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Monday Musings: Dirt

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We all expect there to be a minimal European presence these days in the dirt races on the Breeders’ Cup cards every November as the stark difference between the two forms of the sport in the United States becomes ever more obvious, writes Tony Stafford.

Aidan O’Brien’s attempts to secure dual and enhanced appeal for his potential stallions over the years have come pretty much to naught even if Giant’s Causeway’s honourable second place to Tiznow – when was it? wow, 25 years ago - had been the marker that kept him trying until City Of Troy’s unplaced effort last November.

It can be done, as Romantic Warrior’s near miss in the Saudi Cup and its £8 million first prize showed last weekend. And I think that if it’s going to be any European stable that tries seriously in the future, it will almost certainly be the Simon and Ed Crisford team.

I doubt it will be Charlie Appleby and Godolphin. I had two preconceptions in my mind before settling down to pen these words. First, that the UK stables have been finding the allure (and money) of the Dubai Carnival meeting less and less compelling. And secondly, that Godolphin still like to have their dirt runners on the main Meydan cards.

Yet when I looked more closely there were ten UK-based trainers, not counting Appleby or the Crisfords, who are regarded as locals in action this past weekend on the Super Saturday card in its traditional spot, three weeks ahead of the World Cup.

Pride of place had to go to George Scott, reinvented winner-wise in 2024 and now showing the kind of promise he always exhibited in his younger days. He initially worked with Michael Bell and, after a short time in the US assisting Simon Callaghan, then came back to help Lady Jane Cecil upon Sir Henry’s sad passing.

Scott’s own marital breakdown inevitably caused a slowdown in his career, but he now boasts a yard full of exciting horses and big owners. In West Acre he has charge of a 3yo sprinter that can top the charts in his category in Europe this year.

Life and luck are all about timing. Between West Acre’s second and third runs in his two-year-old season, back in October, West Acre changed from a joint-ownership between Michael Blencowe and Valmont, the latter having in the past couple of seasons become a major ownership force in UK racing, to the outright possession of Mr Blencowe.

He won easily a few days later at Southwell after which he was shipped out for the Carnival. Following an initial second place, he broke the five-furlong course record in a Group 2 last month and then was not far behind time-wise on Saturday.

He was the 4/7 favourite for the £183k to the winner Grade 2 Nad El Sheba Turf Sprint against 14 opponents, among them last year’s winner Frost At Dawn. Her trainer, William Knight, plus Robert Cowell, Dylan Cunha, Archie Watson and the Crisfords were all represented. It was no contest though as Callum Shepherd brought the favourite through for a regulation win in the final furlong.

 

 

Nearest UK connection was Cover Up, no, not the revered (to me) extreme stayer of Sir Michael Stoute’s who extricated me from a hole at Royal Ascot one day almost a quarter-century ago. This Cover Up picked up 30k for Simon and son Ed, while two of Jamie Osborne’s contingent each collected a similar place prize in other turf races.

I began by illustrating the limit of ambition of European horses in dirt races in the US, even where the money is at its most lavish. I wasn’t expecting to find that no Godolphin horse, trained either by Charlie Appleby or Saeed Bin Suroor - the latter having no representation at all on the card - ran in any of the three dirt races.

They were left largely to the home team, with Bhupat Seemar the leading domestic player nowadays, collecting two of the trio. The one European dirt success came from 33/1 shot Fort Payne, handled by French-based Nicolas Caullery. World Cup night will have the customary top US and Japanese involvement, no doubt, especially in the World Cup itself.

Further emphasising the stark disparity, Godolphin had odds-on shots in all the turf races apart from West Acre’s five-furlong contest. Respectively they went off at 1/12, 10/11, 8/13 and 4/9. All those races were won by Appleby, although the 10/11 shot First Conquest and Mickael Barzalona were only third to the other Godolphin runner, Nations Pride ridden by William Buick.

Buick cleaned up on the day with four wins and a share of his horses’ tally of more than half a million quid. Charlie had some not-inconsiderable place money further to boost his earnings on the day. That is assuming that their already platinum-plated winter contracts are assessed financially in the same way as they are back in Newmarket through the summer.

If you aren’t too familiar with the names Nations Pride and later winner Silver Knott it’s unsurprising as both spent all of 2024 and, in the case of Silver Knott, 2023, plundering riches on the other side of the Atlantic. Godolphin’s management knows that the level of older Graded US turf horses is way below similar Group class contests, in the UK particularly.

 An increasing number of horses in the Godolphin blue are keeping the cash registers flowing and multiplying Appleby and Buick’s transatlantic flights, in the comfort of their private jets of course, through the year. Nations Pride, winner of the Arlington Million last year at its new home of Colonial Downs, will be back in three weeks with the target of the Dubai Turf. I bet Charlie would have preferred not to have to face Romantic Warrior on that day, but the Hong Kong champion is aiming there, realistically so.

What of the day’s opening 1/12 shot? Mountain Breeze, easy winner of the Jumairah 1,000 Guineas, last raced in the UK at Newmarket in August when no match for Lake Victoria. The Aidan O’Brien filly completed her unbeaten five-timer at the Breeders’ Cup in November and it will be interesting to see whether Appleby challenges her and the other strong candidates Ballydoyle have lined up for the first UK Classic of 2025.

A couple of weekends ago, Via Sistina, making her return after a break since her latest success in November, turned out for a 7f Grade 2 contest at Randwick racecourse in Sydney and finished only third, albeit just one length and a nose behind Chris Waller stablemates Fangirl and Lindermann.

The Waller trio were back on parade over one mile of the same track on Saturday for the Grade I Verry Elleegant Stakes and the market bet heavily on Via Sistina. The former George Boughey trainee had already recouped all and more of the 2.7 million gns that Australian interests had paid for her late in 2023 and the success story rolls on.

This time, reunited with regular partner James McDonald (Kerrin McEvoy stood in last time), she got the better of Fangirl by a neck with Lindermann a nose behind in third. The £287k brought her overall earnings to more than £4.8 million, of which only around £100k was accrued in the time she was owned by Becky Hillen, the late David Wintle’s daughter.

Dave was a big pal of Gary Wiltshire, and the larger-than-life bookmaker has a life story out. I’ve no idea what it’s called as the Editor was anxious to save the bother (and cost) of parcelling it up and sending it. I will have to wait until we meet hopefully later this week. When I see it, I’ll let you now, especially how he managed to recover from his wipeout on Frankie Dettori’s seven-out-of-seven day at Ascot all those years ago.

- TS

Specific Course/Distance Analysis: Lingfield 1m2f

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I am a great believer in specialising when it comes to betting on horse racing, writes Dave Renham. When I ran my tipping service back in the early 2000s, I focused solely on five- and six-furlong handicaps. At the time I was doing a huge amount of research into draw bias, and it was when there was still a strong edge to be had over some course and distance combinations.

 

Introduction

Draw biases tend to be more prevalent over shorter distances hence the 6f cut-off point in terms of my tips. Focusing on a specific pool of races also meant I got to know many of the horses inside out, as sprint handicappers tend to run regularly during the year. Therefore, when I began to analyse a race I would have a solid knowledge of many, if not all, of the horses. Over time I started to spot other key patterns which would aid my selection process.

In this article I am going to look at one specific all-weather course and distance (C&D), making a deep dive into the plethora of related facts and figures. One could argue that looking for patterns for races from a specific C&D is a type of trends-based approach; I would agree. Trends, as a route into the horse racing puzzle, is much more fashionable than it was 30 years ago. Now we see 10-year race trends regularly in newspapers, and of course they've recently been added to the racecards here on Geegeez (as well as editorially more long-term for the big races, thanks to Andy Newton's contributions).

As I said, at the beginning of this year a TRENDS tab was added to the racecards which displays a range of information about the most recent renewals of the relevant race. Obviously not all races go back ten years, but it is a really useful addition to an already outstanding racecard. Essentially, then, this article could be considered a C&D trends piece looking at hundreds of races rather than just ten.

I am going to focus on handicap races only, ignoring nurseries (two-year-old handicaps) with data taken from 2018 to 2024, seven years' worth. Profits will be calculated to Befair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for commission. Looking at the results from a specific course and distance should hopefully give us good insight and potentially an edge over fellow punters in such races. For this article, I have chosen Lingfield over 1m2f.

Choosing a C&D on the all-weather means we are guaranteed plenty of qualifying races each year and Lingfield still hosts such races in the summer alongside flat turf contests. Indeed, there are three planned AW meetings in June in the height of the turf season and probably a couple of meetings where turf and AW racing is combined at the course. One or more 1m2f handicaps occur at most meetings.

This 10-furlong trip at Lingfield is not one I have looked at in depth before, mainly due to the fact that personally I still focus on shorter distance races when betting ‘on the level’. So, let’s find out more!

 

Betting market

I'll start with the betting market. The prices shown are to Industry SP, and the splits are shown below:

 

 

The value has been with horses sent off at industry SP's of between 13/2 and 12/1 with a solid overall profit to BSP. In fact, this group also snuck into Industry SP profit, too, albeit only just. Shorter priced runners have performed quite poorly and, looking specifically at favourites, they have lost over 14p in the £ to BSP. That compares very badly against the average for all-weather favourites at all courses in handicaps which stands at just over 6p in the £ during this time frame.

If I adjust the price groups slightly to create fewer price bands, we can see more clearly where the ‘value’ has been on the following graph which tracks A/E indices:

 

 

The graph also helps to confirm the earlier table's findings whereby the bigger price runners (14/1 or bigger) have been exceptionally poor value.

 

Position Last Time Out

Let's now see if the finishing position last time out (LTO) has offered any useful pointers:

 

 

In the time frame from 2018 to 2024 horses that finished first or second LTO have a good record when racing over 1m2f at Lingfield. The strike rate for both LTO winners and LTO runners-up are above the norm, as are the A/E indices. For both of them to be in BSP profit is impressive. When analysing 1m2f handicaps at Lingfield it makes sense to give this subset of runners at least a second glance.

Sticking with LTO winners/runners-up, those that raced at Lingfield LTO have the highest strike rate, at 24.5% (61 wins from 249), showing a BSP profit of £37.62 (ROI +15.1%). These runners would have secured a profit in five of the seven years.

 

Course LTO

We have seen already that a LTO run at Lingfield was a plus if the horse finished in the first two on that prior start. So what about when we look at all horses? How do the stats for LTO course stack up? To give a fairer picture I have restricted the qualifiers to horses priced 12/1 or less. This avoids the BSP bottom line being potentially skewed by huge priced winners. The table below shows the splits:

 

 

No course stands out as a super negative for the LTO run. The LTO Newcastle and Southwell results have been good albeit from modest samples. It is not a surprise that the most runners in Lingfield 10f handicaps also ran at Lingfield last time out; however, for that cohort to be (marginally) profitable from over 600 qualifiers is noteworthy.

 

Sex of horse

Anybody who has read previous articles penned by me on all-weather racing will know that males tend to outperform females in this code from a win rate perspective. That is the case again here as the table below shows:

 

 

Despite the SR% edge though, female runners have provided better returns. However, this is mainly due to two winning fillies going in at BSP odds of 110.0 and 145.1. If we restrict the results as before to horses with an SP of 12/1 or shorter we see the following:

 

 

Males have outpointed their female counterparts across the board here with a higher win percentage, bigger profits and a much higher A/E index. All in all, I would prefer the horse I was backing to be male over this C&D. One final stat worth sharing before moving on is that females aged five or older have struggled even within this price bracket. They secured just 18 wins from 160 runners (SR 11.3%) for a BSP loss of £38.26 (ROI -23.9%).

 

Class change from last race

Let's next examine whether a change in the class of the race has made a difference. Below I share the win strike rates for each group: those who have dropped in class from LTO, those that are racing in the same class, and those that have been upped in class:

 

 

Horses that have been upped in class have the best strike rate by far and they also have the highest A/E index across the three groups at 1.02. Horses dropped in class have an A/E index of 0.90, while those racing in the same class are at 0.80.

Horses upped in class have also made a decent profit to BSP of £122.76 which equates to a return of over 28 pence in the £. If we restrict these 'up in class' runners to those priced 12/1 or shorter to avoid potentially skewed results, they have still returned over 25p in the £. The evidence has a clear winner here.

 

Distance change from last race

Does the distance raced LTO have a bearing on results when running in a handicap over 1m2f at Lingfield? Let’s take a look:

 

 

Horses keeping to the same distance as last time out looks to be a positive. In fact, if we again use the same odds restriction (SP 12/1 or less) the LTO same distance subset have provided 149 winners from 812 runners (SR 18.3%) for a profit at Betfair SP of £83.49 (ROI +10.3%).

One very strong negative stat to share is that horses dropped in trip by more than two furlongs have won just 4.1% of the time (6 wins from 145) for huge losses of £110.16 (ROI -76%).

 

Course form

Does past course form count for anything? Well, if we compare previous course winners versus non-course winners there does seem to be a difference. In terms of win strike rate course winners have won 13.6% of the time compared to 9.8% for horses that have yet to win at the course. The A/E indices correlate with these figures as the bar chart below shows:

 

 

Now the ‘non-course winners’ group does involve a proportion of horses that have yet to run at Lingfield before. However, the A/E index for non-course winners that have raced at the track before is actually lower than the overall figure standing at just 0.79. Therefore, previous course winners have a definite edge over those that have yet to win at the Surrey venue.

 

Draw bias

Over longer distances the draw often becomes irrelevant, but it is always best to check some data rather than assume that is the case. The optimum draw position here seems to be from stall 5 to 7. This group of stalls has provided a strike rate of 13.4% with an A/E index standing at a very decent 1.03. Compare this to horses drawn 8 or higher whose strike rate is only 7.3% and the A/E is 0.71. The lowest draws meanwhile (1 to 4) have secured a strike rate of 11% with an A/E index of 0.82.

The chart below shows PRB3 (the average percentage of rivals beaten of a stall and its immediate neighbouring stalls), which corroborates the A/E narrative around stalls 5-7 (and indeed 8) being favoured.

 

 

As can be seen from the course map below, the mile and a quarter start is close to the winning line and thus presents only a short run to the first turn. This may explain why high draws are significantly unfavoured, with middle drawn horses perhaps able to find and hold a position close to the lead without using up too much energy so to do.

 

 

Although the draw is not perceived by many to be that important over this C&D, the numbers seem to suggest that higher draws (8+) are somewhat of a negative, with an ideal berth being five to seven stalls off the inside rail.

 

Run Style bias

In many previous articles I have shown the importance of run style. Run style can have a big say in shorter distance races on the flat/AW where front runners/early leaders often have an edge. Let's see whether there is any run style bias over 1m2f at Lingfield? Firstly, let us look at the win percentages for each group. Because each run style group has a different number of runners, we essentially use a wins to runs ratio to calculate the win% rate:

 

 

Front runners do not enjoy an edge here and are in fact only the third best group in terms of win ratio. It seems that a position close to the pace or in midfield is best. The percentages for win and placed runners also suggest prominent runners are the best group, and by a more significant margin.

 

 

These two sets of percentages are suggesting that a prominent sit is best over this C&D with a spot in mid-division more preferable than taking the early lead or being near or at the back early. It should be noted that combining the run style with the positive draw section of stalls 5 to 7 we get the following splits:

 

 

Hence if drawn in one of the favoured stalls - five, six or seven - it is definitely advantageous to race prominently or mid-division. This is further demonstrated in the PRB (percentage of rivals beaten) draw / run style heat map below:

 

 

Key takeaways

Below is a summary of the main findings from this delve into Lingfield 1m2f handicaps:

1. SP price range of 13/2 to 12/1 has been positive. Favourites have offered bad value. Horses 14/1 or higher have performed very poorly

2. LTO winners / runners-up have a very good record

3. Male runners priced 12/1 or shorter outperform their female counterparts

4. Horses upped in class have done best

5. Horses racing over the same distance to LTO are the best LTO distance group to concentrate on, especially if priced 12/1 or less

6. Past course winners have a definite edge over horses that have yet to win at the track

7. Horses drawn 5 to 7 have outperformed those drawn lower or higher

8. Prominent racers/mid division have a better record than holdups / front runners.

 

**

Undertaking this type of specific course and distance research can throw up some excellent insights to potentially aid the selection and betting process. If you have a specific C&D you'd like to see some key stats for, please drop a note in the comment section. I will do my best to do some initial digging.

- DR

Monday Musings: Romantic

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It’s official – well almost, the best flat racehorse in the world is a seven-year-old gelding, writes Tony Stafford. True, Romantic Warrior didn’t win the Saudi Cup in Riyadh on Saturday, but he made the high-class Japanese dirt specialist Forever Young pull out all the stops, only getting overhauled in the last 25 yards and losing out by a neck.

The top of the 2024 International Racehorse Ratings was a tie between multiple Group 1 Derby and Irish Derby winner City Of Troy from Aidan O’Brien and the appearing-from-nowhere Laurel River, given an equal figure of 128 after an 8.5 length demolition of the Dubai World Cup field on dirt as long ago as last March.

The Juddmonte-owned Laurel River hadn’t appeared again until being defeated at odds of 4/11 in a Group 3 race back at Meydan where he is now trained by Bhupat Seemar, having started his career in California with three wins for Bob Baffert. He had been an intended starter for the Saudi Cup but was ruled out by injury.

The dangers of allotting such a high score on a single run – true, he had won his previous race at the Dubai Carnival by 6.5 lengths, but that was still only enough to merit a 115 rating – are obvious. In the World Cup, his nearest finisher, staying on all the way home, was the veteran Japanese horse Ushba Tesoro, a regular in Far and Middle Eastern major middle-distance races. He turned up once more on Saturday in the Saudi Cup and the now eight-year-old again put in his best work late in the piece to finish third, albeit ten-and-a-half lengths adrift of the top two.

Forever Young started the 11/8 favourite on Saturday, having gone to the track eight times in his life, each one on dirt. He had been the unlucky member of the trio that crossed the line noses apart in the Kentucky Derby in May, having been interfered with; and again had to give best, this time to Derby second Sierra Leone, when that Coolmore-owned colt won the Breeders’ Cup Classic in the autumn on Forever Young's only other start in the USA. Before Saturday, he'd won all six of his other races.

Those runs gave Yoshito Yahagi's colt an international rating of 121, joint 24th and 4lb lower than Hong Kong-trained Romantic Warrior (125) in joint fifth. The amazing thing about the runner-up, a son of UK-based veteran sire Acclamation and a 300,000gns yearling buy from Corduff Stud at the Tattersalls Yearling sales six years ago, was that this was his first race on dirt after all 23 previous appearances (19 wins) had been on turf.

James McDonald, his regular partner, always finds time away from his Australian commitments – no wonder – to go wherever Romantic Warrior takes him. The only regret for him was that the neck, possibly because he took up the running too far from home and travelled five wide at the top of the straight, made a difference of £5.2 million to the horse’s owner Peter Lau Pak Fai, and maybe half a million for his rider’s share, to McDonald.

 

https://youtu.be/wD848csjW30?si=bacAfJir3FqdJbXJ

 

He didn’t let it get him down though, for having pocketed the best part of 300k there, he was at it again in Hong Kong yesterday, picking up the 720k first prize on Voyage Bubble for a virtual stroll around Sha Tin in the Hong Kong Gold Cup. In the words of the immortal Derek Thompson, he won “as an odds-on <7/20> favourite should”.

It made quite a difference to Romantic Warrior’s earnings. Before Saturday I believe, although the internet resolutely refused to give me up to date figures of before the race, showing horses of lesser prizemoney on top, he was already the highest-earning racehorse of all time. The £18.1 million he had collected from 18 wins, three second places and two (honestly!) fourth spots eclipsed whatever any horse, such as fellow Hong Kong champion Golden Sixty, had compiled. I couldn’t find anywhere that confirmed it.

He isn’t just a one-trick Sha Tin pony either, with Group 1 wins at Moonee Valley in Australia, Tokyo last summer and a cantering warm-up for Saturday across the Gulf at Meydan last month. He’s surely at the top of the earnings tree now, up to £20.9 million and change. It would have become an almost unfathomable £26.1 million if Forever Young hadn’t produced that battling late rally under his Japanese rider Ryusei Sakai.

The case for calling him the best in the world, if only for versatility and adaptability at such a late stage in his career, is made easier by comparing the inability of top-ranked City Of Troy to adapt to dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year at Del Mar. There, he was 13 lengths behind Sierra Leone and ten adrift of Forever Young.

It’s a moot point whether Laurel River’s 128 keeps him ahead of either Forever Young or Romantic Warrior on their form via Ushba Tesoro in Riyadh. I’d love the big three to meet later in the year, maybe in the Dubai World Cup next month, when I’d be siding with Romantic Warrior to clock up another few million of those other sheikhs’ money.

*

The weekend’s (Friday and Saturday) domestic racing was dominated by Ben Pauling and his stable jockey Ben Jones, with two wins on Friday at Warwick, where Jones added a third for an outside stable, and a 200/1 hat-trick together at Kempton on Saturday.

Pauling fancied all of those winners bar one, understandably so as Mambonumberfive, overnight a 20/1 shot for the Adonis Hurdle, had pulled up on his recent hurdles debut and was faced by the Prix du Jockey Club fifth and King Edward VII fourth, the 111-rated on the flat Mondo Man, trained by Gary and Josh Moore.

Mondo Man had cost €520,000, whereas Mambonumberfive was a “cheapie” at only €450 grand! After three non-wins in decent juvenile hurdles for Francois Nicolle, that initial pulled up in the Cheltenham race won so decisively by East India Dock didn’t enhance the trainer’s expectations.

But now we saw the true potential of this giant of a horse of whom Ben Pauling said in the morning “he doesn’t strike me as a juvenile type - he’s one for next season”. Mambonumberfive confounded that negativity with a one-length verdict over Toby Lawes’ St Pancras, the favourite half a length further away in third. Ben Jones reported that Mambonumberfive had been less than perfect over the first three hurdles but got the hang of it in time to get the best of a tight finish.

Mondo Man’s connections reckoned the ground was softer than ideal for the gelded son of Mondialiste, but the effort was still creditable. In between the pair came St Pancras who had picked up the 24k first prize for his Scottish Triumph Hurdle victory at Musselburgh last time and earned another 17 grand here. He was conceding the 5lb penalty to his much more expensive opponents.

A 95,000gns Tatts buy in the autumn out of the Martyn Meade stable, the 86-rated flat performer is almost halfway to recouping the investment of Andrew and Sarah Wates in the colours of Andrew’s 1996 Grand National winner Rough Quest. I expect it will take the two French recruits rather longer to get that far!

With an easy win earlier from the hitherto luckless Bad in a chase handicap (geegeez syndicate-owned Sure Touch running a nice race in fourth) and a more mettle-testing success for Our Boy Stan in the concluding bumper, Pauling had the perfect send-off for his short drive along the A308 to Twickenham where England edged out Scotland in a Calcutta Cup thriller.

That wasn’t a bad weekend as the trainer took his tally to 55 wins for the season and more than 900k in stakes. Ben is 260k adrift of last season’s best and with the major money on offer at the big spring festivals to aim at and ammunition to target them, he must be hopeful that he can push the envelope that little bit further.

- TS

More on Price Movement in NH Markets, Part 2

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Last week I wrote the first of two articles looking at price movements from Opening Show odds to SP in National Hunt racing, writes Dave Renham. This is the follow-up piece expanding on that initial research. As before, the data has been taken from the last five full years, covering 2020 to 2024. I have used William Hill bookmaker prices, and I will use ‘OS’ to denote the Opening Show odds.

To begin, I would like to look at differing race types. Specifically, I want to compare chases with hurdles to see what percentage of these runners shortened in price, lengthened in price (drifted), or stayed the same price, when comparing their OS to their SP.

 

 

As the graph indicates, there was a bigger percentage of drifters in hurdle races compared to chases, and hence fewer hurdlers shortened in price compared to chasers. If we look at non-handicap hurdle races versus handicap hurdle races it can be seen that in non-handicaps 49.4% of all runners drifted, whereas in handicaps the figure stands at 46.2%. Interestingly, this percentage ‘swing’ is reversed when we look at non-handicap chases versus handicap chases. The splits this time see more drifters in handicap chases (44.7%) compared to 41.1% for non-handicap chases. This is a good example of where we can see the importance of digging down into the long grass. We saw this in the first article when noting the differences between certain courses, in the splits for class of Race, and in how the OS odds affect the likely direction of any potential price movement.

I also looked at bumper (NH Flat) races where 47.9% of runners drifted from OS to SP compared with 38% that shortened (just 14.1% remained the same price).

Next, I would like to see there is anything material in terms of day of the week. I am going to concentrate solely on the percentage of drifters on each of the seven days my suspicion being that Saturday will have the lowest percentage, due to having stronger markets. Let’s see:

 

 

Saturday does indeed have the lowest figure which correlates with the race class and course data shared in part one last week. Saturdays tend to have better races when the day is viewed as a whole, and more of the top tier courses are in action on this day of the week, too.

In that prior piece it was noted that Cheltenham was the racecourse that had the smallest percentage of drifters out of all the courses. With the Cheltenham Festival roughly three weeks away, I thought it might be helpful to see what the splits are in terms of runners that shortened in price, lengthened in price or stayed the same price, when comparing their OS to their final Starting Price Odds at the Festival. Here they are:

 

 

This is quite a change from what we have seen so far. Horses remaining the same price from OS to SP have occurred more than either of the other groups. Horses that lengthened in price have a figure 16% lower than when looking at NH races as a whole. I had expected the percentage figure for drifters to be somewhat lower than the norm due to the strength of the Festival markets, but I had not anticipated as much as 16%. I also did not expect the 'stayed same price' group to come out clearly ahead of the others. It has made me think that maybe I write an article where I do a deeper dive into the Cheltenham Festival in terms of price movements, incorporating early morning odds moves too. More of that to come perhaps.

Time to switch attention now to some trainer data. To begin with here are the trainers with the highest percentage of runners that have shortened in price between OS and the ‘off’. To qualify a trainer must have had at least 200 runners during the period of study:

 

 

13 of the 20 trainers have higher percentages for shorteners than for drifters. When I looked at flat trainer data back in the Autumn only two trainers managed that feat. Four of the ‘big guns’ - Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls, Willie Mullins and Dan Skelton - are absent from the list, so what about them? Here are their splits coupled with a selection of some other familiar names not seen as yet (again the table is ordered by % of shorteners):

 

 

It is quite interesting to see Skelton, Nicholls and Henderson with the smallest percentages for horses that have shortened in price from OS to SP. It is also interesting when we compare their shorteners with their drifters in terms of value by using the A/E index. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

For all three there has been far better value in their runners that were backed in between OS and SP compared to those that drifted. Indeed, you would have made a tiny profit to BSP on all Paul Nicholls runners that shortened in price from OS to SP.

In terms of negatives beware Henderson drifters in chases: of the 283 chasers that drifted 43 won (SR 15.2%) but they accrued losses of £58.26 (ROI -20.6%) to BSP. In addition, Henderson non-handicappers (any NH race type) that drifted have also proved to be poor value losing over 18p in the £.

As far as Paul Nicholls is concerned a drifter is a bad sign if ridden by stable jockey Harry Cobden. Although just over 20% of them have still won, backing all 834 qualifiers would have seen a loss to BSP of £184.51 (ROI -22.1%). Conversely, drifters from the Nicholls yard not ridden by Cobden have won more often (21.5%) and proved profitable to BSP to the tune of £108.80 (ROI +19.3%). These runners would secured a blind profit to Industry SP of around 6p in the £ as well. Meanwhile, if a Dan Skelton runner drifts at Cheltenham, beware, as only four of the 87 have won for losses of over 66p in the £.

My final piece of ‘drifting’ data for these three trainers comes in the form of their record in Class 1 races when this occurs. Their results are shown below:

 

 

Henderson’s record is modest but not terrible, but for the other two the figures are very poor. I would not be keen in the near future to back a Skelton or Nicholls drifter in a Class 1 event.

Sticking with these trainers and Class 1 events, let us see their performance when their runners shorten in price before the ‘off’. Unsurprisingly, we see a contrasting picture to the earlier one:

 

 

All three have edged into profit with solid figures across the board. Clearly, for these three trainers in top level races the strength of their runners in the market just prior to the off is very important.

Olly Murphy is another trainer who has a couple of stats worth mentioning. Interestingly, his drifters have won almost as often as those that have shortened in price – 18.2% versus 20.6%. Given those numbers, it won't shock to learn that his drifters made a positive return of 5p in the £ whereas his shorteners lost 20p in the £ (to BSP). Sticking with those runners that have shortened in price, when they started favourite they broke even. When they were not favourite losses have been 27p in the £.

Lastly in this piece, I want to focus on Irish maestro Willie Mullins as there are a few useful titbits when it comes to his stats. There are three powerful stats of which we ought to be aware:

1. Any Mullins drifter at the Cheltenham Festival is not a good sign. 100 horses have drifted from OS to SP at the March showpiece of which only 11 won (SR 11%) for a BSP loss of £43.36 (ROI -43.4%).

2. Don’t be lured in by bigger-priced runners from Mullins ‘being backed’. Horses that shortened in price from an OS of 18/1 or bigger are 0 from 54.

3. When one of Mullins' horses shortens in price from OS to SP take note of the jockey. The table below shows why we want Paul Townend on board:

 

**

This article has highlighted some interesting patterns in terms of how the market moves during that brief period between the opening show and the start of the race. I think some of the trainer data for Messrs Henderson, Nicholls, Skelton, Murphy and Mullins could prove really useful and help to point us in the right direction when contemplating the timing / placing of our bets.

- DR

 

Monday Musings: Levelling Up

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Much was made when the entries came out of this year’s alleged “levelling up” of the respective teams for the Randox Grand National, writes Tony Stafford. Home stables, tired of the now routine grab of almost all of the £1 million prize money by the Irish, had entered close to half (37 of the 87 still engaged) so would have better chances to keep the prizes at home, went the thinking.

Fat chance. Nowadays only 34 can run, making the task of breaking into that portion guaranteed a place in the starting lineup almost impossible. Of last year’s field of 32 (two cried off with vet’s certificates on the day of the race), only eight were UK trained. In contrast, Willie Mullins ran eight on his own, and Gordon Elliott seven.  Three each from those all-powerful stables started at 40/1 and bigger and they all pulled up. The Mullins trio of pullers-up were 100/1, 40/1 and 125/1: Elliott’s were 125/1, 50/1 and 100/1.

No hopers maybe and, just as possibly, their respective owners fancied an afternoon at Aintree and the privilege of being looked after by the redoubtable, nay vivacious, redhead Siobhan Doolan in the owners’ dining room! More likely, their main purpose was to eliminate as many potential UK threats to the big two stables as they possibly could.

With just shy of 50 per cent of the field, it was hard to imagine their failing to get among the big prizes and so they did. Mullins won it with I Am Maximus in the JP McManus colours, and Elliott was second and fourth with old-timers Delta Work and Galvin.

Their compatriot, Henry de Bromhead, had three runners, and two of the first six home in third-placed Minella Indo, the 2021 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, and Ain’t That A Shame, sixth for amateur-riding owner David Maxwell. Only the Maxwell horse does not have the Aintree ticket this time, but the Irish top quartet from last year do. Christian Williams’ fifth-placed Kitty’s Light does not have the entry.

At nine, I Am Maximus will be the baby of the returning team, and he is up 8lb to a top-weighted 167. Second and third are now age 12, and the fourth is an 11-year-old. They aren’t for moving anytime soon.

Two Venetia Williams horses are the sole UK interlopers in the top ten in the weights. Both Royale Pagaille, the second top-weight, and L’Homme Presse ran on Saturday and neither showed the sort of form needed to be feasible contenders at Aintree or, more immediately, in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham.

Royale Pagaille has a fantastic record at Haydock but, predictably, asking him to give almost two stone to some tough staying handicappers in the Grand National Trial over 3m4f there proved too demanding a task. He faded out of contention behind an impressive winner in Nicky Richards’ Famous Bridge, who does have the Aintree entry, as does runner-up Apple Away and fourth-placed Git Maker.

Famous Bridge had been loping along easily in the same race 12 months earlier, when unseating his rider Sean Quinlan six fences from home. The race was won by Gavin Cromwell’s Yeah Man. He returned aiming at the follow-up but this time it was he that didn’t get round.

Royal Pagaille’s intervention in this race had a significant difference to Famous Bridge’s chances, even if he was running off only a 1lb lower handicap mark. Last year, Famous Bridge carried 11st4lb, now he was 16lb lower on 10st2lb. Checking back, he had never carried less than 11st in any of his last ten races over the previous two years! Going as far as three-and-a-half miles, that surely would make a massive difference and so it proved.

So is Nicky Richards planning ahead to the big day in April? Hardly. On 136, Famous Bridge is number 80, five places lower than Lucinda Russell’s mare Apple Away. To complete the trio of unrealistic Grand National candidates from this so-called Trial, Jamie Snowden’s Git Maker in a closing fourth, is number 84.

Famous Bridge did well to collect the £57k first prize. Yeah Man, rated 144 and who unseated on Saturday, is number 61 for the big race. The lowest mark to get in last year was 146. It could happen, but Gavin Cromwell is almost sure to have his sights lowered, maybe to a Cheltenham handicap with the Irish Grand National even more a possible destination.

The other Venetia star L’Homme Presse did his Gold Cup aspirations no favours with an abject performance in the Grade 1 Ascot Chase. Jumping out to the left from an early stage, he was soon pulled up by Charlie Deutsch as the Paul Nicholls-trained Pic D’Orhy won in trademark all-the-way style.

Nicholls showed his emotion, first cheering the horse and Harry Cobden home with his inimitable energy. Then, when interviewed later, he showed how much he was relieved at this first Grade 1 success for his stable since Pic D’Orhy won the same race 12 months ago. Don’t worry Paul, nobody thinks you’re anything but a fantastic trainer. What do they say, form is temporary, class is permanent?

Anyway, the Irish do not intend relinquishing the £500,000 top Grand National prize lightly and it seems more inevitable by the day that JP McManus will be making it Grand National win number four.

He has the first three in the betting with Inothewayurthinkin on top at 8/1 for Cromwell, and last year’s winner second in at 12’s. Slightly from left field is third favourite Iroko, trained in the UK by Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero; he gets in fine as he’s number 27 on the list.

His latest fourth place in a Grade 3 handicap at Cheltenham last month attracted the attention of the stewards who interviewed Jonjo O’Neill, his rider, afterwards and then issued a lengthy report of his comments. Reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem that they were totally convinced by what he told them, and the 14/1 price about the horse, a seven-year-old as is Inothewayurthinkin, reflects the market’s fear of a McManus “plunge”, if he still bothers plunging that is.

Nicky Richards has been recovering well from the riding accident which caused such serious injuries last year, and his horses have been providing the ideal tonic. As well as the valuable prize so deservedly collected by Famous Bridge in the revered Hemmings racing colours, he has also been having a great time with previously unraced bumper horses.

He even asked me to mention a couple of weeks ago to the boss of the geegeez.co.uk team that he had some horses available for syndication and that surely Geegeez needed a representation in the north of the country! Sorry Nicky, no joy on that one.

It seems that Thursday’s debut bumper winner Upon Tweed had been the subject of considerable interest, and he says, “I’m not sure I’ll be training him for much longer. I’ll never stop being amazed how much money agents seem to have to bid on behalf of wealthy people for prospective jumping horses, but they do!”

At the other end of the scale, the latest Tattersalls Online sale last week proved little short of a total washout. Two or three sequences of around ten horses at a time did not receive a suitable bid between them when the closing time for their sale came up with a few minutes’ space in between them. I made it that only 53 of 137 lots changed hands and many of these at bargain basement levels. The whole sale might have struggled to match what Upon Tweed eventually goes for when that piece of horse trading concludes.

Richards' accident last year is testimony to the inherent dangers of riding racehorses. Yesterday’s news that Michael O’Sullivan, at 24 one of the most promising jump jockeys in Ireland, had died following his fall in a race at Thurles last week, shocked the racing community there and here in the UK, too.

Racing families are uniquely resilient, but such terrible accidents are a constant reminder that the ambulances, doctors and vets that attend every race in the principal racing countries are not in any way arbitrary but rather absolutely essential.

- TS

Roving Reports: Data Driven Drizzle

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It's a wet and cold Monday morning here in Nottingham, writes David Massey, and the news has just been announced that it's been the warmest January since they started measuring such things, which apparently was in 1919. As a slave to the data then of course - of course! - I believe the science when it tells me as such. It's just that the places I seem to have visited during that most miserable of months have managed to dodge any semblance of sunshine, as demonstrated by the fact I don't recall any tracks I attended having to miss out obstacles because of low sun.

I tell a lie - Doncaster on a Friday. Ah yes, I remember it well now. The warmth on the back of my neck as I wrote my notes about the brave and talented warriors about to contest the 0-100 handicap hurdle. A brief glimpse of potential spring, snatched away not two days later as I tried to make my way around a flooded Herefordshire.

Yes, I did one of my bi-annual excursions to the Welsh borders at the end of last month. After making a day trip to Cheltenham on the Saturday and remarking how much the water had receded around the Evesham area since my last visit, by the time Monday came back around it was starting to rise again, and quickly. I stayed in Worcester, by the cricket ground, on the Sunday night (although I didn't realise this until first light Monday morning, when the first thing I saw on opening the curtains was the Basil d'Oliveira Stand) and no sooner had I arrived there than the words "precautionary inspection" were uttered at Hereford, along with the phrase "cautiously optimistic". As I've said before, any clerk of the course using the word "optimistic" in an update should be fined five grand, and ten if they precede it with "cautiously". The BHA could, however, use that money to pay for trainer interviews, where famous Berkshire handler Willie Runnem-Ornot can tell us his horse has had a setback for the Cheltenham Festival, but he's "cautiously optimistic" he can get him back on track if Kempton will let the lad have a gallop round next Tuesday when there's no press about. That'll be two grand please. Cash in a brown envelope? Yes, that’ll do fine, thanks for coming along.

And so, early Monday, Hereford bites the dust, and I'm left in a hotel room in Worcester with little to do but look at an empty Graeme Hick stand and nowhere much to go. I'm tempted to hoik it up to Monmore Greyhounds for their afternoon meeting, but my next stop is Ross-on-Wye, in readiness for Chepstow on Tuesday, and I'd be heading the wrong way. I decide instead to do the sensible thing, and just do some pre-emptive Cheltenham writing whilst drinking more hotel coffee than is probably good for me.

The rain is still falling as I set off for Ross. A wise man would have gone back to the motorway at this point and stayed on the main roads but I'm a romantic idiot with time on my hands and decided to go the scenic route using the back roads. I'm glad I did, in some ways - stunning vistas as I drive in the shadow of the Malvern Hills and I also trundle past someone's training establishment - I still haven't worked out who it was - through one of the villages.

Then, about four or five miles out of Ross, there's trouble. I'm in a village where the only way through it is via a bridge, and that's flooded, badly. I stop and try to work out the situation. Gamble, drive through and potentially flood the engine, or (according to Google Maps) track back almost eight miles and add another half an hour to my journey time? I didn't need to wait long for an answer. A lorry goes past me and through the flood. It's deep, too deep. This is confirmed by a Range Rover who does the same, and barely gets through it. For once, common sense kicks in and I turn around. The Malverns look as lovely as they did twenty minutes ago from the reverse angle.

You know that feeling you get sometimes when you arrive somewhere and think "I've been here before, but I can't quite remember when?" - I get that as I pull up in Ross at my Premier Inn. I know I've been here, but I can't quite remember when, or why. Then it dawns on me. I came here once with a good friend a long, long time ago on the way back from our one and only trip to Ffos Las. We had dinner in the Beefeater next door and then a night of great sex in the hotel. Well, that's my recollection of things. She says we just had a poorly-cooked steak and the only pudding I got was sticky toffee before we hit the M50 half an hour later. I think she's probably right. I suspect I've let my imagination get the better of me. It was about ten years ago, after all. Anyway, I'm here again, and I ask the receptionist to book me into the (now) Travellers Rest next door for dinner.

"You'll have a job. The place closed months ago. It's derelict and being knocked down." That's the end of that, then. Serves them right for undercooking my steak.

There's a precautionary inspection at Chepstow tomorrow now. This journey could be a fairly expensive busted flush. However, some light emerges at the end of the tunnel, and for once it isn't an oncoming train.

To amuse myself whilst writing I've had an each-way Yankee at Plumpton and after a 25-1 winner (in a four-horse race too, all to win!) along with another winner and place it's looking pretty good. I'm offered a decent cash out. I never cash out. Never. But... the cash out would cover the price of the trip, and if Chepstow bit the dust tomorrow, it wouldn't matter too much. For the second time in a day, I do the sensible thing and cash out. Do I need to tell you what happened to the fourth selection? Of course I don't. It won half the track. The only consolation being I did have a few quid on as a single. Still, a bit gutting, although I remind myself the whole trip is now paid for if it all goes blank tomorrow. And as the rain falls down on a humdrum town, as The Smiths warbled back in 1984, it has to be said that looks a very likely scenario.

Tuesday morning. Miracle of miracles, Chepstow is somehow on. I'm actually going to get some racing.

I'm going with my friend Alex who I haven't seen in years. She awards herself the title of "Assistant Media Bitch" for the day, which not only suits her well, but could catch on elsewhere, I reckon. I know a few that would fit that title perfectly. Anyway, we have a cracking day, the highlight of which - for her - was making Richard Hoiles a cup of tea. "It won't get any better than that today", she excitedly shrieks. I manage to find a couple of losers before Royal Jewel digs me out, and then Lagertha is something of a paddock standout in the Mares Novice. It'll be a winning day, which is always nice. I don't have a penny on Jo Lescribaa but I'm delighted for my friend Andy who has a interest in her, and all in all it's been a really enjoyable trip despite the grim weather. Better still, it has rekindled Alex's love for a day at the races. She hasn't been for some time - "the game isn't the same as it was", she says, but I hope she will go racing, at least in midweek when it's a bit quieter, again in the near future. The drive home is a long one, but a call in at the ever-lovely Gloucester Services breaks it up.

Back to the present day. The app on my phone now tells me "Rain coming in under an hour." Any chance of a look at that weather data again, please? It's Leicester on Thursday and Haydock on Saturday for me this week. The Trackside bobble hat will be on, I can assure you. Say hello if you see me, or if it's as warm as the data says, Stop Me and Buy One. Either way, have a great week.

- DM

More on Price Movement in NH Markets, Part 1

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Back in October I wrote an article that examined some betting market data whereby I investigated patterns of price movement from early morning odds to SP in UK NH racing. I felt now was good time to revisit the idea but switch attention to movement between opening show and SP.

This is first of a two-parter with data taken from the last five full years covering 2020 to 2024. I have used William Hill bookmaker prices and, for the remainder of this article, I will use ‘OS’ to stand for the Opening Show Odds.

As I mentioned in earlier work, the OS for most races occurs around 10-15 minutes before the race is due to start. Each horse will have its opening price and then, as money is wagered in the period before the race starts, the prices will begin to fluctuate. Some will go up, some down, some will end up the same price as they started. Price changes are also driven by what happens on the betting exchanges.

As I did for the previous research let me start by sharing the figures for all runners over this time frame to see what percentage shortened in price, lengthened in price (often known as drifting), or stayed the same when comparing their OS to their final Starting Price Odds (SP).

 

 

 

These percentage splits are very close to those I found for flat racing with far more horses lengthening / drifting in price than shortening in price. Once again, the smallest percentage figure occurred with horses staying the same price.

Market movement during this short period before the start of the race is a good indicator of a horse's chance of winning as the graph below shows when we examine the win strike rates of the three groups:

 

 

 

Horses that shorten in price have won more frequently, edging towards twice as often as those that drift. In terms of returns, to Industry SP horses that have lengthened in price (drifters) would have lost you a hefty 30p in the £, while those that have shortened in price would have lost you around 15p in the £. To BSP the gap is much reduced with an 8.6% loss for drifters and a 5.6% loss for ‘shorteners’.

Let me now share the yearly percentage of runners splits for the three groups in terms of comparing their OS odds to their SP odds:

 

 

As we might have hoped the splits have been similar year on year. Readers may notice that 2020 is slightly out of kilter, but my guess is that Covid was a key reason behind this. No spectators at racecourses for around eight months in 2020 meant we had an unusual situation come Opening Show with no oncourse bookmakers taking money. It is also the case that, since Covid and 2020, the starting price is framed more significantly around off-course liabilities than on-course, reflecting where the majority of betting action happens nowadays.

For the next part of this piece, I would like to focus on the percentage of horses that lengthened / drifted in price showing a course-by-course comparison. The courses are ordered highest percentage to lowest. As a reminder, the overall figure for all courses was 46.5%:

 

 

I have highlighted in red those courses that had the smallest percentage of drifters and what immediately stands out is that these tracks are universally considered to be top tracks. In fact, if we look at the list of courses that have held the most Graded races over the past five seasons we see the following:

 

 

These same seven courses showed the lowest percentages for drifters. I suspect there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, stronger markets exist at these courses – more money is wagered (off course, on the exchanges, and on course); and, secondly, there tends to be better overall knowledge of the horses that race at these tracks due to the average class level, making early markets more efficient / accurate.

Thinking about class of race, based on my second theory noted above, we might hope that if we look at the percentage of runner splits within each class, the higher classes of race would see a smaller gap between horses that shorten in price from OS to SP compared with those that lengthen/drift.

I have lumped Class 6 races in with Class 5 purely because there are very few Class 6 races in National Hunt racing. In addition, I have added an extra column which shows the percentage difference between horses that have shortened compared with those that have drifted. Here are my findings:

 

 

As hoped, the theory has held, with the highest class of race (Class 1) seeing by far the smallest gap between shorteners and drifters of 5.3%. As can be seen, once we get to Class 4, the gap extends to 16.7% for Class 4 races and 14.9% for Class 5/6 races. Hence, for those of us who may still take a bookmaker’s price between OS and the start of the race, the stats for Race Class and the previous course ones should help inform us more accurately about the chance of our selection drifting or shortening in the ten minutes or so before the race. For punters, having the overall stats gives us a good 'feel', but breaking things down into subcategories can offer more knowledge and understanding of how prices may move.

My focus now is to look at price movement from Opening Show to SP within different price bands. The figures are split by percentage of qualifying runners:

 

 

These price bands are based on huge sample sizes so we can be confident that these types of figures are likely to be replicated in the future. Possibly the most eye-catching percentages are those for bigger priced runners. Once we get to an Opening Show of 18/1 or more, over 50% of such runners have drifted in price. There also seems to be no difference to the overall norm when it comes to those priced up between 9/2 and 6/1. The percentages between shorteners and drifters are close to parity with a slight edge to shorteners. To see this more clearly let me graph the comparison:

 

 

The graph clearly shows this ‘close to parity’ situation with the 9/2 and 6/1 Opening Odds price band. Expanding this slightly, it also shows that the percentages are closest from 100/30 to 8/1 compared with everything else. We knew already that drifters occur more often than shorteners but seeing these price splits offers further appreciation of how likely a horse may be to shorten or drift. Looking back at the flat article I wrote we witnessed a similar pattern in terms of how the overall graph looks.

To conclude, understanding how a betting market may evolve from Opening Show to SP is an area that is rarely analysed. There are some parallel patterns with the flat findings I previously shared, as you might expect. In many ways this is a positive as it provides greater confidence that OS to SP prices will continue to move in similar ways in the next few years.

My next article will be a follow up to this one, and will look at some additional areas such as race type and trainers. Until then...

- DR

Monday Musings: Remembering the Aga Khan

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The news that H H the Aga Khan, head of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim sect, had died last week thrust me back more than 30 years, writes Tony Stafford. At the time I was scrabbling around trying to buy cheap horses, usually those that didn’t reach their reserves at the conclusion of the Tattersalls’ Horses in Training sale.

In those days, my targets were Cheveley Park Stud, usually well-bred fillies that didn’t measure up to their demanding requirements and would go privately for £500, or the Aga Khan detritus that it would be too costly to send back to either France or Ireland with nobody other than me wanting them. To be fair, the Cheveley Park ones were rarely much good!

I say detritus, but M. Drion, the Aga Khan’s manager, called them “boucher” (butcher) horses, so if I didn’t step in, they would be destined for the dinner tables of continental Europe. Once or twice, both targeted operations even gave them away.

While not a freebie, one such was Karaylar, a son of the Aga Khan’s Derby winner Kahyasi out of a mare by brilliant broodmare sire Habitat. He had been with John Oxx in Ireland, but the trainer of Sinndar, another Derby winner for the owner, hadn’t managed to get him on the track.

I spoke to His Highness by telephone having got the number from M. Drion. He agreed £500 and the cash was duly handed over. He called him a “boucher” horse, too!

At the time, I was regularly passing on my “finds” to Northumberland owner David Batey. In a few years he had done so well that he had a video made up of his “first” 25 winners. Most had cost buttons whereas only the last, bought from Brian Meehan as a 2yo at Doncaster sales for £14,000, was not my discovery. The winners had all been trained by my friend Wilf Storey.

I can only imagine the rage building up in the mercurial owner as 3yo Karaylar ran last of 11 first time on the flat and then, in the always well-populated novice hurdles in the north at the time, 16th of 20, 15th of 20 and, to finish the job, 19th of 21.

That brought him an initial mark of 64. Wilf and I always in our deliberations used to reckon on one run to confirm the rating and then go to work. Fourth in his first handicap, he then won a John Wade-sponsored selling handicap hurdle, at Sedgefield. That was a qualifier for the final also at Sedgefield on a Friday night early in May.

I can remember exactly where I watched it but have no idea where I had been earlier for me to be in that place. It was a betting shop in Bishop’s Stortford town centre. Karaylar started the 9/4 favourite and in a field of 16 won as he liked by five lengths under Richie McGrath, who had also been on him for the previous win.

What marked that race as special was its prize - £7,000, for a seller! Just a four-year-old, we thought Karaylar was going places – he did, rapidly downhill, never winning another race.

Mr Batey was also the beneficiary of another Wilf winner ridden by McGrath in his 7lb claiming days. That was Cheltenham Festival long-distance hurdle scorer Great Easeby, bought unraced for 2k from the owner-breeder Robert Sangster. A son of Caerleon, he was acquired in a very comfortable negotiation, sent to Wilf and won seven races between the flat and jumps.

Our association (not with Wilf) suddenly ended allegedly because the owner found out I had made a small profit on one of the deals. His success rate dropped almost to nothing once he stopped sending horses to Grange Farm, Muggleswick.

*

The Aga Khan was the third member of his family to make a massive impact on thoroughbred racing and, equally, breeding. His grandfather, also the Aga Khan, owned the famous flying filly Mumtaz Mahal in the 1920s and was prominent in racing until his death in 1957.

His son Prince Aly Khan kept the family horse racing business going, while at the same living a film star lifestyle,  especially when he married the actress Rita Hayworth. He died in a car crash, having already been passed over for the title of Aga Khan by his father who thought his son Prince Karim, as he was, would be a more suitable leader. For almost seven decades, he fulfilled the role with great skill and was reckoned as long ago as 2014 to having a fortune of $13 billion by Vanity Fair.

For racing fans, his green and red colours have been a constant even though he had refused to have them trained in the UK for a long time, relying on Ireland and France. He had countless champions in his time; for me, though, it’s always been Karaylar!

*

How frustrating that a week after the Dublin Racing Festival, one of the two biggest stars of the UK team shaping up to see off the Irish challenge at Cheltenham was unable to run in his warm-up race.

Sir Gino, flawless over hurdles, the latest time when deputising for the country’s number one, Constitution Hill, in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle and then spectacularly proficient first time over fences at Kempton over Christmas was the absentee. Many had travelled expecting to see him at Newbury, but a cut leg ruled him out of the Game Spirit Chase.

The Nicky Henderson horse was forced to miss the Triumph Hurdle at last year’s Festival and now will be going into the Arkle Challenge Trophy – if he gets there, that is – with only one run over fences behind him, unless Nicky sends him either to Kempton or Bangor as has been mooted.

Of course, waiting to pounce is Willie Mullins with his smart 5yo Majborough, winner of that Triumph Hurdle and unbeaten since in his two runs over fences. He looked last week in winning the Irish Arkle Novice Chase at Leopardstown that he still had a bit to learn about jumping fences. When Sir Gino won at Kempton, you could have thought you were watching a horse that had won ten races over fences, let alone had never run over them before. After all, it was Ballyburn that he was putting back in his box, a horse who all through last season and again at the Dublin Festival, looked like a future Gold Cup winner.

Henderson did have something to smile about on the Newbury card, the mare Joyeuse cantering away with the William Hill Handicap Hurdle and its £87k first prize in the colours of J P McManus. Only a 9/2 shot, the success was therefore expected in some parts but a glance at her earlier career did not present her with the most obvious of chances.

She won her only race in France, a 1m4f AQPS maiden as a 3yo by three parts of a length. The venue? Another of those French tracks where they probably mark out the rails the night before. For the record it was at Paray-le-Mondial, a track and indeed town I’d never heard of; but, in fairness, even those venues that race only once a year are always immaculately presented. Paray-le-Mondial is in the east of France, for the record, about 80 miles northnorthwest of Lyon.

The run was enough to secure a price of €235,000 soon after from the all-seeing McManus talent-scouting operation. Henderson took his time before sending her out for the first run from Lambourn, at Taunton in January last year and she won by half a length.

Two placed efforts in just over three weeks in November and December earned her an initial handicap rating of 123. The way she accelerated away – once favourite Secret Squirrel fell when still right in the argument at the last flight, suggested she wouldn’t have been far away off 143!

The McManus team from Ireland and the UK will be feared as usual next month but a quirk of the altered regulations for Cheltenham’s handicaps means Joyeuse is ineligible for any of them, and she isn’t a novice either. Aintree here she comes, no doubt.

 - TS

‘SR’ Ratings on the All-Weather

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There are numerous reasons why the only racecards I use are the Geegeez Gold ones, writes Dave Renham. There are several useful tabs on the racecard, three of which I always look at first: Pace, Instant Expert and Profiler. For flat and all-weather racing I will also look at the Draw tab.

Each of these tabs offers me useful and diverse information, all at simply the click of a button. In under two minutes I can decide about whether the race in question is one that merits more of my time. If it does, then I will delve into the Full Form tab to build up a bigger overall picture for myself. If I get to the stage where there looks to be a horse or horses that I may be interested in betting on, the next thing I will look at is the SR column in the main Racecard.

The number in that column is a ratings figure derived from Dr Peter May’s research. I have always had huge respect for Peter, and I will always consider his ratings when analysing a race. Having Peter’s ratings is another bonus when it comes to using the Geegeez Gold cards. And for today’s article it is Peter’s SR ratings that I am going to take a deep dive into.

Matt wrote an article in September 2023 looking at the performance of the ratings in National Hunt racing. In that piece he explained that Peter’s ratings are not strictly ‘Speed’ ratings. He wrote,

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

My focus for this article is all-weather racing. I have looked at a five-year time frame from January 1st 2020 to December 31st 2024. When I refer to the ratings from now on, I will call them SR Ratings as that is how they appear on the geegeez racecards.

I have spoken to many people who have compiled ratings in the past, be they speed or ability ratings, and in every case the win rate was the key to judging the effectiveness of their ratings. The top-rated runner should have the highest win percentage, the second highest should win next most often, and so on, gradually reducing for the other runners. Obviously, it is hoped the top-rated runner is the best performer in terms of betting returns, too; however, it is important to point out that regardless of how good a set of ratings is, we cannot generally expect the top-rated runner to secure a blind profit over thousands of races. That's not the case with Racing Post Ratings, Timeform Ratings or any other public rating. Despite that, such figures are an excellent guide to which subset of horses can normally be considered contenders.

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

 

 

The win strike rate for top-rated runners is close to one win in five which is thoroughly decent, and the top three rated horses win almost half (48%) of races. The percentages correlate positively with the rated positions showing a sliding scale that we would hope for. If we look at the Each Way (win & placed) strike rates, we see a similar pattern:

 

 

The top-rated runner is comfortably clear once more, and the sliding scale is replicated showing positive correlation with the win only figures.

In terms of returns to Industry SP, the top-rated runner has performed the best although overall losses stand at 15 pence in the £. However, to Betfair SP losses stand at under 2p in the £. This is impressive considering there are around 13,000 top-rated runners in this sample.

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

 

 

As we can see, in non-handicaps the top-rated runner is well clear of the second rated, while in handicaps the gap is much smaller. This was to be expected, given the relatively competitive nature of handicaps compared with non-handicaps, but again it is good to see it in black and white - or should I say orange and blue!

I would like to now analyse the BSP returns of the top-rated horse in different race types. These have been split into 2yo non-handicaps, 2yo handicaps, 3yo non-handicaps, 3yo handicaps, all age non-handicaps, and all age handicaps. The graph below shows the Betfair SP return on investment percentages (BSP ROI%) for each race grouping:

 

 

Three of the six groupings (2yo non-handicaps, 2yo handicaps, 3yo handicaps) saw the top-rated secure a blind profit which is impressive stuff. All age non-handicaps showed the worst returns, still only losing 6p in the £.

Using the Query Tool on Geegeez I decided to compare the performance of AW favourites, split into those that were also top-rated on the SR Ratings versus those that were not top-rated. Here are the findings:

 

 

The Win PL (profit/loss) and ROI (return on investment) columns have been calculated to Industry SP, and we have a clear winner. In addition, the strike rate is more than six percentage points higher.

When calculating to BSP there is a similar difference between the two:

 

 

Thus, if we back favourites on the all-weather, having them top-rated on SR Ratings would have improved our bottom line. Yes, SR top-rated runners when favourite still made a loss to BSP, but it was limited to only 2p in the £ over five years. A pretty good starting point for further research.

We see a similar pattern when we look at horses second in the betting comparing their record when SR top-rated or not. Here are those splits:

 

 

Again, these are calculated to Industry SP but a clear difference, equating to around 8p in the £, can be seen. To BSP, SR top-rated horses that started second favourite secured a profit of around 4p in the £.

I would now like to look at top-rated runners in all age handicaps in more detail. The reason is that all age handicaps make up around 70% of UK all-weather races, a striking statistic. Also, from a personal perspective, these are my favourite races to bet in. I am hoping that getting a better feel for the top-rated runner has the potential to inform some of our future betting decisions.

Below is a table showing the most positive results from a BSP returns perspective in all age handicaps:

 

 

As a fan of sprint handicaps this makes very pleasing reading. The minimum distance has been a strong positive for top-rated runners in these all age handicaps. The lower weighted top-rated runners have also performed well. It should be noted that this is based on the card weight of the horse and does not consider jockey claims. A quick return is often seen as a positive and, although they tend to be overbet these days, that has not seemingly been an issue when they have been SR top-rated runners. Horses that have yet to win at the course have also snuck into profit possibly due to course winners being overbet meaning the non-winners have been slightly underbet.

I would like to finish by combining top-rated runners with Run Style/Pace. Of course, the run style figures are only known after the race is in progress but the figures follow a familiar pattern we have seen before:

 

The Win PL and the ROI can be considered to be ‘projected’ returns to Industry SP, because as we know we cannot predict 100% how the run style for each horse within each race will unfold. But if we can find a top-rated runner that is a strong candidate for leading early, then this would potentially be a decent betting opportunity. For the record, front running top-rated runners offer slightly better returns in handicaps compared to non-handicaps.

**

At the beginning of this article, I was praising the virtues of the Geegeez Gold racecards. At the end of that opening paragraph I mentioned that having Peter May’s ratings (SR) was a bonus; I hope after reading this article you will agree with me and feel better equipped to tackle the all-weather, particularly under certain highlighted circumstances, going forward.

- DR

Monday Musings: Of The Kid and DRF

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Amid all the extravagantly impressive performances of Wilie Mullins’ three winners on the first day of the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown on Saturday, I must say I was transfixed by one less predictable show a little nearer to home, writes Tony Stafford. Anyway, that’s how I would describe Musselburgh for us down south.

I had spoken to Nicky Richards on Saturday morning about the chance of The Kalooki Kid in the bet365 Scottish Champion Handicap Chase over 2m4.5f, surprised that his seven-year-old was as short as 11/4 for this £100k, £51k to the winner prize.

Nicky was optimistic, saying he had jumped very well at Doncaster (only second time over fences) and he was hopeful as long as the jumping held up.

Let’s put it in perspective. After a debut for the season when second over two miles at Ayr (12 fences) and a win where a few of the potential dangers fell at crucial stages when admittedly he had already taken charge long before the 15th and final fence, he came to Musselburgh having jumped 27 fences in public.

Now, off a tough enough 131 having been raised 7lb for Doncaster, the son of marathon flat-racer Gentlewave, out of a Flemensfirth mare, faced 11 opponents on Saturday. You can add to his two chase runs, six with two wins over hurdles last season, but a starting price of 2/1? Never.

The said opponents had all won over fences and in terms of experience had The Kalooki Kid by his extremities. None had raced fewer than eight times previously over fences, with four of them having won five times each. Adding their hurdles tally to the chase totals, the least number of runs was 16 – in one case – and it was mostly around 20, compared with the Richards’ horse’s eight. More pertinently, the 11 had collected 38 wins in chases before Saturday.

As I said, Nicky was hopeful the jumping would hold up. Regular partner Danny McMenamin settled him on the inside from the start; initially in around fifth in the running and going past the stands was soon in third, the leaps uniformly accurate without being in any way flashy.

By the time they turned for home with four to go, The Kalooki Kid was in a close second place, poised to tackle the long-time leader Saint Segal. A superior jump four out soon had him in front and still going easily.

Saint Segal had bolted up the time before for the Jane Williams stable at Newbury in December, his third win over fences and fifth in all. He battled bravely as for the second time running, The Kalooki Kid reckoned he’d done enough once clear on the run-in, but he still had more than two lengths to spare at the line.

So here we have a horse, bought at the Landrover sale in Ireland by Richards for €40k in June 2021.  Allowed to mature just as his father, the late Gordon W, would have done in his years bossing Greystoke Stables, and now the rewards should be flowing in the yard’s time-honoured manner, granted the required good luck.

With a pedigree like his, three miles should not be a problem, so now it’s down to the trainer to plot the right path. At 68, it’s remarkable that Nicky was still riding out until last autumn when he had an awful fall, breaking his pelvis among other injuries. The rehabilitation has been going steadily, and it would be great to see him back on track in time to witness the future triumphs from his new stable star.

The 2024/25 season has been building up nicely with 21 wins (and almost £400k in prizes) so far and, as well as The Kalooki Kid, he can look forward to further success with the likes of recent impressive bumper scorer They’re Chancers.

**

It was to be expected that Galopin Des Champs buttoned up the first part of the unheard-of triple double when adding a third successive Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown to the two Cheltenham Gold Cups which he has collected in between.

He might have been beaten twice since Cheltenham at right-handed Punchestown by Martin Brassil’s Fastorslow and then stablemate Fact To File, but as Willie Mullins would say, it’s not what you lose that matters, it’s what you win.

The same Fact To File was in this three-miler on Saturday and like three or four others was poised just behind the champion as he as usual led the field into the short home straight with one to jump. Then, Paul Townend asked and Galopin Des Champs delivered. The finishing burst obliterated any challenge.

It was a similar situation with last year’s Triumph Hurdle winner Majborough as he made it two from two since Cheltenham. In a display of raw power rather than slick jumping he made the considerable opposition in the Irish Champion Chase look much less that it had appeared beforehand.

Now he is poised for yet another of those titanic Mullins/Nicky Henderson battles in ‘the’ Arkle at Cheltenham with Sir Gino. Two emerging giants – redolent almost of the Mill House/ Arkle jousts in the 1960’s which so enthralled racegoers for almost three years until Arkle proved his immortality.

The third Mullins winner came in the opening race. The fact that the horse to be called Final Demand was sold for €230k as long ago as June 2022 suggested somebody knew something. The buyer waited until last March before sending him to a point-to-point which he won with ease.

He was then persuaded to let him go and it would be interesting to know how much Brian Drew and Professor Caroline Tisdall needed to shell out for him.

Anyway, they won’t be crying after an easy win at Limerick between Christmas and the New Year and Saturday’s exceptional 12-length victory in the opening Nathaniel Lacy and Partners Solicitors €88k to the winner Novice Hurdle over 2m6f. Mullins had four back-up runners in this and far from creaming the place money, all he had to show was 4th, 5th and two pulled ups including the second favourite Supersundae.

Final Demand will be a banker to follow Ballyburn in the 2m5f novice hurdle at Cheltenham while Ballyburn showed he was back in business after finding Sir Gino too speedy over two miles at Kempton at Christmas time. Back to the distance of last year’s hurdle win at the Festival, Ballyburn slaughtered yesterday’s opposition in the Ladbrokes Grade 1 Novice Chase.

Briefly returning to Final Demand, a son of Walk In The Park, he has the same broodmare sire, Flemensfirth, as The Kalooki Kid. Walk In The Park has been a shining light among Coolmore’s main jumps station, Grange Stud, for the past ten seasons in which time fee has always been advertised as “private”.

His story is odd enough. Runner-up in Michael Tabor’s colours in the Derby, a son of Montjeu, also a Tabor horse and a dual Classic winner (French and Irish Derby), Walk In The Park won only once (as a juvenile) in 14 career starts. Initially standing at stud in France, the year before his transfer to Ireland, his last publicised fee was €1,500. How do they do it? Like Willie Mullins, no doubt, talent and dedication.

We were promised a thriller between two Mullins horses in the Irish Champion Hurdle. State Man had won the last two along with last year’s Champion Hurdle proper in the absence of Constitution Hill, but the market settled on the younger mare Lossiemouth who had put in a spirited show when second to Constitution Hill in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton.

But the clash evaporated into a damp squib down the back straight as Lossiemouth fell, leaving State Man, who narrowly avoided being caught up in the tumble, to collect the €112k first prize. Daddy Long Legs, in the winner’s second colours of Mrs Donnelly, stayed on best to get the “measly” €38k second prize for what was almost a school round until he was asked to go faster in the last half mile and beat two other no-hopers. Was there no UK horse thought capable of nicking one of those lavish place prizes?

Well done then to Warren Greatrex for his enterprise in sending over Good And Clever for the novice hurdle won easily by Mullins’ Kopek Des Bordes. Kopek will be a strong favourite for the Supreme Novice at Cheltenham, but Good And Clever collected €13.5k for his owners Jim and Claire Bryce, as the sole UK runner on the day. That following an unplaced Henry Daly runner – 33/1 as top-weight in a three-mile handicap hurdle the previous afternoon.

- TS

When NH Trainers run two in the same race

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Back in July 2021 I shared some research connected with UK flat trainers when they saddled two runners in the same race (which you can read here), writes Dave Renham. In this article I will do likewise with UK National Hunt trainers. Clearly, there are occasions when trainers saddle three or more runners in a race but, to make the research and writing process easier, for this offering I will once more focus on exactly two runners saddled.

It is likely that in the past some punters have been lured by the prices on two runners from the same stable: if one is 3/1 and the other 14/1 the chances are the focus will be on the more fancied runner of the pair. I, for one, have been guilty of this before.

The data in this analysis has been taken from UK National Hunt races between January 1st 2016 and December 31st 2024. All profit and loss figures have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price less commission. For the shorter priced horse of the pair, I will call this the “first string”, the bigger priced runner will be known as the “second string”.

Overall trainer performance when running two in the same race

Let me first look at trainers who have had two or more runners in the same race on at least 100 occasions (hence at least 200 runners overall). There have been 28 trainers that qualify in the study period using that stipulation:

 

Below are the combined results of all runners for each trainer (i.e. both first and second string horses). The trainers are listed in alphabetical order:

 

 

Not surprisingly, just four of the 28 trainers show a profit when looking at both runners combined. It is unlikely that backing both runners for every trainer in every race is going to make a profit long term as the overall stats clearly show. Indeed, the four in profit owe that accolade to some huge prices going in.

Let us see what happens when we break the data down and compare trainer win strike rates between first and second string runners. The plan is not to compare the raw win percentages with each other, but to add up the winners for each of the two market ranks and work out what percentage of all the winners came from the trainer’s first string (shorter priced runners) and what percentage came from the second string (longer priced runners).

In other words, if we use Donald McCain as an example, he has had 60 winners when running two horses in the same race, of which 45 were his first string runners (75%); 15 winners came from his second string runners (25%).

To show this comparison for each trainer I have split their data into four separate graphs, so as not to overcrowd the pictorial evidence. The orange bar represents first string runners, the blue bar is for second string.

 

 

As the graphs show, the stats vary greatly from trainer to trainer. For example, Nigel Twiston-Davies has two percentages that are close together (57.1% and 42.9%) having done particularly well with second strings, whereas Phil Kirby’s figures are poles apart (95.8% and 4.2%). Overall, when combining all 28 trainers, 75.7% of the winners have come from their first string entries, 24.3% from their second string. These figures are almost a carbon copy of those calculated in the flat trainer article back in 2021.

 

Trainer performance with first string runners

Eight trainers have made a profit with their first string runners and their figures, ordered by BSP profit, are shown in the table below:

 

 

Caution is advised regarding the profit figure for Christian Williams as he had BSP winners equating to 165/1 and 179/1, and yes, they were his first string runners despite the high prices! Chris Gordon in contrast has not had any big-priced winners and overall, his record with first string runners is excellent. If you restrict Gordon’s first string runners to those priced in single figures (at BSP) his record reads a highly impressive 29 wins from 82 (SR 35.4%) for a profit of £33.90 (ROI +41.3%).

Paul Nicholls has had over 400 first choice runners in this double-handed context, and his biggest priced first string winner was BSP 13.0 (12/1). Hence his bottom line has not been skewed by numerous scorers at very big odds. If we look at all his first string runners priced BSP 13.0 or less he has secured a healthy profit of £90.23 (ROI +27.2%) from 332 qualifiers. If we look at the Nicholls profit year on year with this subset of runners we see the following:

 

 

2021 was the year that produced over half of the profit but even taking that out of the equation the performance and consistency has been excellent. Over the nine years of study, seven have shown a profit.

Phil Kirby’s figures are also not badly skewed by horses winning at big prices. Sticking to a price cap of BSP 13.0 or shorter, Kirby has secured 20 winners from 68 qualifiers (SR 29.4%) for a profit of £24.02 (ROI +35.3%).

Nicky Henderson did not secure an overall profit with his first-string runners but the jockey booking seems to have made a difference. When Nico de Boinville has been riding the Henderson first string, the results read 49 wins from 224 (SR 21.9%) for a profit of £21.67 (ROI +9.7%). When any other jockey has been on board the Henderson figures read 46 from 241 (SR 19.1%) for a loss of £74.80 (ROI -31%).

Dan Skelton is a trainer who has performed extremely well over the past few seasons across the entire National Hunt sphere, but when we focus on his first string runners (of two) in chases his stats make very poor reading. From 95 qualifiers only 11 won (SR 11.6%) for hefty losses of £46.44 (ROI -48.9%).

Trainer performance with second string runners

Five trainers have produced a BSP profit with their second-string runners. Clearly big prices have made the difference here with all strike rates under 8%:

 

 

As profits go these should largely be taken with a pinch of salt, but I wanted to share them all the same.

It may be more useful to share a list of trainers with a very poor record with their second string runners, so below are those trainers with the worst returns across the nine year review period:

 

 

Based on these figures it seems sensible to all but rule out second string runners from trainers in the above table.

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One trainer whose data has not been shared as yet is Irish maestro Willie Mullins, simply due to him not quite saddling enough UK NH runners to make the cut. For the record his figures for both first and second strings are good with blind profits to BSP for both. His first string runners have secured returns of 26p in the £, his second string runners 28p in the £.

Harry Fry is another trainer who had less than 200 runners of this type overall, but his first string made a blind profit. Indeed, when focusing on these first string runners using the earlier price stipulation of BSP 13.0 or less, Fry has secured 14 wins from 48 (SR 29.2%) for a profit of £26.31 (ROI +54.8%).

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Trainer statistics are used by many punters when contemplating a bet. These stats come in different forms such as course stats, recent form stats (e.g. last 14 days), favourite stats, horses on debut, etc. The ones I have shared in this article generally fly under the radar but, hopefully, you have found them useful for either pinpointing possible value bets or, just as importantly, helping to avoid poor value ones. Unsurprisingly, given the overall stats uncovered in this article, the evidence points firmly towards focusing most attention on the shorter priced first string runners.

- DR

Monday Musings: The Trials of a Champion

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They crammed into Cheltenham on Saturday, intent on watching possibly the best hurdler of all time go through a public work-out where the betting market suggested there was only a single chance in 13 that he might not retain his unbeaten record, writes Tony Stafford.

Constitution Hill, back from his year’s inactivity with a smart success in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, was getting paid £71k for his troubles and, as he and Nico de Boinville approached the final flight in a clear lead, even those who risk such odds as a matter of routine often “in-running” were counting their impending returns.

But then it almost ended in, if not tragedy – we’ve seen enough of thise in the UK and elsewhere in the world lately to know the difference – at least horse-racing turmoil, as the big horse crashed through that last obstacle.

 

 

He’s clever, though, is Constitution Hill, and landed efficiently enough while de Boinville wasn’t as complacent as his idling mount had been and stayed on board. Ignominy would have been his fate, but normal service was resumed up the hill, with Brentford Hope merely achieving best of the rest status and a very nice second prize of 26 grand.

Not bad for an afternoon’s work when the winner is rated 29lb his superior. Congratulations are due for Harry Derham to identify such a potential reward.

So now it is straight to the Festival, for which Constitution Hill is a 4/5 chance ahead of the Irish trio of Lossiemouth, Brighterdaysahead and last year’s stand-in winner State Man. Maybe next weekend’s Dublin Racing Festival will offer further clarification of where the potential dangers lie, but 4/5 with the guarantee of non-runner no bet seems value to this jaundiced eye. I said earlier, possibly the best we’ve ever seen. Sorry, he’s the best and you can’t get away from it.

Before Saturday’s other most interesting contest with the Festival in mind, there was general concern that East India Dock, the overnight 8/13 favourite for the JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle might be a trifle “skinny” in face of a strong back-up field for this juvenile contest. He started at 2/1 on and won as he pleased.

 

 

This was the race in 2024 where Sir Gino, Constitution Hill’s “shadow” in the Nicky Henderson yard, demolished Burdett Road’s hopes of Triumph Hurdle success when the James Owen gelding had been market leader after his bright start to jumping.

In the event, neither horse was there to try to stem the irresistible force that Willie Mullins was able to bring to the race which he has dominated for the past two seasons with Lossiemouth and then Majborough who won at Cheltenham last March from Kargese.

Sir Gino, having missed Cheltenham, took out Kargese at Aintree and then deputised for Constitution Hill to win the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle in November. With Constitution back in time to run over hurdles at Christmas, Sir Gino was allowed to switch smoothly to fences and impressed so much in beating Ballyburn at Kempton that he’s odds on for the Arkle Novice Chase even though Majborough has also made a winning switch to the larger obstacles. Again, Leopardstown might give us an inkling as to where the Mullins team is now.

Henderson’s skill at earmarking a lightly-raced French import as a Cheltenham Festival contender had, until Saturday, had a serious influence on the Triumph Hurdle market. Lulamba, the easy UK debut winner for Henderson of his juvenile hurdle at Ascot remains the 5/4 favourite despite East India Dock’s ten-length win on Saturday. The third horse home had been 18 lengths behind him when they met previously over the course, now it was 28 lengths back to that Nigel Hawke runner, Torrent.

In between them in the J P McManus colours was Stencil, a good winner two runs back in France for the George/Zetterholm team, but a well-beaten sixth last time out, both races at Compiegne.

Lulamba had raced only once before his smooth success, that was for previous trainer Arnaud Chaille-Chaille (so good they named him twice – still can’t resist it!) at Auteuil. He contested a 15-runner AQPS race and started almost 8/1 yet bolted home by five lengths from another George/Zetterholm juvenile.

Compare that history with East India Dock, who went off in front and made all on Saturday. That was his third unbeaten hurdle race following a busy campaign on the flat where he won twice with three places from ten, running at two miles and ending with an 89 rating. Two different ways of arriving at the same point.

Which do you choose, the battled-hardened ex-flat racer or the totally untested dual hurdle winner? I know which type Henderson would favour and with the immediately-preceding example of Sir Gino who came a similar route in 2023, it’s hard to pass over Lulamba, but I think it would be great for racing if James Owen did have a Festival win.

Incidentally, it seems he still intends having a shot at the Champion Hurdle with Burdett Road. The Greatwood Hurdle winner is up to 150 after his latest third to Constitution Hill and Lossiemouth in the Christmas Hurdle and you are entitled to believe he would have finished closer but for a very bad mistake at the last, which brought a tired effort to the finish thereafter.

Running for third or fourth at Cheltenham is still a worthwhile objective. Last year, the places behind State Man were around £100k, £50k and £25k. With the chance of a smallish field, where can you be getting such value for money? Also, the proud right in your later days to show your grandchildren the race card with your horse and the greatest hurdler of all time contesting the same race.

My grandchildren have had the odd day at the races, but it’s their parents who have the recollection of the day they came to Cheltenham late in January 1986 to see my horse (owned with Terry Ramsden after he bought half my share) win Sir Gino’s and East India Dock’s Triumph Hurdle Trial. The silver trophy was and is very nice, and I’ve promised it to my elder daughter. I just had a look and it needs a clean.

The race in those days was sponsored by the Tote and was worth ten grand to the winner. Tangognat started second favourite for the big race but finished tailed off on fast ground. Peter Scudamore, who had ridden him to that win and also on January 1 at the same course, was forced to ride for his boss David (The Duke) Nicholson despite protest, and won on 50/1 shot Solar Cloud, his and Nicholson’s first winner at the Festival.

When earlier I played a couple of times in football matches against David Nicholson – press versus trainers – I came away with heavily-bruised shins, he was such a tough bugger. But deep down there was a great degree of kindness, too.

A few years later and after the football, a horse I’d bought for two grand off Robert Sangster for an owner of Wilf Storey’s had proved a money-spinner. That horse, Great Easeby, was by Vincent O’Brien’s and Sangster’s French Derby winner and later champion stallion Caerleon and was adept both as a hurdler and a flat-race stayer.

He lined up for the 24-runner Hamlet Cigars Gold Card Handicap Hurdle (precursor to the Pertemps Final) and won all out from fast-finishing Gillan Cove, with Nicholson’s Pharanear a close third.  The stewards interviewed the jockeys to see if Great Easeby had caused interference to Pharanear and 7lb claimer Richie McGrath was entitled to be nervous.

Nicholson, however, instructed his jockey Richard Johnson not to object, which might otherwise had given the race to Gillan Cove. The Duke – more a King to my mind.

Incidentally, 29 years on, the same Richard Johnson signed the chit at Cheltenham’s Tattersalls sales on Saturday night at 230k for an Irish point-to-point winner. The not-so-young McGrath is also busy with a preparation yard in Middleham and remains a great friend and help to his old mate Graham Lee.

*

I note trainers are being recommended by their trade organisation the NTF to request payment for interviews and Dan Skelton is quoted in yesterday’s Racing Post as agreeing with the idea.

I wonder how much trainer Evan Williams would be expecting to price up his “inside information” after Saturday’s 4.20 race at Uttoxeter. Interviewed by Andrew Thornton and asked about his Owl Of Athens that had been backed from the overnight 66/1 to 85/40, he said, “you must be clutching at straws if you backed it”. Owl Of Athens won by eight lengths.

- TS

The Maths of Multiples, Part 2

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In my previous article, the discussion moved to each-way doubles and how the makeup of certain races / markets has the potential to give punters an edge over bookmakers, certainly in terms of the place part of such a bet, writes Dave Renham. You can read that article here. In this follow up, we are going to dive deeper into the world of the ‘each-way double’.

For these bets to be profitable in the long run, we ideally need to have achieved a value price on both of the two selections, in terms of the win part as well as the place part, for every bet that has been struck. In other words, the actual chance for both parts of the bet for both selections are higher than the percentage chances on offer from the bookmaker. Technically we could also make a long-term profit if one of the two parts of the bet always offers enough value to compensate for the part that does not. It goes without saying that achieving any sort of edge is far from easy.

To try and illustrate this in numbers let us imagine an each-way double where we have place terms of one quarter the odds, and the price on both selections is 5.0 (4/1). The true percentage odds for a horse priced 5.0 to win is 20%; the true percentage chance for a place with quarter the odds stands at 50%. (N.B. a ‘win’ constitutes a ‘place’, so effectively ‘place’ means ‘win or place’). Therefore, if both horses are priced over 5.0 to win, we have a value bet.

To help crunch the numbers, I have created an excel spreadsheet to simulate a series of each-way doubles with a specific price / percentage chance for each selection. The number of simulated each-way selections for each series of bets has been set to 1000. This is a huge number of races but due to each-way doubles rarely achieving two wins, it makes sense to use such a large number. Ultimately it is easy to tweak the number of bets/races for each simulated series, so I could adjust the number of races up or down. Within each simulation I can adjust the win/place percentage chance of these ‘runners’ (above and below the ‘true’ percentage chance) to examine the long-term outcome from a profit/loss/returns perspective.

So, to kick off I'll return to the example of the two 5.0 priced runners given in the third paragraph, where we have place terms of one quarter the odds. If we assume each 5.0 price is always the ‘true’ price, then over 1000 bets we would break even. The maths look like this based on a £1 each-way stake (£2 in total) on these 1000 each-way doubles:

Races with two wins – 40
Races with ‘place’ wins (e.g. Win/Place or Place/Win or Place/Place) – 210
Races where the bet was a loser (e.g. at least one horse unplaced) - 750

Thus...

The 40 successful win bets would have paid £960 profit and £120 profit on the place part of the bet;
The 210 winning place bets would have paid £630 profit for the place part but would have lost the £210 placed on the win part of the bet, leaving a profit of £420.
The 750 losing bets would have seen a loss of both the win stake and the place stakes equating to £1500.

Adding the profits of £960, £120 and £420 we end up in credit to the tune of £1500, but subtracting the losing bet total of £1500 we arrive at that break-even situation as mentioned above.

This 5.0 / 5.0 example shows what happens when the horses win and place as often as they theoretically should do based on their odds / percentage chance. In this case we know already that a true 5.0 shot should win 20% of their races and win or be placed in 50% of them. So, what happens when these percentage chances differ from the ‘true’ percentage chances? This is where my spreadsheet comes in to save time.

The first graph will look at the effect that different win and placed percentages have on the long-term Return on Investment figure (ROI%). Remember we will be theoretically placing 1000 each-way doubles on two horses priced 5.0 with quarter the odds a place. In order to help explain the graph, the table below shows how I have adjusted the win and place percentages:

 

 

 

 

There is a neat symmetry to these results. As is shown, if we could increase the average win chance by 2% (from 20% to 22%) and the placed percentage also by 2 (from 50% to 52%) the long-term return would be a pleasing 14% or 14p in the £.

Let’s look at another example. This time we will assume both horses are priced 6.0 (5/1) but the place terms are 1/5 of the odds. I have tweaked/changed the percentages in exactly the same way as I did in the first example. For the record the true win percentage chance here is 16.7% (to 1 decimal place), with the place chance being 50%. Here is what I found:

 

 

We get a similar pattern as one would expect although not quite the exact symmetry of the previous example. It should be noted at this juncture that the 1000 bet simulation using this particular price point could show that a horse has won 39.89 times in the 1000 races! Clearly this is not possible, so I have simply rounded the ‘expected’ win or placed results to the nearest whole number. Therefore, one could argue that the 7.8% ROI for let’s say the W17.7 P51 group is not 100% accurate, but it is as near as doesn't matter in the context of these simulations.

Time now to look at two horses with different prices; I am going to consider horses priced 3.0 (2/1) and 5.0 (4/1), using one quarter the odds a place. This is more difficult to show on one graph because we now have effectively two win percentages and two place percentages being used for each ROI% calculation. Hence, I am going to share two separate graphs.

In the first of the two graphs the ROI%s shown are based solely on the win percentages for each horse changing compared to their true win percentage chances. In this case I have assumed that the place percentage chance has remained the same for both horses for this simulation. The bottom of the graph has a key which I will now explain:

TW stands for the true win percentage chance for each horse based on their prices of 3.0 and 5.0 (which 33.3% and 20%)

TW+1 stands for the true percentage win chance +1% (34.3% and 21%)

TW+2 stands for the true percentage win chance +2% (35.3% and 22%)

TW+3 stands for the true percentage win chance +3% (36.3% and 23%)

TW-1 stands for the true percentage win chance -1% (32.3% and 19%)

TW-2 stands for the true percentage win chance -2% (31.3% and 18%)

TW-3 stands for the true percentage win chance -3% (30.3% and 17%)

 

To be clear, the graph below shows the effect on the ROI% of only theoretical changes in the long-term win percentages. All place calculations are based on their true percentage place chances which for the 3.0 priced horse is 66.7% (to 1 decimal place) and for the 5.0 priced horse it is 25%.

 

 

Assuming we can improve our percentage chance of each horse winning by 3% compared to their true chance we would make close to 13p in the £ over the long term. Conversely, if the percentages for both horses dropped by 3% we would be losing just over 11p in the £.

The second graph will show theoretical changes in the place percentage while keeping the win percentages at their true figures. I will again use +1, +2 idea but this time I will use TP meaning true place percentage:

 

 

As we can see a change of 1%, 2% or 3% in the placed percentages has less influence on the ROI%. However, if we can gain a place edge while keeping parity in terms of the win percentage then we will make money over the longer term. Clearly if we can gain both a win edge and place edge your profits should mount up nicely.

It is time to look at some ‘real life’ data now, based on actual horse racing results and prices going back to 2010. I looked at all 12-runner handicaps over this time frame which covered over 90,000 runners. I looked at the prices of different runners and extrapolated their actual long-term win and placed percentages. I then used these figures to work out the potential returns on a series of 1000 each-way doubles with said percentage chances. As I was simulating 12-runner handicaps for each of the 1000 races, the place terms were set at one quarter the odds. Here is what I found:

 

 

This does not make for pleasant reading. The reason behind such poor figures is, of course, the bookmaker edge I discussed in the first article. The average prices of the runners do not reflect their true chance of winning, or indeed placing.

Readers may note that the 5.0 / 5.0 figures see a loss of 16.6%. If we go back to the first graph in this article which examined a 5.0 price / 5.0 price simulation, we can see that when the win% was set at 18% and the place at 48%, this lost 14%. Given the real-life figures gave us an ROI% just below that at 16.6% it is no surprise to know that the actual win and placed percentages based on the 2010-2024 average figures were just below these at 17.97% for the win and 46.67% for the place.

Understanding how probability works is important when it comes to betting singles, but I would argue it is even more important when it comes to combining two or more horses in a bet. Probability can be a complex subject at a higher level but, fortunately, for betting purposes it is relatively straightforward. Just remember, for those of us betting doubles, trebles, fourfolds, and so on, we need to multiply the percentage chances together to give the overall percentage chance.

*

I hope this has been an enjoyable and informative piece, and that it has tied in neatly with the previous one. Each-way doubles are bets that are worth considering given the right conditions of price to chance and race shape. I am in two minds about whether to dig a bit deeper with the potential to research and write a third piece. I will play around with some ideas in the next few weeks so watch this space!

*

Before I go, if anyone is interested in a more complex probability challenge please read on.

I would like to share a famous problem that I used to pose to my older students when I taught in schools. It is a version of what is known as the ‘Birthday Paradox’.

Imagine 30 children in a room all aged 12. What is the probability that at least two of them will share the same birthday? 

Now for those who have not heard this paradox before, then I urge you to take an educated guess at the chance of this occurring before reading on.

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When I posed this question to my classes over the years, their thinking generally went along the lines that there are 30 children, there are 365 days in a year and hence they divided 30 into 365. Having said that, most of them ‘rounded’ 365 to 300 to make the calculation easier, where 30 divided by 300 gives an answer of 10%. So, I would say 95% of all answers I received were in the ballpark of 10%. However, 10% is way off.

The actual answer is 69.68%.

Be honest now – how many saw that coming?

I am sure there will be a high proportion of readers that will be incredulous that this is the answer. However, if you Google it, you will see that the information above is accurate, and how the answer is calculated.

Until next time...

- DR

Monday Musings: The Lunatics Prove Me Wrong!

/in /by

A week ago, I sat down at this keyboard wondering who were the lunatics that thought staging the inaugural so-called Berkshire Winter Million over the following weekend was a viable project, writes Tony Stafford. The frost stood outside like snow on the whole of my car and temperatures had plunged to minus 5 degrees overnight.

Also, Ascot’s recent record with its mid-January Saturday fixture was hardly encouraging, the last two having been frozen off. The money on offer for the two days on the Riverside Royal racecourse and the sandwiched-in Ascot date was terrific, yet by and large the Irish left us to our own devices: they clearly thought the odds were against its going ahead.

But they, like most of the UK racing fanbase, starved of jumping for much of the previous week or so, were to be confounded.

Windsor has the luxury of wide swathes of turf that are relatively lightly worked all year, those Monday night cards giving the racecourse staff plenty of time between fixtures to repair the effect of pounding hooves.

The worry, having seen the first jumps fixture since Windsor briefly took over some Ascot cards when that racecourse was having its drastic and by now (if not at first) accepted to have been beneficial, not least to racegoers, transformation almost two decades ago, was the layout of the circuit.

Talking to Hughie Morrison on the Friday morning, he said he wasn’t convinced by it, but like trainers of the other 13 runners in the £110k - £57,000 to the winner Fitzdares-backed handicap hurdle - he was prepared to give it a go. He believed his family horse Secret Squirrel was “very well handicapped, but maybe not quite tough enough for a race of this nature”.

I was on a train, travelling back from four brilliant days with Victor Thompson at his superb Link House Holiday Cottages 100 yards from the beach in Northumberland, so didn’t see the race live, but I have since. That was the beach, maybe a mile away across the bay at Beadnell, where Gordon W Richards, father of Nicky, began his own training career in the 1960’s before transferring across country to Greystoke.

Back at Windsor, Hughie needn’t have worried. Indeed, far from being overawed by tackling much more experienced rivals, 11/4 favourite Secret Squirrel gained control over Knickerbocker Glory at the final hurdle and gradually pulled clear to the line, without Nico de Boinville needing to pick up his stick. You would imagine the William Hill Newbury Hurdle at Hughie’s home track in three weeks would be the next objective.

Secret Squirrel was bred by and runs in the colours of the Hon. Mary Morrison, Hughie’s wife, and is a son of Stimulation. Hughie trained Stimulation to win the Group 2 Challenge Stakes over 7f on the flat and supported him as a stallion throughout his time at Llety Farms, a 250-acre spread in Carmarthenshire, run by David Hodge.

On the flat, Stimulation’s best produce has been the staying mare Sweet Sensation, whom Hughie trained to win the Cesarewitch for Paul Brocklehurst. After Friday, Secret Squirrel will have become the sire’s outstanding jumper. Llety Farms have for now given up standing stallions and Stimulation has been sold and been based in Kuwait for the past two years.

Hughie and Mary had a day to remember as a few minutes later at Market Rasen, their recent acquisition Eyed added a second win on the course for the stable. In between he was unsighted going to the first fence at Lingfield where he unluckily came down. Eyed could also be on a steep upward curve as a three-mile chaser.

Back to last week, and I had suggested it was lunatics that framed the Berkshire Winter Million. On the same day as the two Morrison winners, one horse that was sold from the yard for 27,000gns last autumn almost made a winning debut for his new connections an hour or so earlier at Meydan. Lunatick – yes, that’s how they spelt it – got within a neck of bagging the £24k opener on the card, his strong finish thwarted only by Silvestre de Sousa on a 33/1 shot.

While with Victor the other day, preparing for what I believe (well, perhaps hope) will be a compelling book, we had a trip around the area near Newton-by-the-Sea and as far south as Lynmouth and Amble on the coast, seeing the sites where he was King of the Sea Coal industry for decades until the mines packed up. On the way, every few miles there were pockets of houses (amounting in total almost to one hundred): “we built those”, he said.

Then, on the way back for a late lunch at his beloved Purdy Lodge, where they serve the world’s biggest all-day breakfast – not that he or partner Gina Coulson partake – we took in the village of Felton, where in the 1980s he added farming to the strings of his very wide-ranging bow, acquiring four (three now sold) farms totalling 3,750 acres. He removed all the hedges and quickly became the leading corn grower in Northumberland.

As he mused at the time, “If farmers can farm, why not me?  It can’t be that difficult, if you are prepared to work; and all the Thompsons worked!” Until you drive along with Victor’s former farms on either side of the road seemingly on and on for miles – 3,750 acres is almost six square miles! – you realise what a massive undertaking that was. When you consider Llety Farms is 250 acres and many would regard that as a sizeable plot.

It all makes me feel tired! Luckily, I managed to upgrade to a First-Class seat on the way back from Alnmouth (319 miles to London), elected for sausage and mash over a lamb rogan josh and arrived home in okay shape. I didn’t feel it until Saturday evening when for once I slept right through!

The Irish challenge on Friday was restricted to a duo of Gavin Cromwell runners in lesser races and both finished in the money. Same again, two runners, on Saturday. This time it was Willie Mullins, chancing his arm, again, with one-time invincible Energumene, against Jonbon in the Clarence House Stakes; but the Nicky Henderson horse cantered home and will go to Cheltenham as a hotpot for the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

Willie sent over a travel companion for his old champion, no doubt thinking 2/5 shot Kargese, last year’s Triumph Hurdle runner-up, would have a walk in the Royal park. That mare had to give best though to Dan Skelton’s improver Take No Chances who came out on top under Kielan Woods, by three-parts of a length.

Then to yesterday. Here we had to be a little more cautious as among five raiders, two from the more readable Henry de Bromhead in terms of expectation, there were three from less predictable sources.

We all know about back-with-the-licence Tony Martin. The form of his Zanndabad suggested he ought to be among the principals in the 2m4f novice handicap hurdle, but he faded in the home straight, proving correct his trainer’s fears about the soft ground.

Then it was the turn of Charles Byrnes, of whom you can never be sure until the money’s down. And maybe not even then.

Byrnes, like Martin, had a ban recently, but it doesn’t seem to have altered his way of going about his training. He had two runners, one a newcomer in the bumper for whom there was pre-race interest and another in the immediately preceding novice handicap hurdle.

That horse’s three runs this season had been 8th at 33/1, last of 17 at 33/1 and pulled up at 20/1. Despite this, serious money followed him in the 3m4f handicap chase into 9/1. He ran a respectable race in third behind 25/1 shot Planned Paradise, trained by long-distance expert Christian Williams. Watch out Eider Chase!

Byrnes was also on the premises in fourth in the closing bumper, won by winner-a-day over the weekend Harry Fry with Idaho Sun, who looks a very smart performer.

The Irish horses generally ran well, but none from nine was their winning tally over the weekend. So well done to the home trainers and to the organisers, Arena Racing. Even if Ascot is not in their ownership grouping, they do show its racing on their Sky Sports Racing channel. I think it’s fair to say you’ve proved so many of us wrong!

- TS

The Maths of Multiples, Part 1

/in /by

I am sure even the most disciplined of punters will have had a more ‘exotic’ bet at least once in their life, be it an exacta, tricast, placepot, double/treble, or some type of accumulator bet involving four or more selections, writes Dave Renham.

The lure of a bigger payout has a big appeal to many punters; I certainly include myself in that category in the past. I have been very lucky to have what I consider to be one monster betting payout in my life which was thanks to a tricast / CSF combo back in 2004. At the time this one bet paid the equivalent of around ten months’ worth of my take home pay from my teaching job. I wouldn’t mind that happening again now, I have to say!

The problem of course with any exotic bet is that the margin in favour of the bookmaker is usually bigger than it is if solely betting win singles. The more selections you have in an accumulator the bigger the bookmaker’s edge generally is. I am not going to dive deeply into the maths here but to give you a basic understanding of what is going on let me look at a hypothetical fourfold win only accumulator that has been placed with a bookmaker. I am going to assume that the four selections come from races with ten runners in each race and the decimal odds obtained for each horse are:

4.0, 6.0, 3.0, 7.0

In this scenario, the unlikely event of all four winning would net a profit of £503 for a £1 stake (£504 total return, including stake).

The problem is that the true odds of each of the four horses should be bigger. This is due to the inbuilt bookmaker overround/edge. On average the bookmaker’s edge in a 10-runner race will be around 20% (using a rough guide of 2% per horse). Hence when you add up the percentage chance of all the runners this will equal around 120%, not 100% which would, of course, give punters a fair playing field due to the odds be true/correct.

To find odds for these four horses much closer to their true odds we can look on the Betfair Exchange as their betting book for each horse race is always closer to 100%. This means the odds are as near to the true odds as we can get. Of course, we cannot place a fourfold on the Exchange, but I can at least borrow their ‘true’ prices to see what the winning return on this wager should pay, rather than the payout we saw earlier. Here are prices for our four horses that will be nearer to their true odds – the type of odds you would find on the Betfair machine:

4.6, 7.2, 3.25, 8.6

As can be seen each corresponding price is bigger, not by that much, but enough to make a huge difference overall. In this case, the winning profit on the fourfold would stand at a much healthier £924.70 for your £1 stake – over £420 more than would have been returned using the odds available from the bookmaker.

To make money on betting we need to get a value price. For example, if we can get odds of 2.2 on the toss of a fair coin, which should be priced at 2.0 we have value. Hence one could argue that multiple bets or accumulators can offer the punter value as long as all the selections are value prices. One immediate downside of course is that even if we are effectively getting value on each horse, we still need all of them to win!

Staying with the tossing the coin example, we can apply this to horse racing. Let’s assume that we have found four horses priced 2.2 that we believe have true odds of 2.0. If we combine them in a fourfold accumulator, the chances of all four winning equals 1 in 16. This is based on probability theory where we multiply the individual chance of each event together with each other – in this example each horse has a 50% or 1 in 2 chance of winning their respective race so we calculate thus ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ = 1/16.

Hence, we would be expected to win this fourfold bet one time in every 16 attempts. Of course it is not going to pan out perfectly like that in real life – we will not have 15 losing bets followed by a win, then another 15 losers followed by a win and so on. However, over the long term we will win with this type of bet on average around once in every 16 races (if we are correct about our true odds estimate).

But what is the edge on this bet?

Let us imagine we place £1 on each fourfold using the probability theory scenario of one win in 16. Over the 16 bets we would lose £15 on the 15 losing bets but win £22.43 on the one winning bet plus our stake back. This gives us a profit of £7.43 from £16 staked which equates to a Return on Investment (ROI%) of 46.4%.

As I have mentioned this calculation has been based on probability theory being played out perfectly in real life over 16 fourfold bets involving 64 horses priced at 2.0 with true odds of 2.2.

Let’s now compare the winning fourfold return with 64 individual win singles on these same horses using £1 stakes. With a 50% chance of winning this means we win 32 times and lose 32 times. The 32 losses lose us £32. Each win nets us a profit of £1.20 so 32 x £1.20 equals £38.40 giving us an overall profit of £6.40.

Now the eagle-eyed mathematicians will have noted that in the second example the total outlay of the bets comes to £64 and in the fourfold example it came to £16. We were correct, so comparing simply the two profit figures here is not a fair test. We need to calculate the ROI% as before by dividing the profit of £6.40 by the total stake of £64. This gives us an ROI of 10% - a good deal lower than the fourfold return. Therefore, by doing that comparison, we can see that fourfolds where we have value on each horse, potentially gives us extra value in the long term when compared to win singles.

However, this is all well and good, but a massive downside to the multi approach is finding four horses that offer value on the same day. For some of us it hard enough to find one each day, let alone four. In theory, four value selections combined in fourfolds offer us the chance to really enhance our long-term returns, but in practice it is going to be nigh on impossible to achieve it.

Even if we did find four value selections what are the chances these value selections will all be available with the same bookmaker? Not only that, but the example I gave looked at four very short-priced runners giving us returns on average once in 16 races.

If we instead consider say four horses that all had a bookmaker price of 4.0 (3/1) where their true odds were all say 4.3 (3.3/1), based on probability theory this bet is going to be landed just once in every 256 bets (because ¼ x ¼ x ¼ x ¼ = 1/256).

So, if we assume we are able to find four 4.0 priced horses with true odds of 4.3 on the same day with the same bookie, let’s say once every week, and we place them in a win fourfold accumulator, on average we will have one successful bet every 4.92 years! Perhaps this is starting to help explain why bookmakers push their multiple and accumulator bets so much!

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

There is one type of multiple that some people believe can offer us some value though and that is an each-way double. An each-way double is when we place a bet on two horses to win and/or place. If both horses win, the win part is worked out in the same way as a win double. If both horses place, or one horse wins and the other one places, we will win the place part of our each-way double. And, naturally, if one or both horses fail to at least place the bet is a losing one.

Let’s look at example with prices. We’ll assume both horses are priced at 5.0 (4/1) and the place odds are ¼ of the win odds. Here are the possible outcomes based on a £1 each-way double (£2 staked):

 

 

Advocates of this bet will say that one advantage of an each-way double compared with a straight win double is that we can get a return even if both horses fail to win, as long as they get placed. They will also say, quite rightly, that compared to the fourfold accumulators looked at earlier we only need two horses to perform well, not four. Hence the bookmaker edge / margin is less pronounced.

Personally, I do play each-way doubles from time to time. When running my tipping service back in the early 2000s I put up the odd each-way double as actual main bets/selections, and I nailed an each-way double that returned a profit of £128 for an outlay of £2. So, with the right selections in the right race, I view this bet as having potential to make money long term. However, as with anything in betting, we need lots of patience to find the right opportunities.

The ideal type of race we are looking for is when we have a race with a very short-priced favourite, with the second favourite clear in the betting of the remainder. Such a race could look like this – let us assume it is a non-handicap:

 

 

We could find that a maiden or a novice chase/hurdle race could be priced up in this way. In this example the second favourite is ideal as one of our each-way double selections, because there will be value in the place part of the bet. The chance of the place based on the bookmaker price is even money (2.0) thanks to the place paying 1/5 of the odds, but in reality, the true chance of placing is much shorter, probably somewhere around the 1.80 mark.

The maths behind proving this is complicated, so I won’t bore you with that, but after the next race I look at I hope you are able to trust me on it. Therefore, allow me to now give a real-life example from a race in October 2024 with a similar market dynamic, because you will be able to see the place value more easily:

 

The ‘shape’ of the market for this race is not quite as good as my hypothetical example purely because the second favourite is only four points clear of the third favourite in the betting. However, the top two in the betting have the same prices (30/100 and 5/1) as in the imaginary race, and if we look at the Betfair place odds we see the following:

 

 

Now I noted earlier that Betfair odds on the win market are as close to true odds as we can find. It is a similar story for the place market, especially for the top two in the betting. Hence in the Sedgefield race we can see that the ‘true’ place price for Path Of Stars was 1.72. Remember the place part of this bet, if successful, would pay 2.0 at the bookies. This gives us the edge as far as the place part of the bet is concerned because the true chance of Path Of Stars placing in percentage terms was 58.1%, a full 8.1% higher than the bookmaker percentage chance of placing which was 50%.

Hopefully that makes sense, and you can see that there can be a place edge to be found given the right race shape / market make-up.

Unfortunately, before one gets too over excited, there is an issue with a possible each-way double even if you are able to find two similar place edges on the same day with the same bookie, which is that we have not considered the bookmaker win odds versus their true odds.

Ideally, we need to find horses that not only have this place edge, but whose exchange price is as close to the bookmaker price as possible. As we know, this does not happen often, but in this real-life example Path Of Stars was only marginally above his bookmaker price of 6.0 on Betfair as the BSP was 6.16. To give you some maths here, the chance of a true 6.0 priced runner winning is 16.7%, a true 6.16 priced runner has a 16.2% chance of winning.

For the record Path Of Stars did not finish in the first two, but that is not the point. The point is that in terms of the place part of the bet, the probability/maths was in our favour and he was very much a value play.

Five-runner races offer the best value from a place perspective when two horses count for places, hence why I chose that field size to try and illustrate my point. Likewise, eight-runner races offer the best value from a place perspective in terms of three placed horses where the bookmakers pay one fifth of the odds. These races also lend themselves to getting that place edge we have seen already. Below is an eight-runner race from 10th October 2024 which was actually a handicap. The race was at Exeter:

 

 

Again, we have a short-priced favourite, and the second favourite War Lord is again priced at 5/1. With 1/5 the odds a place, the second favourite once more has a 2.0 chance of placing according to the bookmaker odds. However, when we look at the Betfair Placed Odds we see that War Lord’s ‘true’ odds are 1.76 not 2.0.

 

 

This type of race offers the same place edge as before. Unfortunately, in this example War Lord’s win price on Betfair was significantly higher at 8.55. On the upside he finished third and did land the place.

At this juncture I should mention that using five- and eight-runner races for these bets has some inherent danger. One non-runner in either would scupper plans instantly as the place terms will be altered essentially turning the bet on its head. The value place bet would suddenly become a very bad value bet. Hence, it may be better to think about six-runner or nine-runner races as an option just in case, even though these are slightly poorer value in place terms. This is assuming of course you can still gain the same type of edge within the place part of the bet.

That’s all for this article. However, my plan is to go into more detail about each-way doubles in a follow up piece. I have spent several hours creating a spreadsheet that can simulate thousands of races where theoretical each-way doubles with specific prices can be placed, and the long-term returns can be calculated based on ‘true’ win and placed percentages.

Why an article solely looking at each-way doubles? Well, as I said, bookmakers hate these types of bet: they know that there can be a place ‘flaw’ in the type of races I have discussed. Bookmakers have been known to close accounts for people they consider to be successful “each-way double thieves”. [If you value your accounts, you’ll have more success placing these bets on the high street!]

Right, I’m off to play with my spreadsheet and I looking forward to sharing some findings with you next time.

-      DR

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