Read all sorts of commentaries and tips across a range of racing disciplines on the most popular horse racing blog in Britain, from staff and guest writers.

Statistics for National Hunt Racing in November

/in /by

The National Hunt season starts to move up a gear as we roll into November, writes Dave Renham. We have the Paddy Power meeting at Cheltenham; the Grand Sefton Chase at Aintree; the Betfair Chase at Haydock featuring the first Grade 1 of the season; the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle; the Ascot hurdle, Haldon Gold Cup at Exeter, and on.

In this article I will look at November stats and trends for National Hunt racing in the UK going back as far as 2017. Profit and loss has been calculated to Industry Starting Price (SP), but I will quote Betfair Starting Price (BSP) where appropriate.

Betting Performance by Market Rank, November, 2017-2023

Let's start off by looking at the betting market and the returns to SP (ROI%). Below is a graph with an overview of the top market ranks versus the rest:

 

Favourites lost the least in terms of return on investment, while horses 5th or bigger in the betting have proved very poor value. To BSP, losses for favourite backers would have been only 1.56% so not far from a break-even scenario.

Favourite Performance, by Race Code, November, 2017-2023

Sticking with favourites let us see the splits when it comes to race code. For the record there were 11 races held on the all-weather that were classified as National Hunt Flat races so I have combined these results with the overall NH Flat race numbers:

 

 

Favourites in chases proved the best value – an A/E index of 0.97 is close to that magic 1.00 figure. In contrast, favourites in NH Flat races struggled a fair bit. Even at Betfair SP losses were over 12p in the £ (-12.2%). Be wary of any favourite in a NH Flat race in November which finished 2nd or worse LTO. 70 horses have started favourite after this LTO placing of which 18 have won (SR 25.7%) for a loss of £23.70 (ROI -33.9%). Losses to BSP were still steep at £19.51 (ROI -27.8%).

Favourite Performance, by Race Type, November 2017-2023

A look now at handicap market leaders versus non-handicap favs. Here are the splits:

 

 

There is quite a difference here: market leaders in handicaps got to within touching distance of a break-even situation and, to BSP, handicap jollies made a small profit during the study period of £61.52 (ROI +2.8%). Both handicap chase favourites and handicap hurdle favourites proved profitable on 'the machine'.

While I’m discussing favourites, it should be noted that of the 30 such horses in Grade 3 races in November only two have won. A small sample for sure, but one to be aware of.

Performance by Last Time Out (LTO) Finishing Position, November, 2017-2023

I want to look at LTO performance next in terms of finishing position. Here are the numbers:

 

 

Last day winners were the best of a modest bunch in betting performance terms. Having said that, if betting to BSP, LTO winners only lost 2% of stakes (2p in the £). Sticking with LTO winners, if the horse won LTO when making its seasonal debut - and was thus having its second start of the campaign - such runners recorded a profit at BSP of nearly 5p in the £.

Another LTO winner group worth noting is that of those returning to the track after less than three weeks. This cohort won 90 times from 246 (SR 27.6%) with a small loss to SP of £11.01 (ROI -1.2%), but a profit of £88.87 (ROI +10%) to BSP.

It looks worth almost blindly avoiding LTO runners that fell, were pulled up, or unseated their riders. Their figures are extremely poor (perhaps not surprisingly).

Trainer Performance, November, 2017-2023

Time to look at trainer stats now and below is a table containing the trainers with the top 20 overall win strike rates during November since 2017. This covers all runs in the month and all prices:

 

 

Eight of the 20 handlers notched a blind profit to SP, five of which (Greenall / Guerriero, Fergal O’Brien, Twiston-Davies, Venetia Williams and Symonds) were particularly impressive as they did not have big-priced winners skewing their results. The big guns of Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls had plenty of success, but neither offered value across their full runner cohort.

As I have mentioned before, we need to be careful sometimes with trainer data as big-priced winners can skew the profit figures. Hence, I have taken trainers in the above table and compared their A/E indices across two price bands – 9/1 or shorter, and 10/1 or bigger. The first graph shows the trainers whose A/E indices are higher with their shorter priced runners:

 

For this group of trainers, therefore, we can be more trusting in their overall figures. The A/E indices for horses priced 10/1 or bigger are generally poor. Indeed, Messrs. Greenall and Guerriero had no winners from 30 from that group, and Nicky Henderson managed a solitary score from 81 starters.

Most of these trainers have decent A/E indices with their runners priced 9/1 or shorter. Anything 0.95 or higher I would deem as positive and those trainers with that range of A/E index are shown below along with their complete stats for runners priced 9/1 or shorter:

 

 

Five of the nine proved to be profitable while the SP losses for Richards and Henderson were small.

Now let me look at the remaining trainers from the original table whose A/E indices are higher with their bigger priced runners:

 

Kim Bailey, Jimmy Moffatt and Tom Symonds all had decent A/E indices for both groups, whereas the other four trainers - Newland, McCain, Thomas and Thomson - did not. The overall figures for both Thomas and Thomson in the ‘all runs in November’ table showed good profits, but this graph highlights neatly that their figures were skewed. Indeed, the pair enjoyed a winner apiece at 66/1, while Thomson also saddled a 25/1 winner.

Additional Trainer Statistics

Below are some additional trainer stats that could prove useful to follow this November:

1. Paul Nicholls at Wincanton. This was especially so with horses priced 9/1 or shorter. With this cohort he had 30 winners from 79 (SR 38%) for a profit to SP of £16.09 (ROI +20.4%). To BSP it reads +£24.83 (ROI +31.4%).

2. Nicky Henderson runners priced 9/1 or shorter having their second start of the season. This group produced a 30.2% strike rate (35 wins from 116) for a profit of £23.01 (ROI +19.8%). To BSP this improved to £32.24 (ROI +27.8%). Staying with Henderson, his hurdlers at Newbury produced a 31% strike rate and returns to SP of 18p in the £, 27p to BSP.

3. Three trainers have performed particularly well with horses making their seasonal debuts and their results are shown in the table below:

 

 

None of the three have had big-priced winners skewing their results so they are worth keeping an eye out for this November.

4. Chris Gordon at Plumpton. Gordon recorded 11 winners from 39 (SR 28.2%) for a profit to SP of £4.68 (ROI +12%); to BSP £10.45 (ROI +26.8%). When his runners were in the first three of the betting the figures improved to 11 wins from 26 (SR 42.3%) for a profit of £17.69 (ROI +68%) to SP; £23.45 (ROI +90.2%) to BSP.

Trainer Performance, 60+ Runners at 9/1 or shorter, November, 2017-2023

Finally in this piece let me share a good chunk of trainer data in one table. Below are the figures for all trainers that have had 60+ runners that have started at an SP of 9/1 or less. Nine of the trainers have had their data displayed above but I have included them here, too, as it makes more sense than to leave them out. The table is ordered by win strike rate:

 

 

There are 66 trainers there, so plenty to get your teeth into!

Let’s hope the recent historical data in this piece help to point us in the right direction over the next few weeks. It would be nice to win a bit of extra money with Christmas around the corner!

- DR

Monday Musings: Sistina’s Aussie Fortunes

/in /by

 

Who would have believed it? Three hundred and twenty-five days after buying the then five-year-old mare Via Sistina for 2,700,000 guineas at Tattersalls December sales, new owners Yu Long Investments were already in the black, writes Tony Stafford.

On Saturday at Moonee Valley racecourse, Via Sistina tackled the Ladbrokes Cox Plate over ten furlongs. She won, beating the Japanese-trained favourite, the six-year-old entire Prognosis by eight lengths in track record time, taking her earnings in Australia to £2.9 million.

It’s common knowledge that Australian trainers know how to prepare for the Melbourne Cup, Tuesday week’s (November 5) biggest prize and “the race that stops a nation”, but before we get too excited about Via Sistina’s chance in the big one, there is a small hurdle for her to overcome.

Moonee Valley and Flemington may only be 3.1 kilometres apart, so less than the Cup’s distance of two miles (3,200 metres), but the double in the same year of these two highly prestigious races has been only rarely achieved. Phar Lap, the greatest Australian horse of the Inter-War period, did it in 1930, while the dual Melbourne Cup heroine Makybe Diva did the Cups double 19 years ago. Time flies.

She was a six-year-old, and that second Melbourne Cup win proved to be her racing swansong before retiring to stud.

The Cox Plate is acknowledged to be Australia’s premier non-handicap Group 1 race and it carried just over £1.6 million to the winner on Saturday. It was Via Sistina’s fourth Group 1 victory in six starts since travelling down to Australia, to which can be added one second place in another £1.6 million to the winner extravaganza.

Chris Waller, best known for his training of Winx, never asked that great mare to go further than the 1m2f of the Cox Plate. She won the second of her consecutive quartet in the race by eight lengths, mirroring Via Sistina on Saturday, and won 37 of her 43 career starts.

Should Waller decide to go for the Cup. Via Sistina will clearly challenge for favouritism and while like Winx she has never won at beyond 1m2f, she is a staying rather than the speed type of Winx at the trip. If she runs it would add massive excitement and a completely different aspect to an already compelling race.

Two people at least that will be looking on wanly should she run, will be previous owner Becky Hillen, daughter of the late David Wintle, and her initial trainer Joseph Tuite, who handled the five grand yearling as an unraced two-year-old and progressive three/four-year-old.

George Boughey had her in his yard at the latter part of her four-year-old season and then at five, where she began the startling progression, that culminated (so far) in that Cox Plate tour-de-force. Some selling owners cannot bear watching their former horses win for the new connections. Until Saturday, Becky and husband, bloodstock agent Steve, were probably happy enough. After Saturday and maybe next week, it might be a different story.

But for Joe Tuite it can only have been two years of turmoil and what might-have-been after he relinquished his licence in late August 2022. Clearly, studying Via Sistina’s career from the comfort of my office, Tuite had a major part in developing a late-maturing filly into the colossus she now is.

Unraced at two, Via Sistina won second time out as a three-year-old, by five-and-a-half lengths in a Goodwood maiden fillies’ race. She added a Newmarket handicap off 89 by four lengths in October of that year. Such was her obvious potential at that stage, that when Tuite targeted a fillies’ Listed race at Doncaster the following month, she went off as the 11/4 favourite, but finished in the ruck, only 13th of 18.

Clearly at the start of her four-year-old season, her training hadn’t gone smoothly, and it wasn’t until August 27 that Via Sistina made her debut. She appeared in the Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor, a Group 3 race open to colts and geldings as well as fillies. She was a 33/1 shot and in finishing fourth she probably exceeded expectations.

By now though, the die was cast and Joe had already made up his mind to give up the unequal fight of trying to keep himself financially afloat. A report in the Racing Post the day after the filly’s promising return to action tells how it was almost with a measure of relief that he was finishing. The story went thus:-

Joe Tuite felt a mix of sadness and nerves as he saddled the final runner of his 11-year training career on Saturday, yet he stands by a decision to retire due to financial difficulties. Via Sistina outran her 33/1 odds to finish fourth in the Sytner Sunningdale & Maidenhead BMW Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor.

Tuite revealed he'd had a "few offers" for a future job in racing but no decision had been made.

Tuite said on Saturday morning: "It's a bit of a weird feeling – I can't really describe it. It's a bit of sadness I suppose.

"There are a lot of times where you go racing and there's not much of a worry but today I'm on tenterhooks about it all."

The trainer said a difficult season, with just two winners, and financial issues heightened by escalating costs were behind his reasons to retire.

He added: "It's definitely the right thing to do. I was down on numbers, and it was putting square pegs into round holes. I'd be worried looking down the road what the future would be like for the lower-tier of racing, that's for sure.

"It's tough but business is tough for everyone, not just racing, it's in all walks of life.

"I know my decision surprised a few people, but a few people that were closer to me weren't, as they could see the way things were going."

Within not much more than a month, Via Sistina was already showing Joe that maybe if he had held on for a short while, things might have sorted themselves out for him. Transferred to George Boughey, Via Sistina was quickly off the mark for him, running 2nd in the Group 3 Pride Stakes at Newmarket at the beginning of that October and then going across to Toulouse and picking up a provincial Group 3 in November.

She ran five times for Boughey last year as a five-year-old, starting off with a six-length win in the Group 3 Dahlia Stakes at Newmarket in May, before going across to the Curragh for the Group 1 Pretty Polly on July 1 where she beat Hughie Morrison’s slightly unlucky in running Stay Alert by two lengths.

She didn’t win again in this hemisphere, but third as the even-money favourite in the Group 1 Falmouth at Newmarket 13 days later when dropping back to a mile probably wasn’t her ideal task. Then it was 2nd, beaten a nose in the Prix Jean Romanet (ten furlongs) at Deauville before that sale-exploding run behind King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot a year ago.

The luck was certainly just as much with Becky Hillen in terms of the timing with the December sales and all that Aussie money, barely a month ahead. Just as the luck had been notoriously absent when Joe Tuite had to make the awful decision to cut his losses and hand in his licence even as the filly he nurtured so carefully was about to come into full bloom as a late-developing racehorse.

For each of her 121 seconds of action around Moonee Valley on Saturday, Via Sistina earned her new (ish) owners £13,000.

In 11 years as a trainer in the UK, Joe Tuite had a best tally of 30, but usually picked up between 15 and 20 or so wins each year. From 1,881 runs over those 11 seasons, on the flat he won 173 races and total earnings of £1,552,585. Put another way, it represented a return of £825 per runner.

It must be salutary to think that his former inmate, the one that he brought to a position where she was equipped to make the giant strides she later managed as she had not been rushed or abused, won more in those 121 track-record-breaking seconds than he did in all those 11 years.

We keep saying it. Something’s rotten about English racing that we can afford to lose people with the skills of a Joe Tuite because he can’t manage to make it pay. Our only point in world racing seems to be to provide the proven material that can then go back to countries with many times more prize money to spread around and clean up – like Via Sistina!

One footnote. Cheltenham’s winter season proper started on Friday and Saturday and, as usual, it proved a bonanza for the Irish. They had six winners over the two days, including the first four races on Saturday. Henry De Bromhead had the 1-2 in the £100,000 featured chase, his pair mopping up £75k as they careered well clear of the rest up the Cheltenham run-in. Here we go again!

- TS

 

Run Style Bias in Handicap Chases: 2024/25 Season Update (Part 2)

/in /by

This is the second of two articles where I am revisiting run style bias, writes Dave Renham. As with the first piece, which can be read here, the focus is on handicap chases with seven or more runners, and all data has been sourced from UK NH racing between 1st January 2017 and 6th October 2024. I looked mainly at the distances of 2m1f or less and 2m3f-2m4f last time; in this follow up I concentrate on races of 2m5f-2m6f and 2m7f-3m2f.

Before getting into the numbers here is a quick recap of which type of horse fits each run style profile:

Led – horses that lead or dispute the lead early, usually within the first furlong; known as the front runner.

Prominent – horses that race close to pace tracking the leader(s).

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

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

Front Runners in UK Handicap Chases (7+ Runners)

Let us begin by comparing the A/E index for the ‘Led’ group (early leaders/front runners) versus the other three groups combined (Prominent, Mid Div, Held Up) across different field sizes for ALL distances.

 

 

This graph is illuminating. It clearly shows that the front running edge in handicap chases becomes stronger as the number of runners increases. The Impact Value comparison shows the same trend:

 

 

Once we get to 11 or more runners the front running bias becomes extremely potent, strengthening further still as we hit 14+ field sizes.

It’s time now to look at the stats over 2m5f-2m6f.

Run Style in UK Handicap Chases, 2m5f-2m6f (7+ Runners)

My first port of call in terms of this distance band is a comparison of the win strike rates for each run style group. It is important to note that these figures are based, as in the previous article, on the wins to runs ratio within each specific run style group. Here are the splits:

 

As with the first article we see a bias towards front runners, and a tapering related to early race position thereafter; but at 2m5f-2m6f prominent racers were not far behind front runners. Horses that raced further back early in the race continued though to struggle.

Let me share the A/E indices next:

 

There is good correlation with the wins to runs ratio here. The 1.15 figure for front runners indicates good value but it is less impressive than the 2m1f or less figure of 1.23, and also the 2m3f-2m4f figure of 1.31. Prominent racers are within 0.01 of the magic 1.00 figure. The held up A/E of 0.63 is low and has offered punters really poor value.

Onto the Impact Values now:

 

The same sloping pattern can be seen again, displaying good correlation across all three metrics. The 1.5 Impact Value for front runners is, like the A/E number, below the figures achieved at the two shorter distances examined in the first article (1.65/1.75). However, the front running bias is still in evidence, such types winning 50% more than might be expected.

Now I want to examine the individual course run style stats over 2m5f-2m6f. Less than half of the UK NH courses race over this trip so there are only 15 courses to share. Below is a table comparing the wins to runs ratio within each run style group, as well as their A/E indices. As with the first article I have colour coded it to help make the biases clearer. Numbers in green are positive, numbers in red are negative.

 

 

Aintree didn’t make the table due to a small sample size of races. Having said that, four of the 14 races were won by front runners and the average field size was 20. Hence, from limited data, front runners at Aintree look to have an edge.

The strongest front running biases from the other tracks appear to be at Cartmel, Kelso, Sedgefield and Taunton. Ffos Las consistently played against front runners at the shorter distances reviewed in part one, and this has again been the case. Front runners have also struggled at Leicester.

Before moving onto the longer distance races let me share the run style figures over 2m5f-2m6f restricted to horses from the top three in the betting. These stats also share potential profit and loss amounts to SP:

 

 

This table helps to show the positive correlation between the A/E indices with the ROI column. Horses from the top three in the betting that have taken the lead early have been excellent value and profitable to follow; those that raced midfield or were held up early have been very poor value.

 

Run Style in UK Handicap Chases, 2m7f-3m2f (7+ Runners)

Once again I’ll start by sharing the strike rates for each group (wins to runs ratio):

 

Even at longer distances horses that get to the front early have a strong edge. The same pattern across all run styles continues with ‘L’ outcompeting ‘P’ which in turn out outcompetes ‘MD’ with ‘HU’ bottom of the pile once more. Horses that led in handicap chases at this distance range won twice as often as horses that raced in midfield.

The A/E indices are next up:

 


 

These indices suggest that the front running bias is stronger for races between 2m7f and 3m2f than it is at those from 2m5f to 2m6f. Indeed, if one had correctly predicted the front runner(s) in each race from 2m7f-3m2f one would have profited to SP to the tune of £842.05 (ROI +31.6%). Finally let me share the Impact Values:

 


 

These values confirm how strong the bias is, so now may be a good time to compare the A/E indices and Impact Values for front runners across the four distance bands covered in the two articles:

 

 

This confirms the consistently strong figures across the board, with the 2m3f-2m4f distance edging it in terms of having had the strongest bias over the period of study. But there looks to be value and a well above average strike rate at all distances reviewed.

Back to the longer (2m7f-3m2f) distance band and let me share the run style stats when restricting to those horses that were in the top three in the betting only.

 

 

Front runners from the top three in the betting have performed extremely well showing how profitable they could have been. Again, we have terrible returns for mid division and held up runners.

It’s time now to look at the 2m7f-3m2f course run style splits looking at wins/runs and A/E indices. The format will be familiar by now:

 

 

The courses with the strongest front running biases in this distance bracket have been at Ayr, Cartmel, Catterick, Cheltenham, Chepstow, Exeter, Hereford, Hexham, Ludlow and Musselburgh, while front runners have struggled at Bangor, Carlisle and Haydock.

Overall Front Running Biases in UK Handicap Chases (7+ Runners)

There were eight courses that showed a consistently strong bias across all distances. They were Cheltenham, Doncaster, Exeter, Hexham, Kelso, Musselburgh, Sedgefield and Southwell. Two courses saw front runners at a disadvantage overall, those being Bangor and Ffos Las. The remaining courses offer front runners some sort of edge although its strength varies from track and trip to track and trip.

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

Summary

That concludes this two-parter. In summary, since 2017 in handicap chases of 7+ runners, front runners have enjoyed an edge at all distances and at nearly all courses. The strength of the bias has been as strong in 2023 and 2024 as it has ever been so when analysing such races make sure you consider how the race is likely to be run from a run style / pace perspective. I have no doubt it will improve your bottom line.

And, if you're not using the pace maps on this site, you are at a distinct disadvantage to those who are. The maps on geegeez.co.uk are more accurate than any other pace maps I've used, and are worth the subscription fee alone in my opinion.

- DR

Monday Musings: UK Prizemoney has a mountain to climb

/in /by

Eighty-six horses, many of whose connections feared that heavy ground at Ascot would render their task hopeless, gathered on Saturday aiming to take a slice of the – for the UK anyway – lavish prizemoney on offer, writes Tony Stafford. It was British Champions Day, for four Group 1 races, a Group 2 and a one-mile handicap making up what from the stands seemed a motley six-race card and, in the end, the ground wasn’t too bad looking at the race times.

The UK administrators have clearly been beaten to the punch though by the Irish, and by their two-day feast at Leopardstown and the Curragh in September. Obviously, the French could never be budged from their also two-day sacrosanct Arc extravaganza over the first weekend of October.

So here we were again, switched from the outside flat track to the inner hurdles circuit. As I approached in the late morning, the sun finally having broken through, I passed the one-mile round start. The grass looked lush and verdant green, almost waiting for a herd of cows to come along and start munching.

Apart from Kyprios in the opener, there was no other established superstar on show although Roger Varian’s Charyn deserves to be elevated to the elite level after snaffling the day’s second biggest prize, the one-mile Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, with authority.

Saturday’s top pot, money-wise, the Champion Stakes, had been expected to be a match between the smart French-trained Calandagan and William Haggas’s improving Irish Champion Stakes winner, Economics. But in a rough race, Economics had a dreadful passage (and also reportedly bled), and it looked as though his fellow three-year-old Calandagan was home and dry, having squeezed through a gap at the rail.

But Jim Crowley on the lightly raced six-year-old Anmaat, at 40/1, also managed to thread a passage through in the dying strides to deny the younger horse and give trainer Owen Burrows a massive boost. Most of the crowd were scratching their heads, apart from my mate Steve Howard who fluked a tenner each-way and paid (with help of two of his friends) for a superb Chinese meal for nine of us on the proceeds.

To my mind, the Champion Stakes has never been the same, not benefiting at all from the switch in 2011 from Newmarket and its far less weather-susceptible surface, even conceding Frankel on his career finale the following year.

Saturday’s racing was eventful, Kyprios making it seven from seven on the season with one of his most commanding performances when collecting the G2 Long Distance Cup by an untroubled couple of lengths. What do the boys do now, we thought? Keep on collecting the same half dozen races as in 2022 and this year – 2023 was an injury-marred aberration – or retire him to stud? Not a bit of it, Aidan O’Brien said after the race, he’ll be having the winter off, coming back in the spring for the customary Navan then Leopardstown path to, hopefully, a third Gold Cup – and the rest.

The Stayers are given short shrift by the powers that be, the winner’s cheque £255,000 good enough for a non-elite race but below the other treasures on offer. £283k was the main prize for the sprinters and fillies and mares, while more than double that goes to the milers and ten-furlong stars. Takeaways for the two top prizes were respectively £737k for Anmaat and £655 grand for Charyn. Second home in the Champion Stakes was worth £279k for Calandagan while another French horse, Facteur Cheval, received £248k for his second to Charyn, both uncomfortably close to Kyprios’s take-home pay.

Calandagan had already earned eleven grand more than Saturday on his previous trip to the UK, following home City of Troy in the £703k to the winner Juddmonte International at York.  When Ambiente Friendly ran on into second behind City Of Troy in the Derby two and a half months previously, he collected £334k for the Gredley family and James Fanshawe against the winner’s prize of £882,000, best in the entire UK programme.

Thus, the top reward for a runner-up spot in UK racing in 2024 has been Ambiente Friendly’s £334,000. So what? you may ask. So what, indeed. On the other side of the world, at Randwick racecourse in Sydney, Australia earlier the same day, a horse called I Wish I Win collected £337,331 for finishing last of 11! That’s 43 thousand more than Ambiente Friendly’s best second prize of the entire UK race programme and, as near as damn it, £100k more than Calandagan picked up in the Champion Stakes later that day.

The six-year-old was competing in the Everest Stakes over six furlongs. If he had finished seventh, the money would have been just the same for this six-year-old who had previously won six of his 18 races. His total earnings to date have been a touch short of £7 million.

The year-older mare Bella Nipotina won the race, and her earnings leapfrogged Saturday’s tail-ender by dint of the £3.74 million to the winner – up to £8.78 million. She has won seven of 52 career starts and is trained by Ciaron Maher. Kyprios, with 15 wins from 19 starts and only a year younger than Bella Nicolina, has earnings of £2,635,000.

Until recently, Maher shared the training billing with Englishman David Eustace, son of James and brother to Harry, who has quickly built up a strong stable in their hometown of Newmarket. David has now moved to Hong Kong, another place where the prizemoney levels must burn into the hearts of those David has left behind in his native land.

Not content with knocking off the big one, Maher also collected more than a million for third and, for good measure, added another £1.5 million for the victory of Duke De Sessa in the Caulfield Cup. Caulfield, near Geelong in Victoria, is a mere 886 kilometres south, and a nine-hour drive, from Randwick. The race is usually a stepping stone to the Melbourne Cup, run at Flemington on Tuesday, November 5.

A nice touch on the last race of the Randwick card was the £1.58 million-to-the-winner King Charles III Stakes as the King and Queen embark on their tour of Australia. Maher was second here, threequarters of a length behind winner Ceolwulf, with the favourite Pride Of Jenni.

Reverting to the Everest, and its 20 million Australian dollar (just over £10 million) total prize fund, it threw up some other amazing facts. The 11 competitors after the race had each won more than £1 million in their careers to date, several of them from only a handful of runs, especially a trio of three-year-olds. Among these was a Justify colt owned by Coolmore called Storm Boy, who finished eighth behind the winner yet beaten only two lengths.

The total career earnings for the eleven, stands at a notch over £40 million from a total of 180 runs, which I make more than £22,000 per run. When Duke De Sessa was trained in Ireland by Dermot Weld, he won around €100k for two Group 3 wins and one Listed victory.

The clue? The title name Everest is preceded by the letters TAB, the off-course near monopoly system which fuels the astonishing power of the prize money in that country. No wonder owners here beseech their horses to win nice races as three-year-olds and await the calls of the top trainers, of which Maher is no exception.

We’ve been saying it for half a century. Maybe the Prime Minister’s wife, who likes racing, might get her hubby and his party to rush through a bill to effect an off-course pool monopoly here. Actually, no rush, you have five years to do it!  We’d still have one or two bookmakers on the course for colour, although when it happens, don’t try to get a hefty bet on when you go racing, having paid all the excessive costs – for everything!

*

Last week at Newmarket, Book 2 of Tattersalls sales in Newmarket was also operating at more than 100,000 guineas per horse over the first two days – of course nothing like the drama of Book 1. Maybe if the buyers had been sending their precious acquisitions of the previous week straight to Australia you could start to understand how it could happen.  It won’t be the case; the Aussies are mostly too canny for that and wait to see what they can do on the track before biting.

At the other end of the scale, Book 4, starting late on Friday when most people had gone home, originally catalogued 81 yearlings. Of those, 20, probably wisely, didn’t show and of the remainder that did, 28 didn’t make their reserve prices.

In the event, 33 were sold through the ring, although others, probably out of desperation by their vendors will have found new owners later. The total official aggregate of the 33 that did change hands was £111k, for an average of just over three grand and a median of two thousand, both figures around one per cent of the Book 1 figures.

Ten found new buyers at the minimum bid of 1,000 guineas including a strong-looking Rumble Inthejungle colt bought by Henry Candy. Henry, one of the most-admired veterans of his profession, has been saying that he has no wish to retire, and that he has worked hard all his life and intends to continue to do so. I’d love that colt to win a race or two for him.

As for the hapless vendors who have nurtured their young stock with the same care as the posh studs who made all the big money, you must be totally sympathetic. To be in Book 4 is like a leper’s curse. Surely Tattersalls can either include them in a slightly enlarged Book 3 where they could have a chance as buyers are still around, or be more stringent on which horses they accept for the sale.

- TS

 

Run Style Bias in Handicap Chases: 2024/25 Season Update (Part 1)

/in /by

It has been three years since I looked at run style bias in National Hunt racing, so I felt now was a good time to revisit the topic, writes Dave Renham. Personally, I use run style bias for around 50% of my National Hunt bets so it is an area that I feel is extremely important. This article is the first of a two-parter.

The focus for both articles will be handicap chases with seven or more runners. Data has been taken from UK NH racing spanning from 1st January 2017 to 6th October 2024. I have split the races into four distance bands – 2m1f or less, 2m3f-2m4f; 2m5f-2m6f and 2m7f-3m2f. In this piece I will concentrate on the two shorter distances of 2m1f or less and 2m3f-2m4f. There is a relatively small number of handicap chases at 2m2f and these have a micro-section below.

As a reminder, geegeez.co.uk offers some powerful resources and the stats I am sharing with you here are based on the site’s pace / run style data, which can be found within individual racecards, a separate Pace Analyser tool, and in the highly configurable Query Tool. The run style data on Geegeez is split into four groups – Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score assigned to each group. Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:

Led – horses that lead early, usually within the first furlong or so; or horses that dispute the early lead. The early leader is often referred to as the front runner.

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

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

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

Race Leaders in Handicap Chases

Let me start by comparing the win percentages for the ‘L’ group (early leaders/front runners) versus the other three groups combined (Prominent, Mid Div, Held Up) across all distances by Year:

 

 

As the graph indicates front runners have a definite edge when it comes to strike rate. It is important to be aware that the number of runners in each run style group differs: prominent and hold up categories usually have more runners within their groups. 'Leaders' is the smallest group as usually you only get one early leader in this type of race, occasionally two when there is a battle for the early lead.

Hence although raw strike rates have significance, it is may be instructive to look at metrics like Impact Values (IV) and the A/E index (Actual winners/Expected winners). More information on these IV and A/E metrics can be found here.

First here are the A/E index splits by year:

 

 

These figures correlate positively with the strike rates. The ‘L’ group of race leaders have recorded consistently high A/E indices ranging from 1.09 to 1.33. The three other run style groups combined have ranged from 0.76 to 0.82. Anything above 1.00 for A/E indices suggests good value so front runners have consistently offered punters good value year in year out. Onto the Impact Value comparison now:

 

 

This is to all intents and purposes a carbon copy of the A/E graph. These initial findings already highlight why run style bias is important in handicap chases and something that needs to be factored in to your form study. It is time now to break the stats down into the distance bands as mentioned earlier. Let me start by examining the shorter distance handicap chases.

Handicap Chases of 2m1f or less

To begin with l will share the win strike rates for each group. Note that these figures are based, as before, on the wins to runs ratio within each specific group. Here are the splits:

 

Based on what we have seen already in this article in terms of the overall stats, these figures should come as no surprise. The ‘led’ group is comfortably clear of the rest in terms of win rates. Thereafter, the graph slopes from left to right implying that the nearer a runner is to the front of the race in the early part the better. We will see this pattern tend to recur across all race distances. Let me share the A/E indices for these shortest distance handicap chases next:

 

This is another demonstration of how the 'Led' group have offered punters excellent value. 1.23 is a strong A/E index figure on a significant sample size. We again see the sloping pattern from left to right, giving us the correlation statisticians are always looking for. The IV splits complete the set:

 

There is strong positive correlation once more, emphasizing the edge front runners have over 2m1f or less. Indeed, if you had sourced a crystal ball in perfect working order and been able to predict all the horses that led or contested the lead early in these races you would have secured a huge £1 level stakes profit of £330.21 (ROI +29.9%). This is just to Industry SP; to Betfair SP you could probably double that figure.

Now I want to examine the individual course run style stats over 2m1f or less. Courses that had a handful of qualifying races have not been included. Below is a table comparing the wins to runs ratio within each run style group, as well as their A/E indices. I have colour coded it to help make the biases clearer. Numbers in green are positive, numbers in orange or red are negative.

 

 

The strongest front running biases look to be at Cheltenham, Doncaster, Hereford, Hexham, Sedgefield, Southwell and Stratford. Other courses where the bias is still very significant include Cartmel, Huntingdon and Plumpton.

I did a little extra digging into the Cheltenham and Sedgefield run style stats because, as we know, it is all very well having a front running bias, but it is not easy predicting who will lead a race early. Looking at the Cheltenham numbers first, five of the 27 winners were top rated pre-race in the PACE section of the geegeez.co.uk racecards, while 12 of the 27 came from the top three in the pace ratings. If you had backed ‘blind’ the top three pace rated horses in all qualifying races at Cheltenham, you would have made a profit of £29.18 to SP (ROI +36%). Looking at Sedgefield, where there were more qualifying races (44), the top-rated pace horse won 12 times and backing them blind would have secured an SP profit of £16.55 (ROI +37.6%). The second rated pace horse won eight times for a profit of £28.04 (ROI +63.7%). So, 20 of the 44 races were won by one of the top two rated pace horses in the pre-race pace cards. That is extremely impressive going.

Clearly, I have delved more deeply into just two courses and distances as regards analysing the performance of the pre-race pace ratings, but the initial signs are promising. The problem with this type of research is that it is quite time consuming as you can only cross-check one race at a time. However, when I get some time, I will analyse some more.

In terms of courses where front runners ‘under achieve’, these include Carlisle, Ffos Las, Newbury, Sandown, Uttoxeter and Warwick. As punters, it is important to recognise the uniqueness of British horse racing in terms of how different course configurations can be. Courses can be left- or right-handed, sharp or stiff, undulating or flat, while the circumference and shape of each track differs too. Fences are placed in different positions and the length of run ins also varies. Some of these factors may help to strengthen or indeed weaken any front running bias.

Now it is time to switch to the next distance band.

Handicap Chases at 2m2f

Briefly, there were 86 races at this specific distance in the near eight year study period. The breakdown is below and, happily, the pattern is repeated: horses that lead do much the best, though those racing midfield have outperformed prominent runners. Hold up runners have found life difficult.

 

 

Of the five qualifying tracks with 7+ runner handicap chases at this specific distance, Kempton was by far the best performing for front runners.

 

 

Handicap Chases of 2m3f to 2m4f

I am going to start with this cohort by looking at the strike rates for each run style group as I did before. Keep in mind that these are wins to runs ratios calculated within each group.

 

These figures mimic closely those for the 2m1f or less distance band. Front runners would have again been a licence to print money should you have been able to predict them pre-race. Backing the front runner during this timeframe, would have made a profit of £548.82 to £1 level stakes (ROI +33.3%).

Onto the A/E indices now:

 

These numbers suggest the front running bias is stronger than over the shorter distance. Let’s see if the IV figures back up that assertion:

 

The chart does correlate with the slightly improved A/E indices. To save readers scrolling up and down to compare the two distances, the table below shows these stats in one place to make the comparison easy:

 

 

The led and prominent figures are higher for both metrics at the 2m3f-2m4f distance, while the mid div and held up figures are lower. All of this points firmly to an even stronger run style/pace bias to front runners.

Time to examine the individual course data for the 2m3f-2m4f group now, and below is another table comparing the wins to runs ratio within each run style group, as well as their A/E indices. It’s colour coded as before:

 

 

It is interesting to see that Cheltenham, Doncaster, Sedgefield and Southwell have strong front running biases again as does Plumpton. Other courses that have displayed a good edge to early leaders include Carlisle, Musselburgh, Perth and Uttoxeter. There are three courses where front runners have been at a disadvantage which were Bangor, Ffos Las and Lingfield. The Ffos Las figures for 2m1f or less were also poor for front runners.

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

And that is where we will leave the first of this two-parter. It will be interesting to see how strong the front running biases are at the two longer distance groups - find out next week! Until then...

- DR

Monday Musings: A Mishap for Martin

/in /by

It wasn’t Mullins, Willie or nephew Emmet; nor Gordon Elliott; neither O’Brien, Aidan or Joseph; nor even tricky old Charles Byrnes that was slipping away silently to collect the proceeds from a 33/1 winner of the Club Godolphin Cesarewitch at Newmarket on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. No, it was that man Martin again.

Tony of that ilk is a mastermind at, in racecourse parlance, having it off. He did under his own name in the Chester Plate (Cup consolation) in May; lost his licence but still had the brass neck to stand grinning alongside his sister Cathy O’Leary – the trainer in name – after the same horse, Alphonse Le Grande, also picked up the Northumberland Plate consolation at Newcastle in June. Martin must have had more than a little influence in Saturday’s even more spectacular coup de grace on Dewhurst Stakes Day.

I would imagine those closest to the horse won a few bob – it’s difficult not to when the SP is 33/1 and presumably in a race that was at least ten short of the optimum figure - and no better for it - they must have got longer than that in the build-up.

It was almost with glee then that on the TV coverage after the photo-finish verdict was announced, Lydia Hislop and Nick Luck counted the whip strikes administered by apprentice rider Jamie Powell and came up with ten, the magic number which would normally be construed as the borderline for disqualification.

Nothing will be finalised until tomorrow when the whip offences committee reviews a case that seemed to satisfy the local stewards and young Powell himself, namely that he did indeed hit Alphonse Le Grande ten times.

The £99k first prize will be a significant loss to the owners, the appropriately named Bet Small Win Big syndicate, but their respective sibling trainers have done them proud collecting three very tough handicaps in the UK this year. Pretty rough justice for the rider, too!

The hapless jockey is no novice. Before this year he had amassed 59 wins in three seasons at home. In that context, only seven more from 171 rides in 2024 when an acceleration might have been expected along with experience, is quite an anomaly.

But nothing like the anomaly where riding for Saturday’s trainer, or indeed her brother when he still held the licence, is concerned. Cathy O’Leary has had an almost equal number of domestic runners on the flat and over jumps in the past period. Until September 5 when En Or won a two-mile handicap at Clonmel, she had not trained a single domestic winner and, until now, it’s En Or from 37 runs. Over jumps, it’s nought from 30, so one from 67 in all.

As to the possibility of a rider/trainer(s) connection, forget it. Young Powell, as I mentioned earlier, has had 171 rides in Ireland this year, yet none from either Mrs O’Leary or her brother. I wonder if the disqualification is confirmed tomorrow whether he’ll be asked to get up on another of their plots.

Plots they surely are. One report suggested Alphonse Le Grande had been down the field in his previous race in Ireland as though it was a rubbish run. His eighth of 30 in the Irish Cesarewitch, worth almost 500k to the winner, represented a very good performance. I just watched the replay, and he was almost the only runner staying on in a race won by Aidan O’Brien’s The Euphrates

In the last furlong and a half, he passed at least half a dozen high-class handicap stayers, many like him laid out to try to win the massive prize. Had there been another 100 yards to run, he would have been fifth.

Anyway, one win in 67 at home: yet two in five for Cathy in the UK. Her Zanndabad came over for the Queen Alexandra at Royal Ascot, started 9/2 favourite and finished sixth under William Buick. Belgroprince accompanied Alphonse Le Grande to Newcastle and finished seventh behind him.

Her final UK runner in that time is probably one to write down in your notebooks or trackers. The 47-rated Jackie Brown came to Hamilton in August and was unplaced in a low-grade handicap.

Since returning home, the filly has had three runs and started 25/1 each time. First it was 14th of 17; next 5th of 12; then last week at Navan she was beaten only half a length in an 18-runner handicap. Remember the name and watch out UK, Cathy might well be coming!

If the result is amended tomorrow, it will mean that never mind the 12-horse Irish assault, the UK will have ended two years of their domination in the race with a 1-2. The Crisfords’ Manxman won the race on the far side by half a length from Ian Williams’ Aqwaam, who looked all over the winner a furlong out. Strong-finishing Alphonse Le Grande nosed ahead on the near side of a race shaped into two halves by Ryan Moore’s guiding Queenstown across as they entered the ten-furlong straight.

Ryan and Aidan had earlier had the disappointment of the withdrawal of overnight odds-on shot The Lion In Winter from the Darley Dewhurst Stakes.

In his absence, once raced, and that only a week earlier, Expanded made a brave battle of it with Godolphin’s Ancient Truth up the stands rail while Shadow Of Light, the other Charlie Appleby runner, switched over from the far side group to get up late in a battle of heads.

All three colts will probably be aimed at a Guineas, though whether it will be in Newmarket, Longchamp or at the Curragh is anyone’s guess at this stage. It didn’t appear there was another City Of Troy in there this year, but you never know and it was a great effort for Shadow Of Light to come back so soon after his emphatic Middle Park Stakes win over Whistlejacket two weeks earlier.

Saturday’s racing for the big teams was almost a half-term break after the excesses of three days of Tattersalls October Yearling sale Book 1.

The board behind the auctioneers shows several currencies in addition to the UK guineas bidding, with Euro, US dollar and Yen to the fore. I am grateful to the Blood Horse for revealing that Newsells Park Stud, owned by Graham Smith-Bernal, grossed almost three times as much as any other vendor, his lots accruing more than $23 million. That’s 17.6 million guineas!

The median figure (the middle when all 400 are laid out from top to bottom was an astonishing 250,000 guineas and the average 340,000 guineas, both records, as was the total turnover of 128 million guineas. That figure beat the 2022 record when 120 more yearlings were catalogued.

Sixteen lots exceeded one million guineas, and two buyers dominated throughout. Amo Racing, in a concerted effort to break into the territory that Kia Joorabchian described as “the province of the home-breeders like Coolmore, Godolphin, Juddmonte and Shadwell”, paid a total of 20 million for 17 yearlings.

Godolphin might be prolific breeders these days, but Sheikh Mohammed and team were also very active, even exceeding Amo Racing’s tallies with 18 yearlings at just over 22 million guineas.

Smith-Bernal, happy for the international break so he could concentrate on his lovely yearlings rather than Tottenham Hotspur FC, sold the most expensive of the lot at 4.4 million for a filly by stallion of the week Frankel, naturally to Amo.

Lots of love, as the ancient Romans and Latin scholars might have said, going around at Tattersalls. And plenty of Amo too!

- TS

Price Movement in NH Racing Markets

/in /by

In a recent article I compared the Early Morning Odds of horses (EMO) with their Opening Show odds (OS) and their final Industry Starting Price (SP) for UK Flat racing, writes Dave Renham. In this piece I will revisit the idea but the focus now is on UK National Hunt racing. Data has been taken from 1st January 2021 to 30th September 2024. How similar will the patterns be? Let’s take a look...

Strike rates by market movement profile

To begin with let's make the process easier by using abbreviations for the different price movements. So, for horses that shorten in price I will use the abbreviation ‘S’; for horses that remain the same price I will use ‘R’; for those that drift in price (lengthen) I will use the abbreviation ‘D’.

There are nine possible combinations in terms of price movement within these two timeframes (EMO to OS, and OS to SP). Below is a graph showing the percentage of runners for each price movement combination.

 

 

As you would expect the bar chart is similar to that which we saw when analysing flat data. The D/D group made up roughly a quarter of all runners and is comfortably the most likely pattern to be seen of the nine.

Performance Metrics by market movement profile

Now that we know how likely each combination is to occur we can examine the combinations in more detail by breaking down their performance in terms of strike rate, profitability, ROI% and A/E indices:

 

 

Two of the three combinations where a drift occurred between EMO and SP, D/D and R/D, produced by far the worst figures across all the metrics (SR%, ROI% and A/E indices). In fact, both combos would have lost you significant money if betting to BSP. The D/D group would have lost you 13p in the £, the R/D group lost a whopping 22p in the £. To put this into perspective if you simply backed all NH runners in every race over this time frame you would have lost just under 6p in the £ betting to Betfair SP.

Shorten / Shorten (S/S) Runners

The best figures came from the horses that shortened in price in both time frames – the S/S group. It makes sense to explore the S/S group in more detail given they have produced the best overall performance. I want to start by breaking the S/S results down by National Hunt Race Type. I will look at A/E indices first:

 

 

As can be seen the figures for chases and hurdles are virtually identical, but there is a steep drop off down to the A/E index for NH Flat races (also called bumpers). On to the Return on Investment percentages (ROI%) now to see what they show. The ROI%s are based onto Industry Starting Price returns:

 

 

There is positive correlation between the A/E indices and the ROI% figures at SP, with losses far greater for NH Flat runners who have the S/S profile. This is reflected at Betfair SP, too, with chase and hurdle qualifiers losing 4p in the £, NH Flat qualifiers more than 11p from every pound. Why this is the case is probably because NH Flat races tend to be made up of relatively unexposed horses. Hence, some horses will be supported in the betting based on what they might have shown away from the racetrack. Others will be backed solely due the trainer or the owner rather than the form or inherent ability of the individual horse in question. Hence punters and bookmakers are not always able to base their opinion on cold hard facts in these bumper races.

Sticking with the S/S group let me share how well these runners have performed in terms of Class of Race. Here are the full splits (there were only a handful of Class 6 events, hence they have been lumped together with the Class 5 stats):

 

 

The figures suggest that the S/S group has performed less well at either end of the class spectrum. Qualifiers from both Classes 2 and 3 made blind profits to BSP which is perhaps no surprise given their high A/E indices.

If we focus on the Class 1 races and look at the subset of Grade 1 to Grade 3 races the figures for the S/S group are poor – 66 wins from 511 qualifiers (SR 12.9%) for a loss to SP of £155.56 (ROI –30.4%). The A/E index stands at a lowly 0.75 and even to BSP losses were steep at £137.59 (ROI –26.9%). Horses that are constantly backed through the day, and then again late on, do not look the safest betting propositions in these Graded contests.

My next port of call was to look at the A/E indices of the S/S group of runners in terms of what odds they were priced up first in the morning – their ‘EMO’. Here is a graphical representation of those data:

 

 

Essentially this data is telling us that the for the S/S group the shorter the price the better in terms of ‘value’. The 17.0 to 23.0 and the 26.0+ groups are slightly out of kilter, but overall, it looks like horses priced 4.5 (7/2) or shorter early doors are the ones to focus on. Indeed, backing all horses from this shorter price EMO subset (1.01–4.5) would have lost you only 1p for every £1 staked to BSP.

Price movement by trainer

I want now to examine some trainer data, starting with horses that shortened in price from EMO to OS, i.e. the S/S, S/R and S/D groups. To begin with I would like to share some trainers with percentage of runners split for each of these groups. These are the handlers with the highest percentage of runners that match the S/S profile, listed along with the S/R and S/D percentages also:

 

 

Melanie Rowley tops the list with nearly 49% of her runners that shortened between EMO and OS continuing to shorten from OS to SP. To give some context the average percentage of runners’ figure for ALL trainers for the S/S profile is 35%. However, in Rowley's case, it did not lead to a profitable outcome; in fact, quite the opposite – one would have lost 44p in the £ backing all her S/S runners to SP; and it was still a 40p in the £ loss to BSP.

Profitable S/S trainers

There were, however, six trainers in the list who did make a profit to SP with these well-backed runners. The six were Henry Daly, Ben Pauling, David Pipe, Sandy Thomson, Tim Vaughan and Mark Walford. Below is a table containing all trainers who made blind profits with their S/S group of runners, listed alphabetically:

 

 

If only we could have predicted which of their horses were going to have the S/S pattern, then we could have backed them at their Early Price and made even more impressive profits. Nevertheless, none of the trainers in the above list had winners at huge prices that skewed their bottom lines so they look a group who know when they've got a live one.

A dozen trainers made a blind profit including one of the most powerful stables in the country, that of Paul Nicholls. When the Ditcheat yard's horses have shortened from EMO to OS and again from OS to SP, they have produced an outstanding strike rate of over 35% and returned more 8p in the £ profit. What is interesting is that only 28% of the Nicholls runners that shortened in price between EMO and OS then continued to shorten to SP, whereas 48% of them drifted in that final period. It is also interesting that this subset of runners (the S/D group) also performed well with 123 going on to win from 401 runners (SR 30.7%) for an SP profit of £25.57 (ROI +6.4%). To BSP this improves to +£62.65 (ROI +15.6%).

Overall, you could have made a healthy profit to BSP by simply backing ALL Nicholls runners that had shortened in price from EMO to OS.

D/D Trainers

It is time now to briefly look at some D/D data for trainers. I want to focus on horses that had Early Morning Odds of 10.00 (9/1) or shorter to avoid skewed results due to big–priced winners. Obviously, the strike rates of trainers with horses that drift from EMO to OS and then continue to drift to SP are not going to be that impressive. Below is a table of the top 15 trainers with the D/D profile in terms of strike rate:

 

 

No surprise that only three trainers have made a profit to SP, but that figure rises to nine at BSP. Of the trainers in that table, Paul Nicholls has seen significant losses with his D/D runners. They look worth swerving.

At the other end of the scale here are the trainers with the lowest strike rates from their D/D runners with their EMO 10.00 (9/1) or shorter:

 

 

It would make sense with this group of trainers to, unless you are a layer, ignore their horses if they have drifted from EMO to OS and are starting to drift again from their OS price as we near the ‘off’.

For the record horses priced up early at 10.00 (9/1) or bigger that show the D/D profile have won just 1.6% of their races (228 wins from 14220 qualifiers) for losses to SP of £6949 (ROI –48.5%). Losses are obviously less steep when looking at BSP returns but losses are still over 21% (21p in the £).

Finally, let me share one significant stat from the most influential NH owner, JP McManus. When his runners are popular in the market and show the S/S profile they have secured a 29% strike rate and returns of 6p in the £ to SP. His runners showing the D/D profile, however, perform poorly hitting a strike rate of 8.7% with SP losses of 30p in the £.

Market Movement is an integral part of the betting picture and I hope this article has provided some useful pointers for the National Hunt season which is just about to click into top gear.

- DR

Monday Musings: Gloom?

/in /by

There’s so much gloomy navel-searching about all the things that are perceived to be wrong with racing in the UK, but it took only a couple of days in Paris to dispel them, or some of them anyway, writes Tony Stafford.

True, the statistics are invariably distorted by first place in the £2.4 million to the winner Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – something which wouldn’t have been allowed to happen in pre-supplementing days – by Ralph Beckett’s remarkable filly Bluestocking, but in overall terms the home team took a real hiding.

Four wins for the UK, via Brian Meehan, the Gosdens and Ed Walker, as well as Beckett, matched Aidan O’Brien’s personal quartet over the two days. The French, on home soil with everything - even down to the going in their favour - limped behind with three.

Aidan also collected the £100k-plus Arqana sales conditions race on the first day and front-running Los Angeles picked up just shy of half a million for his third in the Arc. Once more, though, it was fillies to the fore, Bluestocking confirming Prix Vermeille form with Aventure, edging a half-length further away than in the trial three weeks earlier.

I’ve always found the fillies’ Group 1 on Trials Day much more significant than either the Prix Niel for 3yos or the Foy for the older colts. Those two races had five runners each last month, whereas the Vermeille had a field of 12.

The Arc 1-2 had some smart performers behind them that day: Emily Upjohn, Stay Alert and last year’s champion juvenile filly Opera Singer were the next three home. The races for the boys were remarkably similar, each run at more than four seconds above standard, a full three seconds slower than Bluestocking in the Vermeille.

Ralph Beckett has been relentless closing on the top training positions over the past few seasons and his comment, “I couldn’t see any reason not to supplement her,” epitomises his pragmatic approach to training.

Of course, as with all the big stables, and he had 183 listed in this year’s Horses In Training, there is a margin for error. When the year began, Bluestocking had won only once, on juvenile debut in September 2022. Since the summer, it has been a roller-coaster of ever greater success.

I had a look at the overall prizemoney earned by each of three major European horseracing and breeding superpowers over the weekend. Although Aidan got off to a flyer winning three Group races, including Kyprios’s second Prix du Cadran over 2m4f on day one, the momentum wasn’t quite maintained.

Yesterday, the lesser fancied of his two Jean-Luc Lagardere runners, Camille Pissarro, echoed the late-running performance on the first day of 25/1 shot Grateful. The similarity? Both were ridden by Christophe Soumillon with Ryan Moore on the first string. Ryan had the consolation of three €100k plus wins on day one, the third in the valuable conditions event put on by the Arqana sales company. And his third place on Los Angeles in the Arc earned him his jockey’s share from around half a million.

The overall Irish haul not including the Arc was around £675,000. The French on home soil amassed just over £800,000 for their non-Arc runners, while UK horses collected more than £1.22 million for 22 places. When you add in the Arc money, the GB total thanks to Bluestocking is more than £3.67 million; the French total comes to approximately £2.15 million and Ireland – almost entirely via the Coolmore runners was close to £1.3 million. So the UK stables picked up better than half the available money!

Even though the French had many more runners in the additional races than either UK or Ireland, they retained barely 30% of the money available. If we’re in trouble, how about them?

Those from the big teams cannot rest. After a day today looking at stock in the Tattersalls sales barns, Book 1 of the October Yearling Sale starts tomorrow, three days when 448 yearlings – blue-bloods all, but which cannot all turn out to be talented – go under the hammer.

The sale nowadays closely echoes the example of the Goffs Orby sale in Ireland, staged last week. That also commences with a Book 1 for the top stuff and Book 2 for the rest. A later sale offers less expensive pedigrees.

It’s amazing how the decisions of a sales company can make such a difference to the prospects of a borderline Book 1/Book 2 yearling. It’s simply the difference between whether an owner is to get a decent price for his/her sales candidates. Book 1 over there had 466 lots going under the hammer over two days. Of those, 399 (80%) found new owners at an average price of €128k.

The two days of the similarly populated Book 2 proved far less attractive to buyers with only 332 of 449 changing hands, that’s 70%. If that was significant, the average price of €20k was disturbing for many stud owners, especially pin hookers who will have struggled to match foal prices never mind a year’s costs.

One well-known trainer who was happy to pick up a horse from Book 1 at a fair price, did not look at any of the stock in Book 2. “It’s okay to buy them just because they are cheap,” he said, “but you have to find someone to pay for them and to have them trained.”

I canvassed a few trainers some weeks ago as it was proposed by friends to buy a horse in training. They were all middle-range but talented trainers and they were all somewhere around £60 a day (plus VAT of course). So, we’re already up to at least £500 a week, with extras like shoeing, vet charges and transport to the races. In Newmarket and many other training centres, there is also a gallops fee levied.

On Friday, the day after the conclusion of Book 1 and three days before Book 2 where most owners will not have to worry much about the likes of Godolphin, Coolmore, Amo Racing and rest to find a yearling, there are more than 750 lots to wade through. Smaller catalogues for Books 3 and 4 next week conclude as the runners for the Cesarewitch, Dewhurst and the rest go to post next weekend.

Newmarket’s first day stages a race which illustrates just how tough and frankly absurd UK’s horse racing economics are for all bar the super-rich – or those lucky enough to get a superstar for not much money.

The opening maiden of that Friday’s card has a prize of just more than £10k, much better admittedly than some that have been run on the Rowley Mile recently. Many were bought at this time last year, so at around a minimum £2,500 per month that’s at least £30,000 to get to this stage on top of their purchase price.

The happy winning owner on Saturday will receive approximately 70% of the £10,000 first prize, less jockeys’ fees and transport to the course. Sixteen of the 30 entries went through the ring, home-breds making up the remaining 14.

The cheapest of the sales group cost £45k – bought by our friend Sam Sangster and trained by Brian Meehan. The most expensive was £400k for a newcomer from Aidan O’Brien. The average - going for a £7k pot I emphasise - was 135k.

Talking of Sam Sangster and his link with Brian Meehan, Manton's longest-serving present incumbent had a Royal Ascot double this June with Rashabar (Coventry Stakes, Group 2) and Jayarebe (Hampton Court Stakes, Group 3). They had only one run each in the meantime, Rashabar when second in the Group 1 Prix Morny to Whistlejacket, and Jayarebe, also second at Deauville, to Economics. They came to Longchamp with high hopes.

Jayarebe did the business on Saturday in the Group 2 Prix Dollar, making all, while Rashabar was caught only in the last few strides of the Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere by Camille Pissarro, the aforementioned O’Brien second string ridden by Christophe Soumillon.

Rashabar will aim at the 2,000 Guineas next spring while it would be no shock if Jayarebe pitched up at the Breeders’ Cup. Meehan won the Turf race there a decade or so ago with Dangerous Midge, who raced in the same Iraj Parvizi colours. Parvizi only came back to the stable after a break of several years with his purchase of Jayarebe.

There were two other notable efforts over the weekend that caught my eye. Apollo One, so often the bridesmaid in big sprint handicaps, gained a first Group-race win at Ascot on Saturday. Peter Charalambous, his owner/trainer/breeder had been frustrated at being beaten close home in the Wokingham, Stewards’ Cup and Portland handicaps this year, but on ground Pete believed he wouldn’t handle, he did, winning almost as he liked.

Secondly, another working on the wrong surface was Hughie Morrison’s Mistral Star, third in Saturday’s Group 1 Prix Royallieu where she was in front until the last 50 yards. I’m confident she would have won on faster ground.

Finally, last week I mentioned Joe Lee and his filly May Day Ready. The pair, with the help of Frankie Dettori in the saddle, got the best of a wafer-thin three way photo (centre, see below) on Friday in the Grade 2 Jessamine Stakes at Keeneland, a Win And You're In for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. Exciting times!

- TS

More on Price Movement from Opening Show

/in /by

A few weeks back I wrote an article, which you can read here, that featured an introduction to patterns of price movement from Opening Show odds (OS) to SP odds, writes Dave Renham. In this piece I want to revisit the topic and expand my research. I have taken data from 2021 to 2024 (up to and including September 21st) for UK flat and all-weather racing and I have used William Hill odds as representative of the general bookmaker community.

As I mentioned in my earlier piece, 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 that period before the race starts, the odds will fluctuate. Some will shorten, some will drift, and some will either not move or end up back at the same price they started.

Price Movement: All Runners

I will begin by sharing the figures for all UK flat/all-weather runners during the study period to see what percentage of these runners shortened in price, lengthened in price, or stayed the same price when comparing their OS to their final Starting Price (SP). There is an extra chunk of data compared to the original article here, but the splits are virtually identical (within 0.2%):

 

 

We can use these figures as our baseline when comparing different angles. As can be seen, nearly half of all runners lengthen in price from OS to SP, compared with just under a third that shorten. Around one fifth of all runners end up having the same SP as their OS price.

Original Article Summary

Before moving on let me quickly recap the other main findings from the original article:

1. Horses that shorten in price win roughly 1.7 times more often than horses that lengthen in price.

2. Horses that lengthened in price when their OS was 7.0 (6/1) or less, lost only 1.5% to BSP.

3. Horses with an OS starting point of 18/1 or bigger have lengthened or drifted in price more than half of the time.

4. Horses with an OS of between 100/30 and 13/2 have similar percentages when it comes to shorteners and drifters. All other prices see a big differential as shown in the overall figures (see graph above).

5. The five trainers with the highest win strike rates of the period, namely Charlie Appleby, John & Thady Gosden, William Haggas, Saeed bin Suroor and Roger Varian combined to make a BSP Return on Investment of 5.5% when combining all of their horses that shortened in price from OS to SP.

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

 

Clearly if we can improve our chances of predicting the price movements of horses we are planning to back in the time between OS and the start of the race, then it has the potential to improve our bottom line.

Price Movement by Trainer

My first port of call in this piece is to examine more trainers in detail.

Positive Price Movement by Trainer

To begin with here are the trainers with the highest percentage of runners that have shortened in price between OS and SP:

 

 

The top 20 are listed and Jane Chapple-Hyam heads the list. She is one of only two trainers who had more horses that have shortened in price than lengthened, John Gallagher being the other. Focusing on her runners with an opening show price of 9/1 or shorter we get the following splits:

 


 

Over 45% of her shorter priced runners hardened in price in the 10-15 minutes before the start of the race. Compare this to the average figure for all trainers with this price stipulation which stands at 37%. That is a noteworthy differential but John Gallagher’s splits see more than 50% of his runners priced at single figures on the opening show shortening in price. His stats are thus:

 

What is quite bizarre, however, is that the Gallagher runners that drifted in price won more often than those which shortened. Not only that, but the drifters made a tidy BSP return of over 30p in the £; his horses priced 9/1 or less on the opening show that shortened to SP showed a huge loss of 44p in the £ at exchange prices.

All of the other 19 trainers in the above list had the reverse with their shorteners winning more often than their drifters, which is the pattern one might expect based on the overall data. Jane Chapple-Hyam’s performance fitted this far more typical profile, and the results of her shorteners were much more impressive than for those that drifted as the table below shows:

 

 

Chapple-Hyam’s horses that shortened also made a small profit to Industry SP. It should be noted that her 159 runners whose price remained the same also made a profit to BSP.

Negative Price Movement by Trainer

Time to look now at those trainers whose horses have drifted / lengthened the most in percentage terms from OS to SP.

 

 

As you might expect, most of the trainers on the list are lesser name trainers whose horses tend to operate at the lower end of the ability spectrum. This is reflected in a tendency to saddle bigger priced runners which we know from previous research means they are more inclined to drift than mid- to shorter range priced runners.

There are a couple of additional stats I’d like to share. Firstly, Grace Harris when sending her horses at Wolverhampton has seen 66 of the 99 runners lengthen in price, exactly two-thirds. Secondly, Linda Perratt runs more horses at Ayr than at any other track, but her runners drift in price more often than her average: just under 61% of her Ayr runners drifted in price from OS to SP, and of these 133 runners just five won, showing significant losses. At Hamilton, where Perratt also runs a good proportion of her horses, she sees a similar percentage, 64.3%, drift from OS to SP.

Before moving on from this table of trainers, it is quite a surprise to see George Boughey in this group. It is also interesting to note that his shorter priced runners have similar percentages to his overall ones. Below, there is a graph that shows the percentage splits for runners that were 5/1 or shorter at OS:

 


 

Using this OS price stipulation across all trainers sees 43% of runners drift in price. Boughey’s figure is over 10% above this. So why do so many of Boughey’s shorter priced runners drift in price from OS? That is the 66 million-dollar question, I guess; most likely is that they are frequently over-bet earlier in the day, which leads to a correction 'on the show'.

Why Do Horses Drift?

In fact, now is perhaps a good time to discuss some of the reasons why a horse may lengthen in price in the period close to the ‘off’. Firstly, it is partly due to the bookmaker’s overround being slightly bigger on OS compared with the final market overround, in order to defend against a horse which might have been offered at the wrong price - a rick, in the parlance.

Secondly, how a horse behaves before its race can influence the price, normally in an outward direction. For example, horses that sweat up in the paddock or behind the stalls are noted and this tends to be a negative which often pushes the price out. Also, some horses get very agitated in the parade ring and that warning sign tends to see the price start to drift also. Other horses get to the start fine but then become a problem, usually making it difficult for the handlers to load them in the starting stalls. Another factor can be that a horse is difficult to restraint when going to post,  expending too much energy before the start. And yet another reason for horses drifting is when a different horse in the same race is well backed. In that scenario and in order to balance the market, bookmakers will ensure that at least one horse, often more, move out in price to compensate.

Why Do Horses Steam?

Horses that are being backed close to the off can be down to a mix of reasons also. One obvious reason is because the owner and/or stable are expecting a very big run from their charge. Another reason for contracting price movements is when a horse is shortened deliberately by the bookmakers because they have 'running on' liabilities from multiple bets should the horse win. A third reason could be paddock demeanour - fitness, behaviour, physical well being and the like. And there will be a few times when it is simply not easy to explain a late market move be it positive or negative.

Price Movement by Owner

I want now to look at a selection of owners and consider the percentage splits for those whose horses have run the most during the study period. I have ordered them by the highest percentage of horses that have shortened in price:

 

 

There is a huge difference between Marc Chan at the top and Antony Brittain at the bottom. Chan’s runners do very well when they shorten in price, hitting a strike rate of 29% and producing a profit to SP of £38.77 (ROI +56.2%) and to BSP of £48.65 (ROI +70.5%).

Horses from the Shadwell ownership have also made sound profits when concentrating on their runners that have shortened from OS to SP. Of the 437 such runners 116 have won (SR 26.5%) for a profit to SP of £48.29 (ROI +11.1%). To BSP this improve to profits of £89.39 (ROI +20.5%).

One of the most interesting findings from my point of view is that Godophin’s runners are not that strong in the market. Personally I would be betting a Godolphin runner as late as possible or at BSP if fancying one of them.

Price Movement by Horse Gender

I want to look next at the sex of the horse to see if that makes a difference to the how the price changes from OS to SP. You hear comments especially about younger male horses such as ‘he is acting very coltish’, etc. Hence, I thought it was worth looking at the figures for colts, geldings, fillies and mares.

 


 

There are some differences here with fillies drifting in price more than the other three – over 50% of all fillies have drifted in price. Is this partly down to their behaviour / composure in the paddock, going down to post and behind the starting stalls? I’m not an expert in animal behaviour so I cannot say, but it definitely gives food for thought.

Price Movement in Selected Horses

Finally let us look at some individual horses – I have chosen to share the data for just over 50 horses currently in training. The ones in green are horses that are often backed and hence tend to shorten more from OS to SP; those in red tend to lengthen in price most of the time. The number of qualifying runs in 2021-2024 must have been 30+ to make the list:

 

 

Given how frequently these horses run it is no surprise that there are familiar names in the list including sprinter Summerghand. It may be interesting to note that he is rarely backed late and has drifted from opening show to starting price in nearly 60% of his races. My personal plan is to dig deeper into each horse in the table to see if I can find logical reasons why their stats are as they are. What those are could be down to one key factor, or a group of factors; it might be horse behaviour pre-race, or linked to trainers or owners, or perhaps due to the price range the horse goes off at. I think there are likely to be reasons why the stats for each horse are as they are because they are all far from the ‘norm’ at either end of the % splits spectrum.

That's all for this second helping of price movement from opening show to the off. I hope it has given you some further insights into how the market may shape up in those last few minutes before the start of the race.

- DR

Monday Musings: Joe Lee

/in /by

A week short of 30 years ago I was in New York, staying at the late Virginia Kraft Payson’s rather large house (since sadly demolished) at Sands Point, Long Island, writes Tony Stafford. I’d arranged to meet Bjorn Neilsen – bet he doesn’t think it was that long ago! – at his offices in Wall Street.

He had a very friendly receptionist whose name I cannot recall, who whenever I did try to contact him, always reminded me that she thought my accent was identical to that of Robin Leach who fronted a television show for almost ten years called ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’.

Leach, a Londoner, worked on the Daily Mail’s Front-Page team at age 18, before emigrating to the US. He died in Las Vegas four years ago after a very successful TV career.

When I arrived at Bjorn’s offices, having never met the receptionist before, I started: “I’m….” but before I could get another word out, she said, “Hello Mr Stafford, Mr Neilsen is waiting for you.”

After some chitchat, we retired to a nearby deli where the sandwiches were around five inches high. I had intended going on to Belmont Park for the races that afternoon and Bjorn suggested if I went to Grand Central station, I could get the race special.

When I got there, I discovered the specials had finished and I was recommended to go to Jamaica station and take a taxi from there. I remember crossing the busy road to a drab cab rank and was welcomed into the first one by a genial Asian gentleman who waited for me to state my destination.

“Belmont Park, please,” I asked. “Balma?” he replied, but I thought what the hell and as I was short of time, persevered as we moved along. “Balma?” he said once more. I knew the reputation of many New York taxi drivers not having more than a rudimentary understanding of any form of English, let alone the Cockney version, but he was my best bet.

Suddenly on the left-hand side, a green space loomed. He turned in his seat and said, triumphantly; “Park!” Now I was in dread of what might become of me but was soon reassured to see a line of local women on our side of the road standing at a bus stop.

I managed to get my, I must say, very friendly driver to stop alongside it and opening the door, called out to nobody in particular, “Does anyone know Belmont Park?” Eventually a nice lady possibly in her 40’s said. “I do. If you like, I’ll get in and direct the driver most of the way. Then, I must get out close to where I live, but I’ll tell you where he needs to go from there.”

The lady, called Mrs Lee, explained she was among the 75,000 crowd for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Aqueduct racecourse – the one closer to the city – that October 6, 1995.

She started by saying she probably shouldn’t have got into a cab with a stranger. She had lived nearby as a girl, but the area had become much more dangerous, and a woman had been raped right on the spot where the bus stop was, only a few days before.

She excused her rash reaction by saying someone in racing ought to be safe and that her son was in the sport and worked for Godolphin, asking if I had heard of them.

She said that his name is Joe Lee, and he was in Dubai all the previous winter and would be going out there once more that year.

On the day the National Lottery first began, Saturday 19th November 1994, my son had also made his way from the UK for a six-month stint working in Sheikh Mohammed’s sports club mainly to teach his sons the elements of football, cricket, tennis and the like. He’d just left school and was embarking on what turned out to be a gap year.

He was housed in the same apartment block as many of the work riders, including that year Johnny Murtagh, Vince (now Victoria) Smith and, as I was to find out when I called my son later, Joe Lee.

Joe was a good friend, according to his mother, of Jeremy Noseda. This was the year before the famous Frankie Dettori seven out of seven wins at Ascot on its championship Saturday late September card. I had worked with him that year, helping him with his “A Year in the Life of Frankie Dettori” book, which needed an extra chapter when the copy was already all in type. My entire family was at the launch.

Frankie finished his stellar UK riding career last year but has since enjoyed a second blooming (and some hefty prizemoney percentages) across the pond. These have been temporarily curtailed with an injured shoulder sustained in the stalls at perhaps coincidentally, Aqueduct racecourse two weeks ago.

Time is money these days. One of his most lucrative wins of late was in a Listed fillies’ 2yo race at Kentucky Downs. The winner, May Day Ready, is a daughter of Tapit and Nemoralia, which Dettori rode to the first three of her four career wins when trained by Noseda. Her owners were Peter Brant and Joseph Allen. Brant bred May Day Ready, who has been sold twice, first for only $60k and then as a two-year-old at the Ocala, Florida 2yo sale for $325k to the syndicate which races her now.

May Day Ready won her maiden (and $43k) at Saratoga with Dettori on board, as he was when she cleaned up the $463k when winning a Listed race at Kentucky Downs this month. Jacqui Doyle, freshly back from her four-year stint in the US, told me at Newmarket on Saturday that winning jockeys can expect a ten per cent share. So May Day Ready has already earned the itinerant Italian 50 grand. Quite right too, with a fortnight’s not earning to make up for!

And the point of all this? May Day Ready is one of a small team trained by the same Joe Lee. If someone who knows his very nice mum ever reads this, maybe they could pass on my thanks for that moment of Divine, or at least Papal, Intervention, and congratulate her on her son’s great success all these years later.

Frankie was due to end his absence by riding her on Sunday evening at Santa Anita in the Grade 2 Miss Grillo Stakes which is a “Win And You’re In” qualification for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies’ Turf race at Del Mar in early November. However, the weather intervened and the Miss Grillo is now scheduled for next Sunday, October 6th; what a day of international racing that promises to be.

Jacqui says that daughter Sophie is back riding winners in her adopted country while son James isn’t doing too shabbily as first rider for Wathnan Racing back here. She also stated that the maidens at River Downs carry $43,000 for the winner, and just couldn’t comprehend the prizes of barely £4k for 2yo maidens at Newmarket on Saturdays. But then who can?

Despite our relatively poor money levels, Aidan O’Brien is already past £7.5 million in UK earnings and he had another memorable afternoon when Lake Victoria ran home an exceptional winner of the Cheveley Park Stakes.

All three of her previous wins had been over seven furlongs, so reverting to a furlong shorter for this Group 1 might have seemed over-ambitious, but Ryan Moore never had a moment’s doubt about the daughter of Frankel’s speed.

Taking her to the front after a few yards, she made all the running, at around 40/41 mph in the first half of the race, then drew away at the finish. She did slow a little but not as much as all her rivals. She was faster than the winner of the earlier Middle Park Stakes too.

That winner, Wimbledon Hawkeye, was a clear example of the emerging talent of his youthful trainer James Owen. James Doyle, riding for 92-year-old Bill Gredley, could have a potential Classic candidate here assuming he’s not required to ride for Wathnan. Then again, maybe Wathnan might enquire to Gredley about the colt’s availability.

- TS

 

Roving Reports: And so it begins…

/in /by

I suppose of all the places a new venture could begin there are worse ones than Doncaster, particularly as it doesn't mean a near four-hour commute from my house (that will come next week) and I'm on familiar territory, writes David Massey. St Leger Day almost didn't happen, with the morning drive to the track narrowly averting disaster as I fail to spot a flotilla of police motorbikes and Range Rovers tracking up the outside line of the M18, and I just barely avoid absent-mindedly pulling out in front of them as I try and change the station on the radio. As it turns out, this won't be the last time I find myself just in front of the Prime Minister (for it was he) on the day.

I'm with new work partner Vicki today, who has parents that live nearby and, God bless her mum, she's made me a cheese sandwich with a bag of cheese and onion crisps as an accompaniment. I am delighted to report the sandwich was delicious. Mums, eh? I miss mine, but I think I've found a spirit one with Vicki's as that's exactly the sort of thing mine would have done. "You don't need to, Mum, there will be food there." "Well, I've done you a pack-up now anyway. You never know." And even though you do know, you take the sandwich, and it's brilliant.

So anyway, Doncaster is packed with racegoers, which is good, but it does mean our route down to the parade ring from the press room (which is up top) is hard to navigate. We decide a better option is to go the back way, down the stairs, and come out by the weighing room. This works well for much of the afternoon, until the Leger comes around. We want to head to the pre-parade ring but for some reason we can't turn left, the route totally fenced off, and we have to head between the cordon to the parade ring. Everyone is crowding around the barriers as if they're waiting for someone. Imagine their disappointment as Vicki and myself loom into view. It's at this point I realise the PM is probably about thirty seconds behind me, as there are security men surrounding us. "Keep walking, and don't look back!" I shout to Vicki, just behind me. Sure enough, it's not long after we enter the parade ring that Sir Keir makes his appearance. I'm only glad that we didn't get booed as well.

Vicki is on her own on the Sunday at Doncaster. I warn her early there may be a few drops of rain, but not much. I lose count of the number of photos she sends me throughout the day of her in her transparent waterproof poncho, looking more miserable in each one as the day passes, as my weather forecasting skills prove about as accurate as my race-reading ones. I don't think sending her a photo of the roast dinner I'd made for me and the good lady helped matters, either. Still, I was at Leicester on the Monday before and it threw it down all day there when it wasn't supposed to, so let's call it a soggy score-draw on the week and move on.

And so to Yarmouth and the Eastern Festival. All sounds very exotic, doesn't it: an Eastern Festival? Those of a certain age will be reminded of Turkish Delight at this point. I'm reminded exactly how exotic things will be when I swing onto the Road To Kings Lynn (one of Bing and Bob's lesser-known adventures) and a whopping great potato lorry pulls out in front of me. Game over. Just sit tight and enjoy the finest flat scenery Lincolnshire has to offer for the next forty miles. Sadly, the African Violet Centre is still closed. There will be no streptococcus for me this year.

There will, however, be the more common Mcdonaldsus Drivethru'us on the way. As I arrive, the queue in front of me is one car. In the three minutes it takes to get my food, a dozen cars pile in behind me. I take this as a good sign and one that says luck will be on my side this week. I get back on the main road just as another potato wagon pulls in front of me, the good fortune lasting all of thirty seconds.

I'm in my usual B&B at Yarmouth and so are all the others that stayed there last year. It's like time hasn't moved on at all. Which seems appropriate, as there are parts of the town that don't feel like they have evolved much either, probably for about fifty years. Yarmouth is what it is, but it's badly in need of some modernisation. Even Skeggy has upgraded, for crying out loud.

I'll be at the dogs Monday night (I always go early) and Wednesday night and, on Tuesday, I have a meal with Arthur Cooper and Vicki to discuss further business. Many of you will recognise Arthur's Aussie tones - he commentates on the French racing for Sky on occasions - and he has tales to tell, and racing politics to discuss. We put the racing world to rights over a sticky toffee pudding, which is how it should be. It's a pleasure chatting to him, and I look forward to our next meet.

Tuesday's card is probably the least interesting of the three days. The weather is kind, more so than the results, which are a disaster for bookmakers. Yarmouth is a strong ring too - shop around and you'll be betting to less than one percent a runner. The stretchers are out for the books as the fourth favourite on the bounce goes in mid-afternoon. Trade at Fallen Angels could well see a downturn this year. (Google it, this is a family column.)

Vicki is with me on the Wednesday and I introduce her to the bookmaker who goes by the name of Billy Bongo. Vicki has already asked if that's his real name, which caused much mirth. She's disappointed to find out he's actually called Simon, but when I tell her his surname is "Pieman", it takes her a minute to decide that that's also bull. I give her a little quiz on bookies' names and whether they are real or fake, which she fails badly. She has a lot to learn about the layers, although I notice she has her favourites she likes to deal with. They tend to be the younger, better-looking ones. I shall leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide whether this is purely coincidental or not.

It's the East Anglian Derby at the dogs on the Wednesday night and the place is heaving. Luckily I'm on a table upstairs and have Viv Stingray (also not her real name) with us. Viv works at Southwell and has never been to the dogs before. This means I can easily impress her with my limited dog knowledge but by the end of the night she's a convert, even watching old vids of Scurlogue Champ on YouTube, and of course, loving them. How could you not? He's still the most amazing dog I'll ever clap eyes on. (If you've not watched the recordings or heard of him before, go and have a look. And be amazed.) Viv has already decided she's coming again next year.

Thursday, and the 3lb I lost weight-wise last week is all put back on with the final cooked breakfast of the trip. I tell myself I'll be back on the Ryvita tomorrow as I tuck into a third rasher. My luck this week hasn't been so great and I'm down so far, but a decent bet on Redorange at 3-1 helps the bank balance bounce back a bit. At least it's stayed dry this year, if windy. The drive back is a better one than the one coming down; no 'tater wagons on the route at 7pm, see? One last McDonald's for the road, and I'm home for half nine. I've an email when I get back asking me for a ten-to-follow for the jumps season. I've enjoyed the Flat this year but, I have to say, I can't wait to get stuck into the timber-toppers this time around. Especially now I'll actually be able to see them in the flesh rather than just viewing them going to post from the rails. An exciting winter lies ahead...

- DM

A Study of Owners in UK Flat Racing, Part 2

/in /by

This is the second of a two part series looking at some owner data for UK flat horse racing, writes Dave Renham. The period of study covers 1st January 2019 to 8th September 2024. Profit and loss figures have been calculated to Industry Starting Price (ISP), but I will quote Betfair SP (BSP) when appropriate.

In the first piece I shared data for the major owners who had the top 25 strike rates during this time frame and drilled into three - the Godolphin operation, Shadwell Estate and Cheveley Park Stud. To begin with in this piece, I will review the man with the second-best strike rate overall.

Mark Chan

Backing Marc Chan-owned horses in Britain during the study period has returned a tidy profit to SP of £34.12 (ROI +20.1%) with a strike rate close to one win in every four. Chan, a Hong Kong businessman, has a small but select group of horses that race in the UK. Initially, he owned and raced horses solely in Hong Kong, however in more recent years he has spread his wings. Saturday August 26th 2023 is a date that will be etched in his memory forever, as he landed an impressive treble that day with Angel Bleu winning the Group 2 Celebration Mile at Goodwood, Kinross the City of York Group 2 contest at York just 20 minutes later and then, 55 minutes after that, Lezoo prevailed in the Listed Hopeful Stakes at Newmarket. Three Class 1 wins at three different courses in just 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Most of Chan's horses are trained by Ralph Beckett and their record together reads: 38 wins from 144 starts (SR 26.4%) for a profit of £27.37 (ROI +19%). To BSP this improves to £44.34 (ROI +30.8%). Chan also has a couple of horses in training with John and Thady Gosden. Currently the Chan/Gosden combination has seen 4 wins from 11 starts.

Mark Chan Runners by Gender

One stat that stands out with Chan’s horses is the difference in success between his male runners and his females. Let’s look at the strike rates first:

 

 

Male horses have been 1.8 times more successful in terms of winning races than female horses. There have been more male runners, but still a fairly even split (94 male; 76 female). In terms of returns to SP there is a considerable difference:

 

 

That disparity equates to around 63p in the £ between the SP returns for male horses compared to female ones.

Other Mark Chan Runner Stats

There are three further subsets of stats I’d like to share:

1. Chan’s runners performed well when priced 6/1 or shorter. This group of runners secured 36 wins from 96 (SR 37.5%) for a profit of £35.62 (ROI +37.1%); A/E index 1.31.

2. Focusing on the Grade 1 tracks (Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown, York), Chan secured a 21.5% strike rate (20 from 93) for an SP profit of £13.60 (ROI +14.6%); A/E index 1.29.

3. Chan-owned two-year-olds have performed extremely well with the benefit of at least one previous run. These juveniles have won 16 of their 43 starts hitting a huge strike rate of over 37%. Returns have been 34p in the £ to SP, 44p to BSP. Compare this to his 2yo debutants who have scored only three times from 21 (SR 14.3%).

As I’m writing this, Kinross has just won for a tenth time (eighth for Chan) winning the Park Stakes (Group 2) at Doncaster.

 

Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum

I want to concentrate on the past three years for this Dubai-based owner as his team has excelled during that timeframe. Sheikh Obaid's prizemoney earnings have exceeded £1.5 million in each of the three years, and each year has seen his strike rate north of 20% (21.4% in 2022, 20.9% in 2023 and an impressive 24.7% so far in 2024). Backing all runners ‘blind’ in the past three years would have seen a £85.28 profit to SP; to BSP it stands at a very healthy +£164.41 (ROI +26.6%). It should also be noted that his figures are not skewed by several big-priced winners.

At the front end of the market, Sheikh Obaid has proved profitable to follow, with his favourites and second favourites having combined to win 92 races from 256 (SR 35.9%) for an SP profit of £18.20 (ROI +7.1%). To BSP this improves to £36.03 (ROI +14.1%).

Sheikh Obaid Runners by Age

Moving onto age of horse now and here are the splits:

 

 

Two-year-olds have an excellent record as have those aged four. What is interesting about the 2yo results is what happens when we compare win strike rates based on number of career starts. Normally 2yo debutants score much less frequently than those that have run before. However...

 

 

...as can be seen here, Sheikh Obaid-owned juveniles on debut have won more often than any other subset and, at a ridiculously high 29.9% strike rate for 2yo debutants. The average strike rate for all 2yo debutants in the past three years stands at just 8.4%. Here are the full figures for these 2yos on debut:

 

 

To BSP these figures improve further to  profit of £99.37 (ROI +129.1%). Backing Sheikh Obaid-owned debutants has been a license to print money in the past three seasons.

Sheikh Obaid Runners by Trainer

It’s trainer time next and here are the stats for all runners from any stable that has saddled more than 40 runners for Sheikh Obaid:

 

 

Karl Burke looks the stand-out performer and, if ignoring his bigger-priced runners (14/1 or more), the overall profit improves by £26 to £87.08. His 2yos have been exceptional winning over 36% of the time (16/44) and returning 42p in the £ to SP, 60p to BSP.

Kevin Ryan has a good record in novice events for the Sheikh, scoring ten wins from 36 (SR 27.8%) for a tidy profit of £19.40 (ROI +53.9%). To BSP the profit stands at £30.46 (ROI +84.6%). Sticking with Ryan, when his runners have been in the top three in the betting they have won over 30% of the time (17 wins from 56) returning 39p in the £ to SP, 56p to BSP.

Roger Varian also has a couple of positive stats to feedback to you. Firstly, when Jack Mitchell has ridden their record reads 12 wins from 40 (SR 30%) for a profit of £10.83 (ROI +27.1%). To BSP that improves by a further 9p in the £. In Class 5 events Varian has a 35.7% strike rate thanks to ten wins from 28. Returns to SP stand at 18p in the £, 31p in the £ to BSP.

Unfortunately for Varian, and to a lesser degree for us punters, Sheikh Obaid removed all of his horses from Varian's Carlburg Stables last month.

Sheikh Obaid Runners by Race Class

There has been excellent consistency over the last three years from the runners of Sheikh Obaid which is highlighted nicely by an analysis of race class. His runners have produced profit to SP in every single class of race as the graph below shows:

 

 

Obviously, to BSP these figures improve still further. Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum is by all accounts a demanding owner, but he does seem to be one to keep a close eye on at present.

 

Amo Racing Limited

Amo Racing Limited was founded by football agent Kia Joorabchian and they have had over 200 winners in the past six seasons. However, this year has not gone so well hitting a strike rate of below 10% compared with over 16% when combining the years 2019 to 2023. There have been plenty of ups and downs already with horses being taken away from trainers and jockey Kevin Stott being sacked after eight months of an initial one-year contract; Joorabchian certainly seems to do things his way.

To date he has one Group 1 success courtesy of King of Steel in the 2023 Qipco Champion Stakes. However, it was his 150-1 winner, Valiant Force, at Royal Ascot in the same year that perhaps he is best known for.

Amo Racing by Trainer

In terms of trainers both George Boughey and Alice Haynes boast a 20%+ win strike rate, although this year, as with all his trainers, this figure has dropped.

Perhaps the most potent stat is for favourites: jollies wearing the distinctive purple and white livery have won 103 of their 249 starts (SR 41.4%) for a profit to SP of £28.59 (ROI +11.5%). To BSP this stands at +£44.60 (ROI +17.9%). For the record Amo-owned favourites have edged into profit to BSP even during this poor year of 2024.

*

Trainer Performance by Price Movement

In some other recent articles I have written about price movement, so I thought I would check for any owners who have fared particularly well with horses that have shortened in price from Early Morning Odds (around 9am in the morning) to final Starting Price. The idea was to try and establish which owners may be worth 'following in' if you see a horse of theirs being backed.

Positive Price Movement

There are six owners who have achieved an A/E index of over 1.00 with at least 75 horses that have shortened in price during this time frame. They are shown in the graph below:

 

 

Two owners that I have discussed earlier, Marc Chan and Sheikh Mohammed Obaid, both appear in this list of six. All six from the chart above - the others being David Armstrong, Valmont Racing, Qatar Racing and Paul & Clare Rooney - have been profitable to SP as well as BSP, impressive considering all the horses shortened in price during the day. Hence, a positive market move for any of these owners should be seen as material.

Negative Price Movement

It is interesting when looking at the A/E index of Paul & Clare Rooney with horses that do the reverse and drift from Early Odds to SP. When this has happened their A/E index was way down at 0.59. Such runners showed hefty losses to SP standing at over 55p in the £. But when their horses have been backed, they have produced a return to SP over nearly 7p in the £, with an A/E index of 1.01 (as can be seen in the graph). The strike rates between the two groups vary massively, too, going from 18.9% for horses that shorten to 6.7% for horses that drifted in price.

There is a similar pattern when comparing ‘shorteners’ and ‘drifters’ for Qatar Racing Limited. Here are their splits:

 

 

There is a noteworthy difference here again, much bigger than the norm. Are certain owners really in the know? It’s obviously difficult to tell, but if I was thinking about backing a horse owned by Qatar Racing, I’d prefer to see it strong in the market than weak.

 

Additional Owner stats

For the final part of this article I'm going to share some individual owner stats that I believe are worth knowing:

1. Opulence Thoroughbreds have an excellent record with their 2yos when racing on the all-weather, scoring over 37% of the time and producing returns to SP of 22p in the £.

2. Kirsten Rausing has a good record with her 2yo runners trained by Andrew Balding. Eight of the 24 runners in the study period have won securing an SP profit in every year from 2020 to 2024.

3. Middleham Park send out on average over 600 runners every year hitting a win strike rate of 12%. They spread their horses across numerous trainers and the stand-out handler for them has been Robert Cowell. Of his 67 runners 17 have won (SR 25.4%) for an SP profit of £48.23 (ROI +72%). No other trainer for Middleham has exceeded an 18% win rate with most of them between 10% and 14%.

4. The Cool Silk Partnership has an overall strike rate of 14% but with runners from the Archie Watson yard this jumps to 20.1% (19 wins from 93). Also keep an eye out for the jockey booking because when Hollie Doyle has taken the ride the stats read nine wins from 27 (SR 33.3%) for an SP profit of £16.26 (ROI +60.2%). To BSP it jumps up to +£22.78 (ROI +84.4%).

5. Sticking with Archie Watson and The Cool Silk Partnership, runners sent off first or second favourite have produced outstanding results: 15 wins from 31 (SR 48.4%) for a profit to SP of £24.15 (ROI +77.9%).

*

And that concludes the second of two owner articles. I hope you enjoyed both pieces and have gained some useful insights to help inform your betting where certain owners are concerned.

- DR

Monday Musings: Of Real Racing Heroes

/in /by

Less than a year after areas of Southwell racecourse, including the main grandstand and offices, were flooded to a depth of up to three feet, it played host last Friday to a unique presentation, writes Tony Stafford. No racing there, nor even the Big Trucks event that was lined up for the following couple of days, just one group of five horses galloping for a mile around its Tapeta oval.

Yet the mesmeric draw of City Of Troy and four of his lesser stablemates, accompanied by trainer Aidan O’Brien, was sufficient to entice 1,500 people – that was the pre-event estimate but on the ground the feeling was that the figure had been exceeded – to come to see it.

Here were Ryan Moore, Wayne Lordan, Brett Doyle, Rachel Richardson and Dean Gallagher to ride the quintet in advance of City Of Troy’s Breeders’ Cup Classic challenge at Del Mar, California, in November. (Gallagher amazingly so as it was more than 30 years ago that his dad Tommy asked me if I could find him a job in England. I did and he came to Rod Simpson, yet he is still regarded as sufficiently talented and fit to be asked to take his part in a trial of this importance.)

https://twitter.com/RacingTV/status/1837185812837855338

A few years after Dean had been signed as first jockey for the one-time Midlands greengrocer Paul Green, by then a substantial owner, he rode the Francois Doumen-trained Hors La Loi III into second place in the third of Istabraq’s triple Champion Hurdle sequence, Istabraq trained of course by Aidan O’Brien.

There was no Champion Hurdle the following year because of foot and mouth, but when Istabraq went for the four-timer in 2002, he pulled up as Charlie Swan felt he was wrong, a view confirmed by the vet’s post-race inspection. The winner, Hors La Loi III, by now trained by James Fanshawe but ridden still by Gallagher, beat Hughie Morrison’s Marble Arch, a 25/1 shot into second place.

I can throw in another small personal part to this story. I was asked to try to buy Istabraq from the July sale in 1996 and went to the John Gosden yard at Newmarket a couple of days earlier. I was shown the horse by the late John Durkan, Gosden’s assistant at the time, who said: “He’s a lovely horse. I couldn’t recommend him more highly.”

I had a budget from a Saudi prince who wanted the staying 3yo for the King’s Cup in his home country. I stayed in until 36k but Timmy Hyde, bidding for J P McManus, held sway at 38,000 gns.

I was coming back from Keeneland Sales a few years later when I heard a voice from behind me as we walked to change planes in Cincinnati. It was Timmy Hyde. He said: “Tony, you were the under-bidder for Istabraq. I know because I was standing right behind you! It’s just that that f…ing Danny Murphy is telling everyone he was!” He wasn’t.

The obvious next question was: “How high would I have needed to go?” Timmy smiled and said: “We had 100 grand if necessary!” Hardly an underbidder in truth!

The saddest part of the story was that Aidan wasn’t meant to be training the horse, it was John Durkan who would be leaving Gosden to set up his own operation in Ireland. He even came up to the Daily Telegraph’s office in South Quay Plaza, the one between Fleet Street and Canary Wharf, with our photographer Ed Byrne and Conor O’Dwyer.

But then he contracted inoperable cancer and was unable to proceed with his plans. JP McManus gave the horse to Aidan and four consecutive Festival wins, starting with the 2m5f novice and then three Champion Hurdles, earned him a place in jumping folklore, along of course with his owner and trainer. I’ve never forgotten how honest he was about the horse even though if JP had bought him, he would be training him. Istabraq died this summer at the age of 32, much lamented by his owner and family.

JP has stayed mainly in that environment, dominating owners’ championships on either side of the Irish Sea, while O’Brien has been unchallenged on the flat in his homeland and more than a match for Gosden, Hannon and the rest for most years over here.

When interviewed after a big win, Aidan invariably remembers all the people he considers have played a part in the particular horse’s preparation. It’s not about him, everyone else almost.

On Friday, as Pat Keating awaited his boss’s delayed arrival – there was a crash on the way from the airport - replying to his question: “How long <have they been walking around the paddock>? answered “Forty-seven minutes”. Aidan said: “They are set to go then.” Thirty is the usual requirement. The jockeys mounted, setting off around to the far side of the track for the American-style stalls especially brought for the event.

The imperative, apart from City Of Troy working well and acting on the surface, was a fast pace and the short-running duo that broke best, ensured that would happen. Up the straight, the markedly elongated stretch of the Derby winner’s stride not for the first time struck connections Paul Smith, son of Derrick, his son Harry and Mike Dillon, former Ladbrokes man and a close friend.

The workout was the day job. But then we saw the true Aidan. He had a quick post-work de-brief with the jockeys, giving each the chance to comment, but obviously then having the crucial talk with Ryan on how it went.

But then the crowd saw something I doubt even those that travelled from far beyond the East Midlands would have expected. Aidan smiled throughout whenever cornered by a gallop-goer to sign the nice little racecard designed by Nick Craven, one of Weatherbys’ bosses. Each signature, because we are in 2024 and not 2004, had to require a selfie. None of which the personable O’Brien refused.

There was a lengthy television interview for Sky Sports Racing with Jason Weaver, while Brough Scott added his wisdom of many years to the proceedings. Then Aidan spent ages talking to mainly young aspiring journalists, none of whom could believe this giant of racing would give them so much time.

I guess almost an hour and a half after the workout – the pre-event blurb said he would stay for 45 minutes - he went off smiling for the car to the airport, long after Keating, his travelling head lad, had caught his eye and pointed to his watch.

Aidan O’Brien may be no Frankie Dettori but where the Italian has showmanship in the extreme, Aidan has a modesty and innate kindness that you would need to go a long way to see replicated by any public figure.

It could have been a fiasco, but Aidan’s plan to give his horse an awayday must be termed a great success, not least in PR terms. I’m certainly glad I was there to see it. And I know that the final line of people waiting patiently for his signature, selfie and smile, all got their precious reward for their trip. Well done, Southwell, well done Aidan, Ryan and the rest.

*

Mentioning Marble Arch in relation to Hors La Loi III and Dean Gallagher reminded me that Hughie Morrison has been around for a good while, too. Not So Sleepy hasn’t been with us for quite as long but he did win first time out as a two-year-old at Nottingham ten years ago and in the following May, won the Dee Stakes, the pre-Derby warm-up for winners Oath and Kris Kin, the latter for Sir Michael Stoute who will retire from training at the end of the season.

Not So Sleepy has raced at least four times in each of the next nine seasons, never once having his flat handicap mark drop below 94 and now, after a wonderful repeat win in a valuable Newbury handicap on Saturday, will surely end his career rated over 100 – he was 99 on Saturday. I’ll be shocked if that has ever happened before.

Hughie trains with a rare sympathetic view of his charges – “Each one that gets injured I feel it so much”, he says. But consequently, few trainers have a comparable facility for extending their horses’ working lives. He won a Group 1 with the stayer Alcazar when that horse was ten years of age, but his achievements with the difficult to manage Not So Sleepy dwarf even that.

He finished in the first four in three Cesarewitch Handicaps and was seventh last year. He also ran in four consecutive Champion Hurdles. Despite not taking up hurdling until the age of seven, his three Grade 1 wins include a dead-heat with previous Champion Hurdle winner Epatante in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle, a feat he followed with a second win in the Newcastle race.

Last December, he won a Grade 1 hurdle at Sandown in a procession, a few days short of his official twelfth birthday. Few horses have achieved half as much as Sleepy. His owner, Lady Blyth, seemed very keen as with Quickthorn recently to ascribe lots of credit to rider Tom Marquand, a sentiment reciprocated in their interviews with Matt Chapman for Sky Sports Racing.

Never a mention of the trainer and the usually forensic Chapman didn’t seem to think of bringing in his name either. Maybe Hughie was being courted and given his rightful credit for the horse’s achievements by ITV, but I have only one television set.

Also Saturday was the final day’s riding for Franny Norton, and he chose Chester, where he has been the “King” for so long, for the farewell. He did it in style, notching a treble, and it would be fitting if the course made him an ambassador for the future, especially at the May meeting.

It was a lovely weekend at any rate for some real racing heroes.

- TS

A Study of Owners in UK Flat Racing, Part 1

/in /by

As the title indicates, this article looks at some owner data for UK Flat and AW racing, writes Dave Renham. The period of study is from 1st January 2019 to 8th September 2024. Profit and loss has been calculated to Industry Starting Price, but I will quote Betfair SP when appropriate. This is the first of a two-part series.

Flat Owners' Strike Rate League Table

Let's kick off by looking at the top 25 owners in terms of their strike rate (150 runs minimum to qualify):

 

 

Godolphin top the chart perhaps as one would expect, but hot on their heels is Marc Chan. The top six in the list all have decent A/E indices with four of that six hitting 1.00 or above. I will look at some of the owners in more detail later in the piece.

One owner to not quite make the cut is King Charles and Queen Camilla. Since taking over from the Queen at the end of 2022 the Royals have slimmed the operation down a little. They have had 21 winners from 164 runners (SR 13.8%), but losses have been steep, at £70.42 (ROI -42.9%). The A/E index stands on just 0.71. There has been performance drop off since the death of Her Majesty. From 2019 to 2022 Queen Elizabeth II had 270 runners of which 56 won (SR 20.1%) for a loss of £42.37 (ROI -15.2%); A/E index 0.92. It will be interesting to see if there is an improvement in performance with Royal runners over the next couple of seasons.

 

Godolphin

Godolphin had their first winner in December 1992 in Dubai and from 1994 the operation went global. At the time of researching this piece Sheikh Mohamed's racing entity winner-count worldwide stood at 8787, of which 430 came in Group 1 races.

Godolphin UK Annual Strike Rates

In this country they are based in Newmarket and have two trainers, Charlie Appleby and Saeed bin Suroor. Below are their overall yearly win strike rates.

 

 

There seems to have been a slight uptick in performance in the past three seasons (2022 to 2024). This has been reflected in the profit/loss column with 2019 to 2021 seeing losses of £368.61 (ROI -18.0%), while from 2022 to 2024 these have been much reduced to just -£38.48 (ROI -2.4%).

Godolphin Top Jockeys

Onto jockeys now and a look at all jockeys have had at least 60 rides for Godolphin and have ridden for them in 2024. I have ordered them by number of rides:

 

 

William Buick is the main stable jockey now James Doyle has moved on to Wathnan Racing. Doyle has still ridden for Godolphin this year but only 13 times and with just one win. Buick has an excellent record considering how many rides he has had. Betting all his rides would have yielded just a penny in the pound loss, while to BSP this moves into profit by £73.00 (ROI +6.8%). Oisin Murphy has an excellent record and primarily has ridden for bin Suroor. He’s only been called upon seven times so far in 2024 but has three wins from those rides. Going back to 2019 Murphy has an excellent record when riding in novice events. He has managed 18 wins from 41 rides (SR 43.9%) for a profit of £19.85 (ROI +48.4%). To BSP this improves to +£27.73 (ROI +67.6%).

Godolphin at Grade 1 Tracks

The next area to share is the stats at Grade 1 courses. This is where the biggest races tend to occur and a big operation like Godolphin do target quality.

 

 

The performances at Newmarket stand out. As you can see, I have split them into the Rowley and July courses, partly to show the consistency shown at Godolphin's local track. The two highest strike rates come from the Rowley and July course stats, both have shown profits to SP, and both A/E indices are comfortably above 1.00.

Now, the Godolphin stables are based in Newmarket, so the horses do not have to travel and are used to the surroundings. Even so, these stats are impressive especially given the quality of opposition they face at Headquarters. If you had backed all of their runners at Newmarket to BSP, profits would stand at an impressive +£172.44 (ROI +22.2%). If we look at the yearly BSP returns (ROI%) we see the following:

 

 

Profits in every single year showing excellent consistency. The last three years have been particularly strong.

William Buick has an outstanding record for Godolphin at the Suffolk track thanks to 133 winners from 368 (SR 36.1%) for a profit of £84.61 (ROI +23%). To BSP this climbs to +£121.46 (ROI +33%). Oisin Murphy is 10 from 22 and his mounts have returned a huge return to SP of 159 pence in the £. That has been achieved with the biggest priced winner being 9/1.

All in all, the Godolphin operation keeps firing year on year, and there are no signs of this abating.

 

Shadwell Estate Co (formerly Hamdan al Maktoum)

The Shadwell Estate is a world-renowned racing and breeding operation located in Britain, Ireland and the USA. Sheikh Hamdan al Maktoum became one of the leading figures in international horseracing from the 1980s until his passing in 2021. He was champion Flat owner in Britain nine times, the last of which was in 2020. The operation is now run by his daughter, Sheikha Hissa. It is noticeable that the operation seems to have been streamlined since the death of Sheikh Hamdan with the number of runners per year roughly halving. This seems mainly due to the number of 2yo runners which have decreased dramatically.

In 2022 Shadwell had their best season in the 2019-2024 period hitting over 32% winners and returns to SP of 25p in the £. This year to date has been a little ‘sticky’ relatively with a strike rate of half that on 16.8% and losses edging close to 40p in the £. I am assuming 2024 has just been a small blip, based on going back further in time when they had similar strike rates in 2012, 2013 and 2016.

 

Shadwell Estate Trainer Performance

Below is a table showing trainers who have saddked at least 100 runners for Shadwell and at least one runner in 2024:

 

 

The Gosden, Varian and Burrows yards have all provided excellent long-term results, blind profits to SP and A/E indices above 1.00. This year two trainers in particular have struggled, with Charles Hills on just one win from 19 and Richard Hannon having drawn a blank from all of his 14 runners.

A trainer they may start to use more is Kevin Phillipart de Foy. He has had only four horses to date but three of them have won and overall, he has five wins from 12 from those horses.

In terms of jockeys, Jim Crowley gets the lion’s share of the rides and from 2019 to 2023 he made a blind profit to BSP in every single year, and to SP in four of the five years. This has not been the case this year which is no surprise given the 2024 figures shown above.

From a racecourse perspective, there are 11 courses where Shadwell has sent at least 100 runners since 2019. These favoured tracks have combined to produce a BSP profit of £199.67 (ROI 12.7%). I have graphed their A/E indices below:

 

 

Doncaster and Lingfield have extremely strong A/E indices of 1.29 and 1.26 respectively when Shadwell runners visit. At both courses they have provided good profits to both Industry SP and BSP and the strike rate at Lingfield has been better than one win in every three (34.3%). Kempton is another track where their runners have performed extremely well.

Shadwell Market Performance

Looking at the betting market, Shadwell runners have turned a profit on both favourites and second favourites:

 

 

To BSP profits stand at £45.85 (ROI +6.7%) for favs, and +£65.42 (ROI +14.4%) for second favs.

It will be interesting to see how Shadwell move forward in the next two or three years.

Cheveley Park Stud

The Cheveley Park Stud is Newmarket’s oldest stud farm and has been one of the major forces in European bloodstock and racing for over 35 years. With a strike rate of around one in six they have not been as successful as the likes of Godolphin, but there are still a few positive angles to share, as well as some negative ones.

Below is their annual breakdown:

 

 

As can be seen, it has been a little up and down. This year to date has been good, as was 2021. Last year saw quite a dip so it is difficult to get a handle on how things may go each year.

Cheveley Park Stud by Race Class

Onto to Class of Race next and here are the splits:

 

 

The headline here are those 38 wins at Class 1, with a profit to boot. To BSP this profit stands at £75.71 (ROI +29.3%) and sticking with BSP Class 1 races have yielded a profit in four of the six years. If we breakdown the Class 1 races we see that Listed races have offered the best returns:

 

 

All 17 wins from the Listed races have come with female runners. Females have provided 86 of the runners; the 11 male runners have drawn a blank. It should be noted at this point that around 75% of ALL the horses from Cheveley Park have been female with the vast majority of these being fillies, most of the colts from the stud being sent to auction.

Cheveley Park Performance by Surface

With most of Cheveley Park's runners being fillies, I suspect that the turf versus all-weather stats are worth looking at. Generally, female runners find it harder on the all-weather than on grass, so I am predicting that the red, white and blue-silked runners have a slightly better record on turf. Let’s see:

 

 

No surprises here. The turf figures are far superior to the all-weather ones across the board.

Cheveley Park Performance by Trainer

A look at trainers next. Firstly, a comparison of strike rates across the main trainers (60 runs minimum):

 

 

Quite a variance here, ranging from William Haggas at over 22% to Roger Varian at under 10%. Let’s see which trainers have produced the best A/E indices over the period of study:

 

 

David O’Meara is the standout with an A/E index of 1.11. He had a decent strike rate of close to 19% and has been profitable with Cheveley Park runners to both SP (12p in the £) and BSP (24p in the £). Also take notice if Danny Tudhope is booked to ride for O’Meara and Cheveley Park. They have combined to secure a 54% profit to SP, 71% to BSP.

The Gosden stats look a bit weird as they have been profitable to SP (18p in £) and BSP (26p in the £), but their A/E index is down at 0.84. However, this is because of a below average performance with shorter-priced runners. For the record the stable has made an SP profit in five of the six years.

Cheveley Park Market Performance

Finally for Cheveley Park, let me share some market data because it caught my eye. When the SP has been short (9/4 or shorter) the results have been quite poor. The ownership entity has managed 100 wins from 294 qualifiers (SR 34%), but losses have been significant at £69.53 (ROI –23.7%).

But when their runners have drifted in price from Early Odds (around 9am in the morning) to their final SP they have made a profit if backing to BSP. There have been 749 horses which have lengthened in price from Early Odds to SP of which 108 have won (SR 14.4%) for a BSP profit to £81.08 (ROI +10.8%). So don’t be put off by a Cheveley Park drifter. Drifters at single figure BSP prices have made a profit so these figures are not skewed by several big priced winners.

*

That concludes my first piece. I hope there have been some useful nuggets for you to take advantage of in the future. I will continue from where I left off next time. Until then...

- DR

Monday Musings: The Jugglers

/in /by

The second Saturday in September illustrated how trainers and jockeys’ agents need to be expert jugglers at this time of year, writes Tony Stafford. We had the Irish Champion Stakes, worth a total €£1.15 million (€712k to the winner) and the Betfred St Leger, £830k and £421k to the winner, yet three UK champion jockeys were riding more than 3,000 miles away from either venue.

The trio - Oisin Murphy, William Buick and Frankie Dettori - all lined up in the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes for 2yo fillies over a mile and worth £177k at the Woodbine racetrack in Toronto, Canada. Buick was on the 4/5 favourite for Godolphin and Charlie Appleby, the dual early-season winner Mountain Breeze, but she could only manage eighth place.

Ahead of her were Murphy, fifth on 65/1 shot Ready To Battle, for dominant local trainer Mark Casse despite being the outsider of his trio; and Dettori was one place behind on the Christophe Clement filly Annascaul, the race second favourite.

He was the only one of our itinerant trio to have a ride in the next Graded race, the Ontario Matron (G3) on the Tapeta track. He finished fourth for Casse who again had three runners without securing the win.

Only five turned up for the E P Taylor Stakes for fillies and mares, run on the turf track. In the past the E P Taylor was a frequent target for UK and especially French runners. It honours the Canadian breeder Eddie Taylor. He stood Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Northern Dancer, the stallion who first tickled the fancy of Vincent O’Brien and led, with Robert Sangster and John Magnier’s help, to the legacy of Sadler’s Wells and, through him, to his even more influential son Galileo.

This year, the E P Taylor was a tame affair considering there was £266k for the winner. Oisin got a ride here but could do no better than fourth of five on Blush for French-based trainer Carlos Laffon-Parias. All three of the visiting riders had been previous winners of the race.

Charlie Appleby and Andrew Balding staged a rematch from a Listed race on King George Day at Ascot in July, with Al Qudra, the winner of that race for Charlie and Will, going into the bet365 <they get in everywhere!> Summer Plate over a mile on the turf as favourite, having beaten New Century by just over two lengths then.

Here Oisin turned the form around on identical terms, winning by one and a quarter lengths from Al Qudra in another Grade 1 again worth £177k, as with the juvenile fillies earlier. The share of the spoils made Oisin’s awayday worthwhile and even in defeat Buick got his mitts on a portion of the 60 grand for second.

The principal reason for the Appleby/Godolphin attack was presumably the featured Rogers Woodbine Mile, with a hefty £355,000 to the winner. The Buick mount, Naval Power, was the 11/20 favourite but finished only fourth to a couple of Mark Casse runners, siphoning up between them a good deal more than half a million Canadian bucks. Naval Power had been a very close second on his previous start when Dettori had the mount in a valuable supporting race on Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs in early May.

If you feel sorry for Frankie, the pensioner (in jockey terms) started out the previous weekend looking forward to a hatful of Aidan O’Brien mounts at Kentucky Downs, but only Greenfinch, who finished fourth, ran, the others being withdrawn. But then, a week yesterday at the same track, May Day Ready won a £483k first prize and that was supplemented by a double at the same track on Wednesday. Dettori won the £238k Gold Cup with Limited Liability and then the Dueling Grounds Oaks Invitational with Kathymarissa and another £720k.

His win prizes amounted to £1,323,000 over the week. No wonder he loves being in the US!

What did they miss while waiting for Saturday in Canada? At Doncaster there was an eighth St Leger win for Aidan O’Brien as the inexperienced and in some ways still green Jan Bruegel edged out Illinois in a thrilling tussle up the Doncaster straight. Both colts are by Galileo and at the final opportunity, his sons dominated yet another English Classic.

Impossible to separate in the market, it looked like a potential dead-heat in the race until Sean Levey, who started out life as an O’Brien apprentice before relocating to the UK, forced his mount’s head in front close to the line.

Behind in third and fourth, also locked together, were Deira Mile and Sunway who crossed the line only a nose apart. I thought it a mealy-mouthed decision by the stewards to turn the form around, denying Deira Mile’s ever-adventurous Ahmed Al Sheikh of Green Team Racing another placed run in the English Classics of which he is so enamoured.

Bay City Roller was a good winner of the Champagne Stakes that opened the card, but it might have been a different story had not Chancellor prematurely burst out of the gate. The Gosden colt, a smart scorer at the track last time, was third at Ascot in the race where Al Qudra beat New Century.

The raft of unlikely horse/trainer/jockey partnerships on this unusual day continued in the Portland Handicap, one of my favourite races with its intermediate sprint distance of around five and a half furlongs.

Here, the unluckiest horse in training, Peter Charalambous’s Apollo One, got the services of no less a partner than Christophe Soumillon. The Belgian, a multiple champion jockey in France, had just got his mount’s brave head in front of a gaggle of horses on the far side when the favourite American Affair flew down under the stands rail under Paul Mulrennan to beat him by a nose.

It was a notable win for Jim Goldie and, given the way he finished on Saturday, the Ayr Gold Cup in five days’ time must have its appeal. Peter Charalambous is adamant he would never ask Apollo One to run in the likely soft ground at Ayr, but it would be nice to think he would win a big sprint handicap before too long.

Over the past two seasons he has finished second in four big sprints, the Wokingham and Stewards’ Cup last year and the Stewards’ Cup and Portland in 2024. His total losing distance is barely two and a half lengths in those races.

Irish Champions Weekend featured a fine return to form by the slightly unpredictable but undeniably ultra-talented Auguste Rodin. He ran a great race in the Irish Champion Stakes but just failed to cope with the tenacious favourite Economics.

It had been a brave decision by William Haggas to resist running his colt in the Derby after his sensational <I use the word advisedly> Dante Stakes romp at York and, nicely rested, Haggas had given him an ideal warm-up run at Deauville last month for his main target here.

Economics came from some way back, as did Auguste Rodin. Tom Marquand sent his mount into the lead halfway up the short Leopardstown straight, when it appeared that Ryan Moore on the dual Derby winner was going marginally the easier, even getting his head in front in the last hundred yards. Economics, to his credit, pulled out extra and, despite battling all the way to the line, Auguste Rodin had to be content with an honourable second place.

The path for both horses is set in stone. Economics will now go to the Qipco Champion Stakes for what will be only his sixth career start. Auguste Rodin has the Breeders’ Cup Turf, which he won last year, as his autumn objective.

Just behind in third and fourth were the Japanese horse Shin Emperor, who should make a bold attempt at being the first from Japan to win the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, and fast-finishing Los Angeles, who probably would have fully extended his two stablemates at Doncaster.

His range of entries, from the Champion Stakes (ten furlongs) at Ascot to the British Champion Long Distance Cup (two miles) the same day and, a fortnight earlier, the Arc over one mile and a half reflect his untapped potential and versatility. I’d go the stayers’ route if he were mine – wishful thinking in the extreme!

Yesterday, Messrs Buick and Murphy made it back to the Curragh for the second day of the Irish Champions Weekend. They might not have won as they rode respectively Vauban and Giavellotto into second and third in the Irish St Leger, but at least they got a close-up view of the remarkable Kyprios.

Aidan O'Brien's six-year-old entire was taking his earnings past £2 million with an authoritative performance under Ryan Moore. It was Kyprios' 13th win in 17 career starts. After last year's injury problems and a curtailed season of only two second places, he has now repeated the same first five victories of his unbeaten four-year-old campaign and in the same  races.

That year (2022) he ended the season with victory in the Prix Du Cadran over two and a half miles - by twenty lengths! If he goes there and wins in three weeks it would be a double unbeaten six-timer, four of them at Group 1 level, surely a record, and one that will be exceptionally difficult to match in the future. He deserves to be regarded as at least the equal of Yeats as a stayer. Many will think him superior.

- TS

Your first 30 days for just £1