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There was a space next to me for Aidan O’Brien to slide into as we had a late lunch on Saturday, delayed by the excitements we’d just seen on the track, writes Tony Stafford. To my observation that I’d written that City Of Troy was the best two-year-old I’d ever seen, performance-wise, after the Superlative Stakes back in July, Aidan simply said: “He is”, adding, “I know you did, I read that in your column again last week”.
Ever generous with his comments, I’m sure ITV viewers would have heard the same sentiment a little earlier, but like many other people I was at the time too carried up in the euphoria of seeing a performance so rare in a championship race. Even some of the great horses have made hard work of winning the Dewhurst Stakes on their way to 2000 Guineas or Derby triumph the following year.
Frankel comes immediately to mind as one that didn’t struggle, having comfortably beaten O’Brien’s Roderic O’Connor (Irish 2000 Guineas winner the following May) in his Dewhurst on his fourth start of a 14-race unbeaten career. Two other Group 1 winners were his victims in his first three two-year-old appearances.
Nathaniel (two King Georges) gave him a tussle on debut on Newmarket’s July Course while O’Brien’s Treasure Beach (Irish Derby) was only third when they met in the Royal Lodge immediately before the Dewhurst. These were notable early scalps for the colt that brought such lustre to the end of Sir Henry Cecil’s epic career, and to Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms.
That Frankel is the yardstick to which City Of Troy has aspiration to be measured was immediately and inevitably emphasised as Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith called Saturday’s winner “our Frankel”. If Aidan and Ryan Moore are to be believed, he is.
They waited for Ryan to report back after finishing second in the opener behind one of two smart Charlie Appleby winning juveniles on the day before taking the final fateful step to run. Ryan said, confounding the relatively quick time, which he explained was due to the strong following wind, that the ground was deep and holding.
A quick consultation between trainer and Messrs Tabor and Smith resulted in the decision to let him take his chance. As Michael said: “He can only lose”, a throwback to the 2000 Guineas debacle for subsequent dual Derby and Irish Champion Stakes winner Auguste Rodin. It isn’t the races you lose that count, but those you win. Now they know he can handle deep ground.
Of course, I wasn’t by any means the only media observer of the July humbling of subsequent Vintage Stakes winner Haatem to express extravagant comments. On Racing TV, Nick Luck’s first words as Ryan pulled up the son of US Triple Crown winner and Coolmore stallion Justify were: “Find me a better two-year-old and I don’t think you will. Not this year anyway.”
On his programme on the channel yesterday morning, he had Hughie Morrison, Racing Post’s Lee Mottershead, and recently retired jockey Louis Steward, and all three agreed with the presenter that here was a horse out of the ordinary.
Luck confessed that as the year went on and various other options rather than the conventional UK Classic format were being mentioned, with the Middle Park and Kentucky Derby as tentative plans, and I quote, “I cashed in my Guineas and Derby bets”. Silly Nick!
Back to Aidan, and when you think that he and the Coolmore partners have won a joint-record eight Dewhurst Stakes, six of them since 2013, for him to consider City Of Troy unquestionably the best, that is some recommendation indeed.
As we munched away, he explained, “We’ve never been able to get him tired and that hasn’t ever been the case with any of our horses before him”. To go back and watch the last furlong of his three runs – on debut at the Curragh challenged in the form the furlong pole but pushed out before going away for a comfortable victory; on the July Course exploding clear of decent opposition; and now, when asked, again surging away going up to the line, without ever seeing a hint of interruption in his perfect stride pattern in any of them.
Sectional times by furlong for the Dewhurst Stakes field, the winner accelerating impressively away on soft ground
It’s one thing to do it on fast summer going, quite another to replicate it on deep ground, but as he sailed along happily in front, initially at a steady gallop and then one marginally increased by Ryan before a quickening between the penultimate and final furlongs, the gulf in class was starkly evident.
As with Frankel in his 2000 Guineas, when the fringe performers were catching him to a minor degree at the line after the verdict was long decided, so it was on Saturday. Willie Ryan, a Derby winning jockey in his younger days and long-time observer of all the greats with a close up of Frankel’s career and more recently all the best Godolphin horses in Charlie Appleby’s yard, was adamant. “I know the Rowley Mile is a great front-runner’s track, so Ryan was right to dictate, but to do it like that in any championship race, and especially the Dewhurst, was very special.”
Justify may have won the 2018 Triple Crown in the US, as had another Coolmore America stallion, American Pharoah, two years earlier, but the equivalent feat has yet to have been achieved here since Nijinsky and Vincent O’Brien from the same yard in 1970. Camelot went close for the team in 2012, winning the 2000 Guineas and Derby before finishing runner-up in the St Leger, but if ever a pedigree suggested they can finally end the long wait for another, City Of Troy surely has it.
Galileo’s final crop of two-year-olds this year signals an imminent end of a golden era for Coolmore and the partners’ trainer, but he leaves Frankel as his top successor. Inevitably, Galileo appears prominently in City Of Troy’s pedigree and increasingly we will see the Justify on Galileo mares cross as it becomes obvious how effective it is, with so many high-class racemares the great champion has bequeathed the operation. Like his ill-fated but still highly influential sire Scat Daddy before him, Justify, who was bred by John Gunther, produces top-class turf horses.
With eight three-year-olds and a dozen juveniles to represent him in 2023 from Ballydoyle, the results have been spectacular already. City Of Troy’s exploits against the boys have been almost mirrored by Opera Singer, five-length winner of the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac at the Arc meeting two weekends ago. She is by Justify out of a mare by Sadler’s Wells, of course the sire of Galileo.
City Of Troy’s dam, Together Forever, had already produced four classy winners before City Of Troy. She is by Galileo and if that wasn’t evidence enough, her mother was by Theatrical, another noted stamina influence.
The year of 2024 promises to be tremendously exciting with potential dreams of the first Triple Crown for 54 years. Whereas Frankel did not get the opportunity to show that he would have been just as superior to all-comers at a mile and a half – the ten furlongs and 56 yards of the fast York track in an easy demolition of his Juddmonte International Stakes rivals on penultimate start was the furthest he attempted - I’m sure City Of Troy will tackle that longer trip. Hopefully that will happen at Epsom on the first Saturday of June.
As media director Richard Henry observed to fellow Coolmore executive Christy Grassick as they walked towards the winner’s circle straight after witnessing the sublime performance of their stable star, “Now we know what we’ll be thinking about through the winter”. Clearly, he cannot wait for the first Saturday in May.
We're into the bit of the season I call the "in-between" bit, writes David Massey; the Flat season starts to wind down, although there's still some good stuff to come, and the jumps hasn't really got going, with Chepstow today the signifier that things are about to go up another level.
The return of the evening meetings at Southwell will be my main work in the ring for the next few months. As I've said before, Southwell is one of the strongest betting rings in the country, you'll often get exchange prices or even bigger on some occasions, which makes it a great place for punters but hard to win at for bookmakers.
As an example, the one I work for just about broke even after expenses over the winter last year. You'd wonder why they bother, but work is work and there's always the hope that results will be better for them this time around.
We were at the first of the evening meetings a couple of weeks ago and weren't expecting much in the way of either a crowd or large wagers. Well, how wrong could we have been....
After a fairly quiet opener (in which I tipped the winner Papa Ricco at 14-1, just as an aside ;-)) it all kicked off in the nursery that followed. Literally the first bet I took was a £30ew on the winner Lotting's Lass at 40-1, swiftly followed up by another £25ew and £20ew from his mates. Then in come the each-way bombs for third-home Elliott; a £150ew and a £200ew, the latter from a well-known racing personality. Finally a £200 win on the well-backed runner-up Amroon just on the off. Suffice to say my payout sheet was a large one after the race, and the firm were well and truly behind.
You'd have thought having an 18-1 chance win the maiden would help but no, we took plenty of scores and ponies for winner Sir Terence Hadley, and The Pug was no better in the next. Sniper's Eye attracts two monkey bets at 4-5 before winning the next and third home Running Star is the each-way bogey to give us another kicking. I've twice been to the boss for more float money already before War Defender is a well-backed winning favourite in the sixth, and not even Dance Time at 33-1 in the last gives us any respite, with plenty of small tenners and fivers laid at 33s and 40s. An awful evening, and a shocking start to the new Southwell season.
Compare that to Tuesday night's meeting - a smaller crowd, barely a big bet taken on my joint (the biggest I took was £100 all night, and that won) and nine races with 35-minute gaps between the first three. Those, my friends, are long and boring nights. Thank goodness it wasn't cold.
The appeal for having nine races (and ten can only be around the corner, you feel) for tracks is obvious enough - hello, more media rights money - but for both punters and bookmakers alike it feels like a marathon. Most people had left after seven races and by the time the last came around the stands looked pretty sparse. If we are to have these nine-race cards, can we not have 25-minute gaps? It isn't like there's anything else on most of the time, so you're not clashing with anything.
The spell of recent unexpected good weather saw a decent crowd at Stratford on Monday, too. I'd been called up as the firm I was working for also have pitches at Pontefract and, with the sun out, it made sense to work an extra pitch. Plenty of people enjoying themselves but not a lot of betting action, it must be said. The crowd we were betting to can be best summed up as thus - for the third race, the novice hurdle, one punter came up to my pitch and had £20 win on a 150-1 shot and a tenner each-way on the 7-2 fav. I politely enquired if he'd got one the wrong way round. "Actually, no, but I can see your point, it would make more sense to have the £20 on the favourite and the outsider each-way, wouldn't it?" The boss wasn't happy as he switched his bets around but after he'd backed the winner he thanked me and bet with us all afternoon. See, customer service, it's what it's all about!
Other than those fixtures I've not been about a lot. We, that's the new Mrs Massey and me, had a very pleasant day out at Newmarket for the Sun Chariot and managed to fail to back a single winner. It was good to be there for Inspiral's win and subsequent Frankie Group 1 leap to keep the crowd happy, but all the same it would have been nice if I'd had the chance to roar one home.
I've been to my local track, Nottingham, a couple of times, too, and thankfully the punting there has been a lot more successful. I have bailed out of Wednesday's Nottingham card as the weather forecast suggested a very soggy day ahead - they were right - and given I fancied nothing at all, I chose to stay home and have a study up for the weekend!
We're off to York tomorrow as it's the good lady's birthday so please do come say hello if you see us loitering by the paddock!
- DM
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hammergun2.jpg389830David Masseyhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDavid Massey2023-10-13 09:32:322023-10-13 09:32:32Roving Reports: In Between
In this follow-up article I am once again looking at market movement between the bookmaker’s opening show and the returned Starting Price, writes Dave Renham. The data I've used has been taken from 2018 to 2022 for all UK flat and all-weather racing. Bookmaker data is taken from William Hill.
In the first piece, which you can read here, the overall stats showed that a bigger percentage of horses drift (lengthen) in price from their opening price than shorten, when comparing market movement from opening show to SP. The biggest difference can be seen in horses that open 10/1 or bigger; of these over 42% drift in price compared with 29% that shorten.
Up to now in this research, I have not considered how much the price changed. Clearly all price movement is not the same; for example, a horse can drift from 4/1 to 9/2, but another 4/1 shot could drift far more dramatically out to 10/1 as an extreme, but perfectly credible, example. Likewise, horses that shorten in price can vary markedly in terms of how much their price contracts.
At this point I want to discuss what I mean by "significant price changes" as we need to be clear that looking at the difference in two prices does not necessarily tell the whole story. To help explain what I mean, let me give you some context. Let us consider two horses:
Horse A – whose opening price is 40/1 and whose SP is 20/1
Horse B – whose opening price is 6/4 and whose SP is Evens
If we focus solely on the prices, Horse A has shortened more because 40/1 to 20/1 is a 20-point truncation, whereas for Horse B moving from 6/4 to Evens is only a 0.5-point move. However, in terms of the chance of winning, Horse B has actually improved its chances more. In order to appreciate this, we need to understand the percentages behind the odds – in other words the percentage chance of winning according to the odds. The table below illustrates this:
As the table shows, Horse A has improved its chances of winning by 2.4% (4.8% minus 2.4%). However, Horse B has improved its chance of winning by 10% (50% minus 40%). Knowing and understanding betting odds in terms of the percentage chance of winning is very important. When I wrote my article on trying to create an odds line, the percentage chance for each horse was something I touched upon. Without it, you cannot easily create an accurate odds line.
At the end of this article, I have produced a table with fractional odds, decimal odds and the implied probability (percentage chance of winning) for betting prices. Readers, if required, may use it as a ready reckoner to convert odds into percentages.
It is now time to compare horses that shorten considerably from opening show to SP with those that lengthen/drift considerably. I am going to only consider horses whose prices have changed, in win percentage terms, by 10% or more. Hence the 6/4 to Even money horses mentioned earlier will count, but not the 40/1 into 20/1 ones. (N.B. The word ‘steamer’ is often used about a horse whose price starts to drop dramatically so for the rest of the article I will use ‘steamer’ for horses that shorten in price).
Let's look at strike rates first – for horses whose win chance changes by 10% or more due to their odds move:
These figures correlate with the findings of the first article and the general data set. Steamers have won 5.5% more often than drifters. However, this does not mean that steamers have produced better returns. In fact, it is quite the contrary as the graph below shows:
These strong steamers actually lost over 13 pence in the £ betting to Betfair SP; drifters lost just 1p in the £. The full breakdown of the results is as follows:
A 10%+ change in win percentage between opening odds and SP only occurs roughly once a day on average. Hence, this type of percentage movement can be considered a major price change.
I thought it might be interesting to breakdown the results further by splitting them by the odds at which they opened. Here are the stats for the steamers:
I have tried to group them so that the number of runs for each group is similar. What seems to be clear is that the worst performing steamers from a profit/returns perspective were those that opened at 11/2 or bigger. The shorter prices of 6/4 or shorter also fared relatively poorly.
Onto driftersnow. There are not many big prices here because a 10%-win probability movement is impossible for horses priced 9/1 or bigger. For an extreme example to illustrate this, a horse drifting from 9/1 (10% chance) to 1000/1 (0.1% chance) has a win probability price movement of only 9.9%:
The results for drifters are more consistent in terms of profits/returns – there is very little difference between the worst performing price band and the best one.
It is clear from this data that if betting at BSP, significant drifters are better value than significant steamers.
Trainers
It is not worth looking at individual trainer data for the strength of steamer/drifter (+ / - 10%), as the sample sizes are going to be too small. Therefore, I am going to focus on trainer data for those horses whose prices changed in win probability terms by 5% or more, rather than 10%. This would include, for example, a horse shortening from 8/1 to 5/1, or one drifting from 6/1 to 10/1. I also restricted the runners a little by looking at horses that opened in price between Evens and 50/1. I ignored odds-on runners and those priced 66/1 or bigger for two reasons: firstly, because the majority of punters do not bet in these price brackets and, secondly, the individual trainer sample sizes are extremely small.
Steamers - As noted above I have broken down trainer performance where the win probability implied from opening odds to SP has improved by 5% or more. Trainers with at least 100 qualifying runners are listed. They are ordered by strike rate/win percentage:
The strike rates are decent as you might expect for steamers, but only a handful of trainers have made a profit. The Johnston and Channon stables have both done well from a profit perspective, as has Mick Appleby. Of course, for steamers, any value is gradually diminishing as the price is contracting.
Ten trainers have produced losses of more than 20 pence in the £, which is quite significant especially considering we are using BSP. The Crisford stable has the worst returns, edging above 30% for their losses.
Of course, if you could predict the steamer before it started shortening in price, and bet before it moves markedly, then the likelihood is that most of the trainers in the list would become profitable. Unfortunately, none of us has a crystal ball, which makes those types of predictions somewhat tricky! What would be interesting to find out is what percentage of horses that initially shorten from opening show, continue to shorten. Likewise, it would be really useful to know what percentage of horses that initially drift from opening show continue to drift. However, I do not have that information and guess the only way to find out would be by doing a live day by day data gathering exercise. That’s for another lifetime!
Drifters – Switching to drifters now below is a table of trainer performance where the win probability change from opening odds to SP has decreased by 5% or more. Trainers with at least 100 qualifying runners are once again listed.
There are six trainers in profit here with Stoute, Haggas and Balding drifters performing particularly well from a returns and strike rate perspective. Indeed, all trainers in the above table have combined to secure a small profit of £21.52.
The two trainer tables I have shared indicate that at this 5%+ level of steam/drift, bettors might be better off backing drifters rather than steamers. In fact, if we look ALL trainers as a whole for both groups, we get the following overall figures:
Steamers, as we have come to expect, have the better strike rate, but drifters are offering punters much better value. So, the question is, do you want more chance of winners, or more chance of a profit?
Going back to the stats for Sir Michael Stoute in the second table above, his non-handicap drifters have totally outperformed his handicap drifters as the chart below shows:
Strike rates are similar but there is a big difference in the profits. Non-handicap drifters of this strength (5%+) would have secured Stoute followers impressive returns of 70 pence in the £ to BSP.
I must admit this has been a very interesting area to research. It is something I have looked at before but not in as much detail. It may be worthwhile comparing early morning odds to SP odds in a future piece, and also at some point I should see if the patterns I have found in these two articles correlate with National Hunt data. Anyway, as ever, I hope you have found the research enlightening, and all comments are appreciated as it helps me with my future work.
- DR
p.s. here is the table I mentioned earlier with fractional odds, decimal odds and the implied probability (percentage chance of winning) for betting prices.
Fractional Odds
Decimal Odds
Implied probability (% chance)
1/100
1.01
99%
1/5
1.2
83.3%
2/9
1.22
81.8%
1/4
1.25
80%
2/7
1.29
77.8%
3/10
1.3
76.9%
1/3
1.33
75%
4/11
1.36
73.3%
2/5
1.4
71.4%
4/9
1.44
69.2%
1/2
1.5
66.7%
8/15
1.53
65.2%
4/7
1.57
63.6%
8/13
1.62
61.9%
4/6
1.67
60%
8/11
1.73
57.9%
4/5
1.8
55.6%
5/6
1.83
54.5%
10/11
1.91
52.4%
Evens
2
50%
21/20
2.05
48.8%
11/10
2.1
47.6%
23/20
2.15
46.5%
6/5
2.2
45.5%
5/4
2.25
44.4%
11/8
2.38
42.1%
7/5
2.4
41.7%
6/4
2.5
40%
8/5
2.6
38.5%
13/8
2.62
38.1%
7/4
2.75
36.4%
9/5
2.8
35.7%
15/8
2.88
34.8%
2/1
3
33.3%
11/5
3.2
31.2%
9/4
3.25
30.8%
12/5
3.4
29.4%
5/2
3.5
28.6%
13/5
3.6
27.8%
11/4
3.75
26.7%
3/1
4
25%
16/5
4.2
23.8%
10/3
4.33
23.1%
7/2
4.5
22.2%
4/1
5
20%
9/2
5.5
18.2%
5/1
6
16.7%
11/2
6.5
15.4%
6/1
7
14.3%
13/2
7.5
13.3%
7/1
8
12.5%
15/2
8.5
11.8%
8/1
9
11.1%
9/1
10
10%
10/1
11
9.1%
11/1
12
8.3%
12/1
13
7.7%
13/1
14
7.1%
14/1
15
6.7%
15/1
16
6.2%
16/1
17
5.9%
18/1
19
5.3%
20/1
21
4.8%
25/1
26
3.8%
33/1
34
2.9%
50/1
51
2%
66/1
67
1.5%
100/1
101
1%
1000/1
1001
0.1%
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DavidProbert_newGeegeezLogo-e1538582067746.jpg313830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-10-09 11:03:152023-10-09 11:03:15Steamers and Drifters: Part 2
Last week’s Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 1 in Newmarket highlighted the extravagant cost of owning a high-class racehorse, writes Tony Stafford. Top price was two million guineas – yes, Tatts are still in the Dark Ages financially speaking – which actually pales in comparison with some double digit million-dollar sales in Keeneland, Lexington, Kentucky in the1980’s.
It’s still steamy enough, though, even when the Frankel colt in question is shared out between the Coolmore partners and Peter Brant, of whom I spoke last week.
Of course, they didn’t buy only one, but the thought’s just the same. Add up to £100 a day (or more) to that initial investment for their young horse after initially breaking and pre-training, to inhabit one of the premier yards in the business and you begin to understand the extent of the investment.
Then, when this routinely “beautifully bred” individual eventually arrives in his yard, the top trainer is liable to say, “He [or she] will need time. If he/she runs as a two-year-old, it will be in September or October, or we may even have to wait for the all-weather in mid-winter.”
I watched on Thursday in the buffet dining room – no, if you were wondering, I’ve only ever in all my 55 years at this sale been invited once into the posh dining room. Thus, it’s dish of the day (at 18 quid!) for me and John Hancock, bloodstock insurance man extraordinaire, but he couldn’t be there last week due to dog minding duties. He’ll be in his usual spot today onwards though for Book 2 when the prices will have cooled more than somewhat, but not for Dish of the Day!
So, we gathered by the screen, watching the second run of my friend’s horse (he was invited to lunch) at Salisbury. We thought he would win but a combination of soft ground, a longer trip and different and, as it proved, less judicious riding tactics, brought disappointment.
That’s an aside. My point is that this race was worth £5,400 to the winner – the owner gets around 70% of that - second prize was £2,535, third £1,268 and fourth £634. That works out as around two months’ keep being retrieved for the winning owner, without of course the additional fees for the extras needed during his training at home and the now excessive diesel costs of getting the horse there.
Luckily for the winner, another successful project for the Goodwood Owners Group, he was trained nearby at Guy Harwood’s Pulborough stables by David Menuisier. Gail Brown has headed up the now 30 years of the group and this representative of the 2023 intake, Goodwood Odyssey, has 140 members to defray the cost. He was a £50k buy.
Runner-up Sea The Thunder was also trained relatively close at hand, by Ralph Beckett near Andover, Hampshire. This horse was bred and is owned by John and daughter Tanya Gunther, who bought back their son of Kingman for 200,000 guineas last October.
I met the Gunthers later on Thursday at Newsells Park Stud’s cosy entertaining facility adjacent to the boxes where the yearlings from the farm that topped Book 1’s aggregate of sales were housed. I must thank Gary Coffey of Newsells for that invite.
The Hertfordshire nursery recruited the Gunthers’ Without Parole to join their stalwart sire Nathaniel (Enable and Desert Crown, no less) three years ago, and the couple were marking time waiting for the last of three of his yearlings to go through the ring.
In realising 120k, their colt out of Midnight Hush, who looked the part beforehand, was an excellent result for a first-season yearling whose sire stands for only £7,000, so this was a cause for celebration. Six more Without Paroles will be offered this week in Book 2.
Before the Gunther colt’s sale, as I munched a second piece of carrot cake and sipped a follow-up cup of Newsells’ excellent coffee, Tanya kindly gave me a Without Parole keyring, a substantial metallic piece that will help me avoid further losses of my keys. I said to John, “Without Parole probably describes life in any sphere of racing, breeding, training and even writing about it”. He agreed, saying he’d been involved since his mid-20’s. I’m up to more than 55 years now and there’s no sign of it ending and rarely ever a day off.
Back to that Salisbury race. The horses following the runner-up went through the ring for 60, 150, 150 again, 13k (bought as a foal as usual by the shrewd Julie Wood), 170, 78 and 70 while the last horse home never went through a sale ring. That’s an average of a little over 100k – not looking the most equitable of investments all round, so far, you might think. Then again, those that do well, can expect big bids, usually from overseas. That’s the crock of gold at the end of the UK racing rainbow.
The average sale price on the three days of Book 1 was almost 250k. I expect this week’s numerically bigger three days of Book 2 might come close to a six-figure average. In that context it might not be too churlish to suggest owners deserve to be treated generously by racecourses when they do go to the races.
Gail Brown, who also entertains the winning owners in her room within the owners’ bar at Goodwood meetings, will no doubt ensure a good number of “her” syndicate members can get in to see their horses run. Some tracks nowadays have syndicate rooms as well as the normal owner entertainment areas.
Newmarket on Saturday staged a meeting which featured the £165k to the winner Group 1 Sun Chariot Stakes for fillies and mares and was won in brilliant style by the favourite Inspiral, trained by John and Thady Gosden for the Cheveley Park Stud, and ridden by a delighted Frankie Dettori.
Earlier on the card, the Tattersalls October Auction Stakes offered a guaranteed £150,000 total prizemoney. Entry in this was restricted to horses that had not been bought in either Books 1 or 2 last year, but for those recruited from the two lesser sales, Books 3 and 4, which will occupy Thursday to Saturday in Park Paddocks and some other lesser Tatts sales through the year.
As ever, it attracted a big field, so it was surprising that more of the owners and their friends did not take the opportunity to enjoy the excellent facilities and greatly improved food offered in the Al Basti Equiworld Owners Lounge, situated in the grandstand on the corner of the track where the horses come out. From there you can watch the races on several screens and even see the finish by looking through the large rear window.
Over the years, Al Basti Equiworld, from Dubai, has been instrumental in doubling the area of the facilities both on the Rowley Mile and during the summer on the July Course. It has been thanks to Michael O’Hagan, Al Basti’s representative in the UK, and Lynda Burton, the energetic, efficient, and very popular manager, that standards (and staff proficiency) have risen sharply over the past couple of years.
Now they compare with those on most major tracks, although they do not have the scope of, say, Chester or Ascot. On Saturday, some friends of a friend were looking for a day’s racing close to Cambridge where the three brothers were meeting for a rare weekend get-together.
When one, the eldest, turned up in shorts, I was horrified, probably still traumatised a dozen years on after my wife and a friend were excluded from the Members’ enclosure (they had the correct badges) for a Friday night meeting on the July Course because they were wearing designer jeans. We left in a huff and went to Cambridge for dinner.
It seems though that anything goes nowadays at the HQ of horse racing and he and his identical younger twin brothers were warmly welcomed, both into the track and the Al Basti room. The brothers (one medical doctor, the other a scientist in Cambridge) were less acquainted than Mr Shorts, otherwise known as Rowan, with racing but, having enjoyed the day, they promised a repeat should not be long delayed.
They all backed the last winner – always the best one - about half an hour after they got a family picture taken with none other than Frankie, now in relaxed mood in the room after his big win. The photographer? No, not ham-fisted me, but another Derby-winning jockey in Willie Ryan. Frankie and Willie, like me, will both have enjoyed yesterday’s result from the Emirates, as did my son and grandson, the latter having a rare treat on his birthday weekend.
Space will be more at a premium in the Al Basti Equiworld room next Saturday when hopefully City Of Troy, the colt I believe is the best two-year-old I’ve ever seen, will cement his reputation in the Dewhurst Stakes. He’s a 4/7 shot. The day before, Ollie Sangster will be hoping that Shuwari, slowly away when runner-up in the Al Basti Equiworld Rockfel Stakes on the Friday of the Cambridgeshire meeting, when Al Basti sponsored the whole day’s racing, will make amends in the Fillies’ Mile.
As to the Cesarewitch, Hughie Morrison runs two strong candidates in last year’s runner-up Vino Victrix and the three-times placed in the race 10-year-old Not So Sleepy. I would love the latter to win but it will be tough under his penalty.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/WoodhayWonder_Newmarket.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2023-10-09 07:26:332023-10-09 08:42:24Monday Musings: An Expensive Game
In this article I am going to look at market movement between the bookmaker’s opening show and the final Starting Price and unearth some truth about steamers and drifters, writes Dave Renham.
In what follows I will be focusing on flat and all-weather racing in the UK spanning five years from 2018 to 2022. Bookmaker data is taken from William Hill.
Typically, the opening show tends to be around ten minutes before the off, and these are the initial prices the bookmakers set. Backing a horse at ‘opening show’ and seeing it shorten in price means you have probably gained a decent edge and potentially some value. Conversely, if you take the opening show price and the horse drifts (lengthens) in price, then you may have lost some value.
However, it is important to note that more horses will lengthen in price than shorten. Here is a graphic to illustrate this by looking at the percentage of all runners that either shorten in price, stay the same, or lengthen in price:
As can be seen nearly 42% of all horses drift, compared with 34% who shorten. Roughly a quarter of all runners see their price remain steady. It is interesting to note that the percentages are very similar when comparing handicaps with non-handicaps (within 1%), hence the market behaves in a very similar way from opening show until the off regardless of race type.
My starting point for researching this article is very simple – look at opening show versus Starting Price and seeing what effect the differential has on strike rate and profit/loss. In terms of profit/loss I am going to calculate returns to Betfair Starting Price. For the sake of simplicity, I am going to split the runners into three groups:
- horses that shorten in price from opening show
- horses that stay the same price as opening show
- horses that lengthen in price from opening show.
Using numerical examples:
Let me start by looking at all races.
As we can see, horses that shorten in price have comfortably the best strike rate, therefore, unsurprisingly, the market does tend to get it right most of the time. In terms of returns to Betfair Starting Price horses that have remained the same price have proved the best value by a couple of pence in the £. It may be interesting to note that there is little in it between horses which shortened in price compared with those which lengthened.
So, we have a very even looking starting point in terms of returns / value, now it is time to dig deeper.
Horses whose opening show price was 4/1 or shorter
I thought it made sense to look at different price brackets so let’s start with the better fancied runners. It also seemed logical to use the opening show price for this rather than SP as the opening show price is known pre-race. Here are the splits:
There is the same sliding scale in terms of strike rate, but it is the horses that lengthened / drifted in price that have been better value this time. Horses that shortened in price proved the worst value.
Horses whose opening show price was 4/1 or shorter and then lengthened in price
Focusing on this subset of drifters, it is interesting when you compare the results on Grade 1 tracks compared with other tracks. The Grade 1 tracks on the flat are Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown and York. Firstly, let’s review the win and each-way (win + placed) strike rates:
There is a difference of 1.6% in the win strike rates; 4.3% in terms of combining win and placed percentages (each way). These differences may look quite modest, but they are significant.
The graph below shows the return on investment (ROI%) to BSP for each group to highlight the significance:
Now we can see the significance of a 1.6% difference in win strike rates – the returns are over 7p in the £ worse at Grade 1 tracks for these shorter priced runners compared with the non-Grade 1 tracks. Indeed, away from the top tracks we see a situation where one would have virtually broken even backing every single drifter to BSP when it opened at 4/1 or shorter.
Whatever is occurring to create these differences between Grade 1 tracks and non-Grade 1 tracks for drifters, I am not sure. It may be connected with average field size; it may be connected with the quality of racing. It could be a combination of those, or neither.
Sometimes it is not worth speculating, especially as in this case it is nigh on impossible to isolate why. I’m happy on this one that it makes sense to just go with the data.
Before moving on I have checked the 2023 data (up to 27th Sept) and the same pattern for horses that drift/lengthen in price having opened 4/1 or shorter has continued:
The message according to all the information at my disposal is clear: horses which open at 4/1 or shorter and drift look to be POOR value when racing at Grade 1 tracks; away from these top tracks, such horses seem much better value – taking 2023 into account, going back to 2018 these runners would have lost you just 5p for every £100 bet.
Horses whose opening show price was 2/1 or shorter
Going back to data from ALL courses, if we focus on a shorter opening odds criterion of 2/1 or lower, and only look at drifters, we almost get to a break-even scenario. There were 7696 qualifiers of which 2801 won (SR 36.4%). Backing all 7696 runners at £1 stakes to BSP would have lost a meagre £49.13 (ROI -0.6%).
Horses whose opening show price was 2/1 or shorter that lengthened in price
If we once again look at the Grade 1 track data compared with other tracks for this subset of drifters, we see the following:
A similar, if stronger, pattern than with the 4/1 or shorter opening show cohort of drifters. Here, we are looking at a nearly 3% difference in win strike rate which equates to a difference of over 11p in the £ in terms of BSP returns.
As per the table above, drifters at non-Grade 1 tracks opening 2/1 or shorter have edged into profit. For this to happen across such a large sample – over 6500 runners – is interesting and impressive.
Horses whose opening show price was between 9/2 and 9/1
Time to look at the data for a bigger odds bracket. Here are the splits for each subset of the cohort whose opening show price was between 9/2 and 9/1:
It should have been no surprise to see those shortening in price winning more in percentage terms once again. In terms of returns, as with the shorter priced runners, horses that have shortened have been the worst value, albeit by just over 1p in the £.
Horses whose opening show price was between 9/2 and 9/1 that lengthened in price
I wanted to continue the comparison between drifters in this price bracket at Grade 1 and non-Grade 1 tracks to see if we get a similar differential as before. I assumed we would, as my expectations were that it would only start to reverse with longer-priced runners:
As before the non-Grade 1 track data is notably better, both in strike rate terms and BSP returns. However, the gap is starting to narrow, though the difference between the two is still clear. This dynamic has to switch around for bigger-priced runners and we will see whether this is the case shortly.
Horses whose opening show price was 10/1 or bigger
Onto double figure priced runners on the opening show now. Here are the results:
Horses that remained the same price have provided the best returns, while those shortening have marginally out-performed drifters. All groups though show poorer returns than the shorter priced runners we reviewed earlier. Both the shorteners and the drifters offered poor value for the punter.
Horses whose opening show price was 10/1 or bigger that lengthened in price
Finally for this section, I wanted to investigate whether this subset of drifters produced converse results whereby horses that raced at Grade 1 tracks performed better than those which did not.
Here, necessarily, we have the big switch around: horses racing at Grade 1 tracks have the better strike rate for the first time and their returns are much better than their non-Grade 1 track counterparts.
When comparing the results of horses running at a different level of racetrack, splitting up the drifters’ data into opening show price bands has been an eye opener for me. In the future, if my plan is to place my bet late at a Grade 1 track and my horse opens up 9/1 or shorter, I would think twice about backing it if it started to drift. Conversely if I was planning the same at a non-Grade 1 track then I would want to see it drift!
As it stands, the research shared so far has been very general – hence the huge sample sizes. I have not yet considered how much the price has changed, because clearly a horse can drift from 6/1 to 13/2, but another 6/1 shot could drift dramatically out to 10/1 and beyond. In a follow-up article I will be digging deeper into the size of the change in price.
Back to this article and, having looked at the splits in terms of strike rate and returns for different price bands, I thought it would be interesting to go back to where this all started and look at the percentage of all runners that either shorten in price, stay the same or lengthen/drift within each of these bands. Here are my findings:
This is very enlightening as we can see that the percentage of horses that drifted compared to horses that shortened is similar in the 4/1 or less group, and also in the 9/2 to 9/1 group (green/yellow bars). However, in the 10/1+ group, 42% of all runners drifted, compared to a much lower 28.9% of runners who shortened. These stats are implying that we should delay wagering longer-priced runners by either waiting to the last minute or simply using Betfair SP. For horses that open at prices of 9/1 or shorter, the timing of bet placement seems generally less crucial.
Trainers
Changing tack, a quick look at some raw trainer data now. I have chosen 25 high volume flat trainers, and I am simply comparing win strike rates and A/E indices for all of their runners within the three cohorts we’ve used throughout this piece – horses that shortened, horses that stayed the same price and horses that drifted. I have highlighted A/E indices of 0.95 or higher (in green) – these are essentially positive. A/E indices of 0.79 or lower (in red) are essentially negative:
There are more greens than reds and, as a rule, the strike rates increase as you read across the columns left to right. This is what we would expect based on the overall data presented earlier. However, George Boughey is interesting as his three strike rates sit very close together, between 17.25 and 17.72%. Horses of his that have drifted have proved much better value than those that have shortened.
Clive Cox has a poor record with horses that drift in price as does James Tate, perhaps suggesting these yards know when to bet! Meanwhile, David Menuisier has done extremely well with horses that have shortened in price. They would have provided you with returns of over 17p in the £ to BSP which is impressive: another yard to follow when they’re fancied maybe?
I wanted to delve a little more deeply into trainer statistics and analyse the percentage of runners for individual trainers that either shorten, stay the same price or lengthen.
Below is a list of trainers whose runners drift far more than they. I have ordered them by highest percentage of runners that lengthen in price:
It was surprising to see George Boughey in the list and even more surprising to see him at the top. I also had not expected to see Sir Mark Prescott or Gary Moore appear either. It may be that these horses are often put in at defensively short prices on the opening show, bookmakers fearful of shrewd trainers/connections landing a gamble. Elsewhere, some less well-known trainers are arguably more predictable entries in the table.
There are not many trainers where this scenario is reversed with the percentage of horses that shorten in price being higher than the percentage that drift. However, five well known handlers have this profile and are shown below:
There are some big guns in this list. Punters are aware of the skills of these trainers and hence their runners are usually going to be strong in the betting market. It may be that these yards are, generally speaking, less inclined to gamble their horses, though in the case of Aidan O’Brien that’s not typically the case.
*
It is time to wind up this first article into market movement. There are plenty of stats to chew over and hopefully for punters who bet near or around ‘the off’ it has given some useful data to potentially improve your profit/loss bottom line. You can read part two of this article here.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/steamerdrifter.png320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-10-02 13:57:492023-10-10 09:36:09The TRUTH About Steamers and Drifters
I know I should be dedicating much of today’s article to celebrating France’s successful conclusion to their horseracing Holy Grail – finding an unbeaten three-year-old colt who can win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, preferably as the favourite for Europe’s greatest race, writes Tony Stafford.
As I watched on a nice big screen at a much more leisurely Epsom racecourse yesterday, I picked out the motionless Christian Demuro near the back of the 15-horse field and not for one moment did I think Ace Impact wouldn’t win.
The sprint, when it finally came, was prototype “Arc”, Ace Impact sailing past them all down the outside with any doubts about stamina, class, or anything else you care to mention, made totally irrelevant by the manner of the win.
France has a true champion, one going by an appropriate name that is sure to adorn many colts and fillies down the road. Sir Philip Oppenheimer can be proud of the sire, Cracksman, bred by him from Frankel out of a Pivotal mare and now standing at Darley Stud.
Unlike Golden Horn, which he also bred, Cracksman didn’t win the Derby, finishing third to one of the least remembered winners, Wings Of Eagles and Padraig Beggy - although one that John Gosden, Cracksman’s trainer, thought a talented performer who might have gone further had he not finished lame in the Irish Derby in which he was a close third to stablemate Capri.
Ace Impact’s owners, who shelled out €75k for him as a yearling at the Deauville August sale of 2021 can sit back and wait for the offers to come flying in. The previous Jean-Claude Rouget winner of the race was Sotssass, who is now standing at stud at Coolmore at a fee of €25k. His racing owner Peter Brant was at Newmarket on Saturday.
We had a chat as the juvenile Group races were adding lustre to the first part of the card but, in the manner of racing at the top end, I’m not sure Peter had much of a second glance at the Cambridgeshire. I said here last week how it’s one of my favourite races and having made the 20/1 winner Astro King my best bet of the day in Trainers Quotes, a line I manage every day, I like the race even more.
I did mention that had Silver Sword been left in by Dylan Cunha, he would have been my confident choice, but the South African, who will be moving into the soon-to-retire William Jarvis’ Phantom House Stables, thought it would be coming too soon after his run in a Listed race at Sandown.
He knows best and that at least eased up the chance to stay with a horse I’d latched onto before the John Smith’s Cup at York in July when he started the astonishingly big price of 50/1 considering what an eye-catcher the ex-Sir Michael Stoute horse had been two races previously on first start for his new stable at Yarmouth.
Daniel and Claire Kubler train the six-year-old Astro King, who had been coming to win his race at York, going narrowly past the leader with a thrilling late run only to be caught in mid-stride, not by the winner so much as the camera which just happened to be situated at the only spot that would have counted against him.
Victory in the John Smith’s would have been a feather in the double Kubler cap. Instead, they had to wait for the Ebor meeting to make amends, the gelding having been raised 3lb, but still having plenty left to continue his upward trend in the Clipper Logistics handicap earning £51k in the process.
Astro King had been a buy from the Sir Mchael Stoute stable at the 2022 Horses in Training sales at Newmarket, for £36k having been originally bought as a yearling for 375,000gns from Book 1 of the October Yearling sales there four years earlier.
Sir Michael had nudged him into the low hundreds by his four-year-old days but after a less successful than expected five-year-old season, Desert Crown’s owner decided to draw stumps.
He had finished second (2021) and fourth in successive Royal Hunt Cup challenges, so understandably that was the first major handicap targeted by the Kublers. That race came between the Yarmouth eye-opener and the John Smith’s so when he trailed home only 21st of 30 at the Royal meeting, it would have been understandable if they had lost faith.
Instead, they embarked on a path mirroring and far out-performing what Sir Michael had achieved two years earlier, the Hunt Cup excepted.
As a four-year old he was 12th of 20 in the John Smith’s as the 7/1 joint-favourite and a close third in the Clipper, again as joint market-leader. He was off 102 when beating only one home in that year’s Cambridgeshire on his final start.
On Saturday, having been raised to 107 after the Ebor meeting win, he topped the weights with a massive 9st12lb. I’ve been limited in my research, lists of pre-1977 winners appearing without the weights carried, but certainly over the past 100 years this has been the biggest weight carried to victory.
It came with quite a comfortable course along the favoured stands side from his draw right on the rail in 35. Richard Kingscote was unhurried and once his determined mount hit the front in the last furlong, he was always holding the excessively gambled-on favourite Greek Order by half a length. Winner and second are both by Kingman but the runner-up, who was receiving 17lb, is a Juddmonte home-bred.
Dan Kubler began training in 2012 and in his first nine campaigns never won more than eleven races in a season. Those numbers have moved up markedly since adding wife Claire’s name to the licence. Claire is the daughter of their principal owners, breeders Gary and Lesley Middlebrook.
A feature of their training pattern has been the willingness to target the valuable prizes on offer in such as the Racing League and Sunday series, so that already this year, from 18 wins at 15% they have amassed £462k, far exceeding 2022’s whole year tally of £326k.
Claire, a qualified accountant, grew up around horses at her parents’ stud. Dan didn’t waste his time either, working for Roger Charlton and Jeremy Noseda in the UK and having spells with Ben Cecil in the US, Francois Doumen in France and Gai Waterhouse in Australia.
Saturday’s great win will give their upwardly mobile career a big boost, not only because of winning a major, prestigious race, but also with a weight-carrying record to boot. I expect a lot of prospective owners will be looking up their Google maps to find their way to Sarsen Farm, Upper Lambourn.
*
I enjoyed a first yesterday. I’ve often tagged onto the end of the scrum inside the Epsom winner’s circle after the Derby or Oaks and watched from near but at the same time oh so far away as the Queen, attended by Bernard Kantor in the days his bank Investec were the Classics’ sponsors, presented the winner’s trophy.
Yesterday, with neither of Strong Impact’s owners in attendance, I represented Ed Babington and my friend Jonathan Barnett as their promising maiden filly gained a facile first win after three good second places this year.
She was long odds-on to do so, but what was a surprise was when Anthony Kemp told me that Clare Balding was there to deliver the very nice glass bowl that went to the winner.
I understand the plan is to keep the 81-rated Roger Varian filly, a daughter of Saxon Warrior, in training as a four-year-old and she has the temperament and physique to develop into a high-class handicapper. The Gary Moore-trained runner-up Soigneux Bell should be watched out for, as he is about to make a start in juvenile hurdles after his second to Strong Impact, trying to concede 12lb. He won his sole race in France over two miles back in May, considering which he showed decent speed over this ten furlongs.
As we waited for the winner’s parcel to be made up, we reminisced that I had actually given Clare her first paid journalistic assignment in the racing pages of the Daily Telegraph. Everything is so long ago, and she revealed that the lovely regular walks she does for Radio Four have been going for 24 years. She has an idea for a special guest for the Silver Anniversary edition next year but I dare not reveal who she hopes willl join her.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AceImpact_Arc2023.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2023-10-02 07:13:312023-10-02 08:36:22Monday Musings: Of Kubler’s King, and Double Impact
This is the third in a short series of articles connected with betting on horse races in running, writes Dave Renham. In the first piece, I discussed the idea of DOBBING which essentially means ‘double or bust’. You either double your money or lose your stake. Just to recap, here is a worked example:
Imagine you back a horse at 20.0 for £5; in order to create a potential DOB you try and lay the horse at half the odds for double the stake – so you set a lay at 10.0 for £10. If the horse hits 10.0 or lower in running, your lay bet will be matched and regardless of the result you will win £5 (less commission). If the horse loses but doesn’t hit 10.0 or lower then you lose your £5 stake.
In the second piece I looked at some in-play horse racing data on the flat and this time my attention switches to National Hunt racing. One could argue that National Hunt racing is easier to trade as the races are longer which generally allows the trader more time to make informed decisions. But does the data support that contention?
As before I am going to look at 20 months’ worth of recent UK data which is a very decent sample in terms of size. In fact, I started my research by splitting the data into two and looked at the overall NH DOBBING percentages for each group. One came out at 44.4%, the other at 44.3%. Hence, I feel we can be very confident that this data set will provide us with extremely accurate figures.
Dobbing Percentages by NH Race Type
My first port of call is to split the data into three race tyoe brackets: steeplechases, hurdle races and National Hunt Flat races (bumpers). Here are the findings:
There is not much difference between the three, but NH Flat races have offered the best chance of DOBBING, followed by chases and finally hurdle races. Most National Hunt Flat races are around two miles so it should be no surprise to see the DOB percentage at 45.9%. If you remember from the previous article the flat results for races of 17f+ saw the DOBBING percentage standing at 45.2%. Hence the NH Flat figure correlates positively with that.
Dobbing Percentages by Handicaps / Non-handicaps
Onto handicaps versus non-handicaps next and, for this data, I am excluding the NH Flat results (which are all non-handicaps) as we have that figure already. In the graph below I have shown the overall handicap versus non-handicaps splits, as well as then splitting this by chase races and hurdle races:
As can be seen in the chart above, horses are more likely to DOB in handicap races as opposed to non-handicaps. Meanwhile, handicap chases are the most successful DOBBING-wise although handicap hurdlers DOB only 1% below this figure. The lowest figure goes to non-handicap hurdle races where just 41.3% of horses successfully DOB.
Dobbing Percentages by Distance
When we looked at the distance splits on the flat in the second part of this series we saw that, as the distance increased, so did the DOBBING percentages. Here now is the National Hunt racing breakdown:
As we can see, the same pattern occurs here with the longer the race, the better the chance of a horse DOBBING. In the first article I had alluded to the fact that this might be the case. Races of two miles or less give us the lowest overall percentage (41.9%), whereas the longest distances of beyond three miles have seen horses DOB 46.9% of the time. There is a very strong linearity of improved DOB percentage as race distance increases.
It is interesting to note that races beyond three miles have seen a slightly higher percentage of DOBBERS in non-handicaps compared to handicaps, which is a surprise given the handicap/non-handicap stats I shared earlier. However, for the record, non-handicap chases at further than three miles have seen 48% of runners DOB. This is the highest figure based on distance parameters I have found to date.
Dobbing Percentages by Market Odds
Let's now look at the data in terms of Betfair Starting Price (BSP). For the flat data I used market rank rather than price and the flat DOB% stats were quite even although favourites (that were not odds on) had comfortably the highest figure in those findings. I felt it was worth changing it up a bit and using actual market prices, which is arguably a more accurate measure:
As with the market data from the flat there is no discernible pattern here. It does, however, look best to avoid the essential ‘no hopers’ priced over 500/1. However, it is surprising, to me at least, to see both the 50.01 to 100 price bracket and the 100.01 to 500 price bracket both hitting over 47%. I can’t explain that one, I’m afraid!
Dobbing Percentages by Courses
A look at courses now. Here are the DOB%s for each course, ordered highest to lowest:
There is quite a difference between the highest figure, at Newbury, 50.6%, and the lowest, Fakenham, 41.2%. What immediately strikes me is the difference in the configuration of these two tracks. Newbury is one of the biggest in terms of circumference being 1m 7f; Fakenham is at the other end of the scale at just one mile all the way round. Cartmel (one mile circumference) and Plumpton (1m 1f circumference) are other tight/sharp tracks that appear down the bottom of the DOBBING percentage list. Meanwhile near the top you have Ascot and Lingfield whose tracks measure 1m5f round, Cheltenham at 1m4f and Donny at 2m. Kelso which is in 4th spot does buck the trend though being just 1m1f in circumference.
Digging a little bit deeper, there could be something in this theory as I decided to find the average circumference of the top ten DOBBING% courses and compare that with the average circumference of the bottom ten. The top ten courses averaged out at 12.6 furlongs, while the bottom ten averaged out at over two furlongs shorter at 10.4 furlongs. Of course, a theory is simply a theory, but the numbers I have uncovered at least seem offer some support.
I need to add a proviso here that these stats come from only 20 months' worth of data. It is still a decent chunk of data for each course but, ideally, I would like four or five years’ worth.
National Hunt Horses with good past DOB%s
To finish this piece, I have tried to find a handful of horses that have, in the past, had a high DOB%. My hope is therefore that this will be replicated over the coming season. So here goes – there are nine in total and I have listed them in alphabetical order:
Ahoy Senor – Ahoy Senor is one of the top 3 mile chasers in the country. He has DOBBED in 11 of his 15 races, but with one of those races seeing him start odds on, this improves to 11 out of 14 (78.6%). In those remaining 14 races he has won five of them, but in six of the other nine he has still halved in price or better in running. I am guessing one of the key reasons for this DOBBING success is that he is habitual front runner. 14 of his 15 starts have seen him take the early lead.
Ashtown Lad – Ashtown Lad, trained by Dan Skelton, is a versatile runner who last season switched between hurdling and chasing. He has DOBBED 76.5% of the time (13 races out of 17). He has DOBBED in six of his seven chases, while in hurdle races it stands at seven out of ten. He has shown a mix of running styles with equal DOBBING success.
Before Midnight – Before Midnight is a 10-year-old gelding trained by Sam Thomas. His career DOB% stands at 75% with 18 DOBs from the 24 races when he has priced 2.02 or bigger. The slight concern is that his DOB percentage has been nearer the 50% mark when looking at the last 18 months or so, which is mainly down to a drop in form. However, he could now be well handicapped so it will be interesting to see what the 2023-24 season brings.
Brewinupastorm – Trained by Olly Murphy, Brewinupastorm has achieved 14 DOBs from 25 races, but this becomes 14 from 22 (63.6%) when you ignore his odds on runs (remember, odds on runners cannot dob because they cannot halve in price on Betfair). He has raced mainly over hurdles and his DOBBING percentage in hurdle races stands at a very impressive 75% (12 of 16 qualifying runs). He has raced nine times in the last two NH seasons DOBBING six times (66.7%).
French Dynamite – French Dynamite is an 8yo Irish chaser. He has achieved 13 DOBs from his 20 runs (65%), including ten in his last 12 (83.3%). He races up with the pace (led seven times, raced prominently 11 times, and held up twice) which may be a factor. Six wins helps, but overall, this horse seems to have very solid potential for keeping up a good DOB percentage this season.
Gatsby Grey – Gatsby Grey is a 7yo trained in Ireland by Oliver Kiernan with just 14 NH races under his belt. Of those 14 he has DOBBED in nine (64.3%). It is interesting to note, too, that he has never started shorter than 5.0 BSP. He has three wins to his name and his recent DOBBING record (since Nov 2022) stands at five from his last seven (71.4%).
Guy – Guy is an 8-year-old gelding trained by Nigel Twiston-Davies. He has raced in chases but was switched back to hurdles at the end of the last National Hunt season. He has raced 21 times in his career and has DOBBED an impressive 15 times, equating to 71.4% of races. He has only won twice in these 21 starts, which was what initially caught my eye, as that would account for only two of the 15 DOBs. Digging deeper he has finished second nine times of which he DOBBED on eight of those occasions.
Hatcher – Hatcher is another trained by Dan Skelton. His DOBBING percentage for his career stands at 65%. He has won six races when odds on, so that 65% is based on his other 40 NH runs where he has DOBBED 26 times. Of those 40 he has won eight. What makes his overall record more impressive is that most of his racing has come at around two miles. As we know from the distance data shared earlier, this trip produces the lowest average of all the NH distance DOB%s. However, there is one caveat: as with Before Midnight his more recent DOB% record stands around the 50% mark so this does need to be taken into account.
Le Tueur – Le Tueur is an 8-year-old gelding who has been racing over fences since November 2021. He has DOBBED 14 times in 23 races (60.8%), but again is not a serial winner with just three wins. It is interesting to see that in two of the three races where he was pulled up, he still DOBBED!
So it’s time to wind up this third piece on DOBBING. I am in the process of starting to crunch some run style data for NH races, but it takes a long time - several weeks in fact. Once done, I will report back on that I’m sure in the future.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AhoySenor.png319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-09-25 16:48:232023-09-25 16:50:31Introduction to Dobbing: Part 3
It's been a while since I last wrote an article for Geegeez, writes David Massey. I was very much hoping to do one post-Ebor but other work commitments got in the way and then, before you know it, I'm in Plymouth getting married.
Well, not strictly married as such: we had what's called a civil ceremony, Caroline and me; it takes the religious side of things out of it (neither of us are religious, so it made sense) but we had a great day with our friends, including one or two racing folk among the guests. A little honeymoon in Mevegissey followed, and then it was back home and straight over to the other side of the country (for me anyway) with the annual three-day trip to Yarmouth for their Eastern Festival. The car has done some miles over the past three weeks!
I'll come to Yarmouth later but I haven't told you how this year's Ebor Festival went. In a nutshell, very little big money flying around the ring, results decent, and the most remarkable thing was me driving home at 11.30pm on the Thursday from my digs back to Nottingham as a boiler that was next to my room started making a lot of noise and wouldn't stop. I decided that there was no way I was getting any sleep and so threw a pair of shorts and a t-shirt on and drove back home to get some kip. I arrived back at 12.45 to find the now Mrs Massey somewhat shocked to see me at such an ungodly hour. "I'll explain all in the morning," I muttered as I slumped into bed and straight off to sleep. She was delighted to see me, really.
So you see, it isn't all glam working on the tracks!
I actually had more fun working at York last Saturday. It was a new fixture and you're never quite sure what business will be like on those days. Indeed, after I'd taken the princely sum of £260 on the first I was thinking it was going to be a long afternoon but business did pick up and by the last I was taking £900 on the back line, which made it a lot more workable. We needed a result in the last to make the day worthwhile and got one with Two Brothers grimly hanging on. At that point we were covering expenses and no more, so at least we won on the day.
It was a young crowd, I noticed, and quite a lot of novices having their first time at the races. That included a dad and his three young daughters, none of whom had been racing before but were fully engaged with the whole process, going to the paddock each time, picking their horses and having their £2 bets with me. They backed plenty of winners between them and when I gave them a free £2 bet on the last, Two Brothers was the pick, which really made their day! I'd like to think they'll be back at some point in the future. You don't need fancy gimmicks and music most of the time - just make it reasonably priced, don't have people's trousers down the moment they walk in, and they will come. And hopefully come again.
The young crowd meant two things - a lot of asking for ID's (most have it ready, for young people today getting asked for ID is part of their everyday) and a LOT of debit card bets. Now, our firm has bought some new card machines that are integrated with the software we use to place the bets and my word, it has really sped the process up. Before, you had to punch the bet in, then go to a separate piece of kit, hope the wi-if signal held up as you waved the card machine around in the air, complete the transaction and then print a ticket once approved. That used to take anything between 25-40 seconds. Not now. The new kit spits the ticket out in around 10-15 seconds and makes card betting a breeze. The boss was amazed when I'd done over 70 card bets at the end of play. It's what the young ones call a "game-changer", I believe.
It's a way off but there will come a time when card bets are going to take almost as much business as cash, so you might as well get used to the technology now. A lot of books have adapted to it but many haven't - whilst you might not necessarily need it for somewhere like Fakenham, you almost certainly will at Sandown, so to me it makes sense to get on board with debit cards now. Whether we like it or not....
And so to Yarmouth last week. I normally work at least one of the three days but not this year, it was something of a well-needed break after, er, the break I'd had the week before in Cornwall. The weather was not kind, with a very stiff breeze on both the Tuesday and Wednesday that was right into their faces up the home straight. Plenty of plastic garden furniture went flying, including one old boy who got up to pour himself a tea out of his flask, only to watch his chair disappear from under him and head towards the furlong marker as he did. Thankfully it missed everyone but it could have been nasty. The results were stupendous on the Tuesday and I know of at least one firm that caught sight of a couple of Newmarket faces quietly backing the 25-1 newcomer Cross The Tracks in the ring and cottoned on pretty quickly it ought to be a runner; they won over £2k for themselves on the race. That pretty much makes your week, unless you absolutely do it wrong for the next two days. I'm pleased to say they didn't and won well across the Festival.
I thought the maidens/novices on the Tuesday weren't that great but the Wednesday was a different kettle of fish. The Goldolphin pair that won their respective races, Romantic Style and Edge Of Blue, were both very nice horses physically and should do well, but at the end of the piece today I'll point you in the direction of a couple that might not be stars but should win a race or two next year.
Punters definitely got a bit back on the last two days and a few books that were crowing after the Tuesday were a little quieter by the middle of the final afternoon. There was a double-figure winner on the Thursday but that aside, on an eight-race card the biggest winner was a 9-2 chance. I won a bit on the week, mainly down to the away meetings at Beverley and Uttoxeter rather than anything I backed at Yarmouth, but I couldn't help feel the whole meeting lacked the fun that previous years had. I think I might give it a miss next year and just take the new Mrs Massey away for a week somewhere nice. I hear Kelso is lovely around this time of the year...
Anyway, to finish off with, here's the two I've put in the tracker labelled "Future Handicaps".
Apeeling (Andrew Balding) is well-named, as she did indeed make plenty of appeal on looks and the dam, Satsuma, has produced a few useful sprint winners. However, she doesn't have the stamp of a sprinter - not yet, anyway, she's quite long-backed and has length rather than power and maybe 7f might be her thing. She's time to fill out but her second to the impressive Romantic Feeling was a big step in the right direction and was no fluke. She should be up to winning races.
Gamblers Kitty (Chris Dwyer) already has the size of a three-year-old: he's not only lengthy but tall with it and hasn't filled his frame out yet. He behaved well pre-race but was very green in the race itself, having little idea until the penny dropped very late and, once it did, he stayed on nicely under hands-and-heels to finish fifth to Cross The Tracks. There's plenty to come from him and he's definitely worth monitoring with next year in mind.
Good luck.
- DM
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/HighlySprung_SdS.jpg319830David Masseyhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDavid Massey2023-09-25 14:47:092023-09-25 14:47:09Roving Reports: The 4.00 at Plymouth
They raced for a lot of money in Ireland yesterday, the Friends of Curragh Irish Cesarewitch carrying a £292k first prize, for which 30 horses turned up, writes Tony Stafford. You would have won a lot of money, too, if you had found the Joseph O’Brien-trained winner, the potential heir to the Ballydoyle job one might suggest, sending out 150/1 shot Magellan Strait for a victory which prompted a quiz from the stewards.
The magical Joseph might well have been a little more confident of his shortest-priced horse of four, third home Dawn Rising, who had won Ascot’s Queen Alexandra Stakes as the 2/1 favourite under Ryan Moore at Royal Ascot back in June.
The two O’Brien stayers were split by another veteran of big-race success in the UK, Dermot Weld’s Falcon Eight, successful in the 2021 Chester Cup under Frankie Dettori.
The winner and second do not have the much less well-endowed but still probably more prestigious Newmarket version in three weekends time on their agenda, but 13 from yesterday’s race do, and I’ve managed to find another 11 from various races over the past couple of days even including an unplaced runner in the Preis von Europa in Cologne, Germany, yesterday.
That was the Saeed bin Suroor-trained Live Your Dream, who is very high up in the weights. This 14 was bolstered by Saturday’s Turners Cesarewitch Trial at Newmarket, won nicely by Andrew Balding’s Grand Providence, clearly enjoying the extended trip. Eight of the nine that followed him over the line have the big-race entry.
Ryan Moore, amazingly, was back after riding in Sydney the day before, but his mount, Aidan’s Tower Of London, understandably favourite after his creditable fourth behind stablemate Continuous in the St Leger only eight days earlier at Doncaster, could not make his lenient mark tell.
In all, Willie Mullins had six runners in the big race. The ease with which Ireland’s champion jumps trainer knocks off our big flat long-distance races, matched only really by his main Cheltenham protagonist Nicky Henderson, is well chronicled, but here he was well and truly on the back foot.
Of course, all his sextet, plus one in a consolation race for those missing out on the big one, have Newmarket entries, where he will be aiming to add to his hat-trick from 2018-20. One of those, Stratum, was in the field but Brighton and Hove Albion FC’s chairman Tony Bloom was probably far too engaged watching his team beat Bournemouth (boo! – Ed.) than to take more than a passing notice of his veteran’s 25th place.
Expect an upgrade if he turns up at HQ, and the same probably goes for Jackfinbar (8th), Lot Of Joy (11th), Echoes In Rain (13th), Mt Leinster (22nd) and M C Muldoon (27th after making the running for David Manasseh and partners).
Echoes in Rain had finished second in the inaugural big-money Irish Ces last year, behind the then Aidan -trained Mr Waterville, who is now with Chris Waller in Australia. Ryan rode him into fourth place at Rosehill on Saturday and no doubt he has the Melbourne Cup as his main objective as had Tower Of London. Maybe the latter raid may be under review.
But the one trial that caught most of us out – yet it shouldn’t have if we had examined the very extensive history of his career – was the all-the-way gutsy win of 11-year-old Not So Sleepy in a quite valuable (by UK standards) 1m5½f handicap at Newbury.
Since making a winning debut over a mile as a juvenile at Nottingham almost nine years ago, the home-bred Not So Sleepy has now won ten races for Hughie Morrison, five each on the flat and over jumps. Not So Sleepy has raced 63 times (46 on the flat) with six second and five third places along with ten fourth’s, including in the Cesarewitch’s of 2019 and 2020. Under both codes he has won around a quarter of a million and nudged over a combined £500k on Saturday.
When he won his third-ever race in the Group 3 Dee Stakes his rating jumped up to 107 after that Derby trial. It has never dropped below 94 despite two long losing sequences – 13 in succession after Chester over the next 18 months, then another 15 following his Epsom Derby Day handicap win as a five-year-old.
Running well enough with places in tough races not to get much respite from the BHA officials, Not So Sleepy got a late and in many circles highly questionable switch to hurdling as a seven-year-old. The cynics were preening themselves after he was far too free on debut at Kempton, but he then bolted up at Wincanton which earned a 125 rating. One more pulled up run ended that mixed campaign.
So now it was back to the flat, for another six winless runs, but a portent of what might be in the future was a fourth in his first try at the Cesarewitch behind Stratum. Now it was back to hurdling, winning two Ascot handicaps by making all in devastating fashion, his mark already up to 144 by the time he turned out for the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury the following February.
That year, the big field produced two false starts and after being in a great position to jump first time round, Not So Sleepy found himself hampered at the eventual departure and the then eight-year-old was never in contention. Hughie and his owners Lord and Lady Blyth still had the ambition to run in the Champion Hurdle, but he was pulled up.
A break followed until the autumn, when under Graham Lee he won a Pontefract handicap off that career lowest 94 before his fourth place to Mullins’ Great White Shark at Newmarket in Cesarewitch number two. He then resumed over hurdles, jinking and unseating at the first flight in the 2020 Fighting Fifth won by Epatante, before gaining a second win in the Betfair Exchange Hurdle at Ascot.
This gave Morrison great satisfaction as he beat a former stable-companion, Buzz, whom the owners had moved to Henderson after Morrison had successfully managed physical issues in his early days on the flat.
He then ran a much improved race, fifth in Honeysuckle’s first Champion Hurdle, before taking in the Chester Cup, finishing a close seventh. He still got his lengthy summer break, but instead of a third run at Newmarket, a close second in a Doncaster handicap was the prelude to a dead-heat with Epatante in the 20201 Fighting Fifth before a fifth place behind the same J P McManus mare in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton and the same position, a little closer than the previous year, behind Honeysuckle in her repeat championship.
He continued with two relatively disappointing runs in summer 2022 but was back in top form with a third after taking up the running a mile out in last year’s Cesarewitch.
Three hurdles runs, two behind the new star Constitution Hill, including once more in his fourth Champion Hurdle, preceded the usual summer break. And you can guess the rest.
He returned at Newbury on Saturday, his trainer joking before the race, having heard the news that Constitution Hill was to continue hurdling, with a wry: “Whatever happens today, I can categorically state that Not So Sleepy will NOT be going chasing this winter.”
So next month, he will be trying to match another of his rival Henderson’s achievements. Nicky won the 2008 Cesarewitch with the 11-year-old Caracciola who proceeded to win the Queen Alexandra at age 12. Morrison has a Group 1 win on his record with 10-year-old Alcazar, but if Not So Sleepy does the deed at the fourth time of asking, that would be a bigger achievement to my mind.
Both the Cesarewitch and Cambridgeshire began life in 1839 and they are two of my favourite races. I was hoping to write a piece today outlining why I thought Dylan Cunha’s Silver Sword was a good thing to win the race next Saturday, but the trainer is unwilling to run him back so soon after his eye-catching run last week in Listed company at Sandown. He prefers to wait for a race he has in mind at Santa Anita in November. If only!
In his absence, I would love to see William Knight make up for last year’s unlucky defeat of Dual Identity, who won most impressively recently at Sandown. All we can hope is that Knight, who has had no luck this year, might have it turn his way this weekend for a change.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NotSoSleepy_Newbury.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2023-09-25 07:16:262023-09-25 07:16:26Monday Musings: Still Not Sleepy
This is the second in a short series of articles connected with betting on horse races in running, writes Dave Renham. In the first piece, which you can read here, I discussed the idea of DOBBING, which essentially means ‘double or bust’: you either double your money or lose your stake. Just to recap, here is a worked example:
Imagine you back a horse at 6.0 for £10; in order to create a potential DOB you try and lay the horse at half the odds for double the stake – so you set a lay at 3.0 (half of 6.0) for £20 (double £10). If the horse hits 3.0 or lower in running, your lay bet will be matched and regardless of the result you will win £10 (less commission). If required, there is a little more detail in the first article.
This second article will dig into the numbers in an attempt to see whether we can improve our chances of finding DOBBERS. I will look at 20 months’ worth of recent UK flat data, which equates to over 12,000 races, covering over 100,000 runners. So let’s get cracking!
Dobbing Percentages by Distance
My first port of call is the distance of the race. In terms of dobbing percentage there is a clear pattern when it comes to distance:
As we can see, the longer the race, the better the chance a horse has of DOBBING. In the first article I had alluded to the fact that this might be the case, and it is always good to see the numbers support the theory. The minimum distance of 5 furlongs gives us the lowest overall percentage (38.8%), whereas the longer distances of 13 to 16 furlongs have seen horses DOB over 44% of the time, while 17f+ races hit 45.2%.
I can think of three logical reasons why there is such a discrepancy when we compare 5f races to races of 17f or more.
Firstly, 5f sprints only take around a minute; races of 17f or more take three or four times as long. These longer races give more time for traders to spot horses that are making eye-catching progress / travelling well.
Secondly, we know that 5f events really disadvantage horses that take up a position near, or at, the rear of the field early. Hence a good proportion of slow starters / held up runners in sprints are not going to get close enough to the action at the front in time. So the chances of these horses DOBBING is relatively low. In contrast, horses that start slowly or are held up in 17f+ races have plenty of time to recover and get into a more competitive position.
And thirdly, keeping on the run style theme, front runners win around 2.5 times as often over 5f as they do over 17f+. It is easy to imagine that, in races where horses that make most or all the running over 5f, very few other runners get in a dangerous enough position to shorten markedly in price and hence DOB.
In fact, having checked that last theory, and although I only looked at 30 5f races where the winner led from start to finish, only 25% of runners dobbed in these races. That’s well below the 38.8% overall percentage for 5f races. I would not expect that 25% DOBBING figure to change too much even if I back-checked 300 races rather than 30. Unfortunately it is not something I can research quickly, therefore the modest sample.
Dobbing Percentages by Market Rank
Moving on to the position the horse holds in the betting market, and as a reminder, odds on runners have been ignored in the figures as they cannot DOB (see first article for full explanation).
Favourites DOB the most; close to 45% of the time – this is probably because a good proportion of market leaders win and, of those who don’t, most run well. I am slightly surprised to see the other market ranks relatively uniform and not sliding downwards left to right. I thought that would be the case, but there is no clear cut pattern.
Dobbing Percentages by Course
In the first article I mused on whether course configurations can make a difference to DOB percentages. Camera angles are different at certain tracks, for example, and as we know courses in this country vary massively in terms of layout. If we look at Chester’s tight bullring track…
…we can see the course is roughly a mile in circumference with short straights. Compare this now to York’s expansive gallopers’ paradise:
The circumference of the track at York is roughly double that of Chester and the finishing straight is nearly five furlongs in length.
Every track in the UK is unique – some are undulating, some have downhill stretches, uphill stretches, long or short straights, sharp bends, etc. Therefore, I would expect to see some variance across the different courses in terms of DOB%. To begin with, let’s look at the DOBBING percentages for each course.
There is a 7% differential in terms of percentages of runners successfully dobbing between Sandown at the top (46.3%) and Newcastle at the bottom (39.2%). It is interesting to note that three of the four lowest DOBBING courses are all-weather ones (Chelmsford, Wolves and Newcastle). Indeed, the other three all-weather courses also reside in the bottom half of the table. Is this down to the level of competition on the all-weather being slightly below that of the turf? Possibly.
Now we know from earlier findings that the distance of races makes a difference DOBBING wise, so maybe courses that have a lower percentage of sprint races enjoy better DOBBING percentages. Likewise do courses with a higher percentage of sprint races have poorer DOBBING percentages?
To try and test out this theory, I ordered all courses in the previous table from 1 to 37 starting with Newcastle who had the lowest DOB%. Hence I put Newcastle in position 1, Wolves in position 2 and so on up to Sandown in position 37. I wanted to use these ‘positions’ to help make the comparison.
I then calculated the percentage of sprint races (6f or shorter) held at each course during the same time frame, ordering the courses from 1 to 37, thus:
Bath top the list with over 50% of all their races being sprints, while Epsom has the lowest figure with just 15.3% of their races being at trips no further than 6f.
Having given the tracks a rank in terms of percentage of races at the course that were sprints, I could compare this with their DOB% rank. For the course DOB% to be strongly affected by race distance then the course ranks for the two variables should be similar.
In some cases they were – Thirsk for example was in position 3 in both: the North Yorkshire track had the third lowest DOB% matching perfectly with the third highest percentage of races that were sprints. In other cases, though, they didn’t match. Wolverhampton, for instance, was in position 2 for DOB%, but position 25 for percentage of sprint races. To try and show the comparison for all the courses I have created line graphs comparing their ranks. I have split it into two so that it fits on the screen:
For perfect correlation we would need to see the blue and orange lines almost follow the same path. That has not happened here taking all the courses as a whole, so we need to look to see how many courses have their orange and blue dots close to each other. 15 of the 37 courses have their two ranks varying by five or less. Meanwhile, nine of the 37 courses have their two ranks varying by 15 or more.
Thus the jury is still out in terms of saying that the course DOB percentages are affected by distance considerations. My guess is that it is a factor at some courses, but there are other factors also making a difference.
Dobbing Percentages by Run Style
To conclude this second article I want to look at possibly my most favoured area of analysis: run style. It should be noted for the run style research for this piece, I have not been able to use such a big data set, due to the time-consuming nature of this type of research. However, I have been able to analyse 4000 runners looking at how run style impacts the chances of DOBBING.
I mentioned in the first article that horses that lead for the majority of the race, or are leading at the furlong pole while looking like a potential winner, are occasions when the leader’s price is likely to shorten considerably. Obviously, if the price drops enough then the horse will DOB. Hence it would logically follow that front runners should have the highest DOB percentage. This is indeed the case as the chart below clearly illustrates. I have used the run style categories on geegeez.co.uk, and the following stats are pulled from all flat race distances from 5f to 2m 6f:
Clearly run style is important from a DOBBING perspective. Front runners DOB over 60% of the time across the test sample, and the chart clearly shows the downward trend from front of the field early to back of the field early. 4000 runners across all distances should be a big enough sample for these figures to be accurate. If I was able to look at 100,000 runners, I would be surprised if the percentages for each group changed by more than two or three percentage points. Moreover, I personally researched run style DOBBING percentages back around 2011/2012 and the percentage splits then correlate well with this newer sample.
It should be noted, however, that the distance of the race will cause slight changes to the run style DOB figures. 5-6f races will see the DOB% for ‘Led’ increase slightly to around the 64-65% mark; conversely the DOB% for ‘Held Up’ drops to under the 30% mark. In longer races of 1m4f or more the reverse happens, with the DOB% for ‘Led’ dropping to 55-56% while the ‘Held Up’ DOB% increases to 38-39%. This makes perfect sense as front runners win such a high percentage of sprint races compared to longer races and, as we know, winners will DOB except for that very small proportion that are priced under 2.02.
-----
That’s the end of this review of flat race DOBBING. The Run Style figures should give readers who may be thinking about employing a DOBBING strategy a possible way in. Next time, I’ll perform a similar analysis of National Hunt racing. Until then…
DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/telecaster_toodarnhot_Dante_830x320.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-09-19 13:06:462023-09-19 13:06:46Introduction to Dobbing: Part 2
If you enjoy perfection, as I am certain it’s something for which the British Horseracing Authority’s handicappers strive for every day, then the St Leger was something of a disappointment, writes Tony Stafford. It will have been doubly so I’m sure for Mr Michael Harris, the gentleman responsible for flat races over 11 furlongs and above.
The ratings for the nine runners (four from the redoubtable O’Brien team) were, in finishing order, Conspicuous 115, Arrest 114, Desert Hero 110, Tower Of London 109, Gregory 111, Chesspiece 109, Middle Earth 102, pacemaker Denmark 102, and Alexandropolis 101.
What was wrong with him? On his rating, surely Gregory should have been third, but maybe a clue to why he wasn’t: John Gosden came over to Aidan before the race and told him he thought the Golden Horns do not like soft ground. It seemed Gregory didn’t.
Obviously, it was a major triumph for Mr Harris, who no doubt will push up the winner into the 120’s and therefore offer hope that he can go to the Arc in a fortnight’s time with a chance of emulating the trainer’s so far only two wins (Dylan Thomas 2007) and Found (2016) in the great French race at ParisLongchamp – see I remembered!
That has been the immediate target for the last four Coolmore St Leger winners but to no avail. The best candidate in 2023 of course would probably have been Auguste Rodin, dual Derby and Irish Champion Stakes hero who, as Ryan reminded me emphatically after yesterday’s win, is firmly online for the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
O’Brien has won 16 races at that late autumn extravaganza, and he is sure to have another formidable team to represent himself and his owners who have kept him supplied with high-class material in the entirety of his career. But it’s what you do with raw material.
The numbers are even more mind-boggling for the five Classic races on either side of the Irish Sea. Saturday’s triumph put him on 43 Classic wins in the UK over the 26 seasons since King Of Kings, 1998 2000 Guineas and Shahtoush (Oaks) gave him a double right at the start of his time as master of Ballydoyle.
He got going a year earlier at home, where he has 50 domestic Classic wins so far with 15 in the Irish Derby leading the way. Here it’s seven in the 1000 Guineas, 10 in the 2000 Guineas, nine in the Derby, ten in the Oaks and seven in the St Leger. The relative home scores are 10, 12, 15, seven and six.
It seems O’Brien has more respect for the status of the Doncaster version, a race that has survived many questions as to three considerations; that it should remain the province of three-year-olds, that they should be only entire colts or fillies; and that it should remain at the one mile, six furlongs and 115 yards of yore. The Irish race has kept its trip of one mile six, but has long been open to geldings and older horses.
Continuous was an appropriate name for a Coolmore winner and there was also much delight, especially from Christy Grassick, in the immediate aftermath. He was doubly delighted, as he celebrated a second Japanese-bred winner this year after Auguste Rodin, while glorying in the identity of the maternal grand-sire, you guessed it, that late but unquestionably very great Galileo.
That champion’s victory in the 2001 Derby was Aidan’s first at Epsom and also marked the arrival on the Ballydoyle scene of Michael Tabor. Start as you intend to go on might well be his mantra. John Magnier and his formidable back-up team – son M V was busily shopping at Keeneland September last week with sire sensation Into Mischief the latest to attract his attention – have no mind to ease off.
Their perennial search is to identify and secure from the major racing and breeding establishments around the world suitable outcross stallions to prolong the potency of the Northern Dancer/ Sadler’s Wells/ Galileo legend. I don’t think they will go far wrong if history is anything to go by.
Continuous in a way exemplified the manner of O’Brien’s training, one of continuous improvement. The son of Heart’s Cry (Sunday Silence) did win his only two races at two, including a Group 3, but when third to The Foxes in the Dante at York and eighth in the Prix du Jockey Club, his limitations seemed there for all to see.
Next though, in finishing a four-length Royal Ascot runner-up to Epsom Derby second King Of Speed he moved up a notch in the hierarchy in Tipperary. An easy success in that most informative of all St Leger trials, York’s Great Voltigeur, should have been enough to convince the sceptics, as it established him as an obvious candidate.
He needed to nudge ahead of the filly Savethelastdance, but when the Epsom runner-up and Irish Oaks winner was beaten into third behind emerging stable-companion Warm Heart in the Yorkshire Oaks on fast ground, her challenge lost some of its impetus. Warm Heart’s victory in the Prix Vermeille last weekend only solidified Savethelastdance’s credentials.
Ironically, had she turned up on Saturday, she would have had the ground to her liking and been worthy of her place in the field against the colts. With the chance of easy ground for her remaining potential targets, she should be fine and O’Brien should be able to find another big target for her before the end of the year.
Continuous had one ingredient that the other eight runners on Town Moor lacked, an instant turn of speed which should make him a threat at 12 furlongs in Paris. No doubt the major Japanese studs, especially Shadai Farm, will be having their eyes on at least a shared stallion deal if not an outright buy. It would take many, many millions of yen to secure him at 183 yen to the £.
It was nice to feel close to the action on Saturday. We had lunch in a room next door to the Royal Box, which unusually for Doncaster had two attendees (the King and Queen) giving veracity to its title. The snag was the corridors were thronged with security people at every turn.
We left the room before they did, but without an escort, I got sidetracked, neither getting into the paddock until the horses had left for the start, and didn’t see them either, unlike most of the crowd who enjoyed their presence and the performance of his horse Desert Hero, trained by William Haggas for a creditable third behind Frankie Dettori on runner-up Arrest.
At least, going to watch by the winning line, it was easy to enjoy Ryan’s clockwork ride from ground level and then to be involved in the post-race photo upon Aidan’s “Come on Tony” exhortation.
So we were left to marvel at the skill of the man with 93 UK and Irish Classic winners to his credit and yet still only in his mid-50’s. To gauge what it means in modern terms, the late Sir Henry Cecil managed 25, saving the best for last with Galileo’s son Frankel in the 2000 Guineas. Sir Michael Stoute has 16 to his credit and John Gosden (with or without Thady) a round dozen. In statistical terms, of the 260 Classic races in that time, he has won getting on for 40% of them and of the UK, just about 35%.
All that was left was to wonder whether Howard Wright was there? My former colleague at the Daily Telegraph had indeed trekked up from Surrey to his birth town and while I neglected to poke my nose in the press room, he was in attendance.
“Yes, I missed the first three,” said Howard yesterday, “But this was my 75th anniversary, so I’ve seen the last 76.” As I said, I should have called in, but greed got the better of me. A few yards from the far end of the main car park is a fantastic fish and chip shop. I can’t manage chips yet, but as my neuralgia seems to be responding to treatment, the famed scampi was fine.
I always used to say that I could make a portion of this delicious concoction last me all the way down to Grantham. I called for the larger (ten) option, but it barely got me to Bawtry. On second thoughts, I must have been a double-ten portion man. Figures! I love the St Leger, almost as much as Aidan, Ryan and the Coolmore boys.
DOBBING is a word I came across around ten years ago in connection with in play/in running betting, writes Dave Renham. DOBBING is usually shortened to ‘DOB’ which means ‘double or bust’. Essentially it is an in play trading strategy. If the trade/DOB is successful, we double our original stake, if the trade/DOB is unsuccessful we ‘bust’ or lose our stake.
What is DOBBING?
For people who have not heard of DOBBING before I will give you a worked example which hopefully will help:
Let us imagine you back a horse at 10.0 for £10; in order to create a potential DOB you try and lay the horse at half the odds for double the stake – so you set a lay at 5.0 for £20. If the horse hits 5.0 or lower in running, your lay bet will be matched and regardless of the result you will win £10 (less commission).
Here are the basic mathematics behind the two potential winning outcomes:
- If the horse goes onto win the race, you get £90 returned from the ‘back’ part of the bet while you lose £80 on the ‘lay’ part of the bet. This gives you a £10 profit.
- If the horse does not go onto win but reaches 5.0 or lower in running, then you lose your £10 stake from the ‘back’ bet, but gain £20 from the lay part of wager – again giving a £10 profit.
- If the lay part of the bet is not matched with a horse that does not win the race, you lose your original £10 stake.
The table below is another way to look at it, showing the three possible outcomes:
For dobbing to be profitable long term, we are probably looking to have a success rate of around 54% or more. This figure has to be a bit higher than a 50.1% baseline as we need to take commission into account.
As Russell Clarke mentioned in the first of his excellent in running articles (which you can read here), only about 20% of all money traded on a horse race occurs in running. Hence, there are far fewer people that trade in running compared with those that don’t. I am sure there are plenty of you out there who have thought about betting in running, but have decided against as it is not for you. There will be some of you who trade and are very successful. Personally, I do dabble in running from time to time, but despite using the market leading trading software, I know I am up against seasoned trading pros. I might be able to produce pre-race plans that are as good as most, but my decision making / speed under pressure is definitely not at the expert level.
An advantage of using this dobbing idea for some punters/traders is that you can place both parts of the bet/trade before the race starts. Therefore there is no need for trading software and you do not have to make quick decisions in running because you have made them already. Hence if you are like me, this is potentially a big plus. However, as the saying goes ‘for every positive there is a negative’. I find I say this phrase regularly in my life away from racing.
I tutor maths and chess online, and my chess students regularly hear this positive/negative quote pertaining to certain moves they make. It is the same here: let us imagine you set your ‘DOB’ pre-race and leave it to run its course. What happens if say you back it at 10.0 and set the lay at 5.0, but by the time the race starts the horse has drifted 15.5? OK the horse might still hit 5.0 in running, but this is going to happen far less often than it would if the starting price was 10.0. Of course the horse could shorten before the off as well, but as a general rule more horses drift than shorten. I know this because I have written about this before, and I have double checked recent data too. As an example, if we look at opening show prices compared to SP in 2023 (UK flat racing), we get the following figures:
Some pretty strong evidence to back up the general rule I mentioned above.
Of course there are ways round this potential issue by placing your back bet as late as possible; literally as the last horse loads in the stalls. The later you place it, the closer the price will be to its eventual Betfair Starting Price. That will mean however, that you will have to calculate and place the lay part of the bet immediately afterwards, and if you have literally placed your bet at the last second, you will be setting your lay after the race has got underway. Having said that, you should be able to put the lay price and stake in the Betfair machine before the horses have reached the end of the first furlong. This manual approach, though, clearly requires you to be around at the start of every race.
An alternative to avoid either the price fluctuating or needing to be tied to your trading screen at the start of each race, is to use some trading software. It is not too complicated to automate the software to back a horse at Betfair SP and once the Betfair SP is established, a lay at half those odds will be automatically placed. The lay will be calculated immediately the Betfair SP has been established (a few seconds after the off) to create the potential ‘DOB’.
DOB Examples
It is time to look at some races to see what can happen to Betfair prices in running. How many horses tend to DOB in a race, how many do not? Initially let me look at four races run on the same day (August 29th 2023). They are all 10 runner events – I chose those races simply to make the ‘dobbing calculation’ easy to understand.
Race 1 – 2.15 Ripon 1m2f handicap (4yo+)
The result is shown below with the Betfair SPs (BSP) and the lowest price matched in running (IP LOW). The penultimate column (BSP/IPL) is the result of dividing the BSP by the IP LOW. For a successful DOB the BSP needs to have at least halved in price; hence showing a figure of 2 or more. Successful DOBBERS are highlighted in green:
In this example, despite nine of the ten horses shortening in price, only two (Bollin Margaret and Cedar Rapids) DOBBED. There was one near miss (Tele Red 1.90). If you watch the race back, or even just look at the in running comments, you will probably understand why there were so few DOBBERS. The early leader, King Titan, led for less than two furlongs and hence was never going to shorten in price enough leading for less than a fifth of the race, especially when the lead was a narrow one.
Cedar Rapids took up the running after 2f leading for the next six furlongs and, considering his starting price of 83.06 and that he was still leading 2f from home, it is fairly easy to appreciate why he shortened to 22 and hence DOBBED. Bollin Margaret then took over the lead having just passed the 2f pole and led to the finish. Hence, as a winner at a BSP of 13.36, Bollin Margaret was always going to DOB.
In addition, once Bollin Margaret took over, the nearest challengers never really looked like getting to her. We could have found that out by watching the race replay or by looking at the in running comments. The comments for Bollin Margaret were ‘took keen hold, prominent, switched right over 2f out, ridden to lead over 1f out, kept on well final 110yds, always doing enough’. Hence with none of her closest pursuers really looking like winning this helps explains why they did not DOB.
Obviously each race is different and the number of horses that DOB will not be the same proportion of runners in each race (as we will see).
IMPORTANT NOTE: Before moving onto the second race, it should be noted that race winners do not always DOB, because the BSP has to be at least 2.02 for a horse to halve in decimal price (to 1.01, the lowest value on Betfair). Hence odds on winners cannot DOB.
Race 2 – 4.00 Ripon 6f handicap (3yo+)
Onto a sprint handicap a bit later on the same card:
This time, three of the ten runners DOBBED, one more than the first race. In this race three horses led at various points: the winner Twelfth Knight, as well as Abate and Russco. Twelfth Knight and Russco both DOBBED, while Abate was a very near miss with a BSP to IP LOW ratio of 1.98. Horses that lead at some point in the race are usually going to shorten in price, sometimes considerably so. That is the type of pattern I would generally expect to see, and the first two races have conformed to that pattern.
Race 3 – 4.15 Newbury 1m 4f handicap (3yo only)
Over to Newbury now for a handicap over 12 furlongs:
This time we see over half the field (six of the ten runners) DOBBING, despite only two horses leading during the race. The high number of DOBBERS is almost certainly due to the fact that the winner Graham, who had been clear 4f out, started to experience that lead steadily eroding. Hence, many in play traders observing the pack close on the leader would have thought / hoped / expected that one or more of those challengers would potentially win. This almost certainly explains why two horses traded so low; Medieval Gold (2nd) traded at 1.5, and Gordon Grey (4th) traded at 2.06.
Race 4 – 6.30 Musselburgh 5f handicap (3yo+)
Here are the facts and figures for this Musselburgh sprint:
An even split here with five horses DOBBING and five not. Three different horses led, of which two DOBBED (Sixcor, the winner, and the runner up, The Grey Lass). Two of the other three that DOBBED come as no real surprise if you watch the race back. Beneficiary made good headway mid race and as he was a big price, he would have caught the eye of enough traders to see his price contract sufficiently to DOB. Favourite Aconcagua Mountain travelled strongly and a furlong out looked the most likely winner. He faded in the final furlong but not before trading as low as 1.56.
What these four races tell us is that every race is going to be different from a DOBBING perspective. Just like every race is different if you are simply backing a horse or indeed laying one.
DOB Anomalies
Readers should note, that there are occasions when only the winner DOBS. An example was the two-mile Goodwood Cup this year run on 1st August. In this race, Quickthorn was well clear of the field after four furlongs, and a mile later with just half a mile to go he was still 20 lengths clear. The opposition assumed that Tom Marquand, the jockey of Quickthorn, had gone out too quick but they were sadly mistaken, and no other horse really stood a chance. Knowing how the race panned out explains why it was no surprise that no horse was really that close to halving in price in running.
Here is the result with the accompanying in running data:
This scenario of a single DOBBER in a race will occur from time to time especially in very one-sided events. However, it is extremely unusual for every horse in a race to DOB. In previous research from 2018 I had a dim recollection that there was a race at Nottingham where all the runners DOBBED. After doing some digging I found the race in question. It was the 7.25 on 7th August 2018. It was a 10f handicap with six runners. Here is the result:
Not only did all six DOB, but they all DOBBED fairly comfortably. One reason for this may be that four of the six led the race at some point, while the two who didn’t, were close to the lead making headway at different points.
DOB Success Rates
Going back to the four 10-runner races I shared earlier, of the 40 runners, 16 DOBBED. This equates to 40% of the runners. Previous flat racing DOBBING research I have done, over different time frames, showed the overall DOBBING percentage average out at around this 40% mark. Considering we need a success rate of roughly 14% higher than this, there is clearly a job on to make DOBBING profitable. So, how can we improve upon this base figure of 40%? Here are some thoughts / questions, which I will aim to expand upon in subsequent articles:
How does run style affect DOB success? I have already discussed the fact that horses that take the lead at some point in a race are likely to shorten in price. Horses that lead for the majority of the race, or are leading at the furlong pole while looking like a potential winner, are both occasions when the leader’s price is likely to shorten considerably. Obviously if the price drops enough then the horse will DOB. Front runners, especially in sprints, are horses that are likely to have real potential to DOB; and, of course, the longer they lead the more chance of this happening. Hold up horses are not screaming out DOBBERS, unless they get into a much more forward position at the business end of the race.
You often hear commentators say that a horse is ‘travelling well’. Horses that are ‘on the bridle’ tend to shorten in price as they are not under any pressure, or so it seems. This is a potentially time consuming idea to test, but I want to put it out there.
Does race distance make a difference? Longer races mean greater elapsed time, and logic dictates that there will be more price fluctuation as a result of this. Hence, the chance of DOBBING may increase.
Do courses make a difference?Certain courses, Bath for example, have difficult camera angles in the final couple of furlongs. I remember trying to trade in running in a Bath sprint around ten years ago; never again! It was so difficult to monitor all the horses from a front on angle. Other course considerations I guess that may have a positive bearing on DOBBING percentages, such as those with uphill finishes, or with long home straights.
What effect does the price of a horse have? One sensible argument would be that shorter priced runners may DOB more often than longer prices, simply because the market suggests they will be more competitive: they are more likely to be mounting a serious challenge at some point in the race. An alternative argument would be that horses starting a long odds do not have to go ‘low’ in running to DOB. An 80.0 BSP shot only needs to reach 40.0 to DOB. Whereas a 4.0 (3/1) shot needs to hit 2.0 (even money).
My questions and thoughts don’t stop there, but it is time to wind up this introduction to DOBBING. As you can see we have a fair bit of digging and number crunching to do – or at least I do! And, at this stage I have only really discussed flat racing; I have not even mentioned National Hunt racing as yet...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Coronet_PrixJeanRomanet_830x320.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-09-12 08:39:102023-09-12 08:40:34An Introduction to ‘Dobbing’
Whatever happened to Trials Day? For many years, three weeks before the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe the French conveniently staged a trio of perfectly-framed races principally for the home defence to flex their muscles in preparation for their upcoming day of destiny at (Paris)Longchamp on the first Sunday in October, writes Tony Stafford. It also attracted some of our best candidates to reveal their talents.
One, the Prix Niel, was for three-year-olds; another, for four and upwards was the Prix Foy, these two both at Group 2 level. The third, the Group 1 Prix Vermeille, was and remains for three and up fillies and mares. All three are run over the full Arc distance of 2400 metres (1m4f).
They staged it yesterday as usual, but it was totally over-shadowed by the second day of Irish Champions Weekend, run at the Curragh – no longer it seems with the requirement of the definite article, viz “The” to go before the track name. I find it as incongruous as I do to precede Longchamp with the name of the country’s capital making it most unnecessarily unwieldy.
Why not LondonEpsom? I shouldn’t be irritated but I just can’t help it. In one other regular piece of work I do every day, I even referred to the Matron Stakes as being run at The Curragh. Silly me.
While the two Group 2 races have £65k to the winner, this was seemingly not enough inducement for a challenger from the UK. There were just a couple of Aidan O’Brien pages to accompany his Vermeille contender Warm Heart, winner last time of the Yorkshire Oaks. There, with a mixture of speed and determination under James Doyle, she held off the Frankie Dettori-ridden Free Wind, with Coolmore first string Savethelastdance third.
Warm Heart recovered well enough from her York exertions to join William Haggas’ Sea Silk Road and Joseph O’Brien’s Above The Curve in challenging for the French Group 1 and she came out on top again in another tight finish.
She had a neck in hand of home runner Melo Melo with Sea Silk Road an excellent third at 31/1. This race carried £303k to the winner and brought Aidan O’Brien a 4,000th career victory. He had a few also at the two days at Leopardstown and Curragh, although racegoers (and me) hoping to see the colt I think could be the best juvenile we’ve seen in recent years, City Of Troy, were disappointed as he was withdrawn from the National Stakes owing to the unsuitably slow ground.
Of course, you don’t get to 4,000 winners without making provision for such frustrations, and in what was left as a four-runner race, his colt Henry Longfellow got the Ryan Moore touch as a narrow favourite in the market.
Henry Longfellow, by Dubawi out of Minding, if you please, had won quite impressively on debut, but it was only just enough to convince the bookmakers who considered Bucanero Fuerte, easy winner of the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes last time and an Amo Racing colt trained by Adrian Murray, to be his near equal on the boards.
The team evidently formulated a plan to try to thwart City Of Troy had he been there – and stayed with it to handle the substitute. The trouble was, both pacemaker Cuban Thunder and Bucanero Fuerte went off fast, leaving Ryan to sit behind them as though going out for a Sunday ride on his hack in the park. When he asked for an effort, either the effect was instantaneous, or the other pair were already knackered, but a five length win from the fourth runner Islandsinthestream, a two-length runner-up to Henry last time, and running on for second again, gives the form a solid look.
Elsewhere yesterday, Kyprios’ return to action in the Irish St Leger provided a disappointment. Last year’s champion stayer, held up in rear in another four-runner affair, never quite managed to challenge Roger Varian’s 2022 Doncaster St Leger winner Eldar Eldarov, who was always travelling best. You can expect a major improvement from Kyprios next time and it will be interesting to see the outcome if they reconvene at Ascot next month on our Champions Day.
I went to Ian Williams’ Owners’ Day yesterday and enjoyed some delicious food – yes, the neuralgia has been behaving itself as long as I do likewise. While queueing, I met a man who works for Arena Racing and he was looking forward to Wednesday’s final day of the Racing League, moved from Thursday so the jockeys that have been assigned to the various teams, would not be excluded by having to ride on the normal opening day of this year’s St Leger meeting at Doncaster.
The big race on Saturday is sure to benefit from the non-clash with the Leopardstown segment of last weekend’s Irish spectacular and, with pots of money to be doled out to owners, teams and jockeys, that can only be a good thing.
Some trainers who had been very much against the idea have been virtually forced to go along with it, as quite a few of the regular races in the Calendar have been lost to accommodate the 50-odd heats in the competition.
It’s easy to see why 39 have been entered for the final race on Wednesday as this open-ended affair (top-rated 107) over 1m4f carries a £51k first prize, which compares very well with the two French Group 2 races yesterday. The slight snag is that to get a run, you must convince your team’s manager – in the case of Williams, it’s Jamie Osborne for Wales and the West – that your horse merits inclusion. Late decisions have inevitably caused trainers to miss other equally suitable if less remunerative alternatives.
For those left on the shelf – and it has happened more lately after some less than inspiring early entry figures – there’s always the option of running instead for instance at Bath. The seven races on the same day carry a total win money of £31,000. The Arc/Sky led series was a small step in the right direction, and as my fellow buffet-queuer said, “At least it might bring some younger people in to enjoy racing. There are not many youngsters here, are there?”
Thereby the conundrum. To own a horse takes a lot of money and the profile of owners with Williams is generally of people who either now have or have had their own businesses, made their money, and can afford the expense and can put up with the poor prizemoney.
True, they deserve to be looked after when they go racing, but the younger people that are so eagerly sought to become enthusiasts and regular racegoers are confronted by high entrance fees, even with some junior concessions, and very expensive catering. There are many countries which stage high-class horse racing where costs for the pubic are nowhere near as forbidding.
It was good to see Auguste Rodin add the Irish Champion Stakes to his Derby and Irish Derby wins, never mind his two lapses in the 2,000 Guineas and King George. If he had won the first Classic, instead of running at Leopardstwn on Saturday, he could have been trying to go one better than Camelot, aiming to be the first Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky in 1970, the stated aim for him at the start of the year.
For a short time yesterday, seeing that Doncaster doesn’t begin until Thursday, I wondered why it was only going to be a three-day meeting instead as the usual four.
Checking with the BHA site, though, I saw that, as with the first meeting every year on Town Moor, it will now extend to Sunday, a welcome injection of high-class racing on that day after some pitifully drab two-meeting Sundays in the UK in recent weeks.
The Group 3 Sceptre Stakes for fillies and mares and the Listed Scarbrough Stakes are joined by some lesser quality but competitive handicaps. But what represents a master stroke by the race planners (just a one-week reprieve for you I’m afraid, BHA) is that the Legends’ race for former great jockeys can have a fabulous weekend television and on-the-spot audience. Well done! Credit where it’s due.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/WarmHeart_PrixVermeille_Longchamp2023.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2023-09-11 06:11:532023-09-11 06:11:53Monday Musings: Of Champions and Challengers
In recent articles I have looked at a very simple ratings method for all-age handicap races which, on initial testing, seems to have shown more positives than negatives, writes Dave Renham. I hope and expect to write further about these ratings at a later date, but need more time to do some further detailed research. This will take several weeks, probably a couple of months.
In this somewhat related article, I would like to share with you the process I went through when trying to create ratings for two-year-old (2yo) races. My plan was to stick to a similar methodology which in essence was:
a) find what I thought were key factors/variables;
b) use PRB (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) data once more as my metric;
c) combine the PRB figures in the same way as the all-age handicap ratings by simply adding up the relevant scores.
There are a number of different types of 2yo races such as maidens, novice events, Group/Listed races (which are all non-handicaps) and nurseries (handicaps). My idea was to try to rate the maiden and novice races. To me these are quite similar types of race and hence I hoped that one cap could be worn by both. Of course that would not necessarily be the case, but even if the ratings worked well for one of the two then I would have achieved something.
To begin with, let me discuss factors I considered for use. Here was my ‘longlist’:
Trainer record – in 2yo maidens/novices
Sire stats – in 2yo maidens/novices
Debut course
Horse Sex – colt, gelding or filly
Horse purchase price
Most Recent form – Last time out (LTO) finishing position
Recent market data – LTO price
Fitness – days since last race
Draw
The eagle eyed among regular readers will note that the last four factors are ones I used in my original ratings for all-age handicaps.
From this starting point I felt I needed to trim the list down, for two reasons. Firstly, as I mentioned in my very first ratings article, when creating ratings I prefer not to over complicate things. Secondly, some of the above factors would cause some problems for one reason or another.
The draw was the first to be discarded. In all of the articles I have written on the draw in the past, I have mentioned that draw bias works best in handicap races. Hence, although the draw may affect some 2yo races at certain courses, I felt it was not a reliable enough factor to use here. Next to go was purchase price as I had no easy way to source it, or indeed back check it on past results. Further, many horses are home bred and therefore never go through a sales ring. I felt it had importance, which is why it made the longlist, and I wished I had some data I could ‘crunch’ to see how important it actually was, but I felt it was a no go for these ratings.
Fitness using the days since last run metric was the third factor I decided to discard. My main reasoning here is that the advantage of a quick return, that tends to happen in older age handicaps, is not replicated for 2yo runners. I looked briefly at some win and placed stats which were very even across the days ranges, so I felt it was unlikely that the more accurate PRB figures would really give a wide enough spread of figures. I felt it wasn’t worth the hours of data gathering and sorting if the figures were likely to be almost identical across the board. One makes decisions like this all the time when delving into horse racing research. Of course sometimes we make incorrect ones but, with experience, decision making improves.
That left me with six factors/variables so let’s look at each in a little more depth.
1 Trainer record – I am not someone who bets often in 2yo races. Occasionally I will if I spot what I feel is a good betting opportunity. However, my main bets that involve 2yos occur when I play the Tote Placepot. Most meetings have at least one 2yo race in their first six so I have to use some methodology to choose which juvenile runners I am going to put into my ‘pot’. Trainer information is always my first call.
Many trainers do follow a similar path year in, year out; they generally stick to the same training methods, know which races to target, etc. Now it should be noted (albeit it is fairly obvious) that each year trainers have a completely new ‘string’ of 2yos, so variances in overall performance are going to happen from year to year. However, when we think about the bigger stables they tend to keep many of the same owners, and these are likely to be purchasing similar animals to what they have done in the past. Hence, past trainer 2yo data is usually quite a good guide to future performance. The graph below offers a real life illustration through the record of Charlie Appleby in 2yo maidens/novice races over the past four full years:
These figures are very similar from season to season and, as I am writing this, his current stats for 2023 are in the same ballpark – 31% win strike rate and 55% each way strike rate.
So how best to utilise past 2yo trainer data was my main consideration as there were different stats I could potentially use. One option would be to use PRB figures calculated from all 2yo maiden and novice events for each individual trainer. However, my concern with that was that the number of runs that a 2yo has is usually extremely important. This is a graph I shared in a previous article written in April when examining 2yos on their second starts:
As we can see there is a significant difference in 2yo performance on debut compared to second starts. Such differences would be replicated when comparing the relevant PRB figures. Not only that, this graph is taking all 2yo runners into account and as you can imagine some specific trainers have even more acute differences. For example, and once again using data from 2017 to 2022, Michael Dods had a 2yo debut win SR% of 5.3%, whereas his second starters won over 16% of the time. William Haggas 2yo debutants scored less than 12% of the time, but on second start won 27% of their races. These are just two examples showing one potential pitfall of using overall 2yo trainer data to produce a trainer rating score.
It was at this point in retrospect when the alarm bells should have been ringing, about how complicated just creating the trainer part of these ratings would be. However, I thought that using previous runs would almost certainly be the way I would want to go, and trainer stats would make the final ‘cut’. However, before digging any further I wanted to look at the other five factors.
2 Sire Stats – sire stats are often an important part of the 2yo betting picture due to the limited past run data most juveniles have. In some cases, especially early season, all the runners in a 2yo race will be making their debut. Hence we have no past form to go on, so we have to look elsewhere. Sires are the fathers of the respective horses and can have a significant influence on their offspring. When we dig deeper we find that the offspring of a good proportion of sires have clear traits or preferences. These may be going/ground related, distance related, age related, experience related, etc.
Having essentially decided to use previous starts as a key factor in determining the trainer rating PRB score, it would be difficult to do the same for sire stats, as this would potentially overlap somewhat. It is not as bad as using LTO position and Beaten distance LTO as two factors in a system as they are virtually the same metric. However, the improvement from debut to second start for sires would mirror trainer improvement to some extent.
Therefore for sire stats I felt a distance metric made more sense: splitting the 2yo sire PRB data into two, obtaining figures for sprints (5-6f) and for longer 2yo races (7f or more). The majority of 2yo races are contested at a mile or less so this seemed logical to me. To give an example of a sire whose 2yo distance stats differ across these two distance ranges, let me share the non-handicap 2yo win stats for Kingman. In 5-6f races his strike rate has been 12.8%, at 7f or longer this increases to 22.2%.
Interestingly, though, when I calculated PRB figures for Kingman they were closer than I had expected. His progeny’s 2yo PRB for 7f+ was 0.64 compared with 0.60 for 5-6f. This comparison helps to highlight why I believe PRB figures are the most accurate of all the statistical metrics that compare performance. Win stats are a good barometer, but PRB figures are much better because they effective ‘grade’ each run; not just whether the horse won or didn’t, or placed or didn’t.
No Nay Never is another sire whose 2yo offspring show a distance bias. At sprint distances his 2yo non-handicappers score over 19% of the time, at 7f or longer this drops to 13.6%. The PRB figures for No Nay Never this time do underline the strength of this bias as the sprint figure stands at 0.63, while the 7f+ one is much lower at 0.53.
Sire stats using this distance metric looked a good option to use in the ratings.
3 Debut course – this is something I have researched in the past and the track at which a horse makes its debut can be a factor in how it subsequently performs. It particularly affects the second career start as we can see if we compare the PRB figures for second starting 2yo that made their debut at either Ascot, Newmarket, Redcar or Ripon.
The importance of the debut course becomes less of a factor the more runs a 2yo has, but it still can have a bearing, so I would have to separate out the number of runs since debut in some way or other. Alarm bells were ringing this time as this factor is definitely going to be time consuming from a data gathering aspect, as I would need to collect the LTO course data one at a time and then combine number of last runs to each course. That could mean anything between 100 and 200 separate data ‘dumps’ into excel as well as adding extra columns and data to it. Ouch. However, at this point I was undeterred, as there have been times in the past when I have had to perform an enormous amount of data collection to write an article or series of articles. Also, I felt this factor was really important and would improve the ratings if it was included.
Having slightly buried my head in the sand regarding the enormity of this project, the question I now considered was does factoring in debut course combined with past career runs conflict / overlap with the trainer data idea which was going to use past runs too? I guessed it would to a small extent, but I was open-minded enough not to dismiss using this metric because of that slight concern. Clearly trainers have their preferred starting points for 2yos in terms of races and courses for debut runs, but individual course debut data combines all trainers and hence any significant overlap is extremely unclear. I was fairly confident – hopeful at least! – that the two factors would not conflict enough to make the ratings biased in any way.
Before moving on, I started to think about another problem that I had known would be a real issue in terms of 2yo ratings. What to do if the horse was making its debut? They have no past race data to work with; no debut course stats. What PRB rating could be assigned to those runners? I had several things to ponder, but decided to move onto the next factor as I felt it would at least have fewer issues.
4 Horse Sex – the sex of a horse has relevance and in 2yo races there are essentially three types of runners – colts (entire males), geldings (males who have been gelded) and fillies (females). I did some initial number crunching as this data collection was easy to do and not time consuming. I compared their PRB figures based on about 25,000 2yo runs in maidens and novices. Here are the findings:
As we can see colts have the best record, followed by fillies and finally geldings. The majority of 2yo runners are colts and fillies (around 87% of all runners combined) leaving geldings that make up a much smaller 13% of the runners.
These stats look promising from a ratings perspective, and I had some data collection completed!
Onto the last two factors now, both of which I used last time.
5 Most Recent form – LTO finishing position is a good barometer of most recent form and it seemed to work well in the handicap ratings. However, I would have same issue with the course debut stats with horses making their debut. What PRB figure would I use?
6 LTO price – LTO price also seemed to work well with the handicap ratings but again the question was what to do about debutants?
*
At this point I was feeling happy that potentially I had six factors to combine to create the ratings. On the flip side, there were a myriad of issues. Perhaps the biggest was the problem of 2yos that were making their debut. These runners would not have PRB figures for three of the six factors (LTO course, LTO position, LTO price). I needed to consider the options.
Option 1 – To use just one of the three LTO factors giving debut runners a standard PRB figure based on all debut run performances.
Option 2 - Combining the three LTO factors giving debut runners a standard PRB figure based on all debut run performances, and dividing the score by three. This would mean all three factors had some relevance (in essence 1/3 of a rating factor).
Option 3 – Use the ratings only on 2yo races where all the runners had previously run at least once.
Of the three I felt the last option made the most sense as I really wanted to combine all six factors if I could. Based on a look at race data going back to 2019, 33% of 2yo races involved horses that all had run at least once previously. This would still provide around 350 races a year where the ratings could be employed. Added to that I had the facility to pull out all these races.
Having decided that was the preferred way forward, thoughts turned to the enormity of the data collection. As a researcher one is limited by the amount of data one has, or can access. We are also limited to a great extent by our computer skills. If you are able to write and use sophisticated computer programs for example, this gives you a huge advantage over those who cannot. If you have a vast database of results with every single type of variable/factor you can think of you also have a big advantage. Time is such a precious commodity and, without either of the above, my constant issue was the hours required for complicated or detailed research.
My expertise in terms of data number crunching is purely Microsoft Excel-based. I am proficient using Excel and use certain time-saving tricks such as cell formulae, pivot tables, functions like ‘VLOOK up’, and so on. However, I cannot write VBA code for macros, which impinges greatly on what I am able to do in terms of quantity and within certain time frames.
Back to the problem in hand. It was time to look at each factor again and try to work out how much work / hours would be involved with each one.
Trainer record – the advantage I have from a research perspective in terms of trainer data is that when I export thousands of results, the trainer of each horse is part of the data set. Hence as a rule trainer data collection/manipulation is not as time consuming as many others things. On the negative side I would be looking at probably three or four separate data sets which I would need to combine and sort. Once that was done I could create the necessary formulae to calculate individual PRB figures and once those are added for all runners, I could use a pivot table to help calculate each trainer’s individual PRB figure. At least I didn’t have to worry about getting the debut stats; that would save me a little time.
The ideal plan would be to have PRB trainer figures for horses that have raced once, raced twice, and then group those who have raced three or more times together.
That part of the research was not too daunting; definitely doable. It would take several hours probably, but not several days!
Sire stats – when I started thinking about how ‘easy’ it would be pulling and then crunching the sire PRB data for the two distance ranges, I suddenly realised that a trick I often use with sire data collection would not work for PRB figures. I could pull sire data relatively quickly if I was using win strike rates or each way strike rates. BUT not for PRB figures. It suddenly dawned on me that I would have to go one at a time, sire by sire. If that wasn’t bad enough from a time perspective, I also realised that even once I’d done that I’d need to find a way of ‘marrying’ the sire data with the trainer data. That would be even more time consuming and rather fiddly to do.
I thought then, OK I could ditch the sire stats part. I’ll still have five factors to use. The other ratings worked well with five, and even with four when I rated races without the draw factor.
Debut course – back to this potentially tricky factor. I no longer needed to worry about debutants and what figure I would assign to them. However, as I mentioned earlier, I would still need to collect the LTO course data one course at a time combined with the number of career runs the horse had. As with the trainer data collection plan the aim would be to have ‘course on debut’ PRB figures for horses that had raced once, twice, and three or more. Earlier I had reckoned that I would need to collect separate data around 100 to 200 times and marry it together; it was clear that this was going to be within that range, although at the lower end (roughly 110).
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It was at this point that, if I had a towel nearby, I would have thrown it in! I had already reached the moment where the data collection and subsequent number crunching was too much to comprehend and hence attempt. It would take several weeks – far too many hours of my time for what I was endeavouring to do. Not only that, I still had three other rating factors where I would need to gather data. That being said, data collection for those three factors would all be far less onerous than the first three. However, it would still be several hours’ worth to add on top.
I was at a crossroads: I needed to decide whether I totally shelved my idea, or adapted it in some way. It has already been established that logically I cannot back test the data over several hundred races as I’d like to, due to the vast amount of time it would take. However, an alternative would be to look to rate races one by one, in real time as it were. Find races for the remainder of the season that qualify and then number crunch each individual race. To be able to do that though, I would still need to have sourced and collated the trainer data from the last few seasons (probably going back to 2015 or thereabouts).
In addition, I would need to source and calculate the PRB figures for LTO position and LTO price. I cannot use the PRB figures I used in the all-age handicap ratings because I used past all-age handicaps to calculate them. To collate the LTO position and LTO price PRB figures for 2yos would not take too long. Again, hours rather than days. On a more positive note the horse sex figures I had already calculated so that rating factor is no problem.
Then, for the sire stats (which I could incorporate doing it this way) and the debut course stats, I would need to check each horse in the race, crunching and then collating the relevant figures. That would take some time, and rating one race would potentially take up to 20 minutes if there was a big field of runners. On the plus side, once I had calculated the individual sire PRB figure that could be added to my 2yo ratings database.
The same would apply for the course on debut/number of career runs PRB figures. Once one was calculated that, too, could be added to the database. After rating, say, 20 to 30 races, the sire PRB stats and the debut course PRB stats would be starting to build up. That would make rating subsequent races far easier as I would start to have some data to hand for some horses that I didn’t need to recalculate.
Hence this is a potential way forward for these ratings should I choose to go that route in future. It will still be a very slow process, and because of that I am undecided in terms of what to do. What is most likely to happen is that I will start to collate some stats over the coming weeks, then try and rate five or six races, and go from there. If the first few races offer some positive signs, it will be easier to plough on and look at more races. If they don’t then it possibly is back to the drawing board.
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I hope this article has highlighted the fact that not all horse racing research goes smoothly.
It also shows that, despite all the best intentions, some ideas, no matter how good they may turn out to be, are simply too time-consuming or difficult to research. What has happened to me here is not a one off. In the past I have started researching numerous ideas with the plan of writing about them, only to abort the process at some point. So I’m used to the disappointment!
That was going to be the end of the article, but before checking it through I decided to source and collate the trainer data. As I have now done that I feel it is only fair to share the data with you. If nothing else, you now have some 2yo trainer PRB figures that may prove useful.
Below is a table of 2yo maiden/novice PRB figures for a selection of trainers. I have chosen the 30 trainers who have saddled the most 2yo runners. The figures are grouped as I discussed earlier into horses that have run once previously, horses that have had two career starts and then horses who have run three or more times:
As you can see most trainers have similar figures in the first two columns, with the third column being the best. My next job will be to source and calculate the PRB trainer figures for horses making their debut. However, that will need to wait for another time.
So I will finish here and ponder what next as far as my attempt to produce ratings for 2yo maiden/novice races is concerned. There will be an update in the future, I promise!
DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/LTO_PRB.png320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-09-04 08:53:522023-09-04 08:53:52An Attempt at Creating 2yo Ratings
There’s modesty and then there’s Dubaian owner Ahmad Al Shaikh, writes Tony Stafford. We’ve known each other for more than 30 years, since he used to be the media specialist attached to the Sheikh Mohammed entourage when our main topic, apart from the racing, was our mutual lack of success in keeping off the kilos.
Ever genial, and now pleasingly if not excessively trimmed, Ahmad worked for his country’s first official newspaper Al Ittihad and he remains an advisor. He was employed by the Dubai Government but always loved his trips to Europe for the major race meetings when the Sheikh Mohammed support team was much more in evidence than now.
Why modest? I think this covers it. We bumped into each other in the paddock at Epsom before last year’s Derby. Introducing me to his colleague, he said: “I’m here to support my friend – he has the favourite for the big race.” The friend was Saeed Suhail and his horse Desert Crown, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, duly won the Classic as the 5/2 market leader.
What Ahmad declined to say as we spoke was that he also had a runner in the race, and his horse Hoo Ya Mal, a 150/1 chance trained by Andrew Balding and ridden by David Probert, finished a creditable runner-up. That was Al Shaikh’s second Derby, and third Classic, runner-up, all at big prices.
Khalifa Sat, also trained by Balding, was second at 50/1 in the Covid Derby of 2020 won by shock Aidan O’Brien outsider Serpentine, and Glory Awaits was another 150/1 no-hoper when runner-up to Jim Bolger’s Dawn Approach in the 2013 2000 Guineas when trained by Kevin Ryan.
All three Classic placed runners were cheaply-bought and that is the normal strategy of this sensible man, whose latest big-race winner, Dubai Mile, has just left Charlie Johnston, Ahmad having sold a half share to Martyn Meade.
A £20k purchase by Mark Johnston at the 2021 Goffs Orby sale, he is a son of the ill-fated Roaring Lion, who covered only for one season at a fee of £40k. The Johnston pattern is always to buy and then issue a list to existing and prospective owners. Ahmad had the speed off the mark to secure him.
Dubai Mile’s appeal as a potential stallion is obvious, having won twice as a juvenile before finishing a close second to The Foxes in the Royal Lodge at Newmarket and then winning the Group1 Criterium De Saint-Cloud over one mile, two furlongs.
Fifth in the Guineas, he couldn’t match the exploits of his two predecessors in the Derby, but having switched from Charlie Johnston, he will race for the rest of this season for Freddie and Martyn Meade before hopefully joining Aclaim and co in their stallion team.
“It’s always been my ambition to own a stallion, so I rejected many offers to sell him. But when Martyn Meade came along with an offer to buy a half with a view to standing him as a stallion, I was delighted. I can’t wait to see his progeny running on the track.”
Al Shaikh does have a smaller interest with another stallion, Khalifa Sat, who was the result of a foal share between the Irish National Stud, who own Free Will, and Lacken Stud, owners of the mare Thermopylae. Twenty years old at the time of her covering by the then first-season stallion Free Will, she has produced ten previous foals, and Khalifa Sat was the last of hers to race. Seven in all were winners.
Khalifa Sat had cost £40k, also at Goffs Orby, and won more than three times that for his Derby second place alone. He had one more, unsuccessful, run and was then retired owing to lameness. He stands at a fee of €2,000 at Lacken Stud.
The post-Epsom story of the two horses that finished one-two last year is interesting, and it’s a matter of opinion, which of the two friends has fared better in the aftermath of that epic day in June last year.
Desert Crown did not race again in 2022 despite having several possible targets and stayed in training as a four-year-old. He made a very promising reappearance after more than eleven months off with a close second to subsequent King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Hukum in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown.
He of course also had the King George on his agenda but had to miss it and then last month came the unkindest cut of all, a fractured fetlock when undergoing his final piece of work preparing for the Juddmonte International at York. He has had screws fitted and Bruce Raymond, racing manager to Mr Suhail, says, “The operation went well but he isn’t out of the woods yet.” Obviously there will be no question of his running again in 2023 and the issue of whether the son of Nathaniel will race on as a five-year-old will need to be addressed.
Ahmad didn’t allow himself too long to dwell on his colt’s exploits at Epsom. In the days between Epsom and Royal Ascot, the Goffs London sale at Kensington Palace Gardens offers owners wishing to sell prospective Royal meeting runners the chance of securing a top price. Mr Al Shaikh needed no second bidding.
Hoo Ya Mal was an obvious target for the stamina-loving Australian market and appealed as a potential Melbourne Cup candidate.
George Boughey was the immediate beneficiary as Hoo Ya Mal was sold for £1.2 million to the bid of Gai Waterhouse. He had three runs for Boughey while awaiting the journey Down Under, winning the Group 3 March Stakes (1m6f) at the late August meeting at Goodwood, then took in the St Leger (8th of 9).
He ran his first race for Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott in the Melbourne Cup, without having a prep race. The Australian pattern usually involves at least one and probably two settling-in runs before Flemington for European imports in the race that stops a nation on the first Tuesday in November. Without any prep, 12th of 22 reads well.
Ms Waterhouse and Bott waited a full ten months before getting the now four-year-old gelding back on a racecourse. They chose a Group 3 contest over a wholly insufficient mile – that is the manner of Australian training! – last Saturday at Randwick and he was beaten just over a length in fifth of 11. I can smell a Melbourne Cup with the more normal training pattern of one of Australia’s great handlers already in motion.
With the £344K for last year’s Derby second – worth almost three times the figure of the Covid year – and the £1.2 million for the sale, you’d think Ahmed would be stretching the purse strings a little, but emphatically no.
He says, “A horse has a nice pedigree and looks nice; he can cost a fortune. But nearly all the horses, for example in Tattersalls Book 1, are nicely bred and any of them can be potentially good. I’ve bought plenty of slow horses, but so have the people who pay millions, I prefer to be sensible and able to afford and enjoy my racing.”
He has a couple of promising youngsters on the track this year. Sayedaty Sadaty (€30k from Germany) won at the fourth time of asking for the Balding stable the other day, making up for a roguish display on his previous outing when inexplicably taking himself out of a race by running through the running rail at the intersection at Windsor.
Erratic steering was also in evidence in the Kempton score, but despite hanging badly left across to the stand rail, he still had lengths to spare (and plenty more in his locker by the look of it) in hand of his rivals. It will be interesting to see his first handicap mark tomorrow.
The other youngster he was keen to mention in our chat was Deira Mile. Ahmad splashed out a bit (for him) at 47,000 Guineas but the signs from his first run for Charlie Johnston were bright indeed. You rarely got a Johnston two-year-old runner in Mark’s days going to one of the top southern tracks for its debut so you guess that the team had a decent enough regard for the son of Camelot.
Starting 25/1 for a competitive maiden, he lost ground from the stalls and ran green throughout yet still got within a short head and a neck of another Camelot colt, Defiance, trained by Roger Varian, in third place. Defiance had cost 150 grand as a yearling and you couldn’t be sure if they lined up again that the result would be the same. Knowing Ahmad’s sure touch with buying and trading horses and not to put too fine a word for it, amazing good fortune so far, big things can be expected from this very promising colt.
It’s not just where horses are concerned that this one-time journalist is sharp. Last week he signed up Richard Kingscote as his retained jockey. Kingscote, the man who won the Derby on Desert Crown, has a prior commitment with Sir Michael Stoute but will be available for most of the time his new employer needs him.
I told Ahmad the story of when I met Richard’s grandma in Tesco’s supermarket in Bromley-by-Bow, East London. It was early one morning, and I had picked up a Racing Post – my usual shop didn’t have one yet. She said: “Oh, you like racing. My grandson is a jockey, Richard Kingscote.” You could see how proud she was. Imagine what she felt when he won the Derby!
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