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Horse Racing Betting in 2023: Five Key Differentiators

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Betting is fun, perhaps more so on horses than most other sports because of the speed with which the result is known; that rapid production of endorphins induced by the short duration of a race compared with, say, a football match.

Arriving at a selection is also fun, the process taking a good bit longer than the actual event for most 'serious recreationals'. Whilst there are no genuine shortcuts outside of getting someone else's opinion (for better or worse), there are facilitators and differentiators.

What are facilitators and differentiators?

 

 

A facilitator is merely something that greases the wheels, smooths the process, or saves time. In terms of horse racing betting, it's usually either the aforementioned trusted human advisor or, for fans - like me - of the puzzle, it's a website form resource like the one found elsewhere on these virtual pages. There's plenty of content about how to use the geegeez toolkit elsewhere - try this link for a run down, so in this post I want to consider the other term, differentiators.

 

 

Differentiators are characteristics that distinguish one entity from another.

 

Winners, or Profit?

The most important differentiation in racing bettors is between those seeking winners and those seeking profit. Let's just pause on this for a moment. While the two need not be mutually exclusive, it is usually the case that long-term profit is found away from the pointiest part of the market. Why? Because the favourite is usually the horse about which the most is known, or at least deduced: greater awareness leads to greater investment, generally speaking.

Desperately Seeking Certainty...

Those mythical beasts, the favourite backers, are often "on good terms with themselves" - as the vernacular of the lazy studio pundit hackneys - because, well, because the favourite wins more often than any other market rank. And, with dwindling field sizes and less competitive racing as a result of the emergence of a training cartel - a small band of elite handlers in whose yards a disproportionate amount of the best horses reside - the percentage of winning favourites is ever increasing, as the image below (UK clear favourite, win strike rate by year) attests.

 

 

This is not necessarily a problem in or of itself, because the price of favourites contracts to reflect the increased frequency with which they win. In other words, you still lose the same amount of dough backing 'the jolly old' as you did: between 6p and 8p in the £. [Although 2022, a full year of industry SP returns, was notably the worst in the past 15 years or so]

 

 

The upshot is that, for casual punters who want to win but don't want to do anything to facilitate that outcome, this is very likely a tolerable end: a slow and inevitable, but painless, death by a thousand betting slip cuts.

Of course, it is possible to rarely deviate from the sharp end of the betting list and win; this will generally mean somehow getting on prior to the final formation of the market (i.e. beating SP/BSP). And that is the aspiration for those who need regular consistent winners: to make money backings shorties. Possible, but pretty tricky.

 

A long time between drinks...

For those who have been around the game a little longer, and/or who have a tank and constitution capable of withstanding what Shakespeare once famously called "the slings and arrows of outrageous variance" (or something), the game is not about finding the most likely winner but, instead, about finding the one that is most incorrectly priced.

And there, in a nutshell, is the puzzle: price vs probability. We need to find the 4/1 shot that should be 7/2; or, in early markets, the 4/1 shot that should be 5/2 (until that concession gets taken away).

Even if we're right about the true odds being 7/2, we're still looking at 77.7% losers. But, over a thousand £1 bets, those 22.3% winners (223) will return £1,115 - or a profit of 11.5%. If you still think taking 7/2 is acceptable when you can get 4/1, you're doing it wrong.

Even at relatively short odds of 7/2, there may be a losing run of 27 or 28 bets in a 1000 race sample; so we have to be set up, emotionally and financially, to deal with that.

Five Key Differentiators

After what has been a circuitous introduction even by my own highly verbose standards, it's time for the meat. If you've got this far, I'm safely assuming you're at least receptive to the notion that finding bargains is different from - and better than - buying cheap stuff. With that in mind, here are five angles I personally use when trying to isolate value; that is, before striking any bet.

I feel that all of these five approaches (with the possible exception of the second half of the final one) should be suitable for even moderately experienced bettors with a small amount of available time - say half an hour to an hour. The master key - so many keys in this post - is in choosing our battles: if we select the right races, we have a way above average chance of coming out in front. Bookies have to price every race, we need only play when we feel advantaged. So let's crack on...

Relevant Form: Exposed, but consistent in today's conditions

This is perhaps the simplest of the five differentiators. We're looking for races where all runners are exposed; that is, they're experienced and have shown pretty much all they have to the handicapper already. In such races, we are not expecting a progressive horse to leap forward seven to ten pounds; rather, we expect that the horse best suited to conditions will have a great chance... and, from a value perspective, especially if that horse is returning to optimal conditions today having recently run under less suitable criteria.

These horses typically lurk in lower grade handicaps for older horses: four-year-old-plus Class 5 and 6 races, the type we see on the all-weather every day through the winter. If you think these races are no good, again, you're not doing it right.

The elements to look out for might include - amongst others - proven form at today's track and trip, on today's going, and / or in today's class and field size. Amazingly - it's almost like I knew where I was headed with this! - there's a tool on geegeez.co.uk that illuminates such things for the whole field in an instant. We call it the Instant Expert. Let's look at a couple of examples:

This was a Class 6 0-58 handicap for horses aged three and up. The three-year-olds in the field were relatively exposed, or else it wouldn't have been for me. We can immediately see from the coloured blocks which horses have won, and which have failed to win, under similar conditions. Here, the favourite, Zealot, had a line of green profile though that was achieved with just a single previous win over course and distance.

More wins or places in the horse's relevant form adds confidence. The horses that interested me here were Zealot, but I didn't like his price, and Rooful. The latter looked an attractive each way proposition; and so it proved: he wasn't good enough to beat the favourite - who scored easily - but he was best of the rest.

The exacta, which I didn't play, paid nearly 9/1.

Sometimes - often in fact - there is a lot of green in the grid, especially when looking on the place view. In these scenarios, we know immediately that it's probably a well contested event and that we should look for easier fish to fry. Here's an example:

Loads of green, plenty of amber and few dollops of red and white (no relevant data). Too tricky. Move on.

Below are a few more Instant Expert grids, and your challenge is to decide which horses offered playable value, and which races looked too competitive and should have been passed.

Play or Pass?

Answers - well my answers anyway, there aren't any right or wrong answers as such - are at the bottom.

1

 

2

 

3

 

4

 

5

 

6

 

My answers were as follows:

1 - Pass, too competitive. 66/1 Myboymax won!

2 - Pass, too competitive. Alligator Alley, 15/8 fav, won

3 - Borderline. Probably pass, but I'd have been drawn to Brazen Idol, who finished second at 5/1. 11/4 fav The Thin Blue Line won

4 - Pass! 15/8 fav Twilight Madness won

5 - Play. A perfect example of a terrible race in need of a winner, with a single horse moderately favoured by conditions and within a few pounds (see right hand columns) of its last winning mark. Back From Dubai had some Class 6 questions to answer but this 0-55 required very little winning. 9/4 was hardly rock n' roll but he was against quantity rather than quality opposition, even allowing for the grade.

6 - Play at the prices. Lots of imponderables in here but, of those with proven form against conditions, Thirtyfourstitches was 20/1 - and won!

This approach works just as well for National Hunt races as it does for those on the flat, as example 6 perfectly demonstrates.

 

Takeaway: It is quick and easy to rattle through a day's racing - especially the older horse handicaps - using the Instant Expert grids as a barometer of competitiveness. Of course, I'd advocate consuming more information before making a betting decision, but even if this won't necessarily isolate a bet by itself, it's a great way of shortlisting races to review in greater detail.

Which leads me onto my second differentiator...

 

The Shape of the Race: Draw and Run Style

If you've been reading stuff on here for any length of time, you'll have noted myself, but especially Dave Renham and Chris Worrall, evangelising about the value of draw and run style. Or, over jumps, just run style. Again, these angles play especially well on the all-weather, because most synthetic tracks in UK and Ireland race on turning tracks, many of them from the minimum trip up.

Draw and run style seem to be fairly well subsumed into market prices these days; at least into starting price market prices. That leaves an opportunity on earlier shows to snaffle some value. But the big opportunity in my view is with draw and run style in concert. Going a step further, I'd favour run style over draw in certain scenarios which I'll come on to. And I'd especially favour a horse from a wide gate with an ostensibly uncontested lead. These horses are very often great bets, presumably because the wide post blinds the market (or at least temporarily unsights it) in spite of the fact that there is a good chance of the runner in question making it to the bend in front without burning too much fuel in the process.

The caveat is that we're looking for a horse that we hope will get an uncontested lead; that is, one which looks as though it is the lone pace angle. Here are some recent examples.

 

 

We're looking at the PACE tab on the geegeez racecards here, and our mate Back From Dubai, whose profile was the only compelling one in his race in the previous section. Here, although it's far from a likelihood, we can see the pace prediction showing 'Possible Lone Speed' and Back From Dubai showing up as 'that guy'.

In this example, I'd have been wary of the three, perhaps four, prominent racers drawn inside him. But he also had the form profile in his corner: in a race where very few had anything to recommend them, he had lukewarm plusses from a couple of different perspectives.

As it happened, Back From Dubai did make all for the win.

Here's another pace map - this time, a race where the front end might well not be the place to be:

 

We can see the pace prediction this time is 'Possible Strongly Contested Speed' and the visual shows three, perhaps four, horses all in the LED column for the average of their past four runs. In these situations, those on the front often take each other on early: this makes for an overly fast gallop in the first part of the race and usually an attritional crawl home at the finish. Such races play to those horses incapable of early speed but who see out the trip well, albeit in their own time!

This particular race was won by the unexposed, and still unbeaten - now in three races - Hickory, who was a class above his rivals. As the result shows, he was good enough to travel on the heels of the speed, while the placed horses came from far back, even though typically this course and distance favours front-runners (see the green blob above the pace map).

 

This doesn't just work on all-weather or on turning tracks, by the way. Both Newmarket courses, for example, offer great advantage to front-runners over most trips up to about nine furlongs. If you'd had the proverbial crystal ball and been able to predict every front-runner at HQ since 2009, you'd have been on to a very good thing as you can see from the table below, taken from geegeez' Query Tool. '4' signifies an early front runner, '3' a prominent racer early, '2' a midfield runner, and '1' a hold up type. Many tracks have a similar profit profile. The advantage of early speed is hard to overstate.

 

And what of the jumps? Here's an example from a handicap chase:

 

Under the conditions of the race, we can see that 'Led' (green blob) types have fared best. According to the pace map itself, Quick Draw figured to take them along and, as must be the way in such cherry-picked examples, he did just that after besting an early challenge and repelling the later runners, only one of which could get within ten lengths.

 

Takeaway: Look for one ideally, possibly two, horses in the 'Led' column, regardless of draw; and try to flesh out a form case from there. If two look to go forward, the inside drawn horse has a geometrical advantage in terms of bagging the rail, all other things being equal. But if the lone pace is drawn wide, you can generally expect a positive value proposition. When three or more horses appear in the 'Led' column, it might not be a race in which to be playing a front-runner.

 

Trainer Patterns: HC1 and TC

There are lots of ways for a trainer to elicit improvement from a horse, but two for me stand above all others: first time in a handicap and first run for a new yard. Let's take them in turn.

First run in a handicap

Before a horse can run in a handicap it must qualify for a handicap rating. To do that, it will typically (ignoring dual winners on the flat or those in the top four twice over hurdles) need to run three times in open or confined novice or maiden company. If that read like a foreign language, fret not. Here's the gist: the best and the worst horses are often forced to keep the same company at the start of their careers; after a small number of races they'll start to find their place in the hierarchy of ability.

If you're John (or Thady) Gosden or Charlie Appleby, you take the free hits early doors and then move up in search of the three horses in your yard who can legitimately contest for the Guineas or Derby etc. If you're John Butler or Mick Appleby - with the greatest respect to those genuinely fine exponents of their craft - you don't have the luxury of a conveyor belt of million-pound yearlings lolloping into your barn annually.

Regardless of the quality of horse, the job of any trainer is to optimise the results from those horses. That typically means finding a race the horse can win and, for bonus points, doing it when the money is down. This post won't cogitate on the ethics of such action for one simple reason: there's no ethical case to answer. As punters, we can discern the blueprint of a trainer as well as we can that of a horse's form cycle. And we should. We absolutely must.

If you are scanning a race, spot a horse making its handicap debut (or even its second run in a handicap), and you don't make a note to look a tad more closely at said runner, more fool you. If a horse that has form of 566, is stepping up a quarter mile in distance (and happens to be bred for it), and showing at 6/1 in the betting for its handicap debut doesn't have you watching the replays, you may be better off swerving races where these inexperienced and progressive - often from an extremely low base - runners hang out.

And, of course, that's absolutely fine because - remember - the number one takeaway from these million words is, Choose Your Battles. CYB. Play where you know most, and where you're as comfortable as possible with what you don't know. Like which trainers, and which of their horses, might leap forward on handicap bow.

Geegeez has some assistance for you, natch. We have a report entitled Trainer Handicap 1st Run. Does what it says on the tin. We also have a handy HC1 (and HC2) indicator on the racecard. And we display in line the trainer's performance in the past two years with such types. These things look a bit like this, report first:

 

 

As with all the reports, you can set parameters at the top to filter the day's qualifiers. And there are various other filtering options - for instance, I'm looking at the Course 5 Year Form view here, which tells me Harry Fry has run two handicap debutants at Plumpton since 19th December 2017. Clicking on the trainer's name reveals today's runner(s), and clicking the little up arrow to the left hand side displays inline the relevant past performances - here we can see that one of the pair won and the other was third.

Obviously, two is an inconsequential sample size, and it is for you to gauge what sort of figure is (vaguely) meaningful to you. What I can say is that, in the context of HC1, small sample sizes and low strike rates are the norm: it really is nailing jelly territory. Again, if that puts you off, pass races where there is an array of 'cap debuts. There will still be 200 other contests on the day!

Here is the indicator and inline trainer snippet content:

 

It's worth noting a few other things while we're here. This horse is having its second run after a wind op and its first wearing a tongue tie. Both of those might be expected to eke out a little improvement; and look at the contextual snippets block - accessed by clicking the trainer icon (with the red box around it). There we see Fry's two year record with handicap debutants at any track, which is fairly unexciting, but note above it his record when moving a horse notably in distance. Hmm, interesting.

The nature of most HC1 plays is that we're grappling in the dark, with every chance that the horse is just not very able and runs a clunker. In that context, we MUST be price sensitive. Would I bet the horse above at 3/1? No. At the 13/2 showing up now? I'm tempted...

 

Change of scenery, change of luck?

A change of stable will often lead to a change of fortunes for a horse. It might be the way the horses are trained, the gallop, the box in which a horse is stabled, or some more personal attention (moving from a large 'factory' yard to a small 'boutique' operation). Like humans, horses respond to different stimuli. The challenge is in knowing which trainers are more capable, and with which type of 'cast off'. If all of what has been proffered heretofore has been 'inexact science', this really is quack territory!

It's an area that geegeez can offer some clues, but in truth I'd like for us to be able to do more. Currently we have a 'Trainer Change' report and a 'TC' indicator on the card, and two-year records on the racecard view for the trainers of all such runners. The report looks like this (5 Year Form view here) :

 

And the racecard view like this:

 

Again, note the additional insights: of those nine runners making their stable debut in the past five years, only three ran in the past two years. Note also that Lucy Wadham has excellent PRB (percentage of rivals beaten) stats across the board - 0.50 (50% of rivals beaten) is a par score and her record is consistently above that. Course form is a positive, too, and this mare wears cheekpieces for the first time. Who knows whether that's a plus or not? [It's generally not but, of course, geegeez has a report for it - and I can tell you Lucy is 0 from 10 with first time cheekies in the past two years, only two placed, a moderate 43% of rivals beaten. Won't stop this one winning if she's good enough, but it's a big red 'x' on her scorecard for me]

 

Takeaway: with HC1, check the trainer's performance with similar types; and look for additional 'tells', such as a layoff of one to three months (perhaps to get the horse fully fit), equipment changes (notably a hood or tongue tie), wind or gelding surgery (wind ops overall are incrementally more effective across as many as a dozen runs, so W2, W3, W4, W5+ are all material - better in fact than W1, more on this another day), a change in race distance (especially if pedigree suggests it will be favourable), and so on. With HC2, look out for when HC1 was quite soon after the previous run with a break prior to HC2 - again, this could imply some 'bolt tightening' since the last day.

On trainer changes, it is obvious that not all trainers are equally talented and, especially, not all trainers are equally good at finding the key to a horse in their care. A change of scenery is sometimes enough, but often it is a change of regime or some personal attention - maybe a weekly back massage or whatever - that can aid a horse's progression.

 

Going: Fast or Slow

This article is mainly about racing form differentiators, and a little bit about how Gold helps as a facilitator. In terms of form differentiation, one of the great separators of men (and women) from boys (and girls) is extreme conditions. One example of this - there will be another for my fifth and final point - is the going. Almost all horses act on good ground, though some are slower than others; by extension, most horses act on good to soft or good to firm (flat racing). To a lesser degree, many - though not most - horses act on soft going. But only a few genuinely handle extreme underfoot conditions: heavy and firm ground.

These conditions place additional emphasis on dealing with the terrain as opposed to the opposition, and it is often the case that a horse which has shown it can win on extremes prevails over classier rivals less suited to, or unproven on, the outlying state of the sod.

Here's a table with some percentages in it:

 

The percentages in isolation are irrelevant, especially when comparing different going descriptions. This is because less extreme going conditions tend to have bigger field sizes and, therefore, smaller win percentages.

No, the job here is to look at how the percentages within a going column change based on the number of previous wins on that going. For example, on good ground officially (we won't get into unofficial interpretations of going, or incorrect official ones, we'll take all that as read because we're dealing with large sample sizes in the main), horses with no prior winning form score about 10% of the time. This rises to a bit more than 12% for those with a single prior win on good ground and hovers around the same figure for runners who have twice won previously on good; it then drops a notable bit for triple good scorers.

Good to soft has a similar, if slightly more consistent for prior winners of one to three on the same ground, profile. Good to firm shows a similar increase from going maidens to those with a single verdict on the same official turf, then a regressive profile for winners of two and three. Deviating the other way, to soft, we see a fairly consistent picture for winners of one to three previous races on soft turf.

But look at heavy ground. Winners of one or two races on heavy are 1.4 times more likely to win than heavy maidens; and winners of three heavy ground races previously are more than 1.5 times more likely to prevail than maidens on that extreme of going.

On firm ground, we see a similar leap from maiden on that terrain to those with one or two wins. The thrice-winner sample size is only 70 (all other samples across the table were in at least multiple hundreds and generally thousands).

Now, of course, there is a selection bias here: horses unraced on heavy or firm that perform below expectations may never race on that going again; and, those which won on extreme going are more inclined to be entered under similarly differentiating conditions in future. It is often the case that a horse doesn't 'need' extreme going but, rather, that it inconveniences other horses more than the runner in question. Plenty of horses either don't have the stamina to cope with heavy ground (which makes races last longer at a slower speed), or "won't let themselves down" (i.e. don't put it all in) on very fast ground that some, especially bigger horses, find stinging or jarring.

Win strike rates are all very well but they don't pay the bills, as alluded to at the top of the piece. So let's flesh out the percentages with some Betfair SP ROI (return on investment) data.

 

 

Interesting. We can see that dual and three-time winners on heavy have a positive expectation; and winners of one and two on firm have also returned players to the black (remember, that bottom right cell in the table is a very small sample size - four-time firm ground winners, an even smaller group (obviously, because they're a subset of the three-timers), had a strike rate of 16.67% and a BF SP ROI of 51.99% - albeit from two winners out of twelve!)

Meanwhile, from soft going to good to firm, it was all but impossible to find a profit via proven going performers.

I've spoken historically about "the rule of two", whereby we get past the notion that a single heavy ground win might have been in a very weak race or by some sort of fluke. Two wins affirms that a horse is definitely suited - or can at least handle - extreme going. Naturally, if the horse is two from five, it will be more compelling than if it's two from 25! And, of course, as we should never tire of saying, the price makes the play.

Those tables above are race code agnostic, by the way: they include flat turf, hurdles, chases, and National Hunt Flat races; and both UK and Irish form, since 2008. And they were reproduced from the excellent horseracebase.

 

Takeaway: when the going is heavy or firm, look to proven performers on that terrain, especially if they're reverting to those conditions for the first time in a while and are commensurately attractively priced. Here's Downforce, a three-time winner on heavy, and a 14/1 scorer this day at the end of the flat season:

 

Field Size: Strong Travellers / Fast Finishers

The final component in my facilitation/differentiation quintet is field size. The number of runners in a race often has a bearing on the tempo at which the race is run; and that in turn has a notable influence over which horses in the field might be best suited. Again, we're looking towards the extremes here, though, having said that, with the continued shrinkage of field sizes comes a problem for those one-paced galloping types. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's think about an average five-runner race. Unless there are two or more front-running types in the field, the balance of probabilities is that the race will be steadily run with an acceleration in the latter part of the contest. That suits horses which are able to change gear, i.e. accelerate, late in the play. Many horses cannot, and for these more galloping types, field size truncation is not good.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the likes of heritage handicaps in which volume of runners more often than not guarantees a strong early tempo. In such events, a horse able to travel kindly through the race, and then able to keep travelling when others are in the red zone, is the one to side with. These types might have been habitually outpaced in small field affairs before arriving at their more suitable setup: as such, they're often attractive prices.

How about some examples?

Big field bulldozers

Big fields first, and a horse called Fresh. Trained by James Fanshawe, this lad is a top class sprint handicapper. Here is his handicap form, by field size:

 

 

We can see from his percentage of rivals beaten (PRB) figures that he is generally on the premises; but, in smaller fields, he tends not to have the speed to match less resilient but nippier rivals. However, in those big heritage handicaps he's an evergreen challenger:

 

 

There are lots of other examples of horses like this: Commanche Falls, Mister Wagyu, Albegone, Primo's Comet, Lawful Command, Give It Some Teddy, Escobar, Bopedro. Over jumps, there's Third Wind, Sire du Berlais, Lightly Squeeze, Dans Le Vent, Lively Citizen etc. With many firms paying five, six, even seven or eight places in big field handicaps, these guys and their ilk are well worth playing.

The best place to find them is our old friend Instant Expert. Clicking on a colour block opens the contextual form inline, so you can also check for any near misses to the places:

 

 

Small field edges: race position

At the other end of the spectrum is the growing number of small field, often tactical, races. Here, positioning and toe are the attributes needed. By positioning, I mean run style essentially: if it's a steadily run race, the ones at the front have a head start in a sprint finish. Where do you want your horse to be?

 

 

One point to you if you said, "at the front". The table above shows the performance in handicaps of four to seven runners over the last five years. It includes all-weather, flat turf, hurdles and chases, UK and Ireland.

It doesn't matter if you look at win strike rate, each way strike rate, return on investment, A/E, IV or whatever: there is a linear pattern whereby those at the front do best (by miles), those handy do next best, and those in the second half of the field fare not well.

To counter any claims of a selection bias in race positioning based on ability, the table below is a subset of the one above containing only horses sent off clear favourite:

 

 

The bias is less extreme but the linearity remains, with front-runners still well favoured over prominent racers, and the later running styles about even behind those further forward.

Identifying front runners is is a challenge, but these tables articulate unequivocally why it is worth our time to attempt that act of clairvoyance. Geegeez Pace Maps, available for every race, assist considerably with the challenge.

Small field edges: fast finishers

Regular readers might have known I'd try to squeeze in a mention of sectional timing somewhere. Eager not to disappoint, this is an example of where that information can be very helpful. Specifically in this case, it answers the question, "in small fields, which horse(s) - apart from the likely leader - have the gears to contend?" [There are, of course, all sorts of other considerations, like ability (!), to keep in mind - but let's stay with the script for now]

Sectional times can tell us how fast horses finished their races; importantly, they also tell us the overall race context in which the finishing time was achieved.

A little more scene-setting: in a big field truly run race, we might (depending on going and track layout) expect the winner to finish in a time close to 100% of the overall race time, section for section (e.g. a five furlong race run in 60 seconds, the final two furlongs run in 24 seconds). A fast finish in that context might be a finishing speed of 103%.

But in a steadily run race, where the field has dawdled through the first three furlongs in 40 seconds, we might expect the closing two furlongs to be more in the order of 22.5 seconds (again, depending on going and track layout) - much faster than the earlier part, and a finishing speed of 111%.

Once we've identified likely fast finishers in the field, we need to overlay the circumstances in which they recorded their fast finish on top of how we perceive today's race will be run. Using the two examples above, if today's race looked like having a good solid tempo - perhaps a couple or three horses who tend to either lead or be prominent - we might favour the 103% fast finish, because that was achieved under similar conditions. If, on the other hand, there was no obvious pace horse - or a single front runner - we should probably be more interested in the 111% fast finisher, which has shown its ability to quicken takingly off a pedestrian pace.

Here is an example of how this works in reality. In the race below, a six-runner mile handicap, we can see that, based on the last three races for each horse in the field, Zealot is likely to get his way in front. Note the Pace Prediction: Probable Lone Speed.

 

If that's correct, we'd expect a steady tempo to the race; after all, if you're leading without any contention, it makes sense usually to conserve as much energy for the finish as possible. With three or four habitual waited-with sorts in opposition, which if any have shown the ability to quicken off a potentially false gallop? Our Fast Finishers report suggests the well-backed Dingle, but only tentatively at best.

 

 

That fast finishing effort was six races ago, on a different track and under what is presumed to be a different tempo to today's race.

Meanwhile, a look at the Full Form tab - with 'Show Sectionals' checked - reveals another contender:

 

 

Hovering over  the coloured blobs in the 'Race Speed vs Par' column (title unhelpfully obscured in the image above), shows the sectional percentages for our OMC (Opening / Mid-race  / Closing) format. We can see that this race was run slowly early (S-6, start to 6f out, run 91.1% as quickly as the race overall), before picking up to an even tempo in the middle half mile (6-2) and a very fast closing quarter mile (105% of the overall race speed).

That race tempo looks a reasonable fit against today's likely setup and, what's more, the horse in question, Tropez Power, won it - over today's course and distance and in today's class. He's a dual winner from four starts on all-weather and, in between those wins, he again showed good acceleration to close from 3 3/4 lengths behind to a length behind at the line in another similarly run race.

It's possible that Zealot just leads from start to finish, though up in grade he's short enough for me. At around 9/2, Tropez Power could be a bit of value. (And, naturally, there are any number of other eventualities, but we're in the business of finding one of the more credible ones at odds which appeal!)

[Update: Zealot, despite missing the break, was rushed up to lead and held up gamely from the two fast finisher horses, Dingle and Tropez Power. Tropez Power actually made a big acceleration a quarter mile out - which got me excited - but then flattened out and looked a bit of a tricky ride. You can't win 'em all]

Getting one's head around sectional timing is not the easiest way to play the horses, but there are real insights to be gleaned for those who take some time to figure it out.

*

Betting horses is a great puzzle, a glorious uncertainty indeed. For me, and many/most geegeez readers, much of the joy is in the thrill of the chase: the time sunk into reading the clues and fathoming a plausible value play from there. To that end, these five differentiators may help your levelling up agenda in 2023; and, needless to say, Geegeez Gold is the great facilitator that underpins them all.

**If you enjoyed this article, please do share with others on the soshul meejahs. There are some links below where it says "Share this entry". [Thank you]

Good luck,
Matt

p.s. not yet a Gold subscriber? Take a 30 day trial for just £1 here >

Trainer Profiles: Anthony Honeyball

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In this penultimate article in my Trainer Profiles series, I will examine the record of Dorset handler and geegeez-sponsored yard, Anthony Honeyball. I will be sharing ten years of UK racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2022, the majority of which can be sourced by members using from the Geegeez Query Tool. All profits / losses in this piece have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. Of course, we should be able to significantly improve upon the baseline figures of SP using exchanges or Best Odds Guaranteed, and I will share Betfair SP data when appropriate.

 

Anthony Honeyball Brief Bio

Anthony was an amateur under the tutelage of Richard Barber before signing up as a conditional jockey for Paul Nicholls where he rode 45 winners. In 2006, he switched his attention to training horses which he did initially from his parents’ Quantock farm in Somerset. In 2012, Honeyball moved just a few miles up the road to Potwell Farm where he has been ever since. For more information on the horses currently in the year, check out this excellent stable tour Matt published in October.

 

Anthony Honeyball Overall Record

To begin with let's break down Honeyball's win record down by year:

 

There have been three years where he exceeded a strike rate of 20% (2017, 2019 and 2020) and, although the last two years have dipped under that mark, SP losses have still been small. Indeed the last three years have all individually been profitable if betting to BSP. Overall, six of the ten years have been profitable to BSP and in the ten years he has basically broken even to that metric.

Time to dig a bit deeper.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Race Distance

Let’s look at race distance splits. Previous articles have highlighted that some trainers perform better at specific distance bands. What about Honeyball?

 

 

There seems to be a slight bias here against the shortest distances (2m1f or less) – both the strike rate and returns are worse with this cohort. Honeyball has actually made a profit to Industry SP in the longer races of three miles or more, although this is essentially down to three of his runners that won at prices of 20/1, 25/1 and 28/1. I do, however, want to examine his three mile-plus record in a little more detail.

Anthony Honeyball Performance in 3 mile+ Races

Let's split these longer races into handicap and non-handicap races first:

 

 

The vast majority of runners at this range have come in handicaps with the non-handicaps  providing significant losses despite the relatively small sample and decent strike rate. It makes sense to further split the handicap data into 3m+ handicap chases and handicap hurdles:

 

 

We now see a lower strike rate in handicap chases, but both have similar profit profiles and A/E indices; these long distance handicaps are definitely a positive area for Honeyball.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance in Races of 2m1f or less

As we saw earlier, these races provided the lowest strike rate from a distance band perspective. Let’s split non handicaps and handicaps as we did for the longer races earlier:

 

 

These are very unusual stats: it is extremely rare for handicap results to have a better strike rate than non-handicaps. In this case the margin is a comfortable one, too. In terms of returns there is a huge gap with handicaps providing 52p in the £ better results as compared to non-handicaps.

In fact if we look at non-handicap races as a whole (all distances) there have been losses of over 28p in the £; in all non-handicap hurdle races this goes up markedly to over 46p in the £. Handicaps are the place to concentrate on, it seems, and that is where we're going next.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance in Handicap races

We have already seen that Honeyball has performed well in certain handicap races. Here is a price breakdown across all handicap races:

 

 

The yard maintains a very good strike rate with shorter priced runners, but thereafter it is not the normal sliding scale we expect to see with price data. Although the dataset is a little limited, which could partially be a reason for this, all price bands have had more than 100 runners. In terms of profits, the majority of profits have come from the bigger-priced runners as the graph below clearly shows:

 

 

Blind profits have been recorded in three of the price bands; the 9/1 to 14/1 group have virtually broken even; but the 3/1 to 11/2 bracket have shown surprisingly steep losses. I’m not sure what to read into this but the 3/1 to 11/2 group did have 246 qualifying runners which is a big sample. What is clear is that Honeyball is a trainer to keep an eye on in handicap races and don’t be afraid to back his bigger-priced runners if you have found a good reason to.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Class

Onto class of race next. Below there is a comparison of win and each way strike rates across the classes:

 

 

There is a definite pattern and correlation in the data here: much lower strike rates in the higher class races, which is perhaps to be expected and is typical of many/most yards; meanwhile in the two lowest grades (5 and 6) Honeyball has made a profit in each. These Class 5 and 6 races have shown similar results when we split the ten-year time frame into two, as the graph shows:

 

 

It seems therefore that these lower class races are ones to look out for.

While we are discussing ‘class’ there is a difference when it comes to comparing horses that have dropped in class compared to those who have not:

 

 

Class droppers have clearly out-performed horses that are racing again in the same class as last time or horses that have been upped in class. Class droppers also would have secured solid returns of just under 7p in the £ to SP; 24p in the £ to BSP.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Course

With fewer overall runners than other trainers we have looked at so far, course stats are going to be less substantial. Hence my first port of call is to look at all race course data. Courses with 50 or more runners in total are shown in the table. They are ordered by strike rate:

 

 

Fontwell has been where Honeyball has saddled the most runners of any course in the UK, and he has had the greatest success there, too, both in terms of win strike rate and also return on investment. Exeter and Taunton has also proven profitable to Industry SP. Not surprisingly perhaps the three most profitable courses have all produced A/E indices above 1.00. Concentrating  on Fontwell, here are the strongest stats I found when breaking the results down:

  1. Seven years out of ten have seen a profit to Industry SP which shows good consistency. To BSP there have been eight winning years, with the two losing two years seeing losses of just 5p and 6p in the £ respectively
  1. Honeyball has been successful in both handicaps and non-handicaps as the table below shows:

There is a slightly higher strike rate in Fontwell non-handicaps, but the returns to SP are virtually the same; A/E indices are exactly the same! To BSP, non-handicaps edge it by 31p in the £ to 27p.

  1. In Fontwell Class 5 and 6 races only, Honeyball has seen 26 of his 60 runners win (SR 43.3%) for a profit to SP of £32.96 (ROI +54.9%); to BSP this increases to +£38.58 (ROI +64.3%)
  1. He has recorded 15 wins from 32 runners (SR 46.9%) in National Hunt Flat races at the Sussex track. Returns of 53p in the £ to SP, 63p to BSP.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Running Style

As regular readers will know, run style data is something I believe can be an important piece in the betting puzzle; certainly in a good proportion of races. To begin with let us see the proportion of runners that fit a specific running style. Geegeez breaks these running styles into four: Led – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

Here are the splits for Honeyball:

 

These figures are relatively ‘normal’ although the front-running percentage is slightly higher than the 'all trainers' figure; commensurately, the midfield figure is slightly lower. Below is the success rate with each run style as far as win strike rate goes:

 

 

We have seen this pattern time and time again in this series of articles: horses that go to the front and lead early (L) win a far bigger proportion of their races compared to the other run styles. Prominent racers have also done well for Honeyball, hitting just over one win in every five races, but horses that raced mid-pack or at the back have relatively poor records. Looking at the potential returns for each group, it should be noted that the front-runner and prominent racer groups would have secured an SP profit; midfield runners would have lost 27p in the £, and hold up horses fared a little worse at 33p.

I want to look at favourites now and specifically their success rate in terms of run style:

 

 

We see exactly the same pattern here with early leading favourites having an excellent record. If you had backed all Honeyball favourites that ended up racing early in mid-division or at the back, it would have cost you a whopping 31p in the £ to SP.

Before moving on, let us split the front-runner data by race type. Potential returns are shown (obviously requiring your crystal ball to have been working perfectly to have identified those racing from the front before the races took place!):

 

 

These stats are highly unusual when comparing them to all trainers. Normally front runners do best in chases when comparing the three main race types; here, the yard's front runners have excelled in hurdle races. The average win percentage across all trainers for front running hurdlers is around 20%; Honeyball is close to double that. Clearly, any potential front runner from the stable in a hurdle contest is a horse to be seriously interested in.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Jockey

Onto some jockey analysis now and, specifically, a look at any jockey who has ridden at least 50 times for Honeyball since 2013, with the proviso that they had at least one ride for the stable in 2022. I have ordered them by number of rides starting with the most:

 

 

David Noonan and Ben Godfrey have produced a blind profit but a 20/1 winner for Noonan and a 40/1 winner for Godfrey are the simple reasons behind this. Both Aidan Coleman and Rex Dingle have decent records when riding favourites – a 44% and 43% strike rate respectively, with both pilots making a profit to SP and BSP. They also improve upon the overall stable win percentage on front runners – Coleman stands at an impressive 37%, Dingle just under 34%.

 

Anthony Honeyball Extra Facts and figures

With the main body of the article complete, here are some extra stats or nuggets that may be of interest:

  1. Honeyball's longest losing run over the past ten years stands at 39. He has had 30 or more consecutive losers on three separate occasions;
  1. Between 15th December 2017 and 17th February 2018 he had 19 winners from 47 runners equating to a strike rate in excess of 40%; between 28th November 2019 and 6th February 2020 he had 18 winners from 45 runners (SR 40%);
  1. There are punters around who occasionally back their favourite trainer or favourite jockey and put their selections in doubles, trebles etc. Hence I thought I would look at what would have happened if you had backed all Anthony Honeyball runners in trebles on the days when he had exactly three runners. He has had exactly three runners running on the same day 100 times; the treble would have been landed just twice. However, despite just the two wins, if you had placed a £1 win treble on all 100 days you would have made a profit of £281.38 from an outlay of £100. Not such good news if you had attempted the idea with doubles on days when he had just two runners. In this case you would have lost £109.19 from your outlay of £218;
  1. Last time out winners have won nearly 21% of the time, but they have been poor value racking up losses of 32.6% to SP, 29% to BSP;
  1. Horses that failed to complete the course last time have proved profitable albeit from a relatively modest strike rate of 12.6%. To BSP this would have seen a return on investment of 40.7% (nearly 41p in the £). You would have made a profit on these runners in six of the ten years;
  1. Horses that have raced before and which are making their seasonal debut have an excellent record – 57 wins from 297 (SR 19.2%) producing profits to both SP and BSP; BSP being £87.46 (ROI 29.4%).

 

Anthony Honeyball – Main Takeaways

 

Anthony Honeyball is a trainer that should be on all of our radars as punters. His runners exhibit plenty of positives and I hope some of those have come out in this article; and that further yields can be derived from his Potwell Farm team this year and beyond.

Good luck

- DR

Monday Musings: A Glut of Shocks

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Have you noticed, there seems to have been an astonishing number of long-priced winners of late? Lack of energy has restricted my analysis to a few days from the middle to the end of last week, with starting and finishing points designed to give the most biased slant to prove the argument, writes Tony Stafford.

Thus, I’ll kick off on Wednesday at Hereford when there were four winning favourites but 14/1 and 12/1 scorers. In the evening at Kempton, one winning favourite emerged alongside 25/1 and 10/1 winners with vanquished 8/11 and even-money shots, but the statistician’s delight came at Newcastle at the beginning of the afternoon.

Within half an hour, after the two opening races went to the market leaders, David Griffiths, no stranger to long-priced success, stepped in with 125/1 shot Endofastorm – my mate, Wilf Storey, sent out that 3/1 favourite Going Underground – unfortunately he did.

Half an hour later it was the turn of Keith Dalgleish. His four-year-old gelding Notimeforanother must rank as one of the all-time inappropriately named winners, so soon after the Griffiths filly and in his case just the 100/1.

But there are 100/1 shots and 100/1 shots and this one should never have started anything like that. Indeed, if certain members of the tipping/punter profession had looked carefully at the race, they would have come away with the value bet of all-time. They say you can’t eat value, but this one instance of it was a tasty dish indeed.

The decoy was his run the previous week over the straight one mile, ridden by the same jockey, Billy Garritty. Starting slowly, he trailed the field throughout and was beaten 33 lengths into last place. His rider reported he was never travelling.

He travelled all right on Wednesday, in midfield until nudged along by Garrity two out. He joined the Alice Haynes-trained even-money favourite, Regal Rambler, 110 yards out and beat him by a neck.

That was his fourth racecourse appearance, the second coming in an Aintree bumper where after showing initial promise at Market Rasen, he was the 11/2 third favourite but finished 33 lengths behind the winner.

Hanging under Jamie Moore in the closing stages, he appeared a likely non-stayer, at least at 2m1f on soft ground. The Market Rasen race was over 13.5 furlongs and he had started the 2/1 favourite and finished a good runner-up to the Don Cantillon-trained winner. I’ll keep you in suspense for a little longer as to that horse’s identity.

The previous October, Poetic Music had won the same Market Rasen race on debut for John Butler. She was sold to a new client of Fergal O’Brien’s for 60 grand at Cheltenham soon after and went on to win two more bumpers, including the New Year’s Day one at Cheltenham before finishing sixth to Facile Vega in the Festival Bumper at Cheltenham. She won first time over hurdles before being beaten by the smart Nicky Henderson filly Luccia in a Listed hurdle at Newbury.

The winner of the same 2022 Market Rasen juvenile bumper cost two and a half times as much to winkle away from the shrewd Mr Cantillon, the £150k being paid at that Cheltenham auction by a patron of Ben Pauling’s. Three days before Notimeforanother won at those incredible odds, the Pauling juvenile followed Poetic Music’s example by winning the New Year’s Day bumper at Cheltenham. Fiercely Proud, for that’s his name, could be very smart and no wonder Notimeforanother could win a low-grade 4yo and up novice race for the equally sharp Mr Dalgleish!

Moving on from Wednesday, Thursday at Chelmsford featured 40/1 and 22/1 scorers with no winning favourite and, while Ffos Las was a more even battleground, there were still 16/1 and 12/1 winners in West Wales. As for Wolverhampton, while four favourites did oblige, Clive Cox’s 1/9 shot Captain Pep, in the Middleham Park colours, never looked like pegging back a Tony Carroll front-runner which checked in at 16’s by two comfortable lengths.

Friday was more level pegging, but in less than half an hour on Saturday there were three notable reverses for lovers of short-priced favourites at Sandown, Wincanton and Cork. A safe haven for backers when times are tough is usually the Willie Mullins stable and with 24 winners in the past fortnight, there must have been room for some profit.

But it has taken him 98 runners over the busy Christmas/New Year period to amass those victories (including three yesterday, two long odds-on, at Naas) and 38 of the runners started favourite. One of those to be over-turned was the 1/4 shot Alastar in the opening maiden at Cork on Saturday.

This son of Helmet had smart form in France and Italy as a three-year-old but had not raced since November 2021 when unplaced in a Group 2 race in Italy. Bought for €150k that autumn, he was gelded early last year. So many of the international Mullins/Howard Kirk buys have lengthy preparation times before arriving on Irish racecourses, with everyone fully expecting the formality of a win. It’s usually the longer the gap the more certain it becomes and 4/1 on about him was hardly a shock.

What was surprising was that the Denis Hogan-trained jumps debutant four-year-old Action Motion, a 12-times raced 65-rated non-winner on the flat, could get the better of the 98 RPR-rated gelding by half a length at 20/1.

Two more short-priced reverses immediately preceded the Cork boil-over. First the Gary Moore French import, Bo Zenith, winner of his only previous start in Auteuil, started 4/11 for his UK debut at Sandown but in the rain-softened ground, he faded up the hill behind the Nigel Hawke-trained I Have A Voice, trailing home 27 lengths back in third. Third favourite at 17/2, this sound stayer looks to have a future and could be a candidate for the Boodles Juvenile Hurdle.

Between these two obliterations, the defeat of a 4/6 shot at Wincanton might seem small beer. Kim Bailey had expected his Top Target to follow his previous success at Wetherby, but after racing prominently, he had no answer to the finishing burst of the 50/1 Joe Tizzard contender I Shut That Door who simply sailed past on the run-in to win by more than two lengths.

Bailey was interviewed on Sky Sports Racing after his front-running chaser Moonlighter battled on gallantly to win at Chepstow yesterday and he bemoaned the season that he and his trainer counterparts have been enduring, not least the implications it has had in hindering the preparation of some of his better horses for Cheltenham, which looms barely nine weeks away.

The seemingly never-ending dry summer and then the very cold weather which wiped out jump racing for a week before Christmas have severely restricted most of his horses in how often he could run them. Those trainers who pressed on regardless often were taking risks and for those who haven’t, now realistically there can only be time for one or at a pinch two prep runs if conditions stay suitable from now on.

Mullins though is so powerful that he will again be approaching the Festival with a guaranteed clutch of favourites. Facile Vega, State Man and Dysart Dynamo all strutted their stuff with aplomb in the period in question (not that State Man will be favourite if as expected he takes on Constitution Hill!) and even if six odds-on shots from Wille bit the dust, the punters will not be dissuaded from seizing what they have come to regard as their annual spring piggy bank.

As to Bailey, 28 years on from his amazing Champion Hurdle (Alderbrook) and Gold Cup (Master Oats) double, he still retains all the enthusiasm and skill, now operating from his nicely-developing yard at Andoversford, a few miles outside Cheltenham. Those big wins came five years after his Grand National success with Mr Frisk.

There’s no doubt that with so many promising unexposed types in his care, the belief persists that a second win in one of jump racing’s Big Three could still await him as he enters the later phase of his glorious career.

Having been around for the entirety of that time, I have to say, I can never remember so many massively-priced winners, even a few for him. I believe it’s a function of Betfair’s domination of the betting market coupled with the weakness on-course and the effects of affordability checks.  Maybe the Editor, who was formerly chairman of the Horse Race Bettors Forum, could spell it out for me and you all!

 - TS

[I don’t know, really, though I suspect it’s most likely to be a combination of moderate racing and the uneven distribution of overround – where the top of the market offers tighter prices and the tail fatter odds – since the move to industry SP’s. That, of course, might be hogwash – Ed.]

My 2022 Betting Profit and Loss

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As has become a bit of an annual tradition, each year in early January I share my personal betting P&L. To be frank, it's all rather mundane - certainly no financial fireworks at any rate - but I'm very happy to continue to 'walk the talk'. To be clear, that means having a huge amount of fun seeking out and making bets, and aiming to finish the year a pound or three in front. Fun first, profit second: two entities that are not mutually exclusive!

Here's the video. One quick line before you press play. I've sped up the tedious transaction management part of the video in the interests of respecting viewers' time (!) - if you'd like to look more closely, you can slow the video down via the little cog icon bottom right and the 'playback speed' option.

If you want to see earlier versions (weirdo! 😉 ), you can find 2021 here, and 2020 here.

[Please don't judge the amount of transactions associated with coffee and egg, or beer, spend!!]

Do feel free to share a comment, or ask any questions, in the section underneath the video.

Matt

 

 

 

Roving Reports: A Tale of Woe

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A very happy New Year to all Roving Reports readers!

I expect you've tuned in here today to hear exciting tales of Newbury, Cheltenham and the like. Tales of daring, of bookmakers standing lumpy bets, of big Christmas crowds and even bigger Christmas bad beats.

Instead, good people, I have a tale of woe to tell you. No sooner had Boxing Day come and gone than this horrid virus that seems to have gripped half the nation managed to get a hold on me too, and for the last week I've been so ill I've been unable to do much other than sit on the sofa and watch the racing. This has its advantages in so much as I haven't had any early starts or humping the gear around in the rain but it also means that, at a busy time of the year, I've earned nothing in the past week. There's no sick pay scheme when you're working the pitches, you know.

I'm hoping to be back at Southwell on Friday night. I'll make a decision on that on Thursday, but for the time being, I'll tell you about the last time I worked, which was Huntingdon on Boxing Day.

This was to be Huntingdon's Boxing Day swansong, with the fixture being moved to Aintree next year and from that point on. It remains to be seen how well that works, as Liverpool is very much a football city and whether people can be persuaded to change sport (and indeed, tradition) is not a given.

I get a lift to Huntingdon with my good friend Daren, who picks me up nice and early from Loughborough. Sharing the journey there and back always makes for an easier day, as there's someone to discuss all your certain winning selections on the way there, and to moan about what bad luck you've had on the way home. (It's the same with the Lottery - I'm picking the correct numbers every week, it's only the machine that keeps selecting the wrong balls.)

As is usually the case here, I'm working with the Speechley firm, otherwise known as S&D Bookmakers. We've a heavyweight team here to run no fewer than five pitches, three on the rails, two in the ring, and once we've set up we get betting straight away. There's an hour to the first but we know today will be busy, and it is important to get business for the first, as once a customer bets with you they tend to stay with you on a day like this. The key is to be pleasant, and have a laugh, which is second nature to me anyway. Every customer is wished the best of luck for the day as they place their bet, although one customer is hardly full of Christmas cheer, spitting back at me "yeah, you don't mean that, you want us all to lose!" I explain to her that some customers today will win, some will lose, and I'll get paid either way, so I may as well be pleasant to everyone! She does not have another bet with me.

It's slow enough to get going but once we're in full swing, it's a steady stream of punters, most wanting £2ew on. That's fine, as long as you've a near endless supply of pound coins (inevitably they'll pull a fiver out) and I make the decision to make it £2.50ew as a minimum, unless they've the correct money. Which on a day like today, I think, is fair enough.

Loup De Maulde is a good result for us in the first, although business is quiet. As the race is taking place, a look out to the A14 shows there's a whole queue of cars still waiting to get in. Supreme Gift is no good in the second, although it could have been far worse as we take a £50ew A Definite Getaway at 66s. Three out he looks certain to be placed, and maybe even win; there's a sigh of relief when he's just run out of the places.

The car queue has disappeared and the place is heaving by Race 3. One thing you have to recognise as a workman is when someone's clearly lurking with a wad of cash, looking for a price, and it's your job to try and reel him in. There one such bloke in front of me, and I start a conversation. "What you looking for, mate?"

He's looking to have a 750-400 the jolly, Crystal Moon. It's 13-8 with us. I offer him the middle ground of a 700-400 but no, he's insistent 15-8 is what he wants. Can't say I didn't try. When it wins, I feel I did the right thing standing my ground.

A stewards enquiry is called. Now, on a day full of once-a-year punters, that's the last thing you want. Those wanting payment are now milling about, waiting for the bing-bong to tell them their fate. This also has the knock-on effect of decreasing business by about 50% for the next race. Folk won't bet if they don't know how much they have to bet with. I'm keeping punters entertained with a joke or two whilst they wait and they really do have to wait, what looks a fairly cut-and-dried places-remain-unaltered verdict is taking more time than thought. Finally that announcement is made, and we can get paid out. Then... the rush begins.

They are at the post with around two minutes to the off and now everybody wants on. I've a queue of about 15 that isn't getting smaller. I'm flat out trying to clear it, which I do with about a minute to go.

Normally, with about 20 seconds to the off, I will stop betting as Jason, running the master book, needs that bit of time to make sure the book is how he wants it, and any late big bets that come raining in from the satellite pitches can easily affect it. However, having cleared my queue, I look up and all I can see is...queues either side of me.

I can't resist a challenge. "NO QUEUE HERE!!" I shout at the top of my voice. Like a pack of meerkats, up pop a hundred heads. The next 60 seconds are a blur as the twenties, forties and fifty pound bets are thrust my way. I'm serving two at a time, almost, to get everyone on. The horses are lining up to go. "Keep betting!" I say to Andy, on the keyboard and punching the bets in. More twenties and forties. We just - just - get them all on as they jump. The first thing I do is go and apologise to Jason for leaving him no time to sort his book, but he's not bothered! Better taking the money than not, he says.

We get a result with the aptly-named Seelotmorebusiness, Harry Derham's first runner which, strangely, has gone unbacked and drifted like the proverbial barge.

William Cody is no good in the next but Jason has decided I should bet the King George on my board, and so I give it a roar. Business for the big race is steady, but a £500-£200 Bravemansgame ensures it isn't a winning one.

Back to Huntingdon and my favourite £2ew punter of the day is back. She's having £12 on every race and has drawn every time so far. This time she backs Supasunrise and Master Malcolm ("because my brother is called Malcolm" - yes, it's that sort of a day) as two of her three bets this time and true to form, she's got the winner and third.

Billy Boi Blue is as bad a result for the payout as possible in the last, as everyone knows a Bill, or Billy, or Mac or Buddy, as Sheryl Crow might have sung, and that's the end of that. We've had a great day though, and as we pack away the gear and get paid, there's a definite sadness we won't be here next year.

That ought to be the end of the tale, but when I get home, I get a text from Jason.

"You've not got any money on you, have you?"

This is a text that sends your heart sinking, as it means the money is wrong. Now, it has been known for me to walk off with some of the float in my pocket. I once got home from Southwell, turned my pockets out and two nifties fell on the floor. I was horrified, as I knew they weren't mine. I rang Rob to ask if the float was short.

"Exactly a oner," came the reply.

"I think I might know where that is..."

One of the reasons Rob employs me is that he knows I'm honest all the day long, and if there's money missing it'll be a genuine mistake. However, after checking every pocket and bag I've taken with me, I find nothing. That gnaws away at me all night but I'm pleased when Jason finds a fair bit of it after a recount. Some margin of error is perfectly acceptable on a busy day like today but you don't want it miles out. I shall sleep easier now...

That is, until, the flu kicks in the next day. Best of 2023, everyone.

- DM

Meeting Charlie Johnston

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The most predictable thing about Mark Johnston is his unpredictability, writes Tony Stafford. When most Scotsmen would be thinking of First Footing on New Year’s Eve, his mind was set on Last Running as he let it be known publicly that his entries in conjunction with son Charlie at Wolverhampton on that Friday evening would be his last.

That left Charlie Johnston, 32, as the sole licence holder at Middleham’s Kingsley House Stables. That long-standing name nowadays more importantly incorporates the magnificent Kingsley Park with its independent gallops less than a mile from the High Street.

Middleham has a wide range of excellent existing work facilities available to the other trainers in the area, which Johnston used for the longest part of his 34 years in the town. But with the stable size swelling beyond 200 horses, it became clear there was a need to ensure continuity of exercise every day. As anyone who knows Newmarket will tell you, delays of getting onto the gallops if stuck in behind a big string can be frustrating for trainers and cause difficulties for horses with the potential for over-excitement.

Thus Kingsley Park was designed, and is organised in eight self-contained stable blocks, all with access to the most up-to-date swimming pools, water treadmills, and with the veterinary and farriery expertise needed to keep the massive show on the road. They are all within yards from stepping on to the various gallops, be they grass or artificial. Each yard has its own manager, reporting directly to the management team and several assistant trainers, the best-known being the admirable Jack Bennett.

Since qualifying as a vet, Charlie has been increasingly involved in the family business and he, his father, and mum Deirdre form the Board of Directors. It was at their quarterly Board Meeting on December 1st that the suggestion of a more immediate change-over was first mooted. Let Charlie explain.

“When we first applied to the BHA for the joint-licence, which began on January 1st last year, we all had it in our minds that it would probably be something which would continue for four or five years as a partnership. It quickly came down to more like two years as the transition had gone smoothly from the outset.

“Then at the last Board Meeting, Dad said: “What about January 1st?” We looked at each other and everyone seemed to like the idea. It had the obvious benefit of making for a tidy transition.”

The first step was to check with the BHA that it could be arranged in time. Then the owners had to be consulted. Charlie said: “As of January 3rd, none of the owners has disagreed with the new arrangement. Of course, Dad will be here every day as usual and all the planning processes that have been in place for decades to decide what and where we run will continue unchanged.

“Mum will, as ever, be riding out her two lots on racehorses every morning, then go across to look after her eventers. She will also continue travelling the country and the world watching eventers she has with other people. The only thing really that will change in the short term is that, when they go on holiday, the phone won’t be ringing non-stop.”

After initially training in Lincolnshire, Mark and Deirdre Johnston moved to Middleham in 1988 buying Kingsley House which, at one time a decade or so earlier, had a less reputable incumbent in Ken ("Window") Payne, the one-time selling-plate king who I knew originally in the days when he trained in the New Forest.

One of his most famous episodes at that time was when he saddled two horses in a four-runner seller, putting his own apprentice John Curant on the “trier” and Lester Piggott on the wrong one. They were the right one (for Ken) and the wrong one (for the betting public) as, Big Jake I seem to remember, strolled home from Mr Bojangles and the Long Fellow.

It was while at Middleham that Payne took charge of a syndicate horse I organised with fellow Daily Telegraph journalists and habituees of Coral’s betting shop in Fleet Street. These included, bizarrely, two punting band leaders in Mike Allen and Trevor Halling – father of boxing commentator, Nick Halling.

Halling senior incidentally got such a kick from that connection that he made a new career in racing journalism in the south-east and was a long-standing regular at Lingfield and all the Sussex tracks. My friend Keith Walton, who is a former boxer who trains professionals, also coaches several Northern jockeys in the skills of the noble art. Keith, a regular on the racecourse in the summer, has a top prospect in David Crawford, known locally as the Black Panther. He promises that when Crawford next appears on a televised bill, he will ask Nick Halling about his father’s health.

Returning to Payne, a horse called Princehood started for us with the remarkable veteran Louie Dingwall who trained on the beach at Sandbanks, in Dorset, where her shack, with its own petrol pump, would represent at least £1 million worth of real estate nowadays – ask Harry Redknapp! One day, aged 86, and with limited vision, she drove her horsebox all the way to the south of France and won the Grand Prix des Alpes-Maritime and £13 grand with Treason Trial, her own horse.

Princehood, a 300gns auction buy, did nothing while in Dorset, but, sent north, won a BBC televised sprint on a Saturday at Lanark just before it closed in October 1977. In typical Payne fashion, he had told us to back him two days earlier in a modest race at Doncaster where he ran a stinker. Nobody had the foresight to take the 14/1 as we watched with dismay during our work break in the King and Keys pub in Fleet Street that Saturday.

Payne’s time at Middleham had various controversies, one of which was the suggestion that as more owners were attracted to the stable, it outgrew its capacity and there were instances of multiple occupation of boxes, fine with a mare and foal, but less advisable with hard-trained racehorses. Also, his accounting was reputedly off course, with it often taking several more than four quarters in a horse to complete the ownership whole! After his wife had gone off with the singer Gilbert O’Sullivan, Payne reputedly went to live in America with his male hairdresser!

The Johnston days happily have been much more conventional. From the outset in 1988 and by October 2017, in saddling Dominating to win at Pontefract, Mark became only the third trainer to saddle 4,000 winners in the UK. Less than a year later, Poet’s Society (Frankie Dettori) won at York at 20/1 to make it a record 4,194 wins and then, in August last year, Johnston crossed the unconscionable milestone of 5,000 victories when Dubai Mile won at Kempton.

Thus, with just the 5,000 (and a few) to aim at, Charlie set off with a 33-1 fourth at Lingfield on Monday and has runners all week from today (Wednesday). Everyone will be wishing this personable young man all the best.

One thing that hasn’t yet taken much of his attention is the use of the family plane, which Mark flies all over Europe and which Charlie concedes is a massive help in the organisation of their time.

“No, flying the plane is probably something that might happen eventually. There is no doubt that it has been a great advantage to be able to supervise everything on the gallops for two-thirds of the morning and still be down at Ascot or Newmarket in time for the first race at 2 o’clock.

“I’m not sure that as well as handing over the licence, Dad will be too excited about being an unpaid pilot for me; but flying has helped keep us in touch with everything, and it would be a shame if it were no longer available to us” he said. It would also make that lovely grass runway just behind the barns a severe waste.

Mark Johnston is relatively young at 63, compared with other senior trainers like Sir Michael Stoute and John Gosden, the latter now named on a joint-licence with son Thady. But, as Charlie says, “He didn’t want to go on indefinitely. He and Mum have built all this up from nothing, and he never wanted it to just fritter away. I’ve no intention of that ever happening!”

Don’t worry   - it won’t!

- TS

Trainer Profiles: Gordon Elliott

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We head back to Ireland for my next trainer profile; this time I will be examining the record of Gordon Elliott. In this article I will be drilling down into just under ten years of National Hunt racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st October 2022, the majority of which can be sourced by members using the Geegeez Query Tool. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price but where appropriate I will share Betfair SP data as that is a better guide these days of the likely profits/losses punters will make.

The main body of this piece will look at Elliott's record when running horses in Ireland. However, I will also examine his UK record as he sends plenty of runners across on the ferry.

Gordon Elliott Brief Bio

Elliott was not born into a racing family, but he started working for Tony Martin in his teens before riding in point to points and under rules. Towards the end of his riding career, before injury curtailed that part of his CV, he rode for Martin Pipe for a year as a conditional.

In 2006 Elliott took out his training license, operating out of Cullentra House Stables, and just a year later became the youngest trainer ever to win the Grand National, courtesy of the former Paul Nicholls inmate, Silver Birch. He has also won the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, one of his 33 winners at the Festival. He mainly focuses on National Hunt racing but he does have a few runners on the flat, and has enjoyed success at Royal Ascot (Pallasator) as well as winning the Ebor Handicap at York (Dirar). He was banned for six months in 2021 after being photographed astride a dead horse, a reckless act. We will probably have to wait another year or two to see what, if any, long term effect that has on his success.

 

Gordon Elliott: Irish racing Record

As stated, the main part of this analysis will focus on Elliott's domestic record.

Gordon Elliott Record by Year

We'll begin with a yearly performance breakdown:

 

It is worth pointing out that 2022 (to date) has produced the lowest win strike rate and the lowest A/E index of the near decade in focus. Has this something to do with the repercussions of his ban? Possibly, but as I mentioned above we will probably need a bit longer to formulate a clearer opinion on that. Even though he lost some high profile horses at that time, it wouldn’t take a lot to pull the strike rate back up over the last two months of 2022.

[Update, Elliott finished 2022 with a domestic strike rate of 14.84%, in line with results since 2018 - Ed.]

It's time to dig a bit deeper.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Race Type

A look at race types first; I have excluded hunter chases as he has had just 16 runners over the ten years.

 

 

In terms of strike rate National Hunt Flat races are comfortably the best performers; it is also the sphere that has seen the smallest losses to SP. Interestingly, though, there is little in it when we examine the A/E indices. Amazingly, one could have made a small profit in chases if backing at BSP, and a slightly bigger one using the machine in NH Flat races. Hurdle races returned a loss to BSP but only just over 7%.

Gordon Elliott Performance in National Hunt Flat Races

It makes sense to dig first into these flat contests. I would like to share market rank data first as it is quite revealing:

 

 

Elliott has an outstanding record with bumper favourites, close to a 50% strike rate. Compare this to the 39.8% success rate of ALL trainers with favourites in Irish NH Flat races, and you can see why this is such a strong stat. Using BSP he would have snuck into profit which, again, for favourite data, is impressive. A/E index at 0.99 is also high.

Less impressive are the performances of second and third favourites, who recorded modest win percentages and significant losses to SP. Painfully, even at BSP, second favourites would have lost you nearly 27p in the £ if backing them all, and over 35p in the £ at industry odds.

Here are a few extra stats for NH Flat races that hopefully readers will find useful:

  1. Male runners outperform female runners, scoring 23.1% of the time to 16.9%. Female losses have been around 6.5p in the £ worse when compared to male returns (Industry SP). However, female favourites actually have done better than their male counterparts, albeit from only 53 runners. Female favourites have returned an impressive 26.5% profit;
  1. Jockey Mr J Codd (Jamie) has secured an overall SR% of just over 30% (116 wins from 381) with losses of only 7p in the £ to SP; to BSP this flips to an 11p in the £ profit;
  1. Horses on debut have a very good record in these races. There have been 435 runners of which 96 have won (SR 22.1%). Profits to SP stand at £27.62 (ROI +6.3%); to BSP this becomes £144.17 (ROI +33.1%). Note, there have been a few big-priced winners in this cohort but nothing outlandish. For the record he has had ten winners priced between 14/1 and 25/1.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance in Chases

A quick review of chases now. Looking at Elliott's yearly stats in terms of win strike rate and win & placed (Each way) strike rate we see the following:

 

Gordon Elliott, win and each way performance in Irish chases

 

Both lines show a gradual drop off in success when compared with the early to mid-2010's. From 2018 to 2022 the average win strike rate was 12.2%; the previous five year period was up at 16.8%. Likewise, the each-way five year splits see the latest period on 31.6% while the earlier five year block was nearly seven percentage points higher at 38.5%, a relative differential of around 20%. Not surprisingly, returns to £1 win level stakes have been much poorer between 2018 and 2022 compared with 2013 to 2017 – 15p in the £ poorer to be precise.

The same pattern can be seen when looking at the performance of his runners in chases when they start favourite:

 

Gordon Elliott, record with chase favourites 2013 to October 2022

 

Elliott made a profit to SP in five of the six seasons between 2013 and 2018 but, since then, he has made a loss each year, with 2020 and 2021 being particularly poor. This is essentially down to the clear drop in strike rate. [Update, by the end of 2022, Elliott had crept into profit for the year with his chase favourites, returning +4.78% ROI at a 43.48% win rate]

However, before moving on there is one further stat I would like to share with you: horses priced 14/1 or bigger have provided a profit to BSP despite a strike rate of just 3.5% (26 wins from 735 runners). To £1 level stakes (BSP) profits stand at £314.17 (ROI +42.7%). I guess many punters on Betfair ignore his bigger priced runners and hence their prices are inflated somewhat, though at that strike rate you can expect to go a very long time between drinks (losing sequences of 45, 48 twice, 49, 51, 52, 67, 75 and 88) !!!

 

Gordon Elliott Performance in Hurdle Races

Our final race code stop is the smaller obstacles, and one interesting comparison is when we look at age stats:

 

 

We see a very clear preference to the younger group with correlation across strike rates, returns, A/E indices and Impact Values.

Before moving on I want to look quickly at hurdles distance data now. There is a slight dip in performance in races of 3 miles or more as the graph below highlights:

 

 

There are notably lower win and win/placed (each way) strike rates over the longer distance hurdle contests. These are races where I suggest one thinks twice about backing Elliott runners.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Course

Onto racecourse data now. I am going to look at all courses where Elliott has had at least 100 runners and break the data down into different subsets. I am going to look at win strike rate and A/E indices across National Hunt Flat races, hurdle races and chases. With a ‘par’ A/E index for all trainers at around 0.87, I have highlighted A/E indices of 0.95 or higher in green – these are positive. A/E indices of 0.79 or lower (in red) are negative. Missing values means that within that race code subset Elliott had fewer than 40 runners:

 

 

There is a huge variety of figures here as one might expect, more A/E indices coloured red than green showing there are several course/race type combinations where he has struggled a little or, more fairly perhaps, where he is overbet. Courses where the stats across the board are generally positive include Down Royal, Clonmel (note that NH Flat rate is 25% from 36 races, just below the threshold for display) and Navan. Courses to avoid look to be Killarney, Leopardstown and Wexford. It may also make sense to steer clear of hurdle races at Galway, Gowran Park and Tipperary. In terms of chases it looks best to avoid Gowran Park and Naas.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Starting Price

Industry SP performance data now. I have looked at market position in National Hunt Flat races already, but it’s time to break all Elliott's runners down by starting price:

 

 

The most positive data comes from the odds-on group followed by the Evens to 15/8 bracket. Odds-on runners are actually very close to breaking even.

In general, the betting returns in terms of SP get worse as the starting price increases. By graphing the A/E indices we can perhaps see the downward trend more clearly:

 

 

Sticking with the front end of the market, we saw earlier that NH Flat favourites were close to breaking even to Industry SP so I decided to look at the hurdle and chase favourite data, too. Chase favourites lost around 6p in the £ and hurdlers close to 11p. This improves to marginally more palatable losses of 3p and 6p to BSP.

As a general rule I would say that shorter priced runners from the Elliott yard are worth close scrutiny and in certain circumstances will offer a modicum of value. If, however, you are the other side of the price fence and prefer longshots, it should be said that despite the 32% losses to SP which 14/1+ horses have amassed, to BSP they have actually proved profitable. These runners have won on average just once in every 29 attempts so - as mentioned earlier - if you head down this longshot road, expect it to be a rocky one.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Running Style

To begin with let us see the proportion of his runners that fit a specific running style. Geegeez breaks these running styles into four groups: Led – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

Here are the splits for Elliott:

 

 

In terms of front runners / early leaders, Elliott sends a relatively modest proportion of his horses to the front: the average front-running figure is 10% for all Irish trainers, so he stands a little below that. Prominent runners, however, have accounted for just under 40% of all runners from the stable which compares with around 30% of all Irish runners; so Elliott is comfortably above the average here.

Let us now see the win success rate of each running style:

 

 

Front runners / early leaders score close to 30% of the time, but remember he sends less than 10% of all his runners to the front early. Some, including me, would say why does he not send more horses to lead early? Prominent racers are comfortably next best in terms of win success with poor strike rates (and very poor returns) for horses positioned further back early in their races.

I want to look at favourites now and see their success rate in terms of run style:

 

 

These are very strong win percentages for front running favourites (over 55% win success) and prominent market leaders do well also, standing at just above 42%. There is a clear drop again when we look at midfield and held up horses sent off favourite. Hence a front running favourite for Elliott is a potent weapon. Here is the figures for favourites by run style, at starting price:

 

 

Essentially if you back an Elliott runner and it goes to the front early, you have far more chance of a) the horse winning and b) making a long term profit. This is especially true if the horse is favoured.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Jockey

Onto some jockey analysis now and a look at any jockey who has ridden at least 75 times for Elliott since 2013, with the proviso that they have had at least one ride for the stable in 2022. I have ordered them by number of rides starting with the most:

 

 

We saw earlier that Jamie Codd has a good record in National Hunt Flat races and these are the races he primarily rides in. Regular riders Jack Kennedy and Davy Russell have very similar strike rates – Russell has provided slightly better overall returns to SP, but these are flipped if we examine BSP returns. Both actually have recorded profits on 'the machine', Russell 3p in the £ and Kennedy up at 11p in the £. Kennedy has a good record on favourites scoring 42.9% of the time; all other jockeys combined have scored just under 40% of the time on stable favourites.

Of course, since this study period, Dave Russell has announced his retirement. The main beneficiary is expected to be Kennedy, though Jordan Gainford is also one to watch.

So that brings the curtain down on the Irish side of his record, let’s take a quick look at the UK data now:

 

Gordon Elliott: UK racing record

Here are Elliott's overall figures in the UK over the past nearly ten years:

 

 

As might be expected given the costs of travel and the logistical effort, he enjoys a much higher strike rate. Minimal losses to SP are a slight surprise; indeed, to BSP Elliott has returned 12p in the £ profit on his UK runners.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by UK racecourse

Perth and Cheltenham are the courses to which Elliott has sent the vast majority of his UK runners. There are five courses where he saddled 40 or more runners (shown below):

 

 

His record at Perth is pretty much bombproof. He has had only one winner priced bigger than 10/1 in the research period (Dantes King at 20/1 in 2013). With horses priced 10/1 or shorter at the Scottish track he has produced returns of 8p in the £ to SP, double that to 16p for BSP.

At Ayr his performance is more mixed: he has made a small profit with favourites, but any horse that has not started favourite has generally run poorly. As a group those non-favourites have won just five races from 63 (SR 7.9%) losing nearly 60p in the £ to SP; 49p loss to BSP.

At Cheltenham, Elliott has a much lower strike rate compared to other courses, which is fully to be expected given both the quality and quantity of opposition, but he has still edged into profit to SP. 257 of his 347 Cheltenham runners in the study period ran at the Cheltenham Festival so let’s look his festival record.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance at Cheltenham Festival

Of his 33 Cheltenham Festival winners, 32 have been achieved in the last ten years. He has been leading trainer at the meeting in two of the last ten years, 2017 and 2018. Here is a graph of yearly performance in terms of wins:

 

 

He had no runners in 2021, when he was serving his ban (Denise Foster, who took over the licence during that time, had three winners at the 2021 Festival); and last year (2022) Elliott did seem to underperform a little, especially if we compare it with 2017 to 2020. Having said that he had six seconds, so if two or three of those had won then I probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything. The perils of tiny sample sizes!

If you had backed all Gordon Elliott runners at the Cheltenham Festival to BSP over the past ten years a profit to £1 level stakes of £161.06 would have been achieved. This equates to returns just shy of 63 pence for every £1 bet. In six of the nine years you would have made a BSP profit on his runners. For the record, the vast majority of the profits have come from Class 1 races.

What is also impressive is the breadth of races where he has been successful: Elliott has won 17 different races at the meeting ranging from the Gold Cup to the Champion Bumper to the Cross Country Chase to the Pertemps to the Supreme Novices to the Triumph Hurdle, etc.

One final stat to be aware of at the Festival is that he actually has a better record with horses wearing some sort of headgear - especially a tongue tie, both from a strike rate perspective and a returns perspective.

 

 

 

Gordon Elliott UK Performance by Race Type

A look now at race type and I have again ignored hunter chases as he has had only eight runners in such events. As we can see, Elliott has done well with his hurdlers when sending them over to the UK:

 

 

A one in four strike rate in UK hurdle races is hugely impressive as are the positive overall returns. Favourites in hurdle races have also impressed as a group, scoring nearly 50% of the time for returns of almost 9p in the £ to SP; 14p to BSP. Horses in National Hunt Flat races have a similar strike rate to that achieved in Ireland but losses have been steep. This is due to the fact that many of his runners in these events start at prohibitive odds.

 

Gordon Elliott – Extra stats and nuggets for UK Racing

Lastly on the UK data here are three extra stats to be aware of:

  1. If you ignore horses that finished first or second last time out his record reads 143 wins from 735 runners (SR 19.5%) for a SP profit of £53.03 (ROI +7.2%); BSP profit stands at £194.65 (ROI +26.5%);
  1. Horses that raced at Cheltenham last time out have won 14 races from 59 making SP returns of 32p in the £ (49p to BSP);
  1. When jockey Sean Bowen rides, the results have been impressive: 34 wins from 104 (SR 32.7%) for an SP profit of £15.87 (ROI +15.3%); BSP profit £27.54 (ROI +26.5%)

 

Summary - Gordon Elliott Key Takeaways

Irish Racing

 

 

UK Racing

 

 

So there you have it – the next year or two will be interesting due to potential repercussions of the 2021 ban, though the early signs are that most data are largely in line with pre-suspension levels. There are plenty of solid pointers, both positive and negative, with which to inform your betting in 2023.

Good luck!

- DR

2022: The Best Bits

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It's been another bumper year of content on geegeez, the daily news and pointers feeds supplemented by some outstanding contributions from our editorial team. What follows is a selection of some of the top posts published here in 2022.

Beneath the pick of the posts, I've also added links to the author's full article lists if you want to read more from a particular writer.

 

Racing Systems: An Introduction

Dave Renham sets the scene for the considered use of systematic betting, and how to start out on the right foot.

 

Racing Systems: Using Systems to Create Shortlists

In one of a number of follow up articles, Dave looks at how to create shortlists from rule-based systems, and why this offers greater flexibility.

 

Making Long Range Cheltenham Festival Projections 

Here, I looked at the pointers from the spring festivals in terms of next season's Cheltenham Festival, in the hope of unearthing a value long range play or two. How are they doing?

 

An Existential Threat (from within) to UK National Hunt Racing

In this long read, I examined some of the major challenges jump racing faces; why they exist; and what might be done to resolve them.

 

2022 Draw Bias Top Ten, part 1

Dave spent a lot of time in 2022 writing about draw bias, and he closed out his series with a two-part top ten. This first half looks at 10-6.

2022 Draw Bias Top Ten, part 2

Naturally enough, if you were interested in positions ten to six, you'll want to know the top five. These are those...

 

Using Past Run Style as a Profitable Indicator

Regular readers will know the emphasis we place on understanding run style. In this article, Dave outlines why it's so important and how to use history as a future profit indicator. Part 2 of this article can be found here.

 

Betting the Breeders' Cup Roller Coaster

The Breeders' Cup is one of my favourite meetings of the year, and in 2022 it featured the monster Flightline as its headline act. Betting was, erm, not straightforward, as this tale relates...

 

Roving Reports: Lucky Man

A new member of the scribbling team in 2022 is David Massey, whose irreverent tales of his travels and travails on track have been a refreshing 'easy read' counterpoint to some of the hard data entries above. In this episode, Dave recounts his great 'fortune' to be doing the circuit this particular week.

 

Author Article Lists

Below are each author's own page, where all of their articles can be found. For the curious/voracious reader, these are a treasure trove of racing tales and profitable pointers, and much more besides. Enjoy!

Matt Bisogno

Dave Renham

Chris Worrall

Tony Stafford

David Massey

Andy Newton's Trends

 

We'll all be back before you know it with more of the same in 2023 (and a smidge more still in 2022).

And, one final time before the year closes, I'd like say that I know you have a huge array of choice of where to go and what to read for your racing fix; we're extremely grateful that geegeez.co.uk is a part of that mix.

From all of us here, wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year, and the best of luck for 2023.

Matt

Trainer Profiles: Donald McCain

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We head to Cheshire to meet the next trainer in this Profiles series, and welcome Donald McCain. As with previous pieces I will be sharing nearly ten years of UK National Hunt racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st October 2022. The vast majority of the stats I share with you can be sourced by members using from the Geegeez Query Tool. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price and I will quote both SP and Betfair SP returns where appropriate.

Donald McCain Brief Bio

Born in 1970, Donald McCain is the son of the legendary trainer of Red Rum, Ginger McCain. He took over from his father in June 2006 having worked as his assistant previously. He also rode in his youth and, over the years, gained experience in the racing business when working for Luca Cumani, Sir Michael Stoute and Oliver Sherwood. As a trainer he has won the Grand National (2011 with Ballabriggs) and enjoyed success at the Cheltenham Festival six times, albeit before the period of study for this piece (2006 to 2012). In fact, between 2009 and 2012 his overall win strike rate stood at 19.2% - this is worth noting when looking at the last ten years which I plan to do right now!

Donald McCain Overall Record

Let's break McCain's win record down first by year:

 

 

Overall, SP losses have equated to 21p in the £ over this 10-year period; to BSP it has been nearer 11p in the £. As we can see, from 2015 to 2020, with the exception of 2017, the win strike rate dropped quite markedly. However, there has been a very positive uptick, or so it seems, in the past two seasons. This recent improvement has been mirrored when we study the win and placed (Each Way) percentages:

 

 

So McCain’s journey as a trainer seems to have gone from early highs to modest lows and now to new highs. Any trainer can have fluctuations from year to year so it will be interesting to see whether the stable can maintain their stronger recent form in the next year or two.

Time to dig a bit deeper.

Donald McCain Performance by Race Distance

Splitting his performance by distance first:

 

There is not much to be gleaned from the race distance splits: a slightly better win percentage at shorter distances, but returns and A/E indices across the three groups are similar. If we split the distances stats comparing chases with hurdle races, we see the following win percentages:

 

 

Again, we see remarkably similar figures. This seems to suggest that McCain doesn't specialise, and is equally adept at training all types of horses.

Donald McCain Performance in Chases

I want to dig into chases races in more detail. Let me start by splitting them into handicap and non-handicap contests:

 

As can be seen in the table, there are considerably more handicap runners and, overall, they have proved far better value. To BSP, losses in handicaps are down at around 5p in the £. Below is a course breakdown of McCain's chase record in terms of strike rate at tracks where he has had at least 75 runners:

 

 

The strike rates are in a fairly narrow range, except for Aintree, where McCain has had just one winner in 76 chase races. He has made an SP profit at three courses – Catterick, Kelso and Musselburgh.

One course that is not on the list is Perth, but his chase record there is worth sharing. He has an excellent strike rate at the Scottish track of 30.4% thanks to 21 wins from 69 runners. Profits to SP stand at £27.23 (ROI +39.5%). To BSP, returns edge up to 50% (50p in the £). He picks up winners there consistently despite averaging only seven runners at the track a year. He has saddled at least two winners in eight of the last ten years and, in one of the other years (2020), he didn’t send any runners there at all.

If we combine the yard's chase record at all Scottish tracks, they have saddled 67 winners from 310 (SR 21.6%) for a profit of £39.52 (ROI +12.8%). Exchange returns increase by just over 9p in the £ to 22p.

Before moving on, here are a few extra chase nuggets worth noting:

1. Horses having their second chase start have secured 37 wins from 162 (SR 22.8%) for a small SP profit of £12.01 (ROI +7.4%); BSP profits stand at £28.58 (ROI +17.6%);

2. Chasers returning to the track within two weeks of their last run have won 37 races from 129 runners (SR 28.7%) for a profit of £48.83 (ROI +37.9%); profit to BSP is £65.24 (ROI +50.6%);

3. Horses aged 6 or 7 have been far more successful in chases than other ages. 6 and 7yos have combined to score 19.5% of the time (165 wins from 848); all other ages combined (4, 5, and 8+) have won 12.4% of the time (93 wins from 747).

Let's take a look at hurdle races now.

Donald McCain Performance in Hurdles

Let’s start once again with handicap versus non handicap splits:

 

This time we see a much better win percentage in non-handicap hurdle races but without too much of a differential in returns as far as Industry SP is concerned. However, to BSP, non-handicaps have lost just 3p in the £, compared to 13p for handicaps.

A course breakdown now and I am sticking to courses that have had 85 or more runners in hurdle races. I have chosen 85 as the ‘cap’ as I wanted to include the Scottish course Ayr (where there were 86 runners in the study period). I have ordered the courses by win strike rate percentage:

 

 

Aintree results are poor once more, as are those at Market Rasen. From a positive perspective, the Scottish courses tend to sit near the top of the table in terms of strike rate once again, although there is none of the overall profit that we saw in the chase data. Two courses have shown a profit to SP (Bangor and Newcastle) and the Bangor data is worth digging down into. Firstly, McCain's hurdle record at the Welsh course by year:

 

 

There was a dip in 2015, part of the period when the yard struggled, but the other nine years have seen strike rates above 18% which suggests he targets this course somewhat; in seven of the ten years there was a profit to SP, and in eight of the ten years a profit to BSP. These are consistent hurdle profits at Bangor rather than simply a couple of huge priced winners skewing the P&L column. Indeed, if we focus on horses priced 8/1 or shorter McCain’s hurdle performance at Bangor is extremely good:

 

 

Those are excellent numbers and, for the record, returns to BSP edge just over 40p in the £.

Bangor, McCain and hurdle races should definitely be on our radar in the future.

Donald McCain Performance in National Hunt Flat races

Here are the figures for all National Hunt Flat races (bumpers):

 

These are very modest figures from a betting perspective in spite of the decent strike rate. Losses to BSP were also steep at a painful 26p in the £. This suggests he has not had many big priced winners in this sphere and that is indeed the case. McCain runners priced 10/1 or bigger in bumpers have won just twice from 135 for a loss of £103.00 (ROI -76.3%). Ouch.

His performance at the front end of the market is not too bad, however; horses priced 3/1 or lower have won 34.9% of their races losing just 4p in the £ to SP and breaking even to BSP. Having said that, odds-on runners have won just 41% of the time losing a hefty 32.8p in the £.

Here are three more NH Flat race stats for stable that readers may find useful:

1. McCain has had just 15 NHF runners at Musselburgh but eight have won; he is 10 from 32 at Carlisle as well;

2. Jockey Brian Hughes has a 23.6% win strike rate in these races for McCain;

3. Horses that have had three or more previous career runs (that includes flat/AW races) have won just 11% of races losing over 60p in the £ to SP; 54p in the £ to BSP.

Donald McCain Performance by Starting Price

We have seen a small amount SP data already, but let us now look at all races as a whole:

 

 

The win strike rates go down uniformly as the price bands increase – it would be weird if that wasn’t the case. Industry SP losses have been the smallest with the Evens to 15/8 bracket, but there doesn’t seem a pattern to returns as a whole. However, I would definitely steer clear of his bigger priced runners (14/1 or bigger) – even to BSP you would have lost 20p in the £. This is much higher than the average loss across all 14/1 + runners which stands at around 13p.

Donald McCain Performance by Running Style

A look at run style next. To begin with let us see the proportion of runners that fit a specific run style. Geegeez breaks these run styles into four:

Led – front runners, horses that take or share an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

Here are the splits for McCain:

 

 

We can see the preferred running style seems to be tracking the early pace (prominent runners); that position has accounted for nearly 40% of all runners from the stable. The early leader / front runner percentage is also high at over 27% which is good to see. Regular readers of my articles will know that horses that take the lead early win more often than any of the other run styles. Not surprisingly, this is the case for McCain as we look at the win strike rates across all run styles:

 

 

Around one in four of McCain's front runners have won, whereas just one in 14 of his hold up horses have passed the post first. Indeed, if you had backed all of his hold up horses you would have lost a whopping 43p in the £ to SP.

I want to look at favourites now in terms of their success rate by run style:

 

 

The win percentage for hold up horses that start favourite is extremely poor and would have lost you a remarkable 49p in the £. Once again front running favourites do best, and comfortably so.

Before moving on, I have looked at front running performance across different courses to see if front runners have done better at some courses than others. The graph below compares all courses where McCain has had at least 40 runners that have taken an early lead (I have rounded the %s to the nearest whole number so it fits more neatly on the graph).

 

 

There is quite a range of success here: excellent at Ayr (18 winners from 44), much less so at Aintree (two wins from 46). As we have seen, McCain's overall Aintree stats are poor so this will come as no surprise.

Donald McCain Performance by Jockey

Onto some jockey analysis now. A look at any jockey who has ridden at least 100 times for McCain since 2013, with the proviso that they have had at least one ride for the stable in 2022. I have ordered them by number of rides starting with the most:

 

 

Stable jockey Brian Hughes has by far the best strike rate. Losses of 13p in the £ were incurred to SP; with BSP, this improves to 4p in the £. Theo Gillard is in profit but a 40/1 winner makes all the difference between a profit and a loss.

As far as Hughes is concerned here are some stats worth noting:

1. Hughes has a 32% success rate on front runners;

2. On favourites he has essentially broken even; clear favourites have just nudged into profit;

3. In races of 2m1f or less he has secured a strike rate of over 24% with marginal 2% losses to SP; 11% profit to BSP;

4. Horses priced 3/1 or less (SP) have provided a BSP return on 6% (6p in the £);

5. Hughes when riding a horse who is having their first career start has a strike rate of one in three and a profit to BSP around the 35p in the £ mark.

Let's summarise the key findings from this research...

Donald McCain – Main Takeaways

It seems that Donald McCain is moving in the right direction once more. It will be interesting to see if he is able to sustain success around the 20% win mark again this season – early signs suggest he will be close.

 

I hope you have found this piece useful.

Best wishes for the remainder of the festive period, and wishing you a very Happy New Year.

- Dave Renham

(Late) Monday Musings: The Ol’ One-Two

/in /by

You have a mare like Epatante, winner of a past Champion Hurdle, successful in 11 and placed in seven more of her 19 career runs and you now know – having witnessed Aintree last year, that she probably ought to be contesting races of 2m4f up, writes Tony Stafford.

With the weather as it has been and the Ascot course’s susceptibility to rapid changes of going, Nicky Henderson was pushed into allowing her to take on stable star – sorry, world phenomenon – Constitution Hill as the calendar compressed when the Fighting Fifth came along.

Instead of the queen, she became the high-maintenance Queen Consort, by her liege’s side until turning for home and then deferring graciously while accepting a £20k pay-day for her trouble.

Once the pattern was set, who was to complain when the old one-two was set in motion again for yesterday’s Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle? While there were five starters, the box which brought the big two to Sunbury might just as easily have been transporting the elite pair across Lambourn for a routine gallop.

As they turned for home, Highway One O One had the temerity to sit in between his betters, still just second as the mare started to flex her muscles. You could not have predicted what happened from that point based on what you had seen until that point, but the evidence of Cheltenham last March and Gosforth Park last month gave the game away.

Mark Johnson’s commentary told it all. Just over a length before two out, three lengths from Epatante on the way to the last; stretched to eight at that final flight and once he met it running, a 17-length margin on a track where distances are never exaggerated unlike many courses in winter ground.

For two little spins behind Constitution Hill, Epatante has picked up around £50k this season and is now that amount short of £1 million in career earnings. Nicky Henderson seems to be favouring going straight to the Festival with this best hurdler I have ever seen and rightly so, I’m sure.

It’s that final kick that is other-worldly. Horses can finish well: he finishes them off and with no suggestion of any weakness; ground or track, style of racing – he has it all.

The Irish must be hoping that somehow his level of ability suddenly drops off, but if Henderson has acquired anything in a training career exceeding 40 years, it’s knowing how to win a big race with a favourite. And even he has never had a favourite like this one.

I was delighted when I saw him at the Horserace Writers and Photographers lunch after he collected his Order Of Merit award for his outstanding career. He was truly chuffed and I told him I thought it well deserved. The shy nature that often comes out in his dealings with the media was there all through that afternoon.

His reputation, already secured, will now have the added insurance, as with Sir Henry Cecil and Frankel, of having his best-ever horse towards the end of his career. It’s probably a case of how long he, Michael Buckley and the horse can be bothered with steam-rollering good (but not good enough) opponents.

I was less delighted to pick up Covid there, after two and a half years of escaping it. I got it mildly, but you never know what’s underneath. At least, it’s not like being a little bit pregnant!

It was a great day for heroes old and new at Kempton yesterday and if anyone thinks that Kempton is a sharp track, the result of the redirected Long Walk Hurdle, from a frozen this time Ascot, would have entertained second thoughts at least.

Here that great stayer Paisley Park came from the back of the field to out-finish Goshen – in the new long-distance role which he can adorn – and Champ by an emphatic margin in a domestic private affair. The Irish will be out in force at Cheltenham in March, but Andrew Gemmell’s heroic 10-year-old can be relied upon to keep his end up.

Times are often misleading but if you had an involvement with Rare Edition, the Charlie Longsdon novice who easily won Monday’s Kempton opener, you would be thrilled to see that his winning time was only two seconds slower than that recorded by Constitution Hill. A seven-length winner, it would be great if this initially non-winning graduate from the Irish point-to-point field, but now unbeaten in four for Longsdon, could challenge the stars next March.

One invader from Ireland that could be there to challenge him is the one-time Derby favourite, High Definition, who made a winning hurdles debut at Leopardstown from the Joseph O’Brien stable ten minutes before Rare Edition showed his paces.

High Definition had won his first two races as a juvenile, including a Group 2, before going into winter quarters with the endorsement of Joseph’s father Aidan ringing in the professionals’ ears. Even when he came back late and looking lazy in the Dante, the story still held over logic, but he never made it to Epsom and then never looked in with a chance when he did get his chance in a Classic on the Curragh in late June.

Until yesterday, High Definition had gone more than two years without winning – his best performance being a second to Alenquer in the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup over ten furlongs in May.

Because there are so many horses that want for some inexplicable reason to take on Messrs Mullins, Elliott, de Bromhead and, yes, when he has a suitable one, O’Brien junior, you get the sort of field that faced High Definition. Twenty-seven runners around Leopardstown, but happily that’s a big, wide track, and it’s made easier as self-selection probably boils this down to three lots of nine.

The old instruction by the UK starters in the days of Gordon Richards either side of WW2 and the old 'gate' starts of “triers at the front” is an approximation to how it works in Irish (and some British) novice races today. They quickly sort out into manageable groupings – three races in one.

Just a look at the first seven there: O’Brien, from Jessica Harrington, Willie Mullins, Peter Fahey, de Bromhead, Mullins again and Gordon Elliott, tells a tale if not a definitive one. The other 20 have to look after themselves, although there’s some pricey types back there too on probably different time-schedules with handicaps in mind for many.

The Racing TV shrewdies – and Boxing Day’s lot, which included Dave Nevison, were sharp enough – noticed High Definition is still  a colt, until next Sunday at any rate when he becomes a horse – of course! The Coolmore NH stallion roster is a highly lucrative end of the business and they reasoned that could be his magnum opus.

It was only on December 20th that High Definition morphed from the usual Coolmore owner group to Mrs J Magnier’s sole possession. I’m sure the others can come back in if and when they wish. I’d love to see High Definition at Cheltenham, possibly measuring up to the more NH-oriented Rare Edition, who showed his paces just 10 minutes later.

Those same Racing TV boys seemed to think the Triumph Hurdle is all but won already, a pretty complacent view at this stage. The Willie Mullins-trained Lossiemouth, another of those unbeaten French purchases, won her graded race for juveniles in almost five seconds slower time than High Definition earlier in the card, but she impressed Dave in particular.

She did win as she liked, making it three easy victories in three. A rare bargain from France at €14k before she had run, she is by Great Pretender, from the family of smart flat-racer Lord Glitters. She must be one of the cheaper buys to grace the Cheltenham-voracious Ricci colours.

Once more, Coquelicot has run in the couple of days before my article, at Kempton yesterday for a 3m mares’ handicap hurdle with six in opposition. She beat a Dan Skelton rival in West Balboa last time at Sandown and this time had the favourite Get A Tonic from the same source ten lengths behind. Alas, on revised weight terms and after a more contested early lead than she's recently encountered, she gave best to the aforementioned Charlie Longsdon-trained Glimpse Of Gala, the rest of the field strung out behind at five length intervals. Hard luck, Mr Editor and partners, but she'll be winning again soon.

- TS

Monday Musings: My Boy Micky

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After a totally blank week of jumping and not much some-weather racing either, a £5k to the winner race ought not be taking much of my attention as we wait for the elements to relent in time for the big Christmas programmes in the UK and Ireland, writes Tony Stafford.

The Irish took the first step back to normality as Thurles returned with a nice pre-Christmas card yesterday and Lingfield may well provide yet another surprise in its new-drainage incarnation by welcoming jumping back to the UK later this morning. [Sadly not, Ed.}

Recently, Gary Moore described the 2022-23 jumps season as his “worst-ever”, referring to one of his local tracks, the above-mentioned Lingfield, as the only one where he has found “proper soft ground”. Moore cites the dry summer; low sun when racing does go ahead eliminating hurdles and fences in many races, and unsuitably fast ground when racing is actually on.

Now the latest spate of abandonments – sometimes delayed until the horses are in the paddock ready to go for the opening race or while horses are still arriving at the tracks – has added to the difficulties. Horses need to be readied and kept up to scratch in anticipation of racing’s proceeding, even though, as Gary says, they know it’s futile. It has all made it hell for trainers and most importantly for the people that pay the bills – the owners.

The lack of clarity of thought descended to a new level of wishful thinking from officialdom on Saturday when Polytrack fixtures, at Lingfield and Chelmsford, due to be televised on ITV4 amid much trumpeting that terrestrial television was keeping the racing show on the road, both grudgingly had to accept defeat after two morning inspections each.

I had occasion to talk to Roger Teal soon after he had arrived with his intended runner at the Lingfield stables at around 9.a.m. in the full knowledge that a second inspection was imminent. He said: “I’ve just got here, it’s minus 5, what do you think?” If it were me, I don’t think I would have waited for an official announcement and a similar situation caused an identical outcome 85 miles across the snow-covered deep-frozen Home Counties around the M25 in deepest Essex.

I had been at Chelmsford nine days earlier when Becky Smith had come on a mission to ride a couple of Micky Hammond runners at the evening meeting there. One fourth and one unplaced did nothing in much-needed points towards her wavering challenge for the amateur riders’ flat crown and she has also been frustrated that a similar close bid for the lady amateurs’ jumps title has also stalled.

With time very short, she conceded she will have to try again next year, but her attitude sums up the entire ethos of her boss, Micky Hammond, and his assistant Gemma Hogg, Becky’s elder sister.

I remember Micky as a top NH rider for Reg Akehurst among others in the South in the 1970’s and 80’s before he went north to ride for George Moore at Middleham and never came back to his native Surrey. Amazingly, he has been training since 1990 and this year equalled his previous best flat-race tally of 19, set in 2015, when Carnival Zain won for the fifth time on August 26.

For the next three months, while this hard-working dual-purpose handler continued to send in winners over jumps, the wish to set a flat-race personal best looked, like Becky’s twin challenges, likely to be frustrated.

Yesterday, having spoken to the horse’s owner, Hammond decided to send Myboymax down to Wolverhampton, a track where he has had amazing success. Myboymax, according to the trainer, “had no chance”, and he added, “the owner hoped he might beat one”.

While favourite Lady Percival, attempting a third consecutive course and distance win in a row, set the pace, Aiden Brookes sat last but in touch off an even gallop. Turning for home it was clear that two were going better than the leader as first Alan King’s Thunder Ahead and then Myboymax went past, the latter staying on the better at 66/1.

That was by no means the only big-priced winner for this under-rated handler, whose 2022 prizemoney tally of £189k is more than £50,000 above his previous best set in that vintage 2015 season.

What is uncanny is that, while there have been 27 jumps winners this season, the prizemoney earned differs by less than £1,000 at £188k in that discipline. That is sure to increase a good deal in money and numbers and he is within only six of matching last season’s win figure. In 2022, adding the 19 jumps wins from the turn of the year to the end of last season on April 23, to the 27 and 20 flat, his calendar tally is 66 wins.

Hammond has few major owners, dealing mainly with locals and partnerships. There is a small involvement with Middleham Park Racing, but ironically it was from that ownership when trained by Richard Hannon, that Myboymax was bought for just £800 at Doncaster sales on October 22, two years ago.

Since then, the Myboycharlie gelding has run 22 times for five wins, five second places and six thirds, earning around £30k. It’s not easy at bargain-basement level, but Myboymax has done far more than anyone was entitled to expect. That’s the measure of Micky Hammond.

**

The big news of the weekend was, of course, the revelation that Frankie Dettori would restrict himself to one more year of money-spinning riding before retiring after the 2023 Breeders’ Cup.

There is no question he has been the supreme big-race rider of his generation, neatly taking over as Lester Piggott left the scene. The torrent of knowledgeable trainers who have signalled his imminent retirement with accolades of the highest respect and indeed affection are a true indication of his uniqueness.

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone. In some ways that was true of Lester. In the case of Dettori, there is no fear of that.

In a way it’s hard to know what to expect from the middle age portion of his life. Will he bother with racing as, say, an agent to owners? Many would queue up to be seen with him. Will it be enough? Then there is his own big family and the children to guide through the teens and 20’s.

So many of the brilliant rides and incredible horses will always be there to see repeatedly, with no doubt the two Racing television channels battling over the next week – if racing continues to be as bleak – to out-cover each other with highlights of his career.

For me, I just need to open my cabinet and remember the time in 1996 when we collaborated on a book, “A year in the life of Frankie Dettori”. It was already in type and about to go out to publishers when September 28 happened. Seven wins out of seven at Ascot and we had had to find a way to include it in the chronicle of his year.

In those days everything had to be put into metal type on linotype machines, so anything you wanted to add, had to be as done as a prefix or suffix. The former solution was agreed with literary agent, Christopher Little – sadly no longer with us and the man in the same role in the Harry Potter books – and Peter Burrell, Frankie’s commercial manager who still holds that position a quarter-century on.

For me it’s enough to look at the front cover and the beaming smile that has become renowned around the world over the decades. Apart from the title, there’s a single quote lifted from the Daily Telegraph – I would guess from the pen of the late John Oaksey.

It says: “Frankie Dettori possesses the looks of an innocent choir-boy, the lifestyle of a loveable rogue, the dress style befitting a Milanese millionaire and the riding skill of Wild Bill Hickock.  What more needs to be said about this singular genius?”

  • TS

Trainer Profiles: Willie Mullins

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We head to Ireland for the next trainer profile and a certain Mr William Peter Mullins. In this article I will be analysing nearly 10 years of racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st October 2022, the majority of which can be sourced by members using the Geegeez Query Tool. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price but where appropriate I will share Betfair SP data. As we know most punters avoid old style SP betting as it tends to impinge heavily on potential profits, favouring instead early prices, best odds guaranteed or exchange prices.

The main body of this piece will drill down into Mullins' record when running horses in Ireland. However, at the end of the article I will examine his UK dataset as he does send a fair number of runners across the sea, usually for the big festivals such as Cheltenham.

Willie Mullins Brief Bio

Mullins was born in 1956 and he began training in 1988. He served his apprenticeship as assistant to his father Paddy and also worked with Jim Bolger. He is the most successful trainer in terms of wins at the Cheltenham festival, with 88, and in the last ten seasons has saddled over 570 winners in Graded contests (484 in Ireland, 90 in the UK). He will surely go down as one of the greatest trainers of all time.

 

Willie Mullins: Irish racing

Let’s look at several different sets of data from Irish racing starting with a yearly breakdown:

Willie Mullins Record by Year

Below is a table showing Willie Mullins' record by year in Irish races, the most recent ( and incomplete) year first.

 

 

Every year his win strike rate has exceeded 20% (1 win in every 5 runs) and in eight of the ten years it has exceeded 25%. In Ireland, his overall win strike rate over the 10-year period stands at 28.15%; the each way SR at 50.18%. Breaking down into five-year batches we get the following splits:

 

 

As we can see, the performance in the last five years has dipped a little. It is still extremely good, but there is a clear drop off. I suspect the main reasons for this dip are i) on 28th September 2016 Mullins relationship with the Gigginstown House Stud ended, and ii) in recent years, Henry de Bromhead and Joseph O'Brien have emerged as serious trainers, as well of course as Gordon Elliott. The Gigginstown relationship has been rekindled, literally a couple of months ago, but it is too soon to say what affect that might have this time around.

When looking at Mullins' 10-year Irish results as a whole one would have lost roughly 11p in the £ to Industry SP. However, using BSP would have broken even, which is on the one hand surprising, but from a punter perspective rather eye-catching.

Time to dig a bit deeper.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Race Distance

In previous articles, we have seen that some trainers do perform better at certain race distances. Let’s take a look at the stats for Mullins:

 

 

There seems to be a distance bias here with a clear drop off when horses are saddled over 3 miles or more. Win and placed (each way) percentages also correlate strongly with the win strike rates:

 

 

In general, it looks best perhaps to steer clear of the longer distance races. In terms of races of 2m1f or less here are the results in terms of race type:

 

 

There is not too much in it with chases arguably marginally best overall.

 

Willie Mullins Performance in NH Race Types

Having just looked at race types at 2m1f or less – it makes sense to look at race types in more detail. Here are the win and each way percentages across the three main race types (I have ignored hunter chases as he had just 28 runners in total in these races):

 

 

National Hunt Flat races have been best while hurdle and chase data match closely. Losses to SP across hurdle races (11.8%) and chases (13.6%) have also been similar. National Hunt Flat races have lost 6.5% which is the best of the three. Indeed, to BSP this would have snuck into profit by 2.7% or 2.7p in the £.

 

Willie Mullins Performance in National Hunt Flat races

It makes sense to dive in to these 'bumper' races in an attempt to find the most positive angles. With that in mind, here are the strongest stats I could find for these races:

  1. Last time out winners have an excellent record, winning 73 races from 175 qualifiers (SR 41.7%) for a profit to SP of £25.60 (ROI +14.6%); to BSP this increases to +£68.67 (ROI +39.2%);
  1. Grade 1 and Grade 2 contests have seen an overall profit thanks to 13 wins from 56 (SR 23.2%) for a profit to SP of £41.59 (ROI +74.3%). To BSP profits edge up to £59.45 (ROI +106.2%). It should be mentioned that Mullins often runs multiple runners in such events;
  1. There are six courses where the win strike rate has exceeded 40% (minimum 25 runs). They are Kilbeggan, Naas, Tipperary, Tramore, Clonmel and Sligo. (Clonmel and Sligo have actually exceeded 50%);
  1. Horses making their career debut have won just over 39% of the time from 419 runners, producing a small 2.7p in the £ return to SP (9.5p to BSP).

 

Willie Mullins Performance in handicaps / non handicaps

Onto handicaps versus non-handicaps next.

There is a huge difference in strike rate for Mullins when we come to compare handicap with non-handicap races. The graph below illustrates this:

 

 

Indeed, the win percentage for non-handicap runners is actually higher than the each way percentage for handicap runners. And this is not just about strike rates, but returns on investment, too. The data correlate when we examine percentage returns to SP – handicaps have lost 25p in the £, compared to just 8p in the £ for non-handicaps. For the record, losses have been much steeper in handicap chases. When we compare A/E indices we also see a big differential with non-handicaps hitting 0.95, handicaps just 0.80.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Starting Price

Industry SP data now and here are the findings:

 

The win strike rates go down uniformly as the price bands increase – it would be extremely odd if that didn’t happen! The 2/1 to 11/4 bracket have snuck into profit amazingly; to BSP this stands at a 5p in the £ return. The best BSP profit has come from the 8/1 to 12/1 price bracket – these runners would have produced impressive returns of 24p in the £. From a negative standpoint, outsiders priced 14/1 or bigger have provided significant losses of just over 42p in the £; if using BSP this loss is cut dramatically but still stands at 12p in the £.

Despite the positivity of the 8/1 to 12/1 performance, there are no guarantees that this price bracket will continue to produce BSP profits over time. Personally I would suggest punters focus more often on the front end of the market – prices up to and including 11/4. This looks a safer option to me.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Course

I shared a small amount of course data earlier, but I now want to dig a little deeper. First a look at his A/E indices across all courses where he has saddled at least 100 runners:

 

 

Five courses are above the magic 1.00 figure namely Tipperary, Tramore, Clonmel, Gowran Park and Wexford. The figures are more modest at Fairyhouse, Killarney, Ballinrobe and Navan, while Downpatrick’s A/E score is very poor.

Let’s look at Tipperary, Tramore, Clonmel, Gowran Park and Wexford in more detail – here is a comparison of their win SR%s amd A/E indices in hurdles, chases and NH Flat races:

 

 

All hurdle and chase A/E indices hit 1 or higher at this quintet of courses, which is impressive; three of the five NH Flat figures are also high. Only Gowran Park in NH Flat races has a poor figure.

Backing every single runner blind at all five courses would have nudged you just into profit to SP, with returns of around 11p in the £ using BSP. In general you should certainly make a note of any horses Mullins sends to one of these five courses. These runners are worth a second glance for sure.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Running Style

To begin with let us see the proportion of his runners that fit a specific running style. Geegeez breaks these running styles into four groups:

Led – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

Here are the splits for Mullins:

 

In terms of front runners / early leaders, Mullins sends a high proportion of his runners to the front – the average front running figure is about 10% for all Irish trainers, while Mullins is more than double that at 21.44%. Further, prominent runners have accounted for 40% of all runners from the stable. In Irish racing prominent runners account for around 30% of all runners, hence Mullins seems to have an appreciation that being up with or close to the pace early is important.

From here, let us see the win success rate of each running style:

 

 

We have seen this run style pattern in each article in this series so far - horses that go to the front and lead early (L) win a far bigger proportion of their races compared to the other run styles. Front runners from the Mullins stable are edging towards winning 45% of the time which is incredibly high. Prominent racers also do well, hitting close to one win in every three races; but horses that raced mid-pack or at the back have relatively poor records scoring around one in every six.

I want to look at favourites now and see their success rate in terms of run style:

 

 

There is a very strong win percentage for front running favourites (over 60% win success) and prominent favourites are also close to the 50% mark. After that, we see a clear drop when looking at midfield and held up horses that started favourite. Hence a front running or prominent racing favourite for Mullins is a potent combination.

Now, of course, we know that predicting a front runner is not an exact science, but let us imagine you had been able to see into the future as regards to Mullins’ runners – here are some angles that would have produced decent returns:

  1. Backing all of his front runners would have yielded a profit to SP of £181.30 which equates to a return of just over 13p in the £;
  1. Backing all front-running favourites would have seen similar returns of 10.5 pence in the £;
  1. Backing all female horses that took the early lead would have produced a strike rate of 48.9% for a profit of £88.03. Impressive returns of 28.7p in the £ here;
  1. Front runners in chases would have secured you returns of over 23p for every £1 bet.

These returns are all calculated to Industry SP; on average you could add another 5 to 10p in the £ if betting to BSP or taking BOG.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Jockey

Onto some jockey analysis now and, specifically, a look at any jockey who has ridden at least 75 times for Mullins since 2013, with the proviso that they have had at least one ride for the stable in 2022. I have ordered them by number of rides starting with the most:

 

Paul Townend and (Mr P W) Patrick Mullins have excellent strike rates in excess of 30%; both have shown a small profit if backing all runners to BSP. Jody Townend has an excellent record also, and these three jockeys look the ones to concentrate most on.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Headgear

This is an area that I have not looked at with other trainers, but the stats for Mullins are worth sharing. So no headgear versus headgear looks like this:

 

 

There is a significant drop in performance with horses that had donned any kind of headgear. Mullins uses a tongue tie or a hood far more than any other type of headgear. He rarely uses blinkers (just 47 times in 10 years). Hence I would not be too keen to see any sort of headgear on a Mullins runner I wanted to back.

And that brings the curtain down on the Irish side of his record; but let’s now take a look at Mullins' UK data:

 

Willie Mullins: UK racing

Below is Mullins' overall record in the UK over the past ten years:

 

Here we see a much lower strike rate, which is to be expected as Mullins tends to send runners to the big meetings and festivals where the racing is hugely competitive. Indeed, 71% of his UK runners have been at Cheltenham and, of these, 96% ran at the Cheltenham festival.

 

Willie Mullins Performance by Headgear

The headgear stats are worth sharing again because we see a clear difference:

 

 

As before it looks best to steer clear of horses that wear any sort of headgear.

Let's focus exclusively on Cheltenham Festival stats now.

 

Willie Mullins Performance at Cheltenham Festival

I mentioned earlier that Mullins is the leading trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival in terms of wins (88); 64 of those have occurred in the past ten years. He has been leading trainer at the meeting in eight of the last ten years also, only missing out in 2015 and 2016, and he has had at least four winners in each of the last ten years as the graph below shows:

 

 

His overall win strike rate in the last ten years stands at just above 12% and backing all of his runners would have secured a small 4p in the £ profit to BSP. 33 of his 87 favourites have won and they have just nudged into BSP profit also.

It is not easy to decide upon which Mullins runners to back here as he often has more than one runner in a race. Probably the one thing I’d look out for is any last time out winners of his – these have won 21% of the time, and in 7 of the 10 years they would have secured you not only a BSP profit but an Industry SP profit also.

For the record, away from the festival, Mullins has had 32 runners at Cheltenham at other times of the year, but only four have won.

 

Willie Mullins Performance at other courses

A look now at courses other than Cheltenham – Mullins' combined UK results are as follows:

 

That's a slightly better than 1 in 5 strike rate. Betting to BSP improve the -11% ROI but only to a negative return of 4p in the £.

Here is a course breakdown – courses with 15 or more runners qualify:

 

The majority of the Aintree runners were at the Grand National meeting, 14 of the 16 winners having come during the ten years of that meeting. Profits were secured at Sandown and Kempton, albeit from very small samples. I'm not sure why the Newbury figures are so bad; again, though, it is a relatively small sample.

Before I look at the main takeaways from this article, here is a selection of UK stats for Mullins (all courses):

  1. Female runners have won 23.5% of their races, male runners 12.9%;
  1. Just one winner from 113 runners has been from horses priced 33/1 or bigger (for the record nine placed);
  1. Paul Townend has a strike rate of just over 18% and has edged into a small profit of 6p in the £ to SP (15p in the £ to BSP);
  1. Front runners have won 32% of their races, hold up horses just 10%;
  1. His record in Grade 3 UK races is surprisingly poor with just 8 wins from 185 races – this equates to a strike rate of just 4.3%.

 

Main Takeaways (IRISH RACING)

  1. In terms of distance, races of 2m1f or less have been the most productive. Races of 3 miles or more have a relatively poor record in comparison;
  1. There has been similar success in hurdle races and chases; a slightly higher strike rate has occurred in National Hunt Flat races;
  1. In National Hunt Flat races last time out winners are worth close scrutiny as are any runners contesting a Grade 1 or 2 contest;
  1. Non-handicap performance is far superior to handicap performance. The record in handicap chases especially is relatively poor;
  1. Horses priced 14/1 or bigger have made significant losses even to BSP;
  1. Tipperary, Tramore, Clonmel, Gowran Park and Wexford have arguably the strongest course stats from a positive perspective;
  1. Front runners from the stable have a very good record;
  1. Jockeys Paul Townend, Patrick Mullins and Jody Townend are three to concentrate on;
  1. Horses wearing headgear have a poor record, especially when comparing them to horses that wear no headgear.

 

Main Takeaways (UK RACING)

  1. At the Cheltenham Festival, last time out winners have a strong record;
  2. As with the Irish stats, horses wearing headgear have a weak record and look worth swerving;
  3. Female runners do well across the UK courses;
  4. Front runners once again have a good record scoring roughly once in every three runs;
  5. Outsiders (33/1 or bigger) have a poor record;
  6. Paul Townend is the best jockey to follow.

-----

That concludes this trainer profile article. Willie Mullins is a serial winner and hopefully the key stats highlighted in this piece will help us to profit in the long term from his runners.

- DR

Roving Reports: Silver or Gold at Newbury?

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The light is just breaking through as I leave the house to get my lift for Newbury's two-day meeting, the highlight of which is the Coral Gold Cup, which has had a promotion, having formerly been the Ladbrokes Silver Trophy, writes David Massey. I'm being picked up at a local tennis club, where unsurprisingly, no-one is having a knock-up at 8am.

We are going very early as, being a Friday morning, there's a good chance we'll encounter motorway traffic. Needless to say we sail down without so much as a "queue ahead" sign and arrive considerably earlier than we planned. I could have had another hour in bed.

Newbury is an easy track to hump the gear on, as they let you park right next to the ring to unpack it all, and then it's a short pull to the ring itself. The joint set up, there's plenty of time for tea and a chat with a few of the other books.

The general consensus seems to be the train strikes, due Saturday, won't affect business that much. We will see. Chat turns to the World Cup, and Martyn Of Leicester reveals he's had a decent bet on Iran to beat the Welsh. It's currently 0-0, but the roar goes up late in the match and he's off and running even before we've had a race. Money without work, indeed.

I'm working on the rails for the next couple of days and the first, and welcome, surprise is that all the rails joints have been cleaned. One of a bookmaker's expenses is paying for a rails/ring joint, if they hire one, and of course you've no choice if you're on the rails. However, the rails joints are often wet, or dirty, or both, and using them can be unpleasant. Not today though, they're in pristine condition. I hide my lunch in the hod.

We get betting an hour before the first, and needless to say, it's quiet. There's time to fetch more tea, although the day isn't cold. Far from it; in fact, the sun is out and actually providing some warmth. It's evens each of two my coat coming off before the first. Unheard of in late November, but we are where we are.

Finally some punters arrive. One thing about Newbury is the bet size is generally bigger here than at other tracks. Most punters have a tenner or a twenty on, even those that are fairly novice and just here for a day out. There's nobody wanting to back the odds-on favourite, Jet Powered, but we take plenty of each-way money for both Fuji Rocks and West Park Boy. That all stays with us as Half Dozen rolls in for third.

Frere D'Armes is a decent result in the second and we're off to a good start. Sadly, a fair chunk is given back by the books on Stay Away Fay, who looks beat at one point but as Russian Ruler hits the wall late, comes through to win.

A little known fact is that the only men you'll find in the toilets whilst the race is on are bookmakers and their workers. For most of us, it's the only chance we get if we need to relieve ourselves of the morning mugs of tea. There will be the usual chat about how it's all going, whether you're winning or losing, that sort of thing. The talk is of whether we can get Stage Star beat at prohibitive odds; it turns out we can.

One woman has had not one, but two, £10 bets on Sebastopol at 20-1 and is delighted to pick up her £420. She's done a lot better than her mate, who had a fiver on Stage Star, and now regrets not taking her friend's advice.

We also cop the lot on the forecast. When there's not many runners we can get the forecast on the board too, and Newbury is a place where punters do like having a forecast bet. More so than anywhere else, in my opinion. No idea why.

Having praised the track faithful for their general bet size, there's no big money around at all today, and the biggest bet I take is on the Long Distance Hurdle, a £200 wager on Champ, which never looks like getting beaten despite the fact it's only a neck at the line.

We get a result in the last, and with our digs for the night only ten minutes away, I'm in the shower by half four and having a nap fifteen minutes later. Lovely. Later, we find a pub to watch the first half of the England game, and it's so dull I'm thinking of starting a Mexican wave. There's a poster on the wall telling patrons that drug taking on the premises will not be tolerated, but I'm pretty sure the bloke in front of me has the jazz fags out. Food, and time for bed.

Saturday, and we're up and running an hour before the first. These early starts are not good for betting purposes; whereas a 2pm start in the summer means you've people around having a drink and a bet, in winter a 12.15 start means people just stay inside keeping warm until midday.

The no-sock brigade are still around but, much like Covid, not in the same numbers as two years ago. Perhaps, after months of wrecking their feet and having them stinking like squashed skunks, they've all realised that covering them up is the future. I bet their chiropodist bills were through the roof.

Anyway, I digress. Luccia gets the favourite backers off to a good start, despite a late drift, and one punter who has had £300 on with us at 6-5 has the lot back on Thyme Hill. That stays in the hod, as does all the Saturday money on Mortlach, for whom all the fivers and tenners are, forcing his price down from 16s to 9s at the off. If that had been a midweek race we wouldn't have taken a penny for Mortlach, but the out-for-the-weekend punters ensure he's well backed on days like this.

Zanza is a shocking result for most of the books, but they get it back with interest on Red Risk who, at 20-1, goes almost unbacked with us. I say almost - we've 2 x £10 bets to pay out, one from a woman who, she tells me, backs everything with "red" in the name. I'm doing it wrong, clearly; I give her a free pen for the advice.

Constitution Hill is winning the Fighting Fifth on the big screen. Round the back, by the paddock, Nicky is getting a round of applause and tips his hat, which looks like it's come direct from Vladivostok, to the crowd. Around the front, it barely creates a ripple.

First Street isn't actually a bad result for us as they all want Teddy Blue, who can manage no better than third. Then the big race, and I'm expecting big queues. They don't materialise. Trade on the not-the-Hennessy is 50% down on what it was last year. As it was earlier in the year at York, the train strikes have really had an effect on turnover.

The last bet I take is a debit card bet from a lad rushing up on the off to have £100 on Le Milos at 9-2. He's the first in the payout queue though. I've a monkey ready bundled up and give him that, and as I get his other £50 ready, he walks off waving the money at his mates. "Oi!", I shout after him, holding his other fifty quid, "is this my Christmas tip?"

His mates are rightly laughing at him. It's a good job I'm honest. Sheepishly he makes his way back through the crowd for his bullseye.

And, of course, as it should be, Amarillo Sky sends the punters home happy as a well-backed 11-8 jolly in the last. It's starting to rain, and it's almost dark. Time to go home, I reckon...

- DM

Monday Musings: Weather and a Two Mile Monopoly?

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Cork managed to race yesterday as indeed, rather more surprisingly, did Southwell, but when we will get some more jumping – in the UK at any rate – is possibly more open to question, writes Tony Stafford.

Today’s two cards have already gone and the Arena Racing Company, which runs Southwell, can giveth with one hand and taketh away with another. Both Lingfield, with an additional, and Wolverhampton, with a scheduled evening card are in the Arena stable.

I was at Chelmsford City briefly the other evening and Neil Graham, their ever-present boss, was anticipating his track might be in line for some of the more 48-hour emergency meetings that trigger when jumps cards are in the process of being lost.

He said that he hadn’t been lucky in the ballot yet, unlike all the others, but reasoned Chelmsford’s turn might be near. “Those tracks that already have been lucky, cannot reapply for ten <or did he say 14?> days”. Chelmsford race on Thursday, so that must be a pre-programmed date.

Fixtures are power in racing. No wonder Southwell battled so hard to keep their fixture alive, employing frost covers and delaying the morning inspection to 9.30 a.m. in the hope that any morning warming after a freezing night, will have had maximum effect. Watching the racing, everything looked fine. Well done, Arena, and Ben Pauling who had a nice double on the card.

Sometimes we try to make bricks where there is no straw. If you will excuse me for once, I’m a little under the weather – that sort of annoying cold that provides alternate nostril routes for moisture to trickle down the face at most inopportune times. As a result, this will be a case of short-changing the readers and hopefully the editor will take a charitable view.

Energumene took the opportunity to return to action at Cork in the Bar One Racing Hilly Way Chase. The best two-mile chaser – possibly for all this millennium [with apologies to Moscow Flyer, Master Minded, Sprinter Sacre and Altior – Ed.] – had to concede 10lb to the two horses that finished immediately (but miles) behind him while the second favourite, Master McShee, who was off level weights, finished a long last having badly burst blood vessels.

Prize money was a sliding €59k, €19k, €9k with €4k for the hapless invalid. Willie Mullins often provides multiple entries in Champion Hurdle eliminators through the year, but he refrained from doing so here. The Henry De Bromhead-trained and Rachael Blackmore-ridden Epson Du Houx was the beneficiary of Master McShee’s misfortune, not that trainer – or owner Gigginstown House Stud – needs a hand-out, 15 lengths back in a welcome back exhibition.

It is hard to see from where serious competition will come for Energumene in the immediate future, save of course Edwardstone, who stated his case for the Queen Mother Champion Chase with that superb effort at Sandown in the Tingle Creek Chase last weekend. That put paid to Greanateen and Shishkin, for the time being at least. But Energumene, like stablemate Facile Vega in the Supreme Novice Hurdle, has built an air of invincibility that makes quotes of even money for next March look value indeed.

Events on the flat continue apace overseas and Ryan Moore had another inflation-busting pick up in one of the races on Hong Kong’s biggest days at Sha Tin yesterday. Riding the six-year-old Wellington for Hong Kong-based English trainer Richard Gibson, Moore added this near £1.3 million first prize to the Japan Cup a fortnight earlier, and again with a weaving through the field ride.

In Tokyo, there was a mile-and-a-half to make his run with Vela Azul on their way to collecting that £2.6 million. It still took a gen of the rarest kind to manage it. Here it was just six furlongs but still Ryan, in my estimation riding at his best since before the serious injury a few years back which he was understandably not keen to draw attention to, was sublime.

He gave Wellington time to find his stride, brought him steadily through to challenge just before the last half-furlong and the prize was his. You can just imagine him licking his lips at some of the Middle Eastern riches that he hasn’t always been in line to challenge for. I bet William Buick and the other Dubai Carnival regulars wouldn’t mind if he kept clear of Riyadh and Meydan next month and onwards.

  • TS

Trainer Profiles: Venetia Williams, Lucinda Russell, Emma Lavelle

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For my third National Hunt trainer piece I want to drill down into three of the most successful females currently training, namely Venetia Williams, Lucinda Russell and Emma Lavelle. I will be examining nearly ten years of UK racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st October 2022. I have used the Geegeez Query Tool to source around 90% of the stats shared in this piece. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price, which the Query Tool uses, but I will quote Betfair SP returns as and when appropriate.

Brief Biographies

Venetia Williams took up her license in 1995. She became only the second female to train the winner of the Grand National when Mon Mome scored at 100/1 in 2009. Venetia is still going strong and this year had two winners at the Cheltenham Festival in the Broadway Novices' Chase and the Kim Muir Handicap Chase.

Lucinda Russell trains in Scotland and has a career tally of over 800 winners and, like Williams, she has been successful in the Grand National, winning that flagship race in 2017 with One For Arthur. The Aintree Festival has been a happy hunting ground in the last two years also, with Ahoy Senor winning the Sefton Novices’ Hurdle in 2021 and the Mildmay Novices’ Chase in 2022.

Emma Lavelle trains near Marlborough in Wiltshire and has produced consistent results year in, year out. Her stable star Paisley Park has won 10 of his 23 starts including three Grade 1 successes and four at Grade 2 level. He is one of three Cheltenham Festival winners trained by Lavelle.

 

Overall Records

First off, let's compare their respective records by year in terms of strike rate:

 

 

As we can see Venetia Williams tends to come out on top from a wins to runs ration perspective each year – she has outperformed the other two in seven of the ten years. Russell tends to have the lowest yearly strike rate figure – this has occurred in eight of the ten years. As can be seen from the graph, each trainer has occasional ups and downs, and this is to be expected. The table below shows the exact yearly strike rates as well as the A/E indices for each year:

 

 

Venetia Williams has generally been on the ‘up’ in the last four seasons with very decent strike rates in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and good correlation from the A/E indices.

OK it’s time to dig a bit deeper now, starting with Lucinda Russell.

Lucinda Russell Trainer Profile

Lucinda Russell Performance in NH Race types

By race type here are the splits:

 

Chase results have clearly been the best from a win perspective; meanwhile, National Hunt Flat races have been a bit of a struggle. It is interesting to note, however, that each way performance (win & placed) has less than a 3% differential between the chase figure (30.4%) and the NH Flat figure (27.6%).

Digging deeper when looking at race type, here are the most useful angles (both positive and negative), from a potential future betting perspective:

  1. Russell has a very good record when sending chasers to Hexham. Of her 230 runners at the Borders track, 46 have won (20%) showing a profit to SP of £68.82 (ROI +29.9%). To BSP the profits increase markedly to £133.87 (ROI +57.7%). The figures are skewed somewhat by a winner whose SP was 40/1 (BSP 79.92), but having said that, Russell has produced profits to SP in seven of the ten years which is impressive
  1. Horses racing in a chase who won LTO are worth avoiding. They would have lost you a whopping 48p in the £ to SP (40p in the £ to BSP)
  1. Favourites in chases have broken even to BSP. Focusing on clear favourites only (not joint favs) would have seen a small 8p in the £ return
  1. Lucinda Russell is not generally one for big-priced winners in handicap hurdles. Horses priced 22/1 or bigger have won just once from 212 runners

 

Lucinda Russell Performance by Race Distance

Race distance breakdown next:

 

 

Looking at the strike rate, returns, A/E indices and Impact Values there is a correlation showing an improvement as the distance range increases. Indeed, backing all her runners to BSP at 3 miles or more would have seen a break even scenario.

Lucinda Russell Performance by Starting Price

Let’s examine starting price now using Industry SP prices. Firstly win strike rates:

 

 

As is usually the case, the win strike rates go down as the price bands increase. Odds on shots have fared well from a limited sample, but the Evens to 15/8 bracket have under-performed. When we look at NH trainers as a whole, the win percentage for horses priced Evens to 15/8 stands at over 38%; an absolute difference of 5% for this price bracket - 14% in relative terms - is huge. Russell also under-performs by over 3% (15% relatively) with horses priced 2/1 to 11/4, and by 2.5% (14% relatively) in the 3/1 to 9/2 price bracket. Hence her A/E indices in these three price brackets are lower than one would expect:

 

 

It can be said that there has been little value in backing Lucinda Russell runners priced between Evens and 9/2. Knowing this, when we see a Russell runner within this price range, there could be value elsewhere in that particular race.

Lucinda Russell Performance by Course

The Russell stable focus the majority of their attention on just nine courses – Ayr, Carlisle, Haydock, Hexham, Kelso, Musselburgh, Newcastle, Perth and Wetherby. 90% of their total runs have been at these courses, so we have good data sets to examine. Below is a graph comparing chase and hurdle win strike rates.

 

 

With better overall chase strike rates, I guess these stats should come as no surprise (chase fields tend to be smaller than hurdle fields, which is an important factor, but not one that fully accounts for these differentials). Only Haydock has seen Russell hurdlers win more often than chasers in percentage terms. Haydock hurdlers from the stable have made a blind profit both to SP and BSP.

We noted the excellent record at Hexham in chases earlier, and it turns out to be the only course that has proved to be profitable backing all runners in all chases. From a negative perspective, Carlisle has not been a happy hunting ground.

Lucinda Russell Performance by Running Style

A look at run style next. To begin with let us see the proportion of runners that fit a specific run style. As you'll probably be familiar with by now, geegeez.co.uk breaks run style into four categories:

Led – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

In terms of run style, 18% of Russell’s runners have led early, 29% have taken up prominent positions while the remaining 53% have raced mid division or been held up near the back. Let's examine the success rate of each run style group in terms of win percentage:

 

 

Regular readers will not be surprised by this graph: early leaders / front runners have been the most successful group for Russell winning roughly one in every six, whereas hold up horses have been less successful winning around once in every 14 starts.

Looking at Lucinda's front running stats in more detail, it is interesting to note that her record improves as the distance increases:

 

 

Front runners / early leaders at distances of 3m+ have been clearly the best performers. Of course, the profits shown in the table are assuming you’d predicted every single front running horse before the race – clearly this is not possible, but it shows the potential value in the yard's front running stayers.

Lucinda Russell Performance by Jockey

Russell currently has two primary jockeys she uses – Derek Fox and Stephen Mulqueen. In 2022, Fox has ridden just over half of all her runners, Mulqueen around a quarter. Here are their overall records going back to 2013:

 

 

Fox has the better record of the two both from a strike rate and a returns perspective. Indeed, if betting to BSP the Russell / Fox combination would have yielded a profit of £130.99 (ROI +11.0%). That said, the profit has essentially been down to one 120.09 BSP winner at Aintree last year.

If we examine results for this combination nearer the front end of the market they have actually performed well. Focusing solely on horses from the top four in the betting, Fox has ridden 103 winners from 572 runners (SR 18.0%) losing around 7p in the £ to SP; to BSP that loss would have been turned into a 7p in the £ profit.

The ‘top takeaways’ for Lucinda Russell will be collated at the end of this article, along with those from the other two trainers.

Time now to examine the stats for our next eminent female tranier, Emma Lavelle.

 

Emma Lavelle Trainer Profile

Emma Lavelle Performance in NH Race types

Race type is the first port of call once more:

 

 

We can see almost identical strike rates in chases and hurdles, with ROI figures also similar. National Hunt Flat races have made a profit but a 66/1 winner has skewed the figures somewhat. Even without that bomb, she'd have almost broken even at SP.

Emma Lavelle Performance in Chases

Let's look at some of the strongest stats (both positive and negative) specifically for chase races:

  1. Younger chasers completely outperform older chasers as this table clearly shows:

 

Five- to seven-year-olds do best and backing all of them blind would have broken even to BSP. 8yos have performed reasonably, but once we get to nine or older performance is poor with just 14 successes from 242 runners (SR 5.8%);

  1. Class 1 and 2 chases have been a struggle – just 18 wins from 234 runners (SR 7.7%). Losses to SP stand at £90.92 (ROI -38.9%). Losses to BSP have been around the 30% mark;
  1. Worcester has been a happy hunting ground in chases with 12 wins from 44 (SR 27.3%). Profits to SP stand at £30.87 (ROI +70.2%); to BSP this edges up to £47.08 (ROI +107%);
  1. Horses making their chase debut have won just over 23% of the time breaking even to SP (+6p in the £ to Betfair).

 

In terms of hurdle races – the strongest stat has been when focusing on shorter distances. Hurdle races of 2m1f or less have provided 39 winners from 182 (SR 21.4%) for a small SP profit of £9.86 (ROI +5.4%). To BSP this increases to +£44.17 (ROI +24.3%).

Having ended this section looking at race distance let us next look at the distance stats across all race types.

Emma Lavelle Performance by Race Distance

Here are the splits:

 

We can see that as the distance increases the performance seems to dip a little. Chases at 2m1f or less, like the hurdle races, hit a win SR% of over 20%. It is National Hunt Flat races that bring the overall win strike rate down for shorter distances. In terms of 3m+ both chases and hurdles hit the 12% mark – chases at 12% exactly, hurdles 12.2%.

Emma Lavelle Performance by Starting Price

Market data is next on the agenda – a look at win strike rate first:

 

These are better figures overall when compared to Lucinda Russell, especially in the 2/1 to 11/4 and 3/1 to 9/2 brackets. Unsurprisingly, the A/E indices look much healthier overall too:

 

 

If you had backed all Emma Lavelle runners priced 9/2 or shorter you would have won 27% of the time losing just 3p in the £ to SP. To BSP this edges to a positive return of nearly 5p in the £. It seems therefore a good tactic to focus on the better fancied runners from the stable.

Emma Lavelle Performance by Course

We noted earlier that Worcester + chases has been a good combination. Let us look at the win strike rates in all races across courses where Lavelle has saddled at least 50 runners:

 

 

There is a big variation from track to track – the premier tracks at Newbury, Ascot and Cheltenham have three of the lowest four strike rates. Combining these courses has produced just 19 wins from 272 runners (SR 7.0%) equating to losses of 62p in the £ to SP. To BSP these losses are still steep at 57p in the £. Some of the most competitive NH racing is seen at these courses and swerving Lavelle runners at all three of these would seem to be a sensible move by and large.

There are much better results from courses such as Newton Abbot, Doncaster, Stratford and Worcester – the yard has hit 20% or better at all four of these. Indeed focusing on these courses and sticking to runners priced 9/2 or shorter we see some excellent results:

 

 

All the profits shown are to Industry SP; to BSP returns have been around 10p in the £ higher. These seem to be four courses to look out for when Lavelle sends a runner there especially if the horse is fancied.

Emma Lavelle Performance by Running Style

In terms of run style 15% of Lavelle’s runners have led early, 35% have taken up prominent positions while the remaining 50% have raced mid division or been held up near the back. Here are the success rates of each run style group in terms of win percentage:

 

 

It's the same old pattern we see time and time again – front runners / early leaders are by far the most successful winning close to one in every four, followed by prominent runners. Horses racing further back early (mid div / at the back) have won roughly just one in every ten starts.

Sticking with Lavelle front runners, these have excelled in hurdle races, winning 30% of the time; chase front runners have won just under 21% of the time. This is unusual as front runners in chases have a higher strike rate than front runners in hurdle races when considering all trainer data as a whole.

Emma Lavelle Performance by Jockey

Lavelle currently employs three main jockeys – Tom Bellamy, Adam Wedge and Ben Jones. All three have had 100+ runners for Lavelle since 2013 and their overall records are shown below:

 

 

All three have strike rates in excess of Lavelle’s overall strike rate, which stands at 14.3%. All have decent A/E indices and two of the three have made a blind profit. It should be noted though that Bellamy has ridden over 72% of Lavelle’s runners in 2022. One additional Lavelle/Bellamy stat worth noting is that when they have teamed up on favourites they have won 21 races from 46 (SR 45.7%) for a SP profit of £6.35 (ROI +13.8%). This increases to returns of 20p in the £ to BSP.

Two trainers down, one to go – it’s Venetia Williams turn next:

Venetia Williams Trainer Profile

Venetia Williams Performance in NH Race types

We will first look at Venetia's record in different race codes:

 

Williams has a reasonable record in National Hunt Flat races from a smallish sample. In terms of chases versus hurdle races there has been a much stronger performance in chases, with losses in such races of less than 10p in the £ to SP, while to BSP this is limited to just 1p in the £. Chases provided a four percent higher strike rate to boot. These races look a good starting point for further digging.

Venetia Williams Performance in chases

Firstly let us look at Venetia's chase performance by year – for this I will compare her yearly A/E indices:

 

 

As we can see, eight of the ten years have seen A/E indices over 0.90 which shows good consistency, performance dipping below that threshold only in 2015 and 2016. In six of the ten years you would have made a BSP profit backing all Williams chasers blind.

Handicap versus non handicap chases next. Generally she has far more runners in handicap chases as this table shows:

 

 

The ROI is much better in handicaps compared to non-handicaps which is useful considering the sample sizes.

Here are some more chase facts and stats worth knowing about:

  1. Chasers priced 11/4 or shorter have provided 158 winners from 424 runners (SR 37.3%) for a profit of £13.64 (ROI +3.2%) to SP; profit to BSP of £26.11 (ROI +6.2%);
  1. Perhaps it is no surprise seeing the previous stat that chasing favourites have done well. They have won 36% of the time producing returns of 5.5p in the £ to SP, 8.8p in the £ to BSP;
  1. In terms of age, younger chasers have done better. Horses aged seven and younger have won 184 races from 881 (SR 20.9%); horses aged 8 or older have won 154 from 1193 (SR 12.9%). The younger brigade have just sneaked into BSP profit across those 881 races;
  1. Female chasers have a good record with 45 wins from 221 (SR 20.4%) showing a very small profit to both SP and BSP;
  1. Horses that won last time out do well when trying to repeat that win in a chase, with 81 wins from 352 (SR 23.0%) for a break even situation to SP; to BSP these runners would have secured a profit of £55.56 (ROI +15.8%).

 

Venetia Williams Performance by Race Distance

Here is the breakdown by race distance but this time I am splitting into chase and hurdle results as they differ somewhat:

 

 

In terms of chases, Venetia Williams has her highest strike rate in the shortest distance band, and her lowest strike rate in the longest distance band. Having said that, the A/E values are all between 0.91 and 0.97. Hurdle wise, we see similar strike rates across the board, but slightly better value it seems as race distance increases. Once again, though, it shows that chases are the races that we should probably concentrate on the most.

Venetia Williams Performance by Starting Price

Market data now and win strike rates first:

 

Williams has a surprisingly low odds on strike rate, coming in at under 49%. However, the Evens to 15/8 bracket has a high figure, as does the 2/1 to 11/4 range. Indeed, backing all Venetia's runners between Evens and 11/4 would have seen you break even to SP, and earn just under 3p in the £ to BSP.

The A/E indices now:

 

Here is confirmation of what was mentioned above, with strong A/E indices for runners sent off between Evens and 11/4. Bigger priced runners (14/1 and up) are definitely worth avoiding – they would have lost you 43p in the £ to SP; 28p in the £ to BSP.

Venetia Williams Performance by Course

On to course stats now and here are the win strike rates for all courses where Williams has saddled at least 100 runners:

 

 

If we take the highest and lowest strike rates out, the percentages across the other courses are not too dissimilar. There are five courses where the A/E index has hit 0.95 or higher; these being Hereford (1.29), Ascot (1.20), Ludlow (0.97), Haydock (0.95), and Newbury (0.95).

I would say that Williams is a trainer who seems to target the race rather than the course.

Venetia Williams Performance by Running Style

In terms of run style, 22% of Venetia runners have led early, 39% have taken up prominent positions while the remaining 39% have raced mid division or been held up near the back. I would surmise that she is more aware than Russell and Lavelle of the importance of a position at, or near, the front early in a race.

The win percentages for each run style group are shown in the graph below:

 

The pattern is what we have come to expect generally, but in percentage terms her results mirror those of Emma Lavelle almost exactly. Hold up horses and mid div runners have poor records.

If we drill into her front runners in chases her strike rate hits 26.1% and if your crystal ball for predicting front runners was in tip top condition, these runners would have returned a profit of £191.59 to £1 level stakes (ROI +41.3%) – and that was to Industry SP! To BSP add another 25p in the £ to this. Hence a Venetia Williams front runner in a chase is a potential gold mine.

Venetia Williams Performance by Jockey

Williams relies mainly on Charlie Deutsch, but both Hugh Nugent and Lucy Turner are jockeys she does use from time to time. Here are their stats:

 

 

5lb claimer Lucy Turner has performed very well and shows a fair profit. However, that surplus would be obliterated if you took out her 40/1 Cheltenham festival winner, Chambard. Deutsch starting riding for Williams in 2015 but had just 11 rides that year. Since then he has ridden 100 times or more for the stable in six of the seven years; the other year he rode 85 times. Here is a year by year breakdown of his win strike rate for the stable:

 

 

Strike rates have been fairly consistent as the graph shows. However, breaking his performance down by race type gives us some interesting results:

 

 

Results in chases have been by far the best, breaking even at SP; and, while there have been a very limited number of National Hunt Flat races, comparing chases to hurdles we see a huge difference.

Main Takeaways

Let me finish by focusing on what I think are the key stats from each of the three trainers.

Lucinda Russell Positives and Negatives

 

Emma Lavelle Positives and Negatives

 

Venetia Williams Positives and Negatives

 

And that's it for this piece: three trainers for the price of one, and bundles of key takeaways.

Next time it is the turn of the Irish and a certain Mr William Mullins.

Until then...

- DR

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