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Monday Musings: Debut Trouble and Double Bubble

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Having cringed five days earlier at the sparse crowds on the Hill at Epsom for Saturday’s Derby, I would have thought taking care of potential money-spending clients would be at the forefront of all racecourses’ actions nowadays, writes Tony Stafford.

Yet on Thursday at Newbury, where there was a 1.30 start, for some reason the course management decreed that until 12.30 they (probably regarded as the enemy until that moment) would not pass.

It could be of course that racecourses’ race day insurance might not kick in until an hour before the first race; but if that’s right, then it’s something they ought to address.

Luckily the owners’ car park is but a stone’s throw from the entrance to the very posh owners’ facility, so once denied admission at 11.50 – I got there quicker than expected as the long-standing and lengthy 50 m.p.h. stretches on the northern part of the M25 and also some more on the M4 had magically disappeared since the start of my house arrest for the previous three weeks.

“Great”, I thought, “that’s plenty of time to get a cup of coffee and study the card.” The horse I’d come to watch wasn’t in until the second race at 2.05 so I might even take advantage of the lunch that’s offered, although with everyone going in at the same time, it would be a bit of a scramble.

One hot choice, pork sausages, so any one unable to partake on religious grounds, would be left with the cold buffet. No such restrictions for me and the sausages were great. I digress.

At 11.50, the promised rain was coming down nicely enough to turn the going from good to firm to good, good to soft in places, allowing the trainer’s assistant associated with “our” horse, a 120k debutant, another possible factor to add to the legion of pre- and post-race book of excuses for a first outing.

After a couple of minutes standing behind the gaggle of already almost-drowning pensioners that comprise many midweek attendees, I had a brainwave, following a couple of others with rudimentary knowledge of the track. “There’s a bar in the hotel, and if that’s no good, there’s always the Lodge”, they offered. The Lodge is where stable lads can stay overnight.

No go at the hotel and around the corner we were very welcome to go into the Lodge, but on race days their bar isn’t open. I slunk back to sit in the car for half an hour.

By the time I did return to the entrance somebody must have taken mercy on the drowned veterans and a few were already in the bar, including my old mate Mike “Chunky” Allen, a fixture at Newbury and Windsor especially, who surprised me with the announcement that it was 20 years since he had left British Airways from his job as Cabin Services Director.

He always used to tell me about all the people in racing he’d managed to get upgrades from coach to first over many years and, from memory, Paul Webber was one of his regular beneficiaries.

I was going on a long-distance trip with my then wife sometime in the 1990s, to the US if I recall. He told me the name of the man who would be CSD on the flight and said: “When you go into the plane, ask for him. I’ve told him about you and he’ll put you in Business Class at a minimum or with luck, First Class.”

Come the day, with my wife saying don’t be silly, we’ll sit in our seats, I wasn’t for turning. The man was standing at the point where passengers would turn left or right. I asked whether he was our man. He said: “Yes”. I said: “Oh good, Mike Allen told me you would look after us.” He gave me a quizzical look and said: “Mike Allen? Never heard of him!” We turned right with one embarrassed husband and an “I told you so” companion.

Last Thursday, I retold the tale with Mike and a witness and Chunky said, “That’s right, I only worked with him for 38 years!”

I thought it would be only fair to buy him what he was drinking as his small house white wine was soon to disappear at the bottom of his tiny glass. I ordered the same again and a non-alcoholic beer for me. I had a longish drive home so you can’t be too careful these days - £12. Good job he didn’t have a large one!

In a field of eight, of course “our horse” was the one doing all the shouting in the pre-parade and, by the time we went into the paddock proper and met the assistant trainer, he added to that obvious negative news with, “Not only that but he’s got his old man out.” A more prosaic description than the coy “rather colty” version beloved of broadcast paddock commentators, you might say.

This juvenile had been, we understood, very forward from day one, had done plenty of galloping and a video of his last piece of work was most encouraging. It’s not my horse, but I attempted to keep the conversation as light as possible as there was, apart from my friend, another partner and his father there. I said, “I saw that gallop, he looked good, unless he was working with a tree.”

Anyway the eight eventually set off on the six and a half furlongs of Newbury and he was slowly away, then dropped further back immediately. On return after the race, his jockey said, “I’d gone 20 yards and he started shouting and it wasn’t until the last furlong that he seemed to get the hang of things.”

He advised patience at least to see his next run as he did keep on well up to the line, improving the distance behind the other two stragglers if not his actual position. Trainer’s assistant said the jockey couldn’t pull him up for ages after the line, so that’s a comfort and I had already taken that reassurance on the eye first time round. I hope my friend and the other owners get some enjoyment. Promise on the gallops can so quickly evaporate with one or two poor displays on the track.

*

I know it’s Royal Ascot this week. I am going to manage only three days, but the early morning work I do for the revamped From The Stables service where around 20 trainers offer their thoughts to me every day means it’s going to be hellish if the roads are difficult.

On Saturday, there were initially 30 horses (in the end quite a few came out) to wade through to find a nap which would appear in the William Hill Radio Naps table.

In the five years I’ve been doing the job – pushed my way when the Editor of this site recommended me when asked his opinion of who might fill a vacancy – we’ve won the competition three times (out of ten goes combined, for the NH and Flat seasons).

Doing my regular call around on Saturday, I spoke to Roger Teal. I very much fancied his horse Hucklesbrook at York as I had done a few weeks earlier at Leicester where he won at 9/1. That day, I forgot to email the tip through and was given a 2/7 shot from the regular substitute provider when mine is a no-show for any reason.

Anyway, Roger told me he was in a rush as his horsebox had broken down on the way and he was waiting for a replacement to bring the horse to run in the valuable featured three-year-old sprint, worth £64k to the winner.

All was well, Hucklesbrook getting there safely and then, ridden by Joanna Mason, winning very authoritatively at 16/1. Roger Teal is a much-underrated trainer (although in fairness, so many of them are). I would love him to win the Queen Anne Stakes, the meeting curtain-raiser of a wonderful Tuesday card, with Dancing Gemini.

To have a 16/1 nap go in was great, but under a new regime instigated only last month and containing an inflex of talented trainers, we now offer a nap, next best and third choice along with an each-way outsider.

The NB, Ben Brookhouse’s My Dream World, had earlier won the Queen Mother Cup for lady amateur riders at 4/1 so an 84/1 double was in place. It is now no longer a secret that winning rider Megan Jordan, partnering a 13th career winner, weighs six cases and two bottles of champagne. At around £50 a pop that’s three and a half grand’s worth. Good for her.

I was getting excited after Hucklesbrook, but then the third choice, Jamie Snowden’s 9/4 shot Hope Rising, turned round just as her field was sent off for a novice hurdle at Uttoxeter, losing a good ten lengths according to the course commentator.

Gavin Sheehan soon got her rolling and she quickly went through the field and into the lead. Jumping well, she seemed to be going better than the hot favourite in the race, but those earlier exertions taxed her stamina and she had to be content with an honourable second place. That treble would have been 272/1!

Later, the day’s each-way outsider, Hughie Morrison’s Mighty Real, a 12/1 shot at Leicester, came with a dangerous-looking run but had to be content with third of eight. If, a word we use too often in racing and I suppose in life generally, things had gone right, it would have been somewhere close to a 3,600/1 payout. Of course, I didn’t have a penny on, but I’m glad to say, plenty of the members did!

You can take a three week trial of From The Stables, using the coupon code ‘geegeez’, here.

 

Royal Ascot 2025: Analysing The Group 1 Races

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There are three festivals a year I get really excited about, writes Dave Renham. The Cheltenham Festival and Glorious Goodwood are two; and the third, which is soon to be upon us, is of course Royal Ascot. Around this time last year I looked in detail at the big 1-mile handicaps at the meeting - you can catch up with that piece here. This year I am concentrating on the Group 1 races.

Introduction

There are eight Group 1s run at the Royal meeting and they are as follows:

 

 

As would be expected, there is a good mix of different race distances and conditions although there is only one Group 1 race at a distance beyond 1m 2f, the Gold Cup.

In this article I am looking back on the last ten years of these Group 1 contests, trying to find any snippets that may help us when tackling the races this year. Profit and losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission.

Royal Ascot Group 1s by Market Rank

Let me start by examining the market. I have ranked the runners based on BSP, which is the most accurate way of doing it. Further, it eliminates almost all of the ‘joint’ market positions.

 

 

These races have definitely been market-friendly with the top three betting positions each producing a blind profit. Those fourth in the Betfair betting lists have performed poorly but due to the modest sample we can perhaps assume this is an anomaly. Regardless, it seems that the top three in the betting are the ones to concentrate on.

Group 1 Favourites at Royal Ascot

Narrowing in on favourites, below are the Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) figures for each individual race to help give a better overview of favourite performance in specific races. For the record the average PRB figures for favourites across the eight races combined stands at 0.76.

 

 

There has been quite a variance with Gold Cup favourites performing best, and by some margin. Their actual performance in the Gold Cup has been as follows:

 

 

During the ten year study period the Gold Cup favourite secured five wins, two seconds, a third and two fourths, so no BSP jolly has completely bombed out.

Royal Ascot Group 1s: Top 3 Market Ranks

If we undertake the same type of PRB analysis across the top three in the betting, the graph generally becomes more even:

 

 

The St James’s Palace has the highest figure now with the Gold Cup a close second. Nine of the ten winners of the St James’s Palace came from the top three in the betting (four favourites, three second favs, two third favs).

Conversely, of all the races the Commonwealth Cup has seen fancied runners struggle the most. Favourites have won three of the last ten Commonwealth Cup renewals, but there were no wins for second favourites (two wins for third favs). Quite a few horses that were in the top three of the betting have bombed out with 10 of the 30 failing to finish in the top ten, three of them being favourites.

It should be noted that the four winning Commonwealth Cup favourites in the past decade more than paid for the other six losing jollies, returning a profit of 2.55 units at BSP.

Royal Ascot Group 1s by Last Time Out (LTO) Position

The second area I want to look at is recent performance and specifically LTO finishing position. Here is a breakdown of performance by last day finishing position (I have grouped all horses together that finished fifth or worse LTO):

 

 

The BSP profit for those that finished third LTO has been totalled skewed by the 140.0 BSP winner Khaadem. LTO winners do look the group to concentrate on with over half of the 80 winners having also won on their most recent start. If we combine LTO winners with a position in the top three in the betting, then we see some excellent results: 36 winners from 115 runners (SR 31.13%) for a profit of £30.50 (ROI +26.5%); A/E 1.14.

It is also worth keeping an eye out for LTO winners that won by at least a length in the race prior to Ascot. These runners have scored 18.9% of the time (30 wins from 159) for a profit of £29.13 (ROI +18.3%).

 

Royal Ascot Group 1s by Last Time Out (LTO) Race Class

Onto looking at the class of race LTO. Here are the splits:

 

 

As we would expect horses that ran in Group 1 company last time have won most often. Those that raced in Group 3 or Listed Class LTO have been profitable, but both have been skewed by very big priced winners going in. Still, Royal Ascot is a meeting where horses fairly consistently win at massive odds.

LTO winners that contested a Group 1 race have actually offered poor value despite a strike rate of close to 30%. The 51 qualifiers lost over 28p in the £ if backing them to repeat the Group 1 win at Royal Ascot.

Royal Ascot Group 1s by Days Since Last Run (DSLR)

It is time to see whether the timing of the last run before Royal Ascot makes a difference. It should be noted this data does not include French, American or Australian runners as I do not have facility to check those. However, it still applies to over 90% of Ascot runners. Here are my findings:

 

 

As the table shows, I have included 50 to 240 days as a single group simply because there are very few runners within that grouping, and their performance has been poor. I wanted to help highlight the difference between that group and the group absent 241+ days (or eight months-plus).

The biggest cohort had a run between 22 and 35 days prior to Ascot and their results have been positive given the overall context. To give a broader overview let me share the PRB figures for each ‘days off track’ grouping:

 

 

These figures correlate with the win strike rates. The figures for 22 to 35 days and 241 days+ are clearly best. Finally in this section, below is the ten-year performance in Royal Ascot Group 1s of horses from the top three in the betting by days since last run:

 

 

Again, this points to the same two groups (22 to 35 days; 241+ days) as the areas in which to focus from a positive perspective. They would have offered punters very good value over the past ten years.

Royal Ascot Group 1 Trainers

The final area I will consider is that of trainers although it should be noted that data is limited. There are a handful of trainers who have saddled at least 20 runners in Royal Ascot Group 1s in the last ten years, and they are shown in the following table:

 

 

It is important not to take these figures (especially big profit lines) too literally due to the sample sizes. It is probably more prudent to look at the PRB values to give a better general indication of how each trainer's horses have run:

 

 

William Haggas, despite having just one winner from 24, has an excellent PRB figure so it looks like he has been somewhat unlucky in recent years. He has endured five second places,  as well as four thirds and five fourths. Haggas looks a trainer that may offer some placepot/ each way value at the very least next week.

By contrast, Roger Varian’s runners have really struggled although a good proportion of his charges have been bigger prices. Indeed, Charyn, in last year's Queen Anne Stakes is Varian's sole Royal Ascot G1 winner to date. There are sure to be more in future but his seem a little over-bet.

Other trainer titbits to share include the fact that Aidan O’Brien's 13 Group 1 winners in the past decade have all been ridden by Ryan Moore (from 61 rides). All other jockeys riding for O'Brien are a combined 0 from 43 since 2015, although again most of these runners were outsiders. Sticking with O’Brien it seems best to concentrate on those starting favourite or second favourite. They have combined to produce 12 of his 13 winners (from 34 qualifiers) returning a small 2p in the £. Finally, albeit from a very small sample, the Gosden stable has had four winners and four placed runners from just 13 runners aged four.

Summary

The Group 1 races at Royal Ascot are the races that owners, trainers and jockeys covet the most, although any win at the Royal meeting is huge.

In terms of the Group 1s, the most fancied runners - those in the top three in the betting - have fared much the best. Don’t be put off by horses having their first run in more than eight months (241+ days) and we might also consider a break of 22 to 35 days (three to five weeks) as more of a positive than a negative.

A last day win is preferable to other finishing positions and a last time out win coupled with a top three position in the betting market has been a very strong positive. From the training ranks, William Haggas appears to have been quite unlucky in the past decade and certainly I’ll be popping a few of his runners in my placepots at the very least. Aidan O’ Brien runners are worth noting if starting in the top two of the betting and particularly when ridden by Ryan Moore.

Wishing you the best of luck with your Royal Ascot Group 1 wagers.

- DR

Monday Musings: Aidan’s Hat-Trick Heroics

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So Aidan and the boys won the Betfred-sponsored Coronation Cup, Oaks and Derby last weekend, picking up around £1.5 million in the process, writes Tony Stafford. Lambourn, the well-backed third favourite on Derby Day, far out-performed his much more talked-about stable companions The Lion In Winter and short-priced favourite Delacroix in almost a repetition of Serpentine’s all-the-way easy victory under Emmet McNamara at the height of Covid five years ago.

Ryan Moore had selected Delacroix from the gang of trials winners rather than Chester Vase hero Lambourn and, in retrospect, it was maybe a little strange as Aidan always sends his best candidates to Chester, its timing best suiting Epsom.

People may question the suitability of a one-mile always-turning circuit as a recipe for revealing Epsom Classic talent, but I know Henry Cecil always reckoned that a big horse would be fine around the Roodeye if he was well-balanced. Lambourn certainly is.

He was picked up almost by default by Wayne Lordan, the apparent third string – Colin Keane, the regular Irish champion was on Dante flop The Lion In Winter. But the stamina Lambourn showed in winning the Chester Vase (just beyond 1m4f) last month convinced Wayne to go hard in the first furlong out of the stalls – to wake his mount up as much as anything – as he knew, unlike many in the field, his mount would not fail through lack of staying power.

Auguste Rodin (2023) and City Of Troy last year were fully expected winners but two other runnings in the last decade have gone to perceived third or higher strings. Wings Of Eagle, the fifth choice in terms of expectations in 2017 was a 40/1 shot when Padraig Beggy guided him home.

Beggy has been rarely seen since on the racecourse, but he did return to Epsom two years later to partner outsider Sovereign as a pacemaker in the Derby and finished tenth. He then rode him as a 25/1 outsider in the Irish Derby and won it!

McNamara might not have seen much riding action after Serpentine’s triumph, but it’s hardly surprising as he had been combining his riding with studying at Griffith College, Dublin. He graduated from there in 2018 with first-class honours in accountancy and finance in 2018 and works in that capacity in the Coolmore operation. Talk about top-class staff!

Moved across to Ballydoyle when David Wachman, John Magnier’s son-in-law, stopped training to take a behind the scenes role in the Coolmore machine, Lordan was third string to Ryan Moore and Seamie Heffernan until that veteran left the team a couple of years or so ago.

Lordan, one of those outdated characters, a true lightweight, had a serious injury during the 2023 Irish Derby which took eight months to overcome. As he said after Saturday’s triumph, he has a wonderful job. It was only a neck that denied him the Oaks-Derby double when Moore’s mount Minnie Hauk just edged out he and Whirl after another flawless front-running ride around Epsom’s tricky 1m4f course the previous afternoon, showing what jewels are available to the Coolmore number two on which to demonstrate his skills.

The modest Mr Lordan affirmed that he will have been in for work at 7 a.m. as usual yesterday and after no drunken celebratory stupor. Like the trainer he’s a teetotaller.

Aidan O’Brien has now won the Derby and Oaks eleven times each and, for good measure, ten Coronation Cups after Friday’s determined triumph for Jan Brueghel over the odds-on French four-year-old Calandagan. The Francis-Henri Graffard-trained horse was adding to his string of half-hearted second places (now four in a row) behind a typically tough O’Brien stayer.

In all, it’s 47 UK Classics from the 139 that have been contested since his first winning attempt in the 1,000 Guineas in 1998. That’s around 33 per cent. At least everyone else has been able to share the remaining two-thirds although, as time goes on, the dominance if anything is strengthening.

Aidan’s 22 Epsom Classics have all come this century, thus 22 of the 52 to have been run, or 42%! When Michael Tabor and Mrs Sue Magnier add their joint win with the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi, they are on 12.

To add to the winner, Coolmore’s partners also own Tennessee Stud, who finished fast from off the pace for the Joseph O’Brien stable. This son of Wootton Bassett was bred by Joseph’s mother Anne-Marie. Wootton Bassett has been the runaway star of the Coolmore firmament of late and his fee for this year was raised to an almost unthinkable €300k.

But even at that lofty price, in this Derby line-up he wasn’t the most expensive of the 14 sires (New Bay, Ghaiyyath, Sea The Stars and Frankel were doubly represented). Juddmonte’s Frankel’s fee is £350k. Dubawi, with one runner yesterday, has the same fee for his services at Darley Stud.

Every November the stud fees for Coolmore’s stallions are made public. I was shocked in 2023 that Australia, the 2014 Derby and Irish Derby winner and a son of another outstanding Epsom hero in the peerless Galileo, had his fee for 2024 reduced to €17,500. If potential clients needed any further encouragement, his dam is the Oaks winner Ouija Board.

I mentioned it to one of Coolmore’s stallion sales team at the time, who said it reflected his lack of popularity, probably because his progeny often needed time. He added that the only people that seemed to have confidence in him still were Aidan and Anne-Marie who sent a good number of mares to him.

Checking on my facts, I was further stunned that the 2025 fee was down to ten grand (Euro, about £8,400). Aidan and Anne-Marie sure know their stuff. It’s not too late for Australia to start going back towards the €50k at which he began his stallion career. Note, for example, that he is still at Coolmore while others have been sent elsewhere due to the hard-nosed realism that characterises the stud’s management. Of the 20 published stallion figures for flat race rather than jumps sires, only one was listed at a lower figure.

Watching from home due to entirely foreseen but inescapable circumstances, I was momentarily fooled into thinking that Lester Piggott had come back to ride in the Derby in the second running after his death. As the horses walked around, I noticed just how similar Rossa Ryan carries himself on a horse. When you get the chance, have a look. No doubt he’ll win the race one day, but the Dante Stakes winner Pride Of Arras never looked in with a chance.

One fact that certainly didn’t fool me was the dispiriting sight of the sparsely populated Hill. Every first Saturday in May, in Louisville, Kentucky, upwards of 100,000 squeeze in, a tradition in US racing that goes back to the days of the famed War Admiral/Seabiscuit match race at Pimlico in November 1938, where upstart Seabiscuit met his regally bred Kentucky Derby-winning rival and humbled him.

When I used to go to Epsom with my dad in the 1960s, there were more people there during the three-day (now one) Spring meeting in April than deigned to turn up on Saturday.

All the years I used to go there when with the Daily Telegraph, I arrived for breakfast in the old lads’ canteen, waiting for a glimpse of a few of the contenders having a leg shake in the morning, and the crowd was already building up. Many scores of buses lined the straight and the Hill was packed. On Saturday there was a sprinkling of people and even Ollie Bell and former England hockey goalie Sam Quek couldn’t disguise the fact that there was enough room for kids to play impromptu football matches.

Apparently, the Jockey Club, who run Epsom, is considering how to deal with the problem. The remedy is simple. Charge a tenner for cars and allow free admission. Then people will begin to flock back, find it an enjoyable experience and one that will develop as the years go on. I’ve never been so embarrassed. Derby Day once was a great British tradition. For most of our much-changed society, it’s an irrelevance. Thank goodness ITV think it’s worth making the effort.

Many say switching from Wednesday was a big mistake but, since Covid, it seems so few people these days have physically to GO to work, that simplification is a red herring.

It’s not as if there’s loads of competition from other sports at this time of year. On Saturday, England played a World Cup qualifying match against Andorra. Who? Our brave boys, rated number four in the world, hammered the opposition (rated 173 – I didn’t know there were that many countries) by a single goal to nil. Some of them are on £300k a week. Worth every penny I’d say.

- TS

Evaluating Jockeys by Percentage of Rivals Beaten

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In this article I will put 35 jockeys under the microscope, writes Dave Renham. These are the riders with the most rides per year, on average, over the past four years. The data has been taken from UK flat racing (turf and all-weather (AW) and the full years 2021 to 2024.

Introduction

I have further limited the findings to mounts sent off at an Industry Starting Price (ISP) of 20/1 or shorter, in order to try to eliminate most of the horses that had little or no chance; and, further, because very big-priced winners tend to skew profit figures.

For this piece I will primarily examine the data using ‘Percentage of Rivals Beaten’, although I also plan to look at strike rates and A/E indices. Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) is a calculation based on a horse's finishing position in relation to field size. It makes key distinctions between a horse finishing, say, fourth in a seven-horse race (PRB 50%, three rivals beaten, beaten by three rivals) and finishing fourth in a sixteen-horse race (PRB 80%, twelve rivals beaten, beaten by three rivals). We express the PRB as a number between 0 and 1. So, in the examples above, 50% is 0.5 and 80% is 0.8.

As racing researchers we can often be blighted by small sample sizes when analysing, for example, win strike rates. Hence, there is a strong argument to suggest that PRB figures are a more accurate metric, simply because they make datasets bigger: they award a sliding performance score to every runner in every race, whereas win strike rate only awards the winner a score with all other finishers getting zero.

Today's offering has a slightly different flow from usual I will be writing it "as I go along". In other words, I’m sharing the research and my thinking process stage by stage, rather than doing all the research and then writing about my findings afterwards. Thus, my main commentary will appear to be in the present tense. If that makes sense, let's crack on (and if it doesn't, it soon will!)

Top Jockeys' PRB: Overall

I will start by sharing the average PRB figures for each of the 35 jockeys over this four-year period. They are ordered alphabetically across two graphs:

 

 

 

 

To provide a benchmark, the average figure when combining these jockeys was halfway between 0.58 and 0.59, so 0.585 to be precise. Oisin Murphy has the highest PRB figure, 0.64, followed by five jockeys tied on 0.62 – William Buick, James Doyle, Rob Havlin, Jack Mitchell and Danny Tudhope. Tom Eaves, Cam Hardie and Andrew Mullen have the joint lowest PRB figure of 0.54.

It should be noted that all riders in this sample are above the 0.5 PRB benchmark and so even the lowest in the cohort are out-performing the norm.

Top Jockeys' PRB: ISP 6/4 or shorter

Although I have restricted qualifiers to those priced 20/1 or shorter, there are clearly some jockeys who have more rides at shorter prices than others. Hence, I am assuming that jockeys should have higher PRBs because of this. To help analyse and potentially confirm this hypothesis I am going to look at the percentage of rides each jockey had with horses priced 6/4 or shorter. The table shows the splits:

 

 

There is a huge variance here, from William Buick with more than 13% of his rides sent off 6/4 or shorter, to Cam Hardie at less than 1%. Of the six jockeys with the highest average PRBs I noted earlier, five of them were in the top six for the highest percentage of rides (highlighted in blue in this table). Therefore, we can see there is a strong looking correlation between price and PRB, as we should expect.

Top Jockeys' PRB: ISP 12/1 to 20/1

It makes sense next to look at the percentage of rides each jockey had when the qualifiers were bigger prices in order to consider both ends of the price spectrum. Therefore, below is a table showing these percentages when considering percentage of rides from runners priced 12/1 to 20/1.

 

 

The three jockeys with the highest percentages (shown in blue) are the jockeys who had the lowest overall PRB figures shared earlier, namely Tom Eaves, Cam Hardie and Andrew Mullen: this is further evidence of clear positive correlation. Also, the lowest four percentages in this group are for Messrs Buick, Murphy, Doyle (James) and Mitchell.

At this early point in my research I am starting to appreciate that despite the fact that PRB is a really useful metric, for this type of research the price of runners is also very important and can significantly sway the balance one way or the other. Hence, the market will be factored in for the remainder of what follows.

Top Jockeys' PRB by Price Range

Having established the importance of the starting price, I have decided to calculate PRBs for different price bands for all 35 jockeys. The brackets I am going to use are again based on Industry Starting Price and they are as follows:

 

 

In the table below I have collated the PRBs for each jockey for each price band. The average figures for all jockeys in the list are shown in blue at the bottom of each column, and I have highlighted any PRB that is at least 3% above the average or at least 3% below the average. The 3% ‘above group’ (positive) is highlighted in green, the 3% ‘below group’ (negative) is in red.

 

 

The colour coding helps to highlight jockeys that seem to perform above the norm and those that may have performed below what might be expected within each price band. There were three jockeys who obtained two ‘greens’: Robert Havlin, Clifford Lee and Kieran O’Neill. And there were four jockeys who obtained two or more ‘reds’: William Buick (3), Holly Doyle (2), Joe Fanning (3) and Rob Hornby (2).

 

Top Jockeys' PRB: All-Round Performance

I am thinking that another way we could analyse these data is to simply add up each jockey’s six PRB figures in the above table and compare them.  Below, then, are the riders with the top ten combined PRB figures when adding the six values together:

 

 

It could be argued that these are the top 10 performing jockeys from my original list of 35 as their totals are based on the overall performance across different price ranges. From looking at these findings I would be happy to see one of these ten riding a horse I am keen to back. Rab Havlin, who has consistently shown positive figures in the research to date, tops the list on a combined total of 3.99. (0.88 + 0.76 + 0.68 + 0.65 + 0.55 + 0.47).

Next, here are the lowest ten combined PRB totals from our sample of the top 35 riders:

 

 

As can be seen, we are talking small margins here so despite these ten being at the bottom we know that they are all still top-notch riders. However, in terms of PRB figures within certain price bands, they have performed with slightly less success than the rest of the jockeys in this sample.

To complete the set here are the remaining jockeys (positioned 11th to 25th) with their PRB totals. Due to the bigger group, I am using a table rather than a graph:

 

 

Top Jockeys: Other Metrics

I stated earlier that PRBs are arguably the most accurate metric but it always prudent to consider other metrics where possible in order to attain a stronger 'feel' for the data.

We know that finishing fifth in an 18-runner race will produce a better PRB figure than finishing eighth in the same the race, but usually finishing fifth does not make punters money (unless those generous bookie types are offering extra places).

At this point, then, I am thinking about the key battles in terms of finishing first rather than second and, therefore, I am going to share the wins, runs, strike rate, profit/loss and A/E indices for all 35 jockeys. As with the PRB data this does not include rides on horses priced over 20/1 ISP. Profits and losses have been calculated to Betfair SP less 2% commission. The A/E indices are based on Betfair prices and any figure above 1.00 has been coloured in green:

 

 

Somewhat surprisingly, 18 of the 35 jockeys have secured a profit which is impressive considering there are not any really big BSP winners to skew the returns. In fact, the highest winning BSP was 46.0 and there were only three winners in total above BSP 40.0, and only 23 above BSP 30.0 (out of total of nearly 12,000 winners).

Rossa Ryan, Saffie Osborne and William Buick have the best ROI%s (above 7%), and they each have one of the top five A/E indices. Impressively, Ryan has made a blind profit in each of the four years, Osborne and Buick matching that feat in three of the four years surveyed. There are two jockeys that made a loss in each of the four years, namely David Allan and James Doyle.

Conclusions

All this is helping me, and hopefully you, to start building a more complete picture of jockey performance; or, at least, the performance of these 35 top riders. The PRB data have given us an extra layer on top of the usual metrics we focus on. However, it is becoming clear to me that for this type of jockey-based research we do need other metrics (win percentage, profits, A/E indices, etc) to bring betting utility to the party.

I am just starting to expand the jockey PRB research into other areas and there is plenty more to share; so I have come to the realisation that this article will spawn a second piece. Thus, it is probably too early to draw any key conclusions from the research so far as there are more pieces of the puzzle to add.

However, next week I have a Royal Ascot article ready to go, so it affords me a little extra time to do further digging for part two of this jockey deep dive!

- DR

Monday Musings: Camille

/in /by

All those Derby trials wins will have come to nought if a Ballydoyle colt doesn’t win next Saturday’s Betfred-sponsored 12-furlong skirting of Epsom Downs, writes Tony Stafford. Never mind Epsom, Aidan O’Brien and his Coolmore backers have turned winning French colts’ Classics this year into an art form.

At least, when future French turfistes look back at the record books, they will maybe delude themselves that the title Mrs Susan Magnier, stored away for further use in the copious Coolmore blue-chip name bank, had been for French-owned and trained Classic winners. But, no, Henri Matisse and Camille Pissarro, respective winners of the Poule d’Essai des Poulains (French 2,000 Guineas) and yesterday’s Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) are just two more Aidan O’Brien examples of the right horse in the right race.

The human Pissarro, born in the (now US-owned) Vigin Islands but soon living in France, started life four decades the earlier of the pair and went through various stages of Impressionism. He died right at the start of the 20th Century (1903).

Matisse, a draughtsman as much as a painter, survived from 1869 into the middle of the last century. Great artists both, great names for a Classic winner, especially those staged in the land of their distinction.

Just as in the Poulains, Ryan Moore gave yesterday’s winner an exemplary ride. Camille Pissarro had made his own impression as he finished third with a strong finish over the mile at Longchamp while Ryan swept home in front on Henri Matisse. Henri will be staying at a mile at Royal Ascot in the St James’s Palace Stakes, and no doubt a clash with Irish 2,000 winner Fields Of Gold, in a fortnight.

I heard someone say yesterday watching the coverage that Aidan reckons the Prix du Jockey Club is more a race for milers than authentic 12-furlong Derby horses, thus none of the trial winners was in yesterday’s line-up.

Two Ballydoyle colts were in the 16-strong field though and it is always easy to earmark outsiders from the stable as cannon fodder if they are there to control the pace. That was the perceived lot of Trinity College, not such a massive 'rag' considering the make-up of the race – at 24/1.

He was quickly away under Wayne Lordan but wasn’t allowed to have it all his own way as Bowmark, the second string working on behalf of the Gosdens’ number one (Detain) and ridden by Tom Marquand, was busily doing his half-spoiler role for the horse that came home a close sixth in that busy end to the French 2,000.

Ryan, from stall one, was always in a lovely clear spot on the rail, a couple of lengths behind the leaders and nowhere near as far back as his mount had been in the mile race. His most dangerous (and probably only) moment came when he needed to scoot past Trinity College, a Dubawi colt running in the colours of Derrick Smith’s son Paul, best known hitherto for the St Leger winner Kingston Hill. Not much room, but he found what there was.

Paul will have loved to be involved so closely in the action here and Trinity College added to his already sterling service in the race by staying on for fourth and 70 grand which Paul shares with the usual suspects. They were behind Cualificar (Godolphin, Andre Fabre and William Buick) and Detain, ridden by Christophe Soumillon.

Wootton Bassett added further lustre to the riches provided to Coolmore Stud with this latest Classic success and he also sired the third home, running in the Abdullah colours of Field Of Gold.

With £708k available to the winner, trainers and owners with horses in the big field outside the main placings would be excused for looking further down the list. They would find, if they didn’t know already, that French money may be generous and with premiums for French-breds doubly so, but they only go down to fifth place, that 35k going to a horse from the Graffard stable.

As to the premium qualification, only the runner-up, a son of Lope De Vega running for Godolphin, was French-bred and that entitled connections to an extra £100k or so.

An unsatisfactory day for the French then – shame after the Fellowes/Shoemark affair and Shes Pretty in the 1,000. Sadly, Charlie’s Luther, fourth in their 2,000 was on the outside all the way and dropped out of the lucrative places this time.

And so to Epsom. I was talking to someone close to the stable a week or so ago and his slant on the ease in the Derby market of The Lion In Winter was explained away as “He goes to France”. They don’t always get it right.

Once backed back into favouritism after the initial shock of that Dante Stakes sixth place when he didn’t run too badly under a less than full-on Ryan Moore finish, he is now available at 6/1 and you never know how much transformation Aidan could have wrought in the short time since.

Everyone now assumes Ryan will be on the Leopardstown trial winner Delacroix, but while he looked very good that day, the opposition in a five-horse affair (two O’Brien tailenders) was hardly extremely testing. Ruling Court, the 2,000 Guineas winner, and the Dante winner Pride Of Arras complete the quartet at the top of the betting.

I was very impressed with the way the Beckett three-year-old creamed through the field on the far rail and the Ackroyd family horse would make a nice change in the way of such as Sir Percy in leaving the race of the season to a smaller owner.

My first fleeting experience of the man who was by 2025 to have an authentic Derby prospect, a year after his Arc win with Bluestocking and with a yard with close to 200 horses in his care, came approaching a quarter century earlier; in fact it might have been even longer ago.

Ralph had just arrived as a pupil assistant to David Loder, who at the time was the king of the well-prepared first-time-out two-year-old. Ralph used to smilingly and good-naturedly amble his way around Sefton Lodge stables, in the manner of a youthful Pride And Prejudice aristocrat, but it seemed his casual style didn’t cut too much ice with 100 miles an hour Master Loder.

I seem to recall just one comment made by his then employer. “Lazy bugger!” All that time afterwards, the mature Ralph still seems to lope his way pleasantly around, and when he does agree to an interview, it’s still the same languid delivery. We’re not all the same, thankfully.

And now after what one might have regarded as an inauspicious start, Ralph Beckett is truly part of the powerhouse of English training.

- TS

Geegeez Pace Ratings in 5f Handicaps, Part 2

/in /by

Last week I shared my research into how the four-race pace totals on the Geegeez racecards performed across UK 5f handicaps in 2024 (excluding 2yo nurseries), writes Dave Renham. You can catch up with that article here. The results overall were impressive given we were looking essentially at raw figures with minimal additional ‘tinkering’.

Introduction

This week I am going to focus on the same dataset but combine the pace rating positions / scores with Dr Peter May’s ratings (the SR column in the Gold racecard).

To recap, 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. The splits are 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

The SR ratings are derived from a neural network developed by Peter May. They are 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 in the racecards.

SR Ratings by Win Strike Rate and P/L

My starting point for this article is to see how the SR ratings performed in 5f handicaps in 2024 starting with win strike rate. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

The rating position correlates well with the win strike rate, although the 5th and 6th rated are reversed. Top rated runners have won just over 17% of the time, while those rated 7th or higher have definitely struggled from a win perspective.

I want to now look at the profit/loss figures for the top three rated runners from the SR ratings. This is because later in the article I will combining the top three in the SR ratings with the top three horses in terms of their four-run pace totals (which I order highest to lowest and call the Pace Ratings Rank). Here are the results in terms of the top three ranked in the SR ratings:

 

 

As we can see, the top-rated SR runners would have lost a small amount if backing all qualifiers blind. Second rated have nudged into profit while the third rated have seen losses around the 8p in the £.

Combining SR Top Rated with Pace Rank Top Rated

Now we know the raw performance of the SR ratings I will begin to combine them with what I call the Pace Ratings Rank. Let's first look at what would have happened if only backing runners that were top rated by both set of ratings. Here are the numbers:

 

 

This is a positive start to the Pace / SR collab! The strike rate has equated to just under one win in every five with returns of over 16p in the £. There were also 26 qualifiers that finished runner-up which is another strong positive meaning that 50 of 124 finished in the first two.

If we expand this slightly to the top three of the ratings for both, we get the following results:

 

 

We have increased the number of bets by around 6.5 times whilst keeping a similar strike rate, although return on investment is slightly less. On the upside, though, we would have made more money in profit terms (from a bigger outlay of course). There were 126 qualifiers that finished second including some at tasty BSP odds such as 40.21, 47.97 and 46.0. There was also a third that was beaten just over a length in a 28-runner handicap at BSP odds of 123.97. The horse in question, No Half Measures, raced at Ascot (21/6/24) and was arguably very unlucky having been the best finisher in the far side group in a race where nine of the first ten home raced up the centre of the course.

Considering we are just combining two different ratings in this way, to get such positive results for higher rated runners in both sets, with no other considerations, is extremely encouraging. Now, I appreciate it is just one year of handicap results at one distance, but 809 horses is a decent sample.

Performance of the Lowest Rated on Pace and SR

Let's now switch and combine lower rated runners from both the Pace Rankings and SR ratings. I am looking at the results of horses rated 8th or lower in both rating sets. Here are their combined results:

 

 

These are very poor results which breeds more confidence in our earlier positive findings when combining higher rated runners from both rating sets.

Top Three Rated on Pace and SR by Handicap Age Restriction

If we split the 809 horses that were top three rated on both Pace Rank and SR Rating into 3yo only, 3yo+ and 4yo+ races we get the following results:

 

 

All three returned a profit, and all three had relatively similar ROIs. These figures demonstrate that these higher rated runners from both sets of ratings have performed consistently regardless of the ages of the horses taking part.

Top Three Rated on Pace and SR by Selected Courses: Positive

I want next to examine the performance of the top three rated on both metrics at a selection of courses that between 2017 and 2023 had the strongest front running biases over the 5f trip. I sourced these courses in the first article by examining individual track performances of early leaders / front runners during that seven-year prior time frame. I used a combination of win percentages, placed percentages and A/E indices to formulate the list.

To recap the 12 courses were: Ayr, Chelmsford, Chester, Hamilton, Kempton, Leicester, Lingfield, Redcar, Ripon, Thirsk, Windsor and York. In that piece I examined solely the top-rated runners from their previous four-run pace totals rather than the top three.

Here now are the figures for horses that were in the top three of both the Pace Ratings and the SR ratings when running at one of those 12 courses:

 

 

That's another very solid set of results with a strike rate close to 20% and returns of over 21p in the £.

Composite Ranking Performance

My next port of call was to combine the ranking positions of both sets of ratings to create an overall numerical total. Hence if a horse was top-rated in the SR ratings and ranked 5th in the Pace Ratings/totals that would score six (1+5); if a horse was ranked 4th in both it would score eight (4+4) and so on. Now we know already what a total of two has achieved as those were the results shared earlier for the top-rated in both. Below I have combined the numerical totals into bands in a graph that shows the strike rates for each one:

 

 

This graph offers further evidence that combining the higher rated runners in each set produces better strike rates. We have the sliding scale of percentages that we always want to see when looking at any type of rating-based data set. Meanwhile, the 2-4 band (i.e. SR 1st/ Pace 1st, SR 2nd/ Pace 1st, SR 1st/Pace 2nd, and SR 2nd/Pace 2nd) have a very solid strike rate close to 19%.

Using the same calculation method and the same bands I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) figures. This metric considers all finishing positions based on the number of runners in each race. It is a useful metric to analyse where possible. Here are the splits:

 

 

The chart presents further strong evidence of the positive correlation we have seen throughout this article in relation to the importance of ranking position within the two sets of ratings. 58% of rivals beaten for the 2-4 band is a materially high PRB figure.

Let me now share the runs, wins, profits / losses for each band:

 

 

It is pleasing to see the 2-4 band producing the best ROI% and also seeing the 5-7 band in profit. The 11-14 group have proved profitable but essentially, they had the biggest-priced winner in the whole year (BSP 127.21) which skews their bottom line considerably. The 20+ band would, not surprisingly, have produced very poor returns from a very low strike rate.

Top Rated on SR and 15 or 16 Pace Total

In the first article I looked at some of the data for the highest four-race pace totals, namely 15 and 16. Hence, horses that had gained these scores had led early in either three or all four of those runs. Based on historical research, I've shown that it is reasonable to think that these horses are the most likely to lead in their next race. So what would have happened if we had backed the top-rated SR runner when they had a pace total of 15 or 16? The results read:

 

 

This gives us a small cohort of runners but even from a small sample the figures look promising. The PRB figure is an excellent 0.62 which adds confidence to this small set.

Top Three Rated on SR and 15 or 16 Pace Total

What happens if we expand this to the top three rated in the SR ratings with runners who had a pace total of 15 or 16? The splits are:

 

 

The number of bets has nearly tripled and although the strike rate and the ROI% have dropped a little, the results are still very positive. The PRB has dropped a little too, but it still stands at a very strong 60% of rivals beaten.

Top Three Rated on SR and Pace Rank, ISP 12/1 or shorter

Finally in this piece I am going to go back to look at the results for horses that were in top three of both the SR ratings and Pace Ratings / totals. To date I have not put in any price restrictions, but as we all know a BSP 100.0 winner can skew the bottom line considerably. One of the main reasons I haven't is because all of the bigger priced winners (BSP 30.0 or more) came from horses that were not in the top three of both. If anything, other rating position bottom lines have been the ones that have been skewed.

However, I felt it only right to share the figures for the top three rated in each when we restrict the price, and to make it clean I am using an Industry SP price cap of 12/1. So, just to clarify, the figures below are those for horses that were in the top three of both ratings and were priced ISP 12/1 or less. The figures are as follows:

 

 

These figures are better than the overall figures for top three in both. A 14p in the £ profit over 720 bets would have been an excellent return. The PRB for these runners is a very strong 0.60. All of this from just two things that can be very easily found on the Geegeez Gold Racecards.

Now that looks very good value to me!

- DR

p.s. if you're unclear how to find these, follow the steps below:

1 Look for 5f UK (turf or AW) handicaps, and ignore 2yo races

 

2 On the PACE tab, select 'last 4 races' and 'Data' view, and sort by Total. Then find the top rated or top three rated in the SR column. In this example, from last night, Jeans Maite was top rated on both last-four Pace Score and SR - and, as you can see from the second image below, won at 7/2 (BSP 4.97).

 

Made all, won!

Monday Musings: Pity Kieran

/in /by

Until a day or so after the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, my mind briefly projected back 39 years to the 1986 Derby early in June at Epsom, writes Tony Stafford. The Khalid Abdullah-owned Dancing Brave was the hot favourite for the race having won the Guineas easily but, after turning Tattenham Corner, virtually last on the wide outside under Greville Starkey, his long run up the middle of the track never looked like wresting the prize, and he finished second.

Shahrastani (HH the Aga Khan, Michael Stoute and Walter Swinburn) was the beneficiary of Starkey’s over-confidence. From that point, nobody believed the two horses were in the same parish in terms of ability, not even when Shahrastani won the Irish Derby by eight lengths later that month.

When Dancing Brave turned out next time in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown, Starkey shot himself in the foot and lost the mount on the best horse in the world. After Dancing Brave came out on top, reversing the form with Shahrastani, the jockey turned and gestured to the grandstands (and probably intending the press box) in a manner that suggested HE was the man.

The publicity-shy Prince Khalid and trainer Guy Harwood clearly did not enjoy the histrionics and immediately switched horses in midstream as it were, leaving Pat Eddery to step into Greville’s misguided shoes. Pat was on Dancing Brave for the rest of his illustrious career, which culminated in an eighth win in ten career starts in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, again coming from a Starkey-like position way out of his ground to beat Bering and Shahrastani.

Neither Prince Karim Aga Khan, who died this year, nor Prince Khalid is with us now but their long-established bloodstock empires remain largely undiminished by the inevitable family transition. Both have been heavily involved in the 2025 Guineas Classics of the three major European racing countries, which culminated in Ireland this weekend.

Aga Khan IV, who died this year aged 88, still seems to cast a hypnotic spell over the racing administrators in France where the bulk of the operation’s horses are housed.

How else could the authorities that demoted Charlie Fellowes’ Shes Perfect from the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches have had their cockeyed verdict maintained by the French appeals system. Fellowes and jockey Kieran Shoemark both said they were received and treated very well when they travelled over to state their case.

As if one was needed. As I said somewhere before, it was a case of legalised thieving.

Shoemark was thus suffering a third career-shattering setback within a week and a half of Classic action on and off the track. My initial mention above of Dancing Brave and Greville Starkey is apt enough but could have been more so. Both Dancing Brave and the 2025 beaten 2,000 Guineas favourite Field Of Gold sported the Abdullah silks.

John Gosden so obviously blamed Shoemark, but I doubt the jockey, who had ridden Field Of Gold in all his previous starts and accepted blame for the defeat, would have expected such summary justice. How many jockeys have been guilty of a similar blunder but kept their jobs? Obviously, having never won a 2,000 Guineas meant defeat hurt him badly, but as they say… That’s racing BJ.

It must have been so galling for Shoemark to have sat and watched as Ireland’s habitual champion jockey Colin Keane stepped in to perform the steering job in Saturday’s Irish 2,000 Guineas and win as he liked. Roy Keane or even the legendary Clapton-based dog trainer of the 1960s, 20 stone Paddy Keane, could have won on him!

That was one instance when the error was obvious. But Big Johnny Gosden sacked him for a misjudgement. At least Starkey got a second go and if he’d done a Ryan Moore or William Buick and just professionally went over the line with maybe a tiny hint of a smile, all probably would have been well.

Shoemark’s sacking denied me a more concrete excuse for drumming up the earlier Abdullah superstar story. Colin Keane didn’t err by over-celebrating as Field Of Gold won Saturday’s Irish 2,000 Guineas in a common canter. Why do they say a common canter, by the way? Canters like the one exhibited by the son of Kingman are anything but common.

*

If I can digress to an element of my extensive recent use of NHS facilities, I hope nobody is offended. I had an MRI scan on my brain recently and when the results eventually came through, I jumped for joy.

Further interpretation revealed all the individual complicated areas were “unremarkable”. To think I once considered myself contrastingly remarkable in that area. The bottom line is that I’m not suffering from Alzheimer’s! Hurrah.

*

Sunday’s results affirmed that when Aidan O’Brien claims to be a couple of weeks behind, he’s not kidding. Look at the 1,000 Guineas result from Newmarket where his top-class 2yo of 2024, Lake Victoria, had finished only sixth. Yet here she started odds-on against several of the fillies that finished ahead of her, suggesting we would get a different result.

So it proved, Ryan Moore bringing Lake Victoria to challenge a furlong out and then easing clear for a margin of a little more than two lengths. That was a third win for his upwardly mobile team on the day at the Curragh. Earlier, the juvenile Albert Einstein won the Marble Hill Stakes and was inserted as favourite for Royal Ascot’s Coventry Stakes, while Los Angeles, brave winner of the Tattersalls Gold Cup (Group 1) will have a host of options to choose from.

But enough of Aidan and his 11th Irish 1,000 win. I was inclined to think it would have been a few more. Returning to Mr Gosden (now augmented by son Thaddeus), the stable’s long-standing number two rider Robert Havlin, conjured a win from the air at Goodwood a few minutes after the Classic success when hot favourite French Master Houdini-ed his way along the rail to nick the 1m6f handicap.

No hint was given by the joint trainers, nor expected by their faithful servant, that he might be in line for some star rides. The 2004 Directory of the Turf – I like to keep up to date – lists his address as Manton House, where Gosden was the trainer for Robert Sangster at the time.

Havlin moved with him as the back-up man in the next few years and at the age of 51 is one of the senior riders in the weighing room.

His situation – nice enough as he picked up a couple of grand for that ride the other day – reminds me of a time in the mid-1970’s when the Racing Editor at the DT, Robert Glendinning, was coming up to retirement age.

He had served during the war in a unit where Kingsley Wright, an irascible gentleman, was an officer. Blow me down, Kingsley was the sports editor when I came to the racing desk and Bob, who had no compunction about telling US what to do, used to behave as though they were still Captain and non-commissioned officer (if that, I never found out).

Both were Yorkshiremen, as was Noel Blunt, who had been a redcap (the hated Military Police) in his conscription time and had climbed the pole to be deputy racing editor, to the extent he would sit in Bob’s chair on Bob’s day off.

We used to go to a pub called the Albion for Sunday lunch as did lots of people from the St Paul’s Church Choir, so in need were they of the gargantuan portions. My shifts didn’t always work for me to have lunch, but Noel’s did and he used to buttonhole the boss whenever he could, considering there were always sports journalists from the Daily Mail and Daily Express hanging on every word.

So Bob is retiring, and one Sunday Noel plucked up the courage to ask the question he’d been agonising over for months. “What’s happening when Bob retires, Kingsley?” Kingsley: – I wasn’t there, but I know what his movements would have been – says, taking off his glasses and leaving them next to his pint: “Noel, your present position is assured.”  Still the most ingenious put-down line I’ve heard. Later that day, Noel announced that he wouldn’t be going to the Albion any more. “It’s no longer value-for-money.”

Soon after, we heard a guy was coming down from the Manchester office to take the job, Kingsley’s son Chris, whose favourite times of the day were when he took his breaks in the local hostelries. Within weeks Noel was off to the Sporting Life! Who says nepotism is dead?

There is no question that sitting in as number two has been full value to Havlin. No doubt Kingsley’s response would have been Big John’s answer if at any time over the last 20 years Rab had had the cheek to ask that question.

  • TS

Roving Reports: Technical Issues, Please Stand By…

/in /by

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

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