positions in the rankings. I have grouped the positions, so ‘1 to 3’ stands for the top three rated runners combined, ‘4 to 6’ is the fourth- to sixth-rated runners combined, and so on.

 

 

As we can see, the best value lies with the top three in the ratings and there is then a sliding scale as we progress through the groups, once more indicating that the higher the position in the ratings the better the value. Along with the earlier strike rates, this is a further positive as far as the SR ratings on the flat turf are concerned.

Let me now split the races into handicaps versus non-handicaps and compare win strike rates for the top-rated with the second-rated runners:

 

 

In non-handicaps the top rated has won over 27% of the time and is around nine percentage points clear of the second rated (about 50% relatively). In handicap races the gap is significantly closer at 1.4% (about 10% relatively), but this is to be expected given the competitive nature of handicaps.

Here are the overall results for these runners:

 

 

The top two rated in non-handicaps have combined to achieve a positive return, with 2nd rated runners providing virtually all of those profits. The handicap top-rated runners would have lost us just over 1 penny in the £ which is very good going given the competitiveness of such races.

Non-handicap top-rated

I would like to dig deeper into SR top-rated runners in non-handicaps starting by splitting their results by age. Here are the findings:

 

 

Top-rated 3yos have won close to 30% of the time producing a small profit. The smaller 4yo group have produced the best returns coupled with a decent A/E index of 0.97. Once we get to 5yos and older these top-rated runners have performed below the norm and look a subset to avoid. Top-rated 2yos have made a small loss of 2p in the £ but considering that a fair proportion of 2yos are unraced (so cannot be rated) this is another solid ratings performance.

Next, I would like to split the results by price. I have done this by creating Industry SP price bands as these are the odds used in the Geegeez Query Tool:

 

 

Top rated horses priced Evens or shorter have just nudged into BSP profit, but the best figures have some from those priced 11/2 to 8/1 and 17/2 to 12/1.

It is interesting, too, when we compare the top-rated win strike rates for these two price bands with all remaining runners combined. We would expect the strike rates to be within a decimal place or two as we are effectively talking about the same price point. However, this is not the case as the table below shows (I have included the A/E indices too for comparison purposes):

 

 

These findings confirm that, for this price range at least, top-rated runners in non- handicaps have performed well above the norm and have offered punters excellent value.

A look at race class next to see if we can spot any patterns:

 

 

Top-rated runners in Class 1 and 2 non-handicaps have both made a profit, as has the Class 5 group. Class 4 results are comfortably the worst in terms of returns. I am guessing here, but it might be because class 4 non-handicaps have had the highest proportion of unraced horses which, of course, are unrated. This could mean we get a few more surprise results because of this.

Handicap top-rated

It’s time to move onto handicap top-rated runners starting as we did for non-handicaps with the age of runners:

 

 

The 2yo top-rated runners under-perform a little especially in terms of the bottom line, but 2yo handicaps (nurseries) are notoriously tricky affairs. In terms of returns there is little in it between 3, 4, 5 and 6yos – these are very consistent results. 7yos have a modest record, but I think this is probably a slight anomaly. The oldest runners, those aged eight and older, have turned a profit, but a BSP winner at 60.0 made a significant contribution to those figures.

Let’s now split the top-rated handicap results by Industry SP. I am using different price bands than earlier due to handicaps having less very short-priced runners:

 

 

Looking at the profit / ROI columns it seems that focusing on shorter priced runners, those 13/2 or lower, might be the way to go. That has certainly been the case over the last five years.

So, to race class next. There have only been two Class 1 handicaps, so I have ignored those. Here are the splits for the other grades:

 

 

The higher class of race for top-rated non handicappers was best, and we see a similar pattern here. Class 2, 3 and 4 handicaps have all made profits to BSP with very solid A/E indices to boot. Class 5 and 6 top rated have still performed OK, but below the level of those higher grades.

The final piece of digging is connected with run style. As regular readers will know, I consider run style to be very important in certain races, especially some handicaps. Here, then, are the win percentages for top-rated SR runners across the four run styles. This covers all handicaps at all distances:

 

 

Early leaders / front runners that were top rated on the SR ratings have won nigh on 25% of the time (one win in every four). This follows the pattern we have seen numerous times in the past. Of course, we only know the early leader after the race has started but if we had managed to predict when the top-rated runner would take the early lead in a handicap, we would have won £1006.01 to £1 level stakes. This equates to huge returns of over 51 pence for every £ bet. Nice money if you can get it and, importantly, a reasonable margin for error in picking top-rated runners that didn’t go on to lead in their races.

**

Geegeez Gold has so many benefits for punters and these SR ratings are definitely one of them. I hope this article has uncovered some useful SR rating angles that can be deployed over the coming weeks and months.

- DR

Monday Musings: One for the Little Guys

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Over the years, ARC hasn’t been everyone in racing’s ideal role model for running racecourses, but it’s hard not to applaud its commitment to the Good Friday All Weather Championships, now happily settled at Newcastle from its original home at Lingfield Park, writes Tony Stafford.

The prize money is stupendous for the types of races, and as Ollie Sangster mused after his Tuco Salamanca finished fast into fourth (but would have been second in a couple more strides in his race), “That stopped him winning almost £40k instead of which we got £9k. The win prize of near 80 grand was what you would expect to get for winning a Group 2,” he said.

Tuco Salamanca, who finished full of running under P J Macdonald having been dropped right out, then encountered the interference that is all so frequent on Newcastle’s straight mile. The jockeys can change course up that straight mile from meeting to meeting, although the stands side is usually king.

I started at Newcastle rather than talk about the scintillating display of the Gosdens’ big grey colt Field Of Gold, who sprinted clear having not had the greatest of runs through to win the Craven Stakes in a canter. The O’Brien 2000 Guineas hopes were conspicuous by their absence, but this was exactly what a trial was meant to be – get rid of the wishful-thinkers and leave the Classics to the big boys. Field Of Gold could well be the horse that ends John Gosden’s blank in the first Classic race of the year. If he wins, no doubt son Thady will be taking the credit – “you were rubbish dad, till I came to help you out!” – he might have said when and if it wins.

Having started out almost two decades after Gosden, Aidan O’Brien had won ten of the 27 2,000 Guineas' since his first in 1998. No doubt one or two might be coming across from Ballydoyle, but Twain, who is the shortest price of the Coolmore contingent, will need to be smart.

His credentials are solid. Pedigree-wise he’s by Wootton Bassett, transformed from a smart stallion in France to an elite one in Co Tipperary. His 2025 fee has been increased from €200k to €300k on the back of sensational results from his stock over the past two years and now he’s getting many of Coolmore’s best mares to mate with. Twain is out of a Montjeu mare and is already a Group 1 winner, at Saint-Cloud last autumn, following a six-length debut maiden win at Leopardstown. It seems he’ll be Ryan Moore’s ride.

Ryan is well used to winning races worth the mere trifle of 77 grand, but when the four-year-old filly Heavenly Heather crossed the line first under diminutive Amie Waugh in the Bet MGM  Fillies’ and Mares’ Championship Handicap at Newcastle on Friday, to my mind she was recording one of the biggest surprise results in the history of UK flat racing.

The 200/1 quote wasn’t the only clue. Here was a filly rated a measly 57 taking on a well-tried eight-year-old mare, Aramis Grey, who is on 92, and putting her in her place. It was no wonder that the local stewards felt minded to stick their collective oar in and try to dent the occasion for the winning trainer Tracy Waggott, based over the county border in Spennymoor, Co Durham. Understandably, her explanation, that she didn’t have any idea how the filly improved so much, was accepted and the right outcome.

Heavenly Heather was 17lb “wrong” at the weights but that made no difference as, despite getting a little bit of interference on the way through, she and her locally based rider did not falter.

Amie, although able to ride comfortably at 7st9lb, had honed her skill in point-to-points in the north of England. She won 24, so often having to carry the saddle with its lead back to weigh in with four stone dead weight. No wonder, like all jockeys, she is so strong.

Then she turned amateur on the flat before in 2021, taking out an apprentices’ licence as a 31-year-old and starting with a 5lb claim. She’s getting near to losing her 3lb now. This was her first win of 2025, and it will have set her up for a worry-free year financially. She still helps her father Simon when she can with his team of jumpers, mostly self-owned at Morpeth up the road from Gosforth Park.

Tracy Waggott is the daughter of the well-respected late jumps trainer Norman. He barely had a runner on the flat – the last I think was in 1998 – but Tracy has turned around the stable’s priorities, doing very well training horses on the level and massively improving facilities at their farm.

It’s sad that, because of the way our handicappers think, Heavenly Heather is likely to get a right old tanking in tomorrow’s revised ratings. But in mitigation, apart from a single run when she got unbalanced at Redcar 11 days before the win and her first outing since Jan 2, all her other runs had been at Gosforth Park, three at seven furlongs and once at a mile.

So she was running at home from home, and for all it’s a straight course, as I indicated above, trouble is easily encountered. The ability to handle the track with its uphill finish is paramount. She ran home gamely, but if the handicapper dealing with seven-furlong form takes it as it stands, she’ll be going up to 80 which will be a shame. Why not make it say 70 and give her a chance, as even that would be a test in different circumstances.

*

Now let’s deal with this week’s main event. That Willie Mullins isn’t much good, is he? After his one-two in the Scottish Grand National, Willie's eight runners at Cheltenham last week had to be content with a sprinkling of places, and the much-publicised raid on Peter Savill’s cash at Plumpton yesterday boiled down to a single race. True, he had four shots of winning the day’s best prize and duly clicked with another one-two courtesy of Absurde and Daddy Long Legs. That’s £55k in the locker!

Of course, he likes to make a drama out of it, so next Saturday at Sandown – where he had another dream day last year with one-threes in both the featured bet365 Gold Cup and the Select Hurdle which put £170k into his coffers, enough to flatten Dan Skelton’s claims - he'll bid to get up in the shadows of the seasonal post.

Over the interim, sentiment seems to have been moving towards Skelton, and he will have plenty of runners next Saturday, too. But if Mullins can bring to the table such stars as last year’s bet365 Gold Cup pair Minella Cocooner and Nick Rockett (where do I know that name from?) and, in the Select Hurdle, Impaire Et Passe and Sir Gerhard, no wonder the boys in Warwickshire are on tenterhooks again.

Finally, it was lovely to meet up with Nick Craven in the Weatherbys box at Newmarket where they were sponsoring the opening race on Tuesday and Wednesday. Nick is a man of many talents but if he was responsible for the catering [he wasn't - Ed.], he’s no Gordon Ramsey as his chicken on skewers were tougher than little Amie Waugh.

As to Tattersalls sales, it was on Wednesday that Kia Joorabchian arrived in the box during racing with his new trainer Raphael Freire, a very nice chap relishing the chance of being the man to follow the great Sir Michael Stoute at the local Freemason Lodge yard.

Having already witnessed a 1.4 million gns Acclamation colt being sold to Godolphin on day one, predictably it was Kia’s Amo Racing that swamped that on day two at a breeze-up record 1.75 million gns price for a son of Havana Grey. Big money from big players then, but don’t forget little Amie. Sounds like a Jane Austen heroine!

- TS

Roving Reports: Do You Know Where You’re Going To…?

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Where to start the latest missive from around the tracks? Aintree would seem like an obvious start point after last week, but then again, I haven't told you about what happened at Cheltenham either, writes David Massey. So do we start there? No, I'll tell you what, let's start at Clacket Lane Services, and with Vicki rather than me, for a change. 

Vicki, for those of you unaware, has been my other work partner for the last year. In fact, as she recently reminded me, it was at Aintree last year we sat down and thrashed out the idea that Trackside has become since then; so, for all I'm dreadful at remembering dates, I can remember a decent meal when I have one, and I had a very good steak that night as we discussed future world domination. 

Vicki has a superb business head. I leave that side of things to her. She can negotiate contracts as if she was trying to win The Apprentice, squeeze ten pound notes out of people tighter than two coats of paint. They should send her to the Ukraine talks. Perhaps she could sort it in a week, because Fanta Man seems to be struggling to finish the job off, to use racing parlance.

However, she has her weak spots. Geography is one of them. Leicester Racecourse is "somewhere in the middle", "I didn't realise Aintree was quite so far away" - she lives near Colchester, "how the hell is it over two hours to Fakenham? It's only seventy miles!", another map-reading gem she came out with the other week. (If she read these columns, she'd know Fakenham is four hours from anywhere, as I've stated on many an occasion. More on this particular excursion later.)

These all pale into insignificance, mind, when I tell you her crowning glory. She was amazed I'd made it to Uttoxeter by 11am the other week. "Wow, how have you got there so quickly?" she exclaimed. Puzzled, I wondered what she meant, given it's barely an hour from my house. "Well....isn't Uttoxeter in Devon?". Yes, friends, she'd spirited it away from East Staffordshire, took it all the way to the bottom of the M5, gave it a new accent and thought I'd somehow driven 200-odd miles in an hour after sending her a text I was setting off sixty minutes before. 

That Fakenham trip. She'd decided she wanted to try out some new make-up brands and looked for a large branch of Boots that was on her way to the Norfolk track as a stop-off. Thetford was favourite, there was what looked a very large branch on the map. And so, off she went and got to Thetford, following the sat-nav directions. When she arrived at Boots, it was indeed a huge, huge building. She'd found the Boots distribution centre on an industrial estate. 

So anyway, Clacket Lane, and she's called in for a coffee and, ahem, a comfort break on the way to Ascot. Having precariously balanced her car keys on top of the toilet roll holder (this isn't going to end how you think at this point) it takes them mere seconds to fall off and onto the floor. And at the same time, slide into the cubicle next door. 

You might expect them to be slid back at this point. Instead, she tells me, she can hear them being picked up and the inhabitant leaving the cubicle, footsteps suggesting she's actually walking off with the keys. Which, as it turns out, she was. 

Panicking, she quickly has to get out and find the person that's waltzed off with them. But she's no idea who. They're long gone. Now what do you do? As it turns out, nothing needed to be done, as ten minutes later the key holder returns to the toilets, looking for someone that might sport a face that says "Hello! I'm an idiot that's panicking having lost my keys." She spies Vicki matching that description and gives her keys back. Turns out her neighbour thought that it must have been she that dropped the keys and thinking they were her own, took them off with her. It was only after realising they didn't open her own car that she realised what had happened, and brought them back. 

All I'm saying is this. If you want someone to read a paddock laden with unraced two year olds, Vicki is your lady. Just don't let her anywhere near a map. 

Oh yeah, Cheltenham. It snowed. A week before, on a Sporting Life podcast recorded in bright sunshine I'd got laughed out of the place for suggesting it might snow at Cheltenham. Nobody was laughing as we drove through heavy fluffy white showers near Evesham on the Wednesday morning and, as I walked into the press room, the Sporting Life lads actually gave me a round of applause for my prediction and a rendition of "Simply The Best", which is a standing joke with the Life lads as my final appearance on Popmaster (a good fifteen years ago now) saw me forget the name of Tina Turner's mega-worldwide hit, meaning I didn't win the DAB radio, merely a Bluetooth speaker that broke within two months. Thanks for that, Ken. 

A tick-box food card was introduced for the press at Cheltenham this year, seemingly to stop repeat offenders from having half a dozen lunches (you know who you are) before the first. You got your bacon roll for breakfast, tick, hot lunch, tick, and a snack in the afternoon, third and final tick. All good. At the end of the Tuesday a couple of people gave me their cards as they weren't coming back for the rest of the four days, meaning I quite literally held all the cards as far as meals went. As word got out later in the week, I had various members of the press sidling up to me, asking if I could use one of my cards to get themselves a bit of breakfast as they hadn't got one. "Here you go son, treat yourself to a sausage sandwich", I whispered, handing the golden chalice over. This must be what it feels like to be a drug dealer. I've never been so popular. 

Horse racing? Yeah, we had a couple of nice winners and napping Doddiethegreat in the Press Challenge, plus sticking up Lecky Watson, saw Team Trackside finish a very respectable fourth on the week. We built on that by making Nick Rockett a bet at Aintree and now stand third overall. Long way to go (doesn't finish until Champions Day) but we're in the mix for the big prize. 

Aintree. The undoubted highlight of the week was not the aforementioned Nick Rockett, nor Jonbon getting back on track, but the Yorkshire Gold teabags in the canteen. Most courses, you're lucky if you get Happy Shopper-type teabags that aren't even tea, just stuff swept up off the floor and tied up in a perforated bag; but such luxury we haven't seen for some time in a press canteen. To give you an idea of what we tend to put up with, there's one course (I won't name and shame... yet) that has tea and coffee you serve yourself with and if you turn the coffee jar upside down, the coffee usually sticks to the bottom. You don't spoon it out, you chip it out. 

The racing was excellent at Aintree on the Thursday, it’s one of my favourite days of the year with its opening run of Grade 1s in a proper jumps atmosphere. Different kettle of fish on the Friday, mind. Ladies Day seemed slightly less busy but hectic nonetheless. As we stayed around the paddock area for much of the afternoon, doing what we do, we didn’t see the, er, merriment around the front but I did get a message from Vicki as she left the track. “There’s a woman lying on the floor getting her face licked by an Irish wolfhound. Also, a lot of nipples on show. I’d leave sooner rather than later if I were you.” Needless to say I packed away pretty quickly after that and made my way back to the car. Sans nipples, thankfully. 

I’m back at Cheltenham for their April two-dayer as I type this and it’s freezing cold, a reminder we haven’t got shot of winter just yet. No snow, but I’m not counting any chickens…

- DM

From a Place, to a Different Place

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Before I start, I should apologise for the rather clunky title, but hopefully it will soon make sense, writes Dave Renham. We all know that not all form is equal: a win at Ascot may generally be considered more meritorious than first place at Catterick, for example.

I decided to see if there is any pattern in how form translates from one track to another. To do this, I focused on horses that finished in the first three last time out (123LTO), comparing results between the 'placed run course' and today's track. In other words, I'm trying to find a relationship - positive or negative - between the host track of an ostensibly good (first three finish) run last time and the course next time. Confused? Let's break it down.

The dataset is UK flat racing between 2017 and 2024 with the focus mainly on the turf courses. However, there is some all-weather (AW) course data shared when the other course is a turf one. Put another way, there is no comparison between all-weather tracks. Profit and loss figures have been calculated to BSP less 2% commission on winning bets.

To begin with let's look at the results for all races/courses of horses that finished in the first three LTO:

 

 

This is our baseline against which to measure our 123LTO course to today's course results. The win rate overall is around one in every six races with losses of just under 4p in the £ at BSP, which is a fairly solid starting point.

Here are the top 20 win strike rates in terms of today's course to 123LTO course. Here are the numbers (80 runners minimum to qualify):

 

 

There are some excellent strike rates here, all well above the 16.4% average figure. 18 of the 20 have seen a BSP profit; and 17 of the 20 have seen an A/E index in excess of 1.00. It is interesting to see that Newmarket has been the LTO course in six of the above, five times horses coming from the Rowley course, once from the July. It is equally noteworthy that very few of the Grade 1 tracks appear in the current course column. I will discuss and dig deeper into this area later in the piece.

Next, here are the 20 lowest win strike rates:

 

 

These are a huge contrast with the first group: all bar one has a win percentage below 8% (worse than one win in 12) and huge losses were incurred in 19 of the 20. The A/E indices are generally poor as we would expect given the other metrics, but 16 are 0.60 or lower which is extremely low. What also stands out here is that the left hand column showing the 'today' course where the vast majority are Grade 1 tracks, York and Ascot accounting for 12 of the 20 between them. Meanwhile, the second column of 123LTO courses is largely comprised of lower tier tracks.

My next port of call was to classify each course into grades (It will become apparent later why I’m doing this). There are eight Grade 1 tracks on the flat: Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket (both courses), Sandown and York. My plan was to grade all courses in the most accurate way possible. I had two ideas. The first was to work out the average prize money at each course over the time frame; the second was to work out the average race class level. I chose the latter because I thought using prize money could see some course averages get skewed due to the very biggest races offering such huge purses; thus, using the average class of race I felt would be more accurate.

Here are my findings for each course. I have put them into three graphs with the courses in alphabetical order:

 

 

 

Ascot has hosted the highest average class of race, with Brighton the lowest; and there is a significant difference between the two. Ascot averages 2.16 (i.e. between Classes 2 and 3 on average, much closer to Class 2), while Brighton is down at 5.43 (midway between Classes 5 and 6). To help give some context, 55% of Brighton’s races have been Class 6 events, whereas at Ascot 34% of races were Class 1 and 31% were Class 2.

From here I decided to grade the tracks (Grade 1 courses seeing the highest class of races, Grade 5 seeing the lowest):

 

 

The average bands I chose were partly based on the individual course averages and partly 'feel-based'. For example, Windsor was on 4.52 and I felt it should be in the Grade 3 group, hence I chose 4.55 as the upper range for that grouping. Having decided upon the splits here are the courses that appear in each group/grade:

 

 

As you can see the majority of the courses land in Grade 4 or 5. It would be preferable perhaps to have slightly more even numbers in each group but those seemed to me to be the most sensible divisions.

Having embarked on this course grading journey let me explain my rationale. I wanted to group the 'today' and 123LTO course data into bigger sets then individual tracks to see if there were any useful patterns. For example, going back to the lowest 20-win strike rates table I shared earlier, that table highlighted that horses which finished in the first three at some lower grade tracks performed poorly if reappearing at one of the higher grade tracks. Is that the case generally? Let’s find out!

To begin with I have simply compared the results based on the course grade 'today' linked with the 123LTO course grade. The table below shows my findings:

 

 

That's quite a mixed bag of results, with eight of the 25 combinations making a profit. However, in order to get a better ‘feel’ for the data I have grouped the 'today' course grade results into one.

 

 

The results at all Grade 1 courses combined are the worst, both from a strike rate and returns perspective. Horses racing at a Grade 3 course after a top three finish have done the best and have snuck into profit. It should be noted that the Grade 3 total of runners is the smallest... but there were still over 10,000 qualifiers from this eight-year time frame.

Having grouped the course data above in terms of course grade, it makes sense to do the same for the LTO course data:

 

 

This time we see slightly worse returns at either end of the spectrum, but there's nothing too significant to be gleaned from this grouping unfortunately.

My final piece of digging connected with the grading of courses idea was do some ‘rearranging’. My thinking was to create an up-in-course grade / down-in-course grade idea, similar to the one for class change or distance change. To that end, I subtracted the course grade from the LTO course grade to create a ‘difference’ figure. For example, a horse that raced at a Grade 4 course LTO and now racing at a Grade 1 track would have a figure of 3 (4 minus 1). Positive figures can be deemed ‘up in course grade’, negative figures ‘down in course grade’.

Here are the win strike rates:

 

 

This graph neatly shows how the change in grade of course affects the win strike rates. Those going from a lower grade course to a higher grade course (the positive figs) have won far less often than those going from a higher grade course to a lower grade one (the negative figures). This is to be expected of course but the correlation is still positive, and beautifully linear. Hopefully we will see a correlation with the BSP returns. Let’s take a look:

 

 

The worst return by some margin is for the largest ‘up in course grade’ figure of 4 (i.e. a horse moving from a 123 effort at a Grade 5 track last time to race at one of Ascot, Goodwood, Newmarket Rowley or York this time); with the second worst being the ‘up in course grade’ figure of 3. Those negative returns can be seen on the right hand side of the chart.

The best returns were with the biggest ‘down in course grade’ figure of 4 (i.e. a horse moving from a 123 effort at Ascot, Goodwood, Newmarket Rowley or York last time to race at a Grade 5 track this time). So, at either end of the spectrum we have something of potential use. Unfortunately, the values in between do not show a clear pattern, which is slightly frustrating given the earlier vastly differing strike rates.

It again emphasises that the betting market is so very efficient and not easy to get the better of, despite the huge amount of data collating and crunching one does!

 

**

 

It is time to wind up this piece now. Sometimes, despite how well thought out a research project is, we don't always get the findings we were expecting or hoping for. The second half of this article has been a little like that; I was hoping to find more positive or negative angles using the ideas connected with my grading of courses but little came to light.

The most eye-catching elements might be the top and bottom 20 strike rate tables I shared at the beginning, though it's definitely also worth looking out for any horses dropping from a placed effort at one of the Grade 1 tracks into a low grade fixture. For anyone interested in all of the 'today' course to 123LTO course data I have, I am happy to share it. There were too many combinations to fit in this article (469 with 80+ runners, to be precise). Please just post your request in the comments.

My parting shot is that perhaps I need to re-think the 123LTO course to 'today' course idea by incorporating and classifying the course configuration. What I mean by that is whether the course is, for instance, ‘stiff’ or ‘tight’ or ‘galloping’ etc. The only issue with that is some courses will fit more than one course type ‘descriptor’. Hmm, I need to get my thinking cap on and come up with a plan. If I find a good way to do this I will share my findings in a subsequent article later in the season.

- DR

Monday Musings: What Went Wrong?

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What went wrong, Willie? Okay, so you got the 1-2-7 in the Coral Scottish Grand National at Ayr, but what happened to the 3-5, especially when you had an extra runner compared to the five in the Randox Grand National at Aintree the previous weekend, writes Tony Stafford.

“I can tell you”, he might say. “One got carried out and the other two, including last year’s winner, MacDermott, pulled up”. Sadly, it was later reported that McDermott had to be put down due to an injury sustained in the race.

It left the Irishman trailing Dan Skelton by £1,581 in the race for the 2024-25 UK trainers’ title. The winner, Captain Cody, is by flat-race stayer Arctic Cosmos, out of the mare Fromthecloudsabove and that was a fair description of how Harry Cobden delivered him from right out the back to foil Klarc Kent, so not quite the Superman, with a flying finish at the end of four miles, if you don’t mind. Cobden must wish he got a few more rides for the Irishman.

Willie has sent 124 individual horses to the UK this season and 27 of them have won 31 races. With place money he has earned £3,102,994 at 19%. Dan Skelton has run exactly twice as many, 248 for 163 wins at very close to the same strike rate (18%) for £3,104,425 after a treble at Ayr on Friday.

Last year, in what now looks sure to be a similar outcome between the two powerhouses, Mullins dominated Sandown’s final day leaving him with £3,326,135 for the season. Skelton, for all his herculean efforts, was marooned (rather unfair to use that word in the circumstances) on £2,983,657 for 121 victories. He’s already exceeded those figures and has 25 entered for Cheltenham’s meeting this week which has £120k in win money on offer, and Thursday is even more potentially lucrative with almost £160k in winner’s cash to be divvied up.

Mullins has 16 in at Cheltenham and in a final day onslaught has 17 in the early-closing races at Sandown on Saturday week compared with Dan’s four. Tough? Like scaling Everest without oxygen!

The rise of the Skelton yard has been remarkable. Minutely master-minded by Nick Skelton, father of Dan and jockey Harry, it can only continue to thrive. Harry is a former champion jockey and winner of the recent half a million pot for big-race points. Nick is an Olympic Gold medal winner from London 2012 but a top international show jumper for decades before that.

Their Warwickshire base has had all the attention paid to it in the manner of a Ballydoyle. Dan will win the title at some stage if not this time round, as Mullins is pushing 70. Then again, with son Patrick or even Ruby Walsh or David Casey to take over, you wouldn’t expect too much loss of effectiveness from Closutton any time soon.

It’s also fair to consider what Willie does at home, when he’s not scaring the daylights out of our best, like Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls, the Skelton boys’ original mentor. Clever fella that Nick Skelton! Mullins has run 287 horses back home this season. Of those, 137 between them have clocked up 181 victories and £4,162,000 in total prizes. He might be good but the numbers help!

I hope Dan manages to move a few thousand clear over the two days at Cheltenham, which will become more than just a side show to this week’s Craven meeting at Newmarket when fast ground will have conditions more like August on the Rowley Mile. <They obviously don’t use that course between June and August, but you know what I mean.>

I couldn’t resist my first few words, as they hark back to probably the two least reasonable examples of “what went wrong” ever used in relation to horse racing.

In April 1985, a horse we’d bought, from Charles O’Brien if memory serves, was heavily backed by its new owner. The more than capable 7lb claimer Simon Whitworth rode a terrific race and Cool Enough won in a photo in a big field Thirsk seller. Wilf Storey was the trainer. In those days daily racing wasn’t televised, so despite picking up a ton of cash, the hard-to-please owner – you’ve guessed it – asked: “What went wrong”, as in “I thought you said it was a certainty”. Cool Enough went on to win seven times in a long career for Lynda and Jack Ramsden.

Then after that, Wilf (I can’t really reveal his part, though totally legal, in it) and the late David Wintle helped engineer one of the best stunts of modern racing history – if I say so myself! - when Topsoil, trained by Wintle having been previously in the care of Barry Hills and Rod Simpson, won a selling hurdle at Haydock.

We’d identified the only danger being a horse of John Jenkins’ and so it proved, Topsoil winning by I think one and a half lengths with 25 lengths back to the third. The owner had a nice win bet and cleaned up with the forecast. Again, no pictures to see; once more the reaction after he collected: “What went wrong?”

It’s hard to believe it was as long ago as July 2017 that Dave died aged 77 and it’s sad that it means he never knew about the significant part in a slice of racing history that his daughter Becky and husband Steve Hillen played in the life of one of the more remarkable horses of present days.

The racing industry is quick to forget where praise is due. When the Hillens’ filly Via Sistina was sold to Australian interests at the end of her 5yo career from the George Boughey stable, nobody seemed to remember it was the retired Joseph Tuite who had sent her on the path to greatness, patiently handling the five grand yearling buy.

True, Boughey quickly brought her into Group race company and her final run, second as a five-year-old to Derby runner-up King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot in October 2023, was a great achievement.

Sold by the Hillens for an eye-watering 2.7million guineas at the 2023 December sales, she went into the care of Chris Waller in Australia. She won a Group 1 race almost immediately in her new home before running a well-beaten 2nd in last year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick racecourse in Sydney.

On Saturday, she put that blemish to rights, winning this year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes by more than a length from the William Haggas globetrotter Dubai Honour in a finish of seven-year-olds. In between, from August in the latest Australian season, she has won another six races, so seven in a single campaign, all at Group 1 level, emulating one of the achievements of Winx for that great mare’s trainer. In all, eight from 11 runs is her Australian tally.

The race was worth £1.46 million to the winner and £420k to the runner-up. That should help with jockey Tom Marquand’s travel expenses to ride the runner-up. New Zealand-born cash cow James McDonald held the reins on the winner as usual.

Via Sistina’s total earnings have passed £6.6 million and she has such an easy disposition according to her trainer that she could keep on notching up those seven-figure prizes for a while to come. Imagine if Joe Tuite had cranked her up as a two-year-old when she wasn’t ready. Indeed, how many potentially great horses go the wrong way for impatience either from owners or indeed trainers?

This week at Newmarket, the Craven Breeze-up Sale will offer the most desirable pedigrees of all the sales of two-year-olds in training to be had, with the arguable exception of Arqana’s similar auction next month. The biggest prices at Newmarket will be paid for sprint types that record fast times over two furlongs in the middle/conclusion of their breezes, but as the editor pointed out to me when we met last week, various other considerations have been added to the agents’ and trainers’ wish lists. I can’t wait to see the returns.

We saw some nice performances in the Newbury Classic trials, notably appropriately named 33/1 Dubai Duty Free Fred Darling Stakes winner Duty First. Archie Watson’s Showcasing filly slaughtered a decent field and Archie’s owners will presumably re-invest their share of the £48k winnings to supplement her to the 1,000 Guineas.

The Watership Down Too Darn Hot Greenham Stakes was almost as clear-cut. Sir Michael Stoute may have retired but Jonquil, in his care for Juddmonte last season, made an instant hit for Andrew Balding – he of the 282 horses, up from 236 last year. This nice colt beat the equally admirable Rashabar from Brian Meehan fair and square, but both will have plenty to say as the season stretches on.

- TS

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