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Things move along rapidly in life in the 21st Century even if a certain English monarch has shown plenty of stickability, writes Tony Stafford. In the Coolmore box on Saturday after the authoritative triumph by Desert Crown in the Cazoo Derby, the main players were adamant we had all witnessed a superstar – one that might go all the way.
Even in his interview after the race, Sir Michael Stoute felt emboldened enough to declare him “promising”. Maybe he was saying, “seen it all before”, and I suppose he had all those years ago in Shergar, but promising? Hardly.
Maybe he was talking about his jockey. You would never have thought Richard Kingscote was having only his second mount in the race in a large field where more experienced big-race riders could easily have got caught up in the inevitable Epsom traffic that can envelop them on the wrong day.
But Kingscote, untroubled, could just as easily have been riding on a Friday evening at Haydock or Chester, the two tracks where he had best showcased his talents in the years he spent riding for the Tom Dascombe stable until Michael Owen’s mid-winter shake-up.
You need luck in this game. Sir Michael Stoute has never been a man in his half-century as a trainer to change his stable jockeys unduly, but Ryan Moore’s progressive unavailability with his Ballydoyle commitments meant there needed to be an available back-up.
In the past, Frankie Dettori might have been a contender for drafting in with Moore cemented to Coolmore, but Kingscote had moved south after leaving Manor House Stables and must have impressed Desert Crown’s trainer that he would do very nicely when he showed up to ride out at Freemason Lodge.
The son of Nathaniel, who before York had raced only once in a maiden at Nottingham last November, was obviously very talented. His trainer, though, was unsure whether Desert Crown could be readied in time for the Dante. Fortunately he was and Kingscote was on board, looking the part as they strolled home in what history has told us is always the best Derby trial.
All that was left was to beat the Godolphins and the Coolmores on Saturday, and this they did with panache, coming down the straight with a surge that took them past Moore and Stone Age as the Aidan O’Brien first string was battling to take control.
The consensus in the box afterwards was that Stone Age didn’t stay, along with a recognition that it would not have mattered if he had. The winner was supreme. It was going to take something special, they thought, to beat him.
That view held until mid-afternoon yesterday and, as is often the case when Coolmore don’t have the winner of a Classic, they still have more than a little to do with the breeding and production of it.
Step forward Vadeni, who swamped the front-running Modern Times for speed and drew effortlessly away in the last furlong of the Qatar Prix du Jockey-Club at Chantilly. He won by five lengths, avenging a defeat in a Group 3 on the track last September when third to James Ferguson’s El Bodegan. That colt battled on well to pip Modern Times for the runner-up spot.
The consolation for the Coolmore partners is that the winner was the result of an outsourcing by his breeder the Aga Khan, who sent Vadeni’s mother, Vaderami (an unraced daughter of the German stallion Monsun), to be one of the first group of mares to visit Churchill.
The quest is always how to replace – or in their wildest dreams – replicate Galileo. They’ve always thought Churchill was his quickest Classic son as the champion juvenile of his year and easy winner of both the Newmarket and Curragh 2,000 Guineas.
Having gone into this weekend as the sire of two Group 3 winners, Churchill now has a five-length winner of a Classic in a field of 15 where runner-up and third had already won at Group 1 level.
Churchill is, on a lower plane, the sire of one of my favourite handicappers, Brian Meehan’s Lawful Command, who has all the courage of his wonderful grandsire. That colt will keep on winning handicaps, but I bet Sam Sangster, who bought Lawful Command, will already be resigned that his yearlings will be priced out of most mortals’ budgets this autumn with the stud fee doing a similar exponential jump as Galileo’s did when his first three-year-olds began flexing their Classic muscles almost two decades ago. Not even his passing has stopped them twitching away!
I mentioned last week when discussing Desert Crown, that he might not have been the most obvious contender for winning a Derby. Not all products of Nathaniel, Frankel’s contemporary and three-quarter-length debut victim to the unbeaten champion, are high-class. Both colts of course were by Galileo, and Nathaniel will always be remembered as sire of the 21st Century’s best race-mare, Enable. He has been a great servant to Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire and Gary Coffee and Julian Dollar have every right in declaring him a steal at £15k too!
Desert Crown may well aspire to similar heights as Enable. There have been many examples of Michael Stoute horses developing from ordinary performers in their three-year-old season to international champions, like Singspiel and Pilsudski all those years ago. When they start out good, they rarely disappoint.
Sir Michael must still hanker after the days when he trained horses of the calibre of Shergar for the Aga Khan, but His Highness’s horses have for many years been centred in France and Ireland for racing and breeding. Long-term stud operations cannot be carried on at full effectiveness without regular injections of new talent and, on the day Churchill offered fresh impetus for Coolmore, the Aga Khan Studs unveiled their latest trump card.
There were three Aga Khan winners yesterday and, rather like the perfect Harry Kane hat-trick (left-foot, right-foot and a header – that’s for you Your Majesty, sorry about yesterday!) – they offered a bright vision of the future.
First in the 12f fillies’ Group 3, the Prix de Royaumont, Christophe Soumillon brought Baiykara, only second best in the market, with an irresistible run which provided a step-by-step dress rehearsal for their Classic show a little later on.
The extent of Vadeni’s success over ten-and-a -half furlongs had been even less anticipated than the filly’s win. You got the impression from winning trainer Jean-Claude Rouget that he might be thinking less about Longchamp in October for Valeni than Leopardstown the previous month. That was probably in line with Soumillon’s earlier murmurings about the Arc for Baiykara.
“I love that race, <the Irish Champion Stakes>”, said Rouget, who has now won five Jockey-Clubs and four of the last seven. Some people in racing seem to think this is the “cheaper” alternative to Epsom and, while Rouget will not hold that view, he did concede that there have been some less than top winners of the Chantilly race along with stars like last year’s hero and European Champion, St Mark’s Basilica. Then again, not every Epsom Derby winner enters the sport’s pantheon either.
The third Aga Khan winner, almost bizarrely, was a sprinter, although in the year when the Aga Khan studs are celebrating the 100 years since the colours of his grandfather, also the Aga Khan, were first seen on a racecourse. That year he bought the flying speckled grey filly Mumtaz Mahal and as well as proving a great racehorse herself, she appears in many of today’s pedigrees, often through her descendant Nasrullah.
Yesterday’s sprint winner was Rozgar, easy winner of the six-furlong Listed race, and while out of an Aga Khan-bred daughter of Sea The Stars, she is by the Darley sprint sire, Exceed and Excel.
Returning though to Baiykara, she is from the first crop of Zarak, a beautifully-bred young stallion, coincidentally listed in 2022’s brochure from the Aga Khan’s French stud, the Haras de Bonneval, at the same fee as Churchill, €25,000.
By Dubawi out of the unbeaten champion mare Zarkava, he did not quite live up to his exemplary breeding, but one of his four wins in 13 starts was at Group 1 level – the Grand Prix De Saint-Cloud and he did just nudge the €1 million prize mark.
Zarak also had something to say later in the card, providing a cross-Channel win for the William Haggas stable. This was Purplepay, a filly bought by his long-time clients Lael Stable at last December’s Arqana sale for €2 milllion.
That price would never have been countenanced in the first half of last year, even though she was prolific in the provinces, but she upped the ante for her last two runs and picked up a Longchamp conditions race before running third in a Saint-Cloud Group 1.
Fittingly, on the weekend when the 2022 Derby was run in Lester’s honour, his American friends Lael Stable, with whom he owned shares in Haggas horses, now have a very smart filly with his son-in-law.
As probably the trainer closest to the Sir Michael Stoute tradition of steadily bringing on his young horses, he can take this explosive filly a long way, perhaps starting at Royal Ascot next week. Yes, we’ve got that to come, in just eight days’ time. Chantilly was only one day after a wonderful Derby performance but, as we’ve seen, things in racing rarely stand still for long.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/DesertCrown_HooYaMal_Derby2022.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-06-06 05:51:452022-06-05 22:05:27Monday Musings: Crown King for a Day?
This week's Gold Nuggets is given over to a look at Epsom's Derby weekend card. Particular focus is on how I set up, the tools I use for different races, and the importance of overlaying draw and run style in the context of the course configuration. Full running order looks like this:
This is the second article in a series in which I will be looking at run style bias, writes Dave Renham. The first article was quite a general piece, although it did drill down into some of the key stats of three trainers – Eric Alston, Mark Johnston and Tom Dascombe. This follow up piece looks at success rates for trainers with front runners including breaking down the data by distance. Once again I have looked at the last eight full calendar years of data (1/1/14 to 31/12/21) including both turf and all weather racing in the UK. The focus is all race types (handicaps and non handicaps) and all distances, races with six or more runners.
Run style is all about the position a horse takes up early on in the race, normally within the first 100-200 yards. There are four basic positions a horse can adopt in a race and these are categorised on the Geegeez website as Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section.
Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:
Led – horses that get to the front early or horses that dispute for the early lead often simply called (front runners);
Prominent – horses that race just behind the leader(s);
Mid Division – horses that race mid pack or just behind the mid-point;
Held up – horses that are held up at, or near the back of the field.
Run style is often linked with the word pace because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Hence for many the words run style and pace are interchangeable.
On this site you can find plenty of run style data in both the Pace Analyser and the Query Tool. These can be found from the Tools tab anywhere on site. Additionally, each racecard has the last four run style/pace figures for each runner. Inexperienced horses may have less data as they may not have run four times.
Benchmarks: Overall strike rates for run style
To begin with I want to look at the average win percentage strike rates for all trainers / runners in terms of run style. In other words what percentage of front runners / early leaders win on average, what percentage of prominent runners win etc. Here is the breakdown:
These raw stats illustrate why run style is so important and why it staggers me that some trainers are clearly averse to sending out their runners to try and lead early.
Front runners do best at shorter distances as the graph below shows. (It should be noted that the small number of 6½f races, just 43 in total, were included in the 7f-1m data):
The advantage to front runners is very strong in sprints (5-6f) and quite potent at races up to a mile, also. The advantage is less pronounced over longer trips but those on the lead still win more often than any other of the overall run styles shown in the first chart (13.91% for leaders over 1m1f+ vs 12.3% for all prominent racers).
Data for hold up horses, as you may expect, shows the reverse. The longer the distance the more chance horses from the back of the field have of coming thorough to win:
Still, even the best strike rate for hold up horses is lower than those racing midfield overall, much lower than the prominent racer superset, and more than half as low as the early leader overall group. More materially, perhaps, the just better than 8% hit rate for hold up horses in 1m1f+ races compares highly unfavourably with the nigh on 14% rate for early leaders in the same races.
Best Front Runner Trainers: All Races
Moving on, let us look at the trainers who had the highest strike rates with their front runners in ALL races of 6+ runners (minimum 80 runs / top 30 trainers):
This table really knocks the eye out! There are some seriously impressive figures here with 14 trainers having strike rates of 25% or higher, five of them hitting 30%+.
The Win PL figures show how profitable front runners are, and that trying to find the best way of predicting them is something all punters should want to achieve.
Saeed Bin Suroor tops the list, and combining a front runner of his with a fancied runner is a potent combination as this table further illustrates:
As the table shows, bin Suroor front running favourites score nearly 54% of the time, while the top four in the betting all have good strike rates and would have produced excellent returns. Remember, all such returns shown on Geegeez are to SP. Using BOG and/or Betfair would see these figures looking even more impressive.
Best Front Runner Trainers: Non-handicap Races
Now let's drill down a level and look at the top trainer strike rates in non-handicap races only (minimum 60 runs / top 20 trainers):
There are few surprises here, with 18 of this top 20 having already appeared on the ‘All Races top 30’ list. Just David and Nicola Barron and Richard Fahey new names to the party.
Best Front Runner Trainers: Handicap Races
Onto the top 20 trainers in terms of front running strike rates in handicaps only (minimum 70 runs) and the key players are as follows:
Here we see slightly lower strike rates, but this is to be expected in handicaps where field size is generally larger (9.85 runners versus 9.26 runners in non-handicaps during the study window).
This time, there are some new names to be aware of - Chris Wall, John O’Shea, Malcolm Saunders, Julie Camacho, Stuart Kittow, Ismael Mohammad and the Coles father and son team (research based on father, Paul Cole, only).
Best Front Runner Trainers: By Race Distance
In this next section, we are going to look at different race distances; specifically, the top 10 front running trainers in terms of win strike rate in each division:
5f / 6f races
Simon Crisford, now training with his son, Ed, is the king of front-running sprinters, his speedballs that go forward immediately winning a whopping 40% of the time. Crisford is one of the more active trainers at the breeze up sales and tends to specialise in two-year-olds generally; perhaps that early education for his runners is a material component. Regardless, many of them clearly know their job from the starting stalls.
Crisford used to be racing manager for Godolphin, and the next three entries in this table are all Godolphin trainers, two of them on the payroll plus John (and Thady) Gosden.
7f / 1m races
Those familiar names appear again when the race distance ramps up a touch, though there are interlopers in the top five now. Sharing top honours with Messrs bin Suroor and Appleby, C. is William Haggas, the trio all winning at this range with around 39% of their front runners.
1m1f or longer races
As we get towards the longer distance races, the strike rates curtail somewhat - to be expected based on the overall data I shared in my introduction; and yet Saeed bin Suroor still managed to achieve a better than one-in-three win rate with early leaders in races of nine furlongs-plus. He's well clear of the wily Sir Mark Prescott and the quietly excellent David Menuisier.
Front Runner Trainer/Jockey combinations
As well as how a trainer likes his horses to be ridden, a key consideration must be the actual rider!
Here, I have collated a list of the top 50 trainer / jockey combos with front runners. For this table I have not added profit/loss data (minimum 40 races), though the A/E column may be used as a proxy (where a number above 1 implies future potential profitability).
As you might expect, there are some very strong stats here with many of the very top trainers and jockeys combining. However, perhaps of more interest are a few combinations that may have sailed under the radar, such as Channon and Bishop, Osborne and Currie, Quinn and Hart, Griffiths and Allan, Midgeley and Lee to name but five. Feel free to do your own sleuthing in the table above!
Front Runner Trainers: Led Win Rate compared with Held Up Win Rate
To finish, I would like to compare individual trainer strike rates for their front runners with the percentages for their hold up horses. Earlier in the piece we saw the average win percentage for front runners was 17.02% between 2014 and 2021 in 6+ runner flat races, while for hold up horses it was just 7.16%.
The aim of this exercise, then, is to create a 'led to held up ratio' (L:H for short) using individual trainer percentages. So, for example and using the overall figures, I divide the led percentage of 17.02 by the held up percentage of 7.16 to create the benchmark trainer L:H ratio of 2.38. From there, we can see which trainers differ markedly from the average figure.
Trainers with a high 'led to held up ratio'
This first table shows those trainers with a much higher L:H ratio. I have also included both win percentages (SR%) to aid the comparison:
Adrian Nicholls tops the list mainly due to his dreadful record with hold up horses – just 1 of the 102 such runners have won. It is also worth noting that Nicholls has a 14.3% strike rate with prominent racers which, considering his overall record, is a real stand out figure.
Phillip Makin’s stats are interesting as he has saddled 21 winners from 84 front runners (25%); compare this with his record with the other three run styles combined which has seen 31 wins from 648 runners for a strike rate of only 4.8%. It might be worth scouring the daily racecards to find potential front runners from the Makin yard.
I also will keep an eye out for other potential front runners from the following stables - Jedd O’Keeffe, Sir Mark Prescott, William Stone, Staurt Kittow, Richard Hughes, John Quinn and Karl Burke.
Trainers with a low 'led to held up ratio'
Let’s now look at the trainers with the lowest L:H ratios:
One trainer worth mentioning here is Lucy Wadham. Her flat race win strike rate across all run style categories is remarkably even:
Not many trainers whose overall SR% exceeds 10% have figures like this.
*
There is plenty to digest in this article and I hope it has given you plenty of food for thought. The next piece in the series will look at run style data for two-year-olds. Until then, and as always, thanks for reading.
- DR
00Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2022-06-01 10:03:092022-06-01 10:03:09Trainers and Run Style: Part 2
This weekend, Epsom Downs will welcome the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations in the absence of both Her Majesty, and his majesty. The former is a late scratch and we all hope and trust she is generally well; the latter, Lester Piggott - in whose honour the Derby will be run - passed just days before the 2022 renewal.
What follows is a slightly different take on a familiar theme: trends and tips for the Derby and Oaks. To wit, it seems reasonable to assert that the Oaks and Derby are parallel lines in terms of equine peer groups and, as such, any profiling considerations might be enhanced by combining the two datasets into a single cohort (group, if you prefer) and seeing what gives. Let's start with that...
Oaks and Derby Combined Trends
Looking at the past ten years gives us 20 individual races - ten Derby's and ten Oaks's - going back to the 2012 pair. Here are a few observations:
Trainers
Aidan O'Brien 12 winners (25 win & place from 80 runners)
John Gosden 4 (10 w&p from 26)
Charlie Appleby 2 (4 w&p from 10)
Ralph Beckett/ Dermot Weld 1 each
This is hardly ground-breaking stuff but it does serve to underline what an elite club the Epsom Classics have become. Ralph Beckett won his second and most recent Oaks in 2013, since when only Dermot Weld - with Harzand in 2016 - has had the temerity to interlope the hegemony of Messrs. O'Brien, Gosden and Appleby.
Naturally, if I asked you to name three trainers who get the best horses, you'd name those three; nevertheless, their dominance is sobering.
Odds
Five winners of Epsom Classics since 2012 returned 13/8 or shorter and, at this stage, it looks quite possible that both the Oaks and Derby will have a market leader with that degree of public confidence behind it. The good news for those of us that typically like a bit more jam on our bread is that four jollies in this odds range were turned over, two of them at odds on and none bigger than 11/8.
Moreover, seven Oaks or Derby winners in the past decade returned 16/1 or longer, and fully 21 of the 60 placed horses returned at least 16/1: windmill tilters, welcome!
Sires
Galileo 8 winners (19 win & place from 57 runners)
Sea The Stars 2 (4 w&p from 14)
Frankel 2 (5 w&p from 13)
New Approach 2 (2 w&p from 7)
Montjeu )
Fastnet Rock )
Nathaniel ) 1 each
Cape Cross )
Deep Impact )
Pour Moi )
Dubawi 0 from 11 (2 placed)
Galileo has sired 40% of the 20 Oaks and Derby winners since 2012. But that's not all. His progeny Frankel, New Approach and Nathaniel have collectively fathered five further Epsom Classic winners in that time. Aside from Galileo and his sons, only Sea The Stars, by Darley stallion Cape Cross, has more than one notch on the Epsom Classic winning post in the study period. And it gets even more one-sided when we consider the female blood lines...
Damsires
There have been two winners each for progeny of mares sired by Kingmambo, Galileo, Danehill Dancer, and Sadler's Wells. This means that Galileo is at least 25% of the gene pool for three-quarters of the Derby and Oaks winners in the past decade. That's a quite astonishing fact, to my eye.
Race Class last time out
The breakdown of last day race class is as follows:
Group 1 6 winners (12 win & place from 38 runners)
Group 2 1 (8 w&p from 27)
Group 3 5 (12 w&p from 72)
Listed 7 (19 w&p from 88)
Other 1 (4 w&p from 18)
*this excludes horses who ran outside of UK and Ireland on their prior start
Those which ran in Group 1 company last time did so, unsurprisingly, in either the Newmarket or Curragh Guineas. Two of them won a Guineas, one was runner-up and two more finished third. Only Qualify, hopelessly outpaced at both Guineas venues before rattling home over the extra half mile at Epsom, was off a Guineas podium from this sextet.
There was a reasonably fair distribution of winners to representatives across other race classes, though the 27 to have contested a Group 2 last time probably under-performed a touch. Golden Horn, winner of the Dante in 2015, was the sole torch bearer for this group, a group that will have high hopes for Desert Crown, the 2022 Derby ante post favourite.
Placing last time out
Only the aforementioned Qualify was off the board on prior start, the full tale of that tape being thus:
1st 12 winners (31 win & place from 114)
2nd 4 (13 w&p from 47)
3rd 3 (6 w&p from 34)
4th 0 (7 w&p from 17)
It's hardly a shock that last day winners have scored again in an Oaks or Derby, but perhaps one might have expected more than 'just' 60% of Epsom Classic winners to come here off the back of a victory in their prep run. Thanks largely to the exploits of Raif's Talent (20/1, 2013 Oaks) and the wind-assisted Serpentine (25/1, 2020 Derby), last day winners actually came out marginally ahead at Betfair SP.
But there may be more to go at with those acquiring minor medals the last day. Of the seven Oaks and Derby winners since 2012 who were 2nd or 3rd last time out, six were 'staying on' (three in a Guineas, two never nearer at Chester, one in a Lingfield Trial). Only Was (20/1, 2012 Oaks) "kept on one pace" on her prior engagement.
Draw
Who doesn't love a good Epsom draw theory? (Rhetorical)
There is all sorts of hokum presented as unequivocal fact on this matter and, as with most 'facts' in racing, we need to be a little less certain and a little more open-minded. The reality with draw at most tracks and most trips is more nuanced than many will have you believe. What follows, then, is offered in that spirit of open-minded sharing: there are no hard conclusions, just a few data from which to infer and a few candidate inferences from yours true - take 'em or leave 'em.
But there is no reason that I can think of why a Derby or Oaks should differ from any other mile and a half race of similar field size at Epsom in draw bias terms. So, from 2012 until now, here are a few cuts of who emerged from where...
[In the images below, I'm showing PRB - percentage of rivals beaten - and PRB3, the average PRB of a stall and its immediate neighbours. This gives a more rounded perspective as every runner, bar tail end Charlies, gets a bit of a score]
8-12 runners, all going: definite advantage to high, possible edge to 'waited with early'
13+ runners, all going: no clear advantage, though low/middle on the lead may be compromised
Quicker ground (good or faster) 8+ runners: advantage to high
Slower ground (good to soft or softer) 8+ runners: no draw advantage, clear run style advantage for held up types
On this final visual, you may wonder why the chart kicks up at the high end and yet I've asserted no advantage. The reason is that there have been very few races on a soft surface with that volume of runners - see below. It is therefore hard to know if those solitary scorers from wide boxes were random outliers or more material. I personally favour the former conclusion or, more accurately, a position of agnosticism (I just don't know). Feel free to draw your own conclusions from the heat maps and charts above.
Profile round up: where does that leave us?
Some interesting - arguably, at least - snippets in the above, but how do we piece them together into a vague identikit winner's profile? And, more pertinently for us value seekers, how do we do it without landing on the glaringly apparent and, consequently, more miserly end of the potential return spectrum?
In general terms, we might look for a runner from one of the main three stables, offered at a bold price, quite possibly (though not definitely) with Galileo featuring somewhere in the first two generations of the pedigree, and maybe a horse beaten but in the frame last time whilst 'staying on'. Do such horses exist in this year's Oaks and/or Derby?
Oaks Profile Possibles
In the Oaks, there are several that fit: Nashwa, Tuesday, Concert Hall, and With The Moonlight most obviously - and that's assuming Emily Upjohn doesn't just go and win again (the eye was taken by the Musidora score, though I'm yet to be convinced by the substance of the form).
These are all "well found", in the vogue parlance, in the betting. A couple of darker fillies perhaps worth a second glance are Tranquil Lady and Moon De Vega.
Tranquil Lady is trained by an O'Brien, Joseph to be precise. She's a daughter of Australia, himself a son of Galileo (and out of Ouija Board, champion-making material right there); and is a half-sister to last week's Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup third, State Of Rest. That one, by Starspangledbanner, was keeping on at the finish over 1m3f. This one, more stoutly bred on the paternal side, did her best work late when taking the Group 3 Blue Wind Stakes at Naas three weeks ago.
It's hard at this stage to know what she beat that day, but she was one of four horses priced 10/3 or shorter, the other trio all coming into the race unbeaten in either one or two starts. Tranquil Lady won by four easy lengths, but that's not all. As the result shows, her rivals were shouting "wait for me" from a fair way out: it is uncommon to see such margins between all runners in a small field race. The winner might just be under-rated.
More speculative again is Moon De Vega, trained by dual Oaks-winning trainer, Ralph 'Raif' Beckett. She is a lightly raced daughter of - you're ahead of me, aren't you? - Lope De Vega, out of an Azamour mare. Lope De Vega wouldn't be an obvious stamina influence, or so I thought, but Profiler tells me she has legit prospects of getting home:
Moon's mum, Lunesque, won at 1m3f and the Azamour damsire influence adds further ballast to this one's stamina case. The next question then is, is she remotely good enough? Well, Beckett knows this gig well enough and I thought the metaphorical hat of his Prosperous Voyage - staying on second in the 1000 Guineas - might have been thrown into the ring (in spite of a dubious pedigree for the task); so the fact he opted for MdV is a small positive to my eye.
Moon De Vega took her time to get the hang of the racing game last term: after two fluffed starts where she ran on with promise on both occasions, she made it third time lucky in a Donny maiden. On her sole 2022 spin, Moon De Vega was fourth in the Cheshire Oaks, earning the following in running comment:
The sectional chart illustrates this better. She's the darker green line:
See how she was making a stronger move than the winner, Thoughts Of June, before getting totally stopped in her run - actually having to take back off heels and swerve a filly cutting in front of her - and was finishing like she had plenty more to offer. Thoughts Of June, trained by Aidan O'Brien and a daughter of Galileo, also has a powerful profile in the context of this piece, but she controlled the pace at Chester and seemed all out at the finish. Still, she's 20/1 and will probably offer the proverbial bold sight in the early skirmishes.
Derby Profile Possibles
Meanwhile, in Saturday's Cazoo Derby (whichever genius came up with "Cazoo, yeah you can", I hope they were handsomely rewarded. Ahem), Desert Crown looks a highly credible heir apparent and, like Emily U the day before, may just be too good. But he's inexperienced and a heck of a skinny price for all that he's everyone's most likely winner.
The first five in the market as I write are either sons or grandsons of Galileo, with rising stars of the stallion ranks such as Ulysses (Piz Badile) linking up with more established producers like Teofilo (Nations Pride) and Nathaniel (Desert Crown). Stone Age and Changingoftheguard, as well as Star Of India, are all by Galileo himself, and then there's the Frankel's, Westover and Nahanni. Bloomin' 'eck!
It's a little harder than in the fillies' race to envisage a world in which one of those regally-bred equines towards the head of the market is not first past the post; but there may still be a tolerable return for a well-crafted risk/reward place play.
For all that I expect Ralph's Westover to take a large stride forward from his all out Sandown trial score, it still probably won't be enough. And, though Star Of India, winner of the Dee Stakes, is not bereft of a chance, it is a long time since Kris Kin (2003) and Oath (1999) did the Dee-Derby double for those legends of the game, Sir Michael and Sir Henry.
A horse I'm drawn to even though he may end up hopelessly outclassed is Eydon. As I mentioned when I flagged him up in this sectional Clock Watcher piece in January, he's by the uber-unfashionable sire, Olden Times, whose last noteworthy winners were in Cup races and trained by the late John Dunlop! Stay with me for a moment, though, because Eydon was fourth in the 2000 Guineas, a test surely on the rapid side for one of his breeding - as well as Olden Times, he's third generation Galileo as his damsire is Frankel. In fact, he was dropping back in trip for the Guineas having lagged up in the Feilden Stakes over nine furlongs the time before. His Guineas in running comment concluded, "kept on inside final furlong".
Both the Oaks and Derby markets are characterised by strong favourites bearing unblemished upwardly mobile credentials, and there might be a case to crash them together in a lazy double: there are plenty of less appealing 9/2 shots than that, and it at least offers a plausible saver against which to take a more ambitious swing.
In that spirit, I've backed Tranquil Lady at 14/1 and Moon De Vega at 33/1, both in the Oaks, each way for smallish (relative, always relative) stakes. And, as soon as yer man Roger gives the go ahead, I'll be lobbing the Derby Hail Mary in the direction of 33/1 Eydon, whose pedigree suggests his trainer ought to have more faith in his staying power (Mr V, naturally, knows more than thee, and way more than me, however). Of course, Eydon's price may shorten once his race target is known, but he'll surely still be 25/1 if lining up and could be longer on the morning of the race, depending on who stands firm on declaration day (Thursday).
Whatever you're backing, good luck and here's hoping for two exciting races on the helter-skelter Epsom cambers this weekend.
Matt
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Masar.jpg320681Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2022-05-30 18:33:452022-05-30 19:44:00Derby and Oaks 2022 Preview
They descended on Leicester racecourse that October Monday afternoon in their droves, writes Tony Stafford. I arrived in the smooth-riding Mercedes driven by Bryn Crossley – incidentally, for one season, “my” project as we pieced together an apprentices’ title. But that was years before.
Now I was observer on the trip up from Newmarket on the day that Lester Piggott, newly out of prison after being found guilty of tax offences, was back in the saddle with three rides.
He was a fortnight short of his 55th birthday and I was travelling along to get the inside story for the Daily Telegraph. Leicester was what it was all about, but the three rides produced no wins, the nearest a short-head second place on Henry Cecil’s Lupescu for the pair’s great friend, Charles St George.
Another of his rides was on the John Jenkins-trained Balasani in a mile-and-a-half handicap in which he was a disappointing favourite. Owned by my friend Mark Smith, although he was not known to me at the time, Balasani was to bring Mark a big win in the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham a few years later after transferring to the care of Martin Pipe.
Pragmatic as ever, and aware there would be a scrum after his final mount of the day, Lester asked Bryn to give me the keys and said: “Bring the car round by the exit ten minutes before my last ride.”
I got to the car park in plenty of time, but having opened the driver’s door, I was confronted by a space that had been occupied by a 7st7lb waif, the steering wheel maybe two inches away from the seat. Add maybe another ten stone, you might have been close. But then there was the issue of how to move it forward.
I remember even now the sensation of sweat trickling down my back in my anxiety. Which button do you press to move the seat? It seemed like ages, but eventually my random and increasingly panic-stricken efforts from outside paid off and the seat glided forward.
Then all that was needed was to switch on. I did. Nothing! Looked for a manual – none to be seen. Tried again and all the while the cacophony from the track as that last race in which Lester was riding came full volume to my ears, drowning out any other sound. Then, suddenly, as they passed the post there was silence, and I could just discern the quietest hint of an engine purring that had ever befallen my ears.
I was off. I belted round to the gate – the crowd was already dispersing – and they caught up Lester and Bryn in their path on the way. Without hesitating, he jumped in the car, saying: “Close the windows”, and at my suggestion that he might want to speak to Graham Rock, sadly passed from us some time after, he uttered a word inappropriate for the occasion but which left no confusion as to his answer.
We high-tailed it out of there, me relishing my job as relief driver, but as we approached a service station just going out of Oadby, he said: “Pull over, Bryn’ll drive!”
As the story had not materialised, Lester suggested on the way back to Newmarket that I might like to travel down to Chepstow the following day. I would drive up to the house in Hamilton Road, from there we would go to the July racecourse, catch a flight to Badminton and from there take a taxi to Chepstow.
I was pleased to come on that leg of the comeback as the best chance was a horse his wife Susan trained for Henryk De Kwiatkowski, a man I had known for eight years since meeting him at Keeneland for the July Sales. I introduced him later to Jim Bolger and he sent him some nice horses to train including the fast filly, Polonia.
The horse that was running at Chepstow was called Nicholas, named after one of his sons and the colt was by De Kwiatkowski’s brilliant stallion Danzig out of Lulu Mon Amour, Lulu being one of the polo-playing aircraft magnate’s daughters.
Nicholas duly won and later won in Group company in Europe, becoming a minor stallion. The journey back was in sharp contrast to the day before and we hatched a plan to tell his own story of the comeback to the Daily Telegraph readers.
In those days, getting words from journalists to the printers for setting required an intermediary stage. These were the telephonists, who listened to your dictated offering, typed them up and, after they were put into type, another layer – the “readers” – would then check the spelling of the typesetters. Basically, we were only able to intervene if a major mistake had been perpetrated at one of the various stages.
The typists and readers were in the same union and their jobs were rigidly and jealously guarded. Anyway, I was lucky to get one of the best of the bunch at the time and while she waited for each phrase, originated by Lester and relayed by me, he got annoyed.
“Give me the phone,” he ordered, and, to be fair, on finishing off his tale of how proud he was to show that people in their mid-50’s could still have a lot to offer, and how he was hoping it would be an example to them, he was brief, to the point and very humble.
I felt humble when upon writing The Little Black Racing Book a few years later, Lester generously supplied the foreword, and the next edition, this time with a Daily Telegraph title, had Henry Cecil’s endorsement.
Now 31 and a half years after the events at Leicester and Chepstow, Lester is no more; and neither is Bryn Crossley or, of course, Sir Henry. I can confess that, more than once, the nightmare of that impossible to move seat and seemingly dead engine have come back to haunt me.
*
Nine Derby wins starting from 1954 and Never Say Die when he was just 18 wove a fabric with the great race for almost 30 years. His riding career, which started with a winner aged 12 on The Chase at Haydock in 1950, lasted for around 45 years. After the initial comeback, which we learned over time had been simply designed to show Vincent O’Brien, his greatest fan, that he was still the man to ride a fancied horse at the Breeders’ Cup later that month, he duly moved into the realms of fantasy.
Here I interject, an “amusing?”, nay embarrassing, headline put up in the Press Association racing office in Fleet Street by the then Assistant Racing Editor, a few years after I’d left the place. George Hill was in the room that morning and he was proudly shown the offering. “Never Say Die – but he did!” How awful! I had not heard of Lester’s passing until a text from George yesterday 47 years after its forerunner. “Never Say Die – but he did!” To think he waited all those years!
But to return to Lester’s most unlikely triumph. On Royal Academy, he won the Mile with a most amazing run from the back of the field, at Belmont Park, at a time when the Vincent O’Brien magic was to some degree wearing a little thin. This was the time when the Robert Sangster/O’Brien/John Magnier initial era of international thoroughbred dominance had been gently declining as fellow investors like Danny Schwartz withdrew their funds, and the money and competition from ruling families from the Middle East took full effect.
As an attempt to replace their buying power at the sales, Vincent headed up the formation of Classic Thoroughbreds, the theory being that Irish racing fans might well be tempted into joining the most successful man in thoroughbred history. He would train great horses and continue to win the world’s most important races as he had been for decades.
They had some initial success in raising significant capital and Vincent went all out to land the Nijinsky colt out of Crimson Saint at the 1988 Keeneland Sales. He was Vincent’s pick of that sale and he thought he could be a re-embodiment of Nijinsky himself, the most recent winner of the UK Triple Crown, in 1970 and, 52 years later, still the most recent. Nijinsky had been ridden in all his UK races by Piggott and O’Brien was determined to get the colt for his new project. <Incidentally, Nijinsky’s Derby was the first I saw in person and the image of his beating the French star, Gyr, is also still engraved on the memory.>
In the end, having won the July Cup that year while Lester was still out of the picture, Vincent’s star buy was on the way to justifying expectations and, after the Breeders’ Cup triumph, he went off to be a stallion with Coolmore, first in the US and then later in Australia where he died in 2002. Classic Thoroughbreds’ management team soon found that trying to keep thousands of small shareholders happy as against five or six very rich men in the old days proved almost impossible, but anyone that did participate in that epic win in the US, will never have forgotten it.
Nobody but Lester could have done it. The sheer will to win for this singular man can never have been matched, certainly not until Tony McCoy came along. But I bet even AP never had the cheek to pinch rides in big races off his pals in the way Lester did. In the week of the Derby, his loss to the game is even more poignant.
Many people in racing knew him better than me, but I have loads of happy memories of Lester and, especially, his almost girlish giggle when recalling a misfortune that befell one of his friends. Priceless and, until yesterday, ageless. But the memories will always be just that.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/lesterpiggott.jpg320830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-05-29 22:21:092022-05-29 22:21:09Monday Musings: Ode to Lester
In this article I will be looking from a different angle at run style bias, which regular readers will know is an area of research in which I have a deep interest, writes Dave Renham. As I have discussed in previous articles on the subject, knowing how a race is likely to play out in terms of a potential running style angle is useful for us as punters. It might point us in the direction of a value bet or, just as importantly, help us swerve a losing bet that we would have otherwise backed had we not realised there was a negative in terms of run style.
I have written several run style articles to date on Geegeez covering numerous angles, but as yet I have not looked at trainers in any depth. This article, then, will start to address that omission as I will look at some general stats for trainer regarding the run styles of their horses.
The reason I have decided to look at trainer data is that a good proportion of handlers will tell their jockeys how they would like them to position their horses early in the race as part of their general instructions; hence past trainer run style data could be informative.
I have looked at eight calendar years' worth of data (2014 to 2021) including both turf and all weather racing in the UK. As a starting point I have looked at all races (handicaps and non handicaps) with six or more runners (all distances).
Before delving into the nitty gritty, for new readers especially, allow me to explain what is meant by run style. Essentially, run style is the position a horse takes up early on in the race, normally within the first furlong, which often defines its running preference. geegeez.co.uk has created some powerful resources to look at run style in the Tools tab. Specifically, either the Pace Analyser or the Query Tool can be used to do this type of research. Running style is often linked with pace because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Thus, for many, the words run style and pace are synonymous.
The stats I am using for this piece are based on the site’s pace / run style data. These data on Geegeez are split into four sections – Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score assigned to each section. These are really helpful as you can drill down into them to help build a picture of how important run style can be.
Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:
Led– horses that lead early, horses that dispute the early lead. I refer to the early leader as the front runner;
Prominent– horses that lie up close to the pace just behind the leader(s);
Mid Division – horses that race mid pack or just behind the mid-point;
Held Up – horses that are held up at, or near the back of the field.
Which trainers' horses lead early the most?
As a starting point let us see which trainers saw their horses take the early lead the most (in % terms). I have included trainers who have had at least 200 runners over this 8-year period:
As a useful comparison, the average percentage of all horses that lead, or share the lead, early is around 13.2%. The trainers with the highest percentages are leading up to and more than twice as frequently as average and, as we've previously established, an early lead is a general advantage; so these men and women are definitely worthy of further investigation. Let's consider some of them.
Eric Alston
Eric Alston trains a smallish string near Preston, Lancashire. His breakdown in terms of percentage of run style across all four run styles looks like this:
We can see Alston is a big fan of horses running close to or up with the pace – over 70% of all his runners have either led or raced prominently. To show how unusual this is let us review Alston’s figures against the overall numbers for all trainers:
There is a clear disparity here, with only 20.3% of Alston's runners having been held up, compared with 36.6% for trainers generally.
Being handily placed is all well and good, but only if horses are capable of winning from there. Alston’s front runners have done well when fancied, generally if they have been in the top six in the betting. We might expect fancied runners to fare best, of course, as a general rule of thumb. Below is a breakdown of Alston's front running performance by odds rank:
As can be seen from the table above, just two wins from 96 runners were when his front runners have been ranked 7th or higher in the betting market.
The final Alston stat I wish to share in this article is his record with front runners in 5f races. He has an extremely good record as you can see:
More than one in four of Eric's five furlong front runners have won which is a very positive situation. Of course, we know that we cannot easily predict front runners pre-race but we also know that this trainer's horses typically run from the front - and, further, we have the excellent Geegeez Gold pace maps to show how much contention there might be for the early lead - so it's perfectly possible to find likely front runners most of the time. Racing, and betting on it, is an inexact science, as we all know.
Charlie & Mark Johnston
Mark Johnston now shares the licence with his son Charlie, a partnership which started on Jan 1st 2022. So, when using Geegeez’s Query Tool for races before 2022, you need to remember to include M Johnston. Firstly, in relation to this powerhouse yard, let's take a look at the breakdown in terms of percentage of runners across all four run styles:
There's a very similar profile to our first trainer, but with a slightly higher combined percentage for front runners and prominent racers as a single group. No fewer than 73% of all Johnston runners showed one of those two run styles in 6+ runner races over an eight year period! The following table, taken from the Pace Score section on the Query Tool, shows perhaps why the Johnston stable tend not to hold their runners up:
Hold up horses have been successful for the Johnston team just 6% of the time, with losses equating to a huge 60p in the £1. Returns drop steadily from top to bottom as you can see.
Below is a breakdown of front runner performance by track for the Johnstons. As can be seen, there is a big difference when we compare the courses at the top of the table with those at the bottom:
No surprises to see Ascot and Newcastle low down, with neither course particularly suiting front runners. Thirsk at the bottom is a surprise, however, although only 30 runners is a smallish sample and hence the figures may be skewed a little. There are some very strong figures at the top of the table: if a potential Johnston front runner appears at any of Beverley, Southwell, Brighton, Catterick and Carlisle we need to take note! [N.B. Southwell performance was based on the previous fibresand surface, so a degree of caution is advised on the new tapeta layout for now]
Tom Dascombe
A quarter of Tom Dascombe’s runners took the early lead in the study period and the first table to share illustrates the difference in success for these early leaders by gender:
In general male horses slightly outperform female ones when it comes to front running stats but the difference is marginal. However, this is a significant difference, which is hard to explain without knowing whether there are any idiosyncrasies when it comes to training fillies. The prices of the male runners were a bit shorter on average, but not enough to make such a big difference to the bottom line. It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues in the coming years, especially with Dascombe having relocated from his Cheshire yard and essentially restarted in Lambourn.
Looking at Dascombe front runners broken down by age we see something interesting when examining their strike rates:
2yos have the best strike rate by some margin. Considering how inexperienced 2yos are this is an impressive performance. When we analyse what would have happened if we had backed all Dascombe front runners, the 2yos would have produced the best returns across the age groups:
Find a Dascombe 2yo that will take the early lead and the stats are nicely in our favour, such runners having returned just over 38p in the £.
Before moving on, it is also worth noting that Dascombe’s front runners across all age groups have performed exceptionally well in sprints with a 23.2% win SR% for races from 5f to 6f; for 7f or further the win percentage diminishes to 14.8%. That's still pretty good considering the shorter the distance the easier it is to lead from pillar to post.
Which trainers' horses lead early the least?
Not all trainers are keen for their runners to take an early lead. Below is a list of the trainers with the lowest percentages in terms of horses that led early in UK flat races of six or more runners between 2014 and 2021:
If you are looking for a front runner, it is unlikely to come from any of these stables.
Trainer Run Style Averages
In order to give us a more complete picture, I have produced some trainer pace / run style averages, using exactly the same methodology that I have previously created course and jockey pace / run style averages in the past. I simply add up the Geegeez pace points for a particular trainer and divide it by the number of runners. The higher the average the more prominent the trainer’s horses tend to race. I have also not only given each trainer an overall pace average, but separate non-handicap and handicap averages, too. To qualify for the list, trainers needed to have had saddled at least at least 100 horses in non-handicaps and 150 in handicaps. As a baseline figure, it is worth knowing that the average pace / run style average for all trainers stands at 2.23.
Most trainers have similar figures but a few - such as Shaun Harris, Sir Mark Prescott, Ed De Giles, Mark Walford, Neil Mulholland, and Christine Dunnett - demonstrate quite a difference between the two. Go figure! 😉 The right hand column shows the difference in average run style score between non-handicap and handicap runners. A negative score implies trainers whose horses that are campaigned more forwardly in handicap races than non-handicaps (say, while working towards an opening rating, for example)...
The list below is extensive!
How, or indeed if, one uses the information in this article to aid personal betting is, naturally, down to the individual; for me, as someone who is often looking to predict the front runner in a race, this trainer run style data is extremely informative. Previous run style articles have noted that huge profits could be made at certain distances if you could consistently predict the horse that is going to take the early lead. Adding trainer data to other factors such as the recent run style profile of each horse, a longer term horse run style profile, the draw and the jockey will all assist in building up the best pace and positioning profile of a race that we can.
In the next article in this series I will delve deeper into trainer run style data. Until then, thanks for reading.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/charlie_mark_johnston_run_style_trainers.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2022-05-25 09:09:192022-05-30 09:09:59Trainers and Run Style: Part 1
He might have got the 2,000 Guineas the wrong way round for UK punters, but Native Trail’s defeat by stable-mate Coroebus left the way clear for the vanquished Newmarket favourite to gain his own piece of Classic hardware at The Curragh on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford.
In between, of course, Charlie Appleby, who trains both colts for Godolphin, also stopped off in France. There, he saddled Modern Games, the third of his elite three-year-old milers, to annex the Poule d’Essai Des Poulains and become the first trainer to win all three one-mile colts’ Classics in the same season.
Each is very talented and while for a time it looked as though Native Trail might have to be fully extended in the Irish “2,000”, he was well on top, going away steadily, at the finish. He beat two longshots, Sheila Lavery’s New Energy, almost two lengths behind, and Imperial Fighter (28/1), who was three-quarters of a length further back in third for Andrew Balding.
One trainer who would have been heartened by the result was William Knight, who went into the 2,000 at his home course of Newmarket with high hopes for the previously unbeaten Checkandchallenge. His colt made his move at the same time as William Buick on Native Trail – on the opposite (stands) side of the course to Coroebus – and got squeezed out by him and then hampered as he dropped into the pursuing pack.
He had beaten Imperial Fighter previously at Newcastle and Saturday’s result would have encouraged Knight in advance of Checkandchallenge’s likely target of the Jersey Stakes over a furlong shorter at Royal Ascot.
Appleby has only the three horses entered in the St James’s Palace Stakes on June 14, the first day of Royal Ascot, and the Newmarket 2,000 Guineas winner is usually the prime contender for that Group 1 prize for the colts. With the other pair running (and winning) more recently, one would expect Coroebus to be the one to take his chance.
No doubt their trainer will have more than a passing interest in the meeting’s opening contest where Baaeed transports his unbeaten record to the Queen Anne Stakes for trainer William Haggas and owner, the Shadwell Estate Company. Interviewed during a string of winners from his stable earlier in the week, Haggas, quite realistically talking about his present form and how that will go forward to the biggest meetings, simply said: “They might not be in that form then!”
Saturday proved a rare blank but a Group 1 international double yesterday with Alenquer in the Tattersalls Gold Cup on The Curragh and Maljoom in the Mehl-Mulhens-Rennen (German 2,000 Guineas) in Cologne brought his tally over the past fortnight to 17 winners.
This was a third success in a row for the unbeaten Maljoom, who made his debut only two months ago. The unbeaten Caravaggio colt may carry Ahmed Al-Maktoum’s colours in the St James’s Palace Stakes.
I enjoyed a nice chat during the sales at Newmarket earlier this year with Dermot Weld, one of the very senior Irish trainers but still one to target the big prizes over jumps as well as on the flat. Yesterday, in the Irish 1,000 Guineas, his filly Homeless Songs sprinted away from the Aidan O’Brien pair Tuesday, the favourite, and Concert Hall, winning by five-and-a-half lengths with the rest trailing way behind.
As the field approached the last two furlongs, Chris Hayes on the Weld filly could be seen coasting along on the outside and the daughter of Frankel, out of a Dubawi mare, accelerated from there and won pulling the proverbial cart.
Whatever preconceptions might be held by connections of Emily Upjohn, they will not be reassured unless Dermot decides not to send his filly to Epsom. Here was a performance to match that of Love in the same Classic race two years earlier although, to be fair, Love had already won the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket.
Love clearly made spectacular progress from two to three and Homeless Songs is making similar strides. Seven weeks ago she beat Agartha, a filly she also overcame when making a winning debut last year, by a length. Yesterday, the margin to the fifth-placed Joseph O’Brien filly was more than six lengths.
Love of course won by nine lengths at Epsom and last year’s Ballydoyle winner Snowfall extended that to a record 16 lengths. It would need her owners, the Moyglare Stud Farm, to fork out the supplementary fee to allow her to run. Her near-at-hand entries are the seven-furlong Ballychorus Stakes on June 4 and the Coronation Stakes over a mile at Royal Ascot.
Dermot seems to be treating her as a miler, but the sign that that might be a moving feast is suggested by later entries in the ten-furlong Pretty Polly and eventually at last over a mile-and-a-half in the Irish Oaks.
There was never a moment to question the veracity of Homeless Songs’ victory but there was plenty of questioning of the York stewards on Saturday when they allowed Believe In Love to keep the Group 3 Bronte Stakes after she weaved across causing interference to a couple of her rivals.
Inside the last two furlongs, Believe In Love, who at that point was on the inside of the whole field in the middle of the wide expanse of York, started to edge to her right. Admittedly Ray Dawson had his whip in his right hand, but when his mount continued to veer over, she was causing considerable discomfort to Ed Walker’s Glenartney who was carried all the way to right under the stands rails.
The measure of the stewards’ disapproval of Dawson’s ride – he didn’t take any corrective measure, say, stopping using his whip and grabbing hold of his mount’s reins to try to arrest the drift – was the eight-day ban he received.
Because the winning margin over strong-finishing runner-up Urban Artist was just over a length, the verdict was allowed to stand, but Believe In Love’s errant course gave Glenartney, who did well in the circumstances to finish third, no chance to win the race so badly was she discomfited.
Both Walker and Urban Artist’s trainer Hughie Morrison were considering appealing the result – and with £51k rather than £19k for second and £9k for third at stake, you can understand their irritation, not least with the kudos of a Group 3 win on the board for an older staying filly being denied them.
This rule of thumb whereby any interference in the case of a win of more than a neck is not normally reversed is like many issues in racing, a flawed convention. I still would prefer in the case of a horse badly interfered with by another, the offender should be placed behind the horse to which it caused that interference.
If that means, as in this case, the runner-up getting the prize, too bad. Without the ground towards the rails where she raced being badly compromised by the antics of the winner, Urban Artist could have won the race judged on how she finished once off the rail and getting a little clear running room for the last half furlong.
*
When Torquator Tasso won last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, it woke up many people to the talents of German horses and horsemen. The five-year-old is among the entries for this year’s Arc – yes, they’re out already! He will begin his season with runs at Baden-Baden a week today and then at Hamburg during the weekend of the German Derby according to his trainer, Marcel Weiss.
Meanwhile, yesterday in Rome at the Cappannelle, another talented German trainer, Markus Klug, sent Ardakan, a son of Reliable Man, to win the Derby Italiano and a prize of £244k. There was no English challenge for a race which in the past was always a target for horses perceived to be just short of winning at Epsom. Maybe we’ll be seeing him over here later in the year, or perhaps supplemented for the Arc.
In this week's episode, we look at the value of identifying horses that have run well from a poor draw; and how to spot these horses and add them to your Geegeez Tracker.
00:00 Intro
04:20 Looking at historical races
13:15 How to research negative draw bias using QT
15:00 Example 1
18:00 Adding to Tracker
22:20 Example 2
24:45 Example 3
27:45 Video Recap
In this article I will discuss another angle that can be deployed in our betting, and that is negative draw bias, writes Dave Renham. I think the phrase was coined in the late '90s by Russell Clarke when he used to write regularly in betting magazines. [He has since contributed an excellent eight part series on the betting markets here on geegeez, which can be read here].
What is negative draw bias?
Negative draw bias highlights a horse or horses that have run well from a poor draw and, hence, in theory have run much better than their finishing position may have initially indicated. From there, one would potentially have a ‘horse to follow’ and worth backing soon afterwards when granted a more favourable position in the starting gates.
As with many things in racing, negative draw bias is not quite as simple as it sounds. There are potential issues with this idea – for example, once we have a ‘horse to follow’ we have the tricky decision of how long to continue supporting the horse in the future? One run? Two? Until it wins? What if it loses four or five races? There clearly is no ‘correct’ answer’ to this question.
We also need to think about under what circumstances we back the horse. Should we back it blindly? Or only under similar conditions? What if it is drawn poorly again the next few times it races?
A third question to consider is, "can we be completely sure the horse has actually run well against a draw bias?" If the horse has been beaten a neck over 5f at Chester from stall 14 then we can be as good as 100% certain. However, generally, races - especially big field affairs on a straight course - where one side of the draw seems to be strongly advantaged over the other. There is a case to say that biases that occur like this can be down to a pace bias (i.e. the fast horses were all congregated on one side of the track and therefore made that 'mini race' quicker) than a draw bias but, regardless of which, it is likely some form of ‘bias’ is in play.
Examples of negative draw bias
It's time to look at some examples of negative draw bias in action. I want to look first at a race at York over the 1 mile trip. This course and distance is in 7th position in my top 10 draw bias courses which I looked at in a previous article with low draws holding an edge over middle draws, and high draws at a big disadvantage. The race was run at the backend of 2021:
This race had a maximum field of 20 and, as can be seen, three of the five lowest draws filled the top three positions. Two middle draws in 9 and 12 came 4th and 5th and then the best of the high draws, Another Batt (drawn 20) and Ouzo (19) came 6th and 7th. This looks a solid example of Another Batt and Ouzo running well considering their negative draws. In fact, draws 19 and 20 are the worst of the lot being stuck ‘out in the car park’.
From a negative draw bias perspective, both Another Batt and Ouzo look to be horses to follow. So how did they fare after this good run? Well, next time out Another Batt went on to win at Donny:
He was joint favourite that next day, so clearly others noticed the good run at York from a poor draw. Even so, he won fairly comfortably and 9/2 are decent enough odds. Ouzo, meanwhile, has yet to run since but may be worth noting. He was bought for 62,000 guineas in the Newmarket Autumn sale and has moved to Jamie Osborne's stable.
Now, of course not all good runs from poor draws will produce next time out winners. So this goes back to the earlier question about what to do when you find one of these negative draw bias horses, and for how long do we support it, and under what conditions? I said earlier that there is no ‘correct’ answer. What we decide will simply be down to personal preference. From my perspective I tend to keep an eye on these horses for three or four more runs. That does not mean I will back them every time and, once they have won, I tend to cross them off my list. Why three or four runs?
Well, as mentioned, conditions in subsequent races will influence their chances. They may been drawn badly again; they may be in a highly competitive 20-runner race; the going may not ideal, and so on. Also, if they do not return to the track relatively quickly, as in the case of Ouzo, then that gives another potential cause for concern. So there are many factors that will make me think twice about backing the qualifying horse, even though sometimes I will miss a good winner by being more selective.
A system from the '90s
There is another reason I will keep the horses on my radar for a few subsequent runs and that is down to a system I used back in the 1990s. This system was based on negative draw bias and the optimum strategy for this particular approach was backing such runners on their next three starts, but stopping if/when the horse was a winner. It was very successful for a four or five year period, and it made me realise that these types of horses should not be immediately discarded if they ran poorly in the race following their negative draw bias run.
I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that big field races on straight courses can produce what seems to be a draw bias but may actually be a pace bias (which, I guess, is a sort of moveable draw bias). Ascot is one such course where this happens on a fairly regular basis. A good example can be seen in the Royal Hunt Cup of 2020:
High draws dominated this race as you can see in the result above. Maydanny, who finished 7th, was the only low drawn horse to finish in the first eight. Now normally your eye would not be drawn (excuse the pun) to a horse that had finished outside the top six. However, there clearly was a bias occurring here, and Maydanny was first home on the disadvantaged far side.
Maydanny did not follow the script next time when beaten into fifth as an odds on favourite. However, on his second subsequent run this happened:
From a plum draw (for a front-running type) in stall 1, he destroyed an 18-runner field at Goodwood, winning by five lengths at odds of 5/1.
Looking back to the Royal Hunt Cup, the in-running comments were insightful, too. Maydanny was the only horse to race on the far side out of the first eight finishers. Therefore, on a straight course especially, it is a good idea to look at the race comments in conjunction with the draw positions for the first few runners home in a race.
Here is another example, where I would argue the race comments are more clear-cut than the draw numbers. The first five home in the Britannia handicap at Royal Ascot in 2021 were as follows:
If we purely look at the numerical draw positions of the first five finishers, we can see that higher draws seem to have been favoured, but on first glance we may not think the draw bias was hugely significant. It may be a different matter if four of the first five home had been drawn 24 or higher and the other runner had been drawn 1; the numbers are shouting out as us in a case like that. However, if we read the ‘in running’ comments for this race we can see that fourth-placed Dubai Honour was the only one of the first five to race on the far side. The other four raced near side. This fact coupled with the draw positions make this look like a good run from a poor draw.
Dubai Honour was a horse that we could have added to our negative draw bias list and if we did, he would have rewarded our faith next time out, getting up to win by a head at 11/2. Indeed, he subsequently won a pair of Group 2's in France before running second in the Group 1 Champion Stakes back at Ascot on British Champions Day!
The next two home on the far side were Mithras (unraced afterwards in UK, renamed Turin Redsun and now racing in Hong Kong) and Qaader, who won at 8/1 two starts later.
Identifying negative draw bias horses (and a shortcut)
I have picked out three examples of negative draw bias but there are plenty more I could have shared with you. Not all will follow the winning script, but a reasonable proportion will win within three or four races.
Ultimately, to pick up on all potential negative draw bias qualifiers, we need to look at results on a daily basis and then keep a track of them, which can be done on Geegeez using the excellent Tracker tool. However, there is a possible shortcut for those of you who simply do not have the time to do that. It won’t likely be as accurate but it will be a quicker way to determine negative draw bias type selections.
Last time out (LTO) race was a handicap with 10+ runners
Horse must have been drawn 10 or higher LTO
Horse must have finished 2nd, 3rd, or 4th LTO
This system is then to be used where the LTO course and distance was one of the following:
Now, for the eagle eyed reader, you may have noticed that my top 10 draw biased courses from 2016 to 2021 are in the list. In addition there are some of the 'near misses' I published with that top 10, as well as Dundalk over 5f. It is very difficult to win from stall 10 or higher at any of these course/distance combinations which is why I chose them.
I looked at results going right back to 2009 – essentially this was to get a bigger individual sample for each course and distance. Combining all of the qualifiers from all of those courses in their next starts we get these bottom line figures:
Considering this is a very raw type of system these combined results are impressive. It should be noted that I chose the course and distances before I checked the results so there is no back fitting here. Indeed, five of the 14 made a loss, so I could easily have manipulated the stats by ignoring those courses to improve matters – but that is not my style.
For the record, those that made a loss were horses that ran last time out at Chester 7f, Kempton 6f, Goodwood 7f, Goodwood 1m and Pontefract 1m. The other nine combinations were all profitable.
I then thought it would be a good idea to compare the strike rates of the negative draw bias system horses with ALL horses that finished 2nd, 3rd, or 4th last time out in 10+ runner handicaps (2009-2021); not just the win strike rate, but the placed strike rate as well (placed SR% being win and placed runners combined). Here is the comparison:
A better absolute strike rate of nearly 2% in terms of wins, which is almost 14% better comparatively; while the placed results show a similar pattern:
Over 3% absolute difference in the placed strike rates, and an 8% comparative improvement. It's satisfying to see increased strike rates in both groups, which adds confidence to the basic system concept and the results thereof.
This system approach should not be time consuming. There will be far fewer races to check over the course of a year compared with worrying about checking the results of all 10+ runner handicaps. Indeed you will only need to check the day’s results when one of these track and trip combo's has rnu a handicap with ten or more runners. Also the system is only concerned with the very next run which means once a horse has run again you simply strike it off the list.
Of course this method is easily adapted: for example, you may want to change last time out position of 2nd to 4th to a distance beaten figure (in lengths, or lengths per furlong - perhaps using the Geegeez Px coloured dots on the left side of the Full Form result rows); you may want to change draw 10 to draw 8; you may want to keep qualifying horses for more than one run, and so on. Ultimately, there is lots of scope to change the approach to suit your style.
Keep in mind (of course) that, as we know, a system is simply that – it is not a magic bullet and just because 2009 to 2021 produced a profit, it doesn’t mean results will continue to be positive in the future, or that there won't be losing runs. This system, however, does follow logical negative draw bias ideas so one would hope it has a sporting chance of repeating its past success in the near future at least.
I hope this article has sparked your interest in negative draw bias and please share your thoughts or personal experiences in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.
- DR
p.s. The recent Victoria Cup, again at Ascot, saw the highest three (out of 27!) stalls combine for a £5208.10 trifecta dividend - keep an eye out for draw bias angles, both positive and negative!
One early morning a few years ago in the days when I still bought a Racing Post rather than access the online version, my regular source did not have a copy, writes Tony Stafford. Not to be outdone I jumped in the car and made a stop at Tesco’s big store at Bromley-By-Bow in between Hackney Wick and Bow.
With only one till open I took my copy and, from memory, a BLT sandwich and went to pay. The senior lady with her full Cockney accent, looked and said: “Oh, you like racing? My grandson’s in racing. He’s a jockey. He’s Richard Kingscote!”
Now more normally you might expect to find grandparents of jockeys to have farms in Limerick or Wiltshire or to have ridden themselves. I doubt Grandma Kingscote – it could just as easily have been Piggott, Eddery or Buick but I think that unlikely - woke to the sounds of horses’ nostrils snorting in her early days which I guessed might have been, like mine, in the East End of London with bomb craters from World War II lingering still around every corner.
I mentioned that meeting to Richard soon after and wish I’d have gone into his heritage a little more. I bet granny wouldn’t have expected her grandson to have made the remarkable change in his source and scene of employment, so secure did the Michael Owen/Andrew Black/Tom Dascombe and Kingscote combination appear then and for a few years after.
Kingscote jumped first, moving south to pick up good rides from Newmarket stables, notably for Sir Michael Stoute, increasingly denied use of his long-term stable jockey Ryan Moore by his lucrative, Classic-bountiful Coolmore job.
Then Dascombe clearly got the tin-tack and he now operates with a team of 13 in Lambourn. Whether he can reinvigorate his career will be a serious challenge, though his interview on Luck On Sunday yesterday related that he’s up for it. All a jockey needs when forced to make a move is a saddle, a pair of boots, an agent and a car to take him to as many stables as he can to ride out and make an impression. Would-be trainers must (for starters) convince the BHA that they have the financial resources to set up and carry their (hopefully) growing business.
It helps if your dad was/is a trainer and he can help you along in the manner of a Crisford, Gosden, Johnston or even a Ferguson. So much more power then to the elbows of such as Boughey and Clover. George went close again yesterday when 1,000 Guineas heroine, Cachet, made a brave attempt to follow up in the French 1,000 at Longchamp, finishing second to the Mikel Delzangles-trained Mangoustine, ridden by the remarkable Gerald Mosse.
Half an hour later the Godolphin blue (Charlie Appleby brand) followed their Newmarket 2,000 one-two with Coroebus and Native Trail by sending out Modern Games under William Buick to win the counterpart French colts’ Classic.
Unraced since winning the hotly-contested Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar last November, the son of Dubawi came home strongly and adds his name to the already formidable team for the Boys in Blue in the major mile races.
They will still have to go some to match the year-older Baaeed in that division after the William Haggas four-year-old brought his tally to seven from seven when winning the Lockinge at Newbury. He started that career less than a year ago on the same course and looks set to be put right to the top of the official rankings after this display.
To be more accurate, Baaeed didn’t just win, he made mincemeat of a strong field of milers and the disdainful three-and-a-bit lengths by which he beat the Saeed Bin Suroor-trained runner-up Real World (a Coolmore-type sighter?) suggests even Classic form later in the season from the best of the younger generation will not be enough to stop him.
The big two power-houses are as strong as ever, but Baaeed’s trainer, William Haggas, is making ever more forceful strides in their pursuit and Baaeed was one of 13 winners for his Newmarket stable in the past fortnight. If you don’t enjoy backing short-priced favourites, never mind, just make sure you take your place early on day one at Royal Ascot when this potential world champion will be the stand-out in the Queen Anne Stakes.
But Richard Kingscote has matters more immediate on his mind after last week’s Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Dante Stakes at York. Riding Sir Michael Stoute’s Desert Crown on only his second racecourse appearance, he brought the Nathaniel colt home well clear of a strong field to clinch what is often the best of the Derby trials.
Ryan Moore was third in the race on the Galileo colt Bluegrass and that colt is sure to do better in time. They were split by the Johnstons’ Royal Patronage who had run a reasonable race in the 2,000 Guineas, not far behind the principals having attempted to force the pace.
When Nathaniel made his racecourse debut at the Newmarket July meeting in the evening maiden race also chosen by Sir Henry Cecil for Frankel, both colts being by Galileo, there was only a half length between them at the line.
Frankel never lost a race; Nathaniel did, but also won plenty, including the King George and Eclipse at Group 1 level. He has been a great servant to Newsells Park stud where his fee for 2022 was only £15,000 but one eternal distinction is that his daughter Enable was probably the best filly to race in Europe in this century.
Now he could be getting his first Derby winner with a Tattersalls Book 2 purchase, admittedly bought for the respectable figure of 280,000gns. How this year’s Book 2 catalogue will celebrate him, Derby success or not!
Desert Crown has been brought along with typical patience by Sir Michael, who has five Epsom Derby winners to his credit, the last three since he was honoured by his home country Barbados for services unconnected to his profession. Ryan Moore rode the last of them, Workforce, in 2010 and was also on the Aidan O’Brien winner Ruler Of The World three years later.
The Derby can often throw up unexpected winning jockeys and you only have to go back to last year when Adam Kirby was the popular beneficiary of William Buick’s decision to ride third-placed Hurricane Lane, leaving Kirby to fill in on easy winner, Adayar.
O’Brien and Charlie Appleby between them have won the last five editions of the Blue Riband and only once has the stable first string been on the right one. That was Buick on Masar in 2018. Ryan has had to watch on from behind as first Padraig Beggy (on Wings Of Eagles), Seamie Heffernan on Anthony Van Dyck and, most recently, Emmet McNamara (Serpentine) won the spoils.
To think that Beggy and McNamara together have ridden as many Epsom Derby winners as the flawless Ryan Moore. As I mentioned last week, Ryan’s riding has been exemplary this season and I think we can expect a ride of supreme skill on Stone Age on June 4.
I have no idea whether Richard Kingscote’s grandma remains in good health. I hope she does and, even more fervently, that she has been gathered up by all the excitement that Richard will almost certainly be on the favourite that day; even more so that she can be there, because I’d love to meet her again!
One horse I would hope turns up on that day is Saturday’s stylish Newmarket sprint winner, Dusky Lord, who came through the eye of the proverbial needle to win the finale after a six-month absence.
I was happy to be representing part-owner Jonathan Barnett and, given the way in which he came through to make it three wins from six, I think this previous Brighton winner could win the Dash, a race I believe Raymond Tooth should have won with Catfish ten years ago.
The fact this remains the fastest-ever electronically-timed five-furlong race is a major achievement for John Best, who saddled the 50/1 winner Stone Of Folca to record a time of 53.69 seconds, which has never been beaten. That works out as an average speed for the entire trip of 41.9 miles per hour.
Catfish stayed on strongly after a tardy start to finish third in the big field, beaten for second by Andrew Balding’s Desert Law. But when Mikael Barzalona returned, he said: “She was unlucky. My saddle slipped at the start and the way she finished if I could have ridden her properly, I’m certain she would have won.”
David Egan reckoned after Saturday that Dusky Lord definitely needed the outing after his six-month absence. Now the Dash is back as a 100 grand race with half of that going to the winning owners. That’s worth going for, don’t you agree Roger?
In this edition of Gold Nuggests, I'll focus on York's Dante meeting and, specifically, a few biases that often show themselves on the slightly quirkier than first meets the eye Knavesmire track.
The running order is as follows, so feel free to skip to the parts of interest to you:
00:00 Intro
00:40 New odds service
05:00 Course guides / familiarisation
08:15 York 1m4f Bias
09:40 York 6f Bias
13:00 York 1m Bias
15:45 York 7f Bias
Also, remember the little cog icon bottom right from which you can adjust the playback speed of my steady drawl!
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/goldnuggets.jpg320830Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2022-05-10 15:44:522022-05-10 15:44:52Gold Nuggets: York Biases
In the previous article I shared my personal views regarding some of the top draw biases in the UK and Ireland, focusing there specifically on the 10th ‘strongest’ to the 6th, writes Dave Renham. In this follow-up piece, I will reveal my top 5.
It’s important to say that these thoughts are mine and mine alone and, of course, there will be people who disagree with my order. That is how it should be; if we all had the same opinions as regards to horse racing it would be pretty boring! Also, how would we get an edge over other punters if we all thought the same?!
It was noted last time that just because a course and distance has a draw bias, there is no guarantee that the favoured section of the stalls will produce long term profits. Indeed, sometimes there may be value in the ‘worst’ section of the draw. This can happen when the market shortens up the better drawn horses too much. When this happens the prices of other runners get bigger to compensate. Ultimately a 3/1 shot will win more often than a 20/1 shot, but if 3/1 shots win 20 races in every 100, and a 20/1 shots wins 6 races in every 100 then you’d only make a profit on the horses priced 20/1. Successful betting is about value; backing horses that have a better chance of winning than their odds imply.
For each course and distance I will share the raw draw stats, and then dig deeper looking for other angles such as the going or when the number of runners gets close to the maximum. The draw stats data comes from the last six full flat seasons (2016 to 2021) and, as ever, the initial focus will be 8+ runner handicaps. The profit and loss figures are calculated to industry SP. I will also share Betfair SP figures when they make a significant difference. As with last time, as a bonus, I will share some ‘near misses’ that just failed to make the top 10. In fact, let’s start with those near misses:
Near Misses
Gowran Park 7f (good or firmer)
The first Irish course to be discussed is Gowran Park. This seven furlongs course and distance has shown a low bias for some time. More recently, ground staff at the track have introduced a false rail which may change things a little over time. At this point, it is too early to say how much of an affect it will have.
Let me first share the win percentages on all going for each third of the draw. Firstly a look at all races from 2016 to 2021:
Low draws have a definite edge during this overall time frame. They are drawn on the inside so no surprises there. This is not a huge bias, but it is significant. Here's what happens if we split this into 'three-yearly' chunks:
The more recent trio of seasons - the false rail was introduced in 2020 - does not seem to have affected the lower draws, but it seems that higher draws are now becoming more competitive against the middle. The PRB figures for each period give us more useful information:
These figures seem to re-affirm that low draws are enjoying the same sort of advantage they have in the past.
The bias, though, does seem to be stronger on better ground. Here are the splits for 8+ runner handicaps raced on good ground or firmer (2016-2021):
Horses drawn in the lowest stalls have won 50% of these races compared with just 13.9% for those drawn high. The place percentages show a very strong edge also, as do the A/E, IV and PRB figures.
Also going back further the 2009 to 2015 stats look as strong:
There is excellent correlation with the more recent data set which adds confidence to what we have uncovered so far.
It was noted in my previous piece that at some draw-biased courses exotic bets such as tricasts or forecasts can prove profitable. This is the case here, too. If you had permed the four lowest drawn horses in full cover tricasts you would have made a small profit of around 6p in the £. The tote trifecta variant would once again have been a far better option as you would have more than doubled your money! An ROI of 120% to be precise. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?
To conclude, Gowran Park was close to making the Top 10 and one could make a sound case for it actually being in there. For the Top 10, though, I wanted to stick to what I perceived to be the strongest pure biases without any extra considerations such as going.
Tipperary 5f
A second Irish course in the 'near miss' squad is Tipperary over 5f. The stats are shown below:
It is a small data set but all areas correlate strongly in terms of high draws having a good edge. The period 2009 to 2015 is equally supportive of high draws.
Clearly opportunities will be limited, but that is certainly a bias to be aware of.
Catterick 5f (good to soft or softer)
Catterick is final stop off on my 'near miss' list. When the going gets softer, higher draws start to take control. Here are the figures for races on good to soft or softer ground:
The reason high draws tend to do well is that on softer ground jockeys often make a beeline to the stands side rail which appears quicker than the far rail under these conditions. A good example of this was seen in the 15 runner 5f handicap on 26th October 2021:
On this occasion, the jockeys headed towards the near side and, as can be seen, five of the six highest drawn runners filled the first five places.
Looking at all the races run on good to soft or softer, the three highest drawn runners have all made blind profit to not only BSP, but industry SP as well.
These are excellent returns across the board. In addition, combining the three highest draws in £1 combination straight forecasts would have yielded a profit of £62.37 (ROI +31.5%). Tricasts / trifectas with the highest four draws combined also would have produced a profit.
Before moving on, it should be pointed out that the bias gets stronger as the going gets softer (soft or heavy ground), although sample is quite small:
So keep an eye on the weather before racing at Catterick. This draw bias to high stalls on good to soft or softer looks a very playable one.
From the near misses - drumroll, please - it’s time for the top five!
5th position – Goodwood 1m
Goodwood over a mile has long been considered a track and trip where draw bias can play a major role. The shame from a punting perspective is that there are very few qualifying races each year. Hence we have a small sample but one with a clear edge to lower draws:
Low draws have a positive edge in all categories and I now want to look at the individual stall positions and how they have fared:
Normally with small samples I tend not to look at individual draws / stalls, but these data set show a cut-off point at stall 5. Horses drawn 1 to 5 have won 18 races from 115 runners (SR 15.7%); horses drawn 6 or higher have won just five races from 181 runners (SR 2.8%). This strongly suggests that horses drawn 1 to 5 have been massively favoured.
To conclude, while there are not many qualifying races each year, clearly when there are they are definitely worth a few minutes of our time.
4th position – Goodwood 7f
We drop a furlong at Goodwood to see a similar low draw bias to the mile trip. One advantage of the 7f distance is there are many more races each year as these stats show:
We can see strong figures across the board here for low draws. This low draw bias has been evident at Goodwood for most of the last 30 years!
It is worth noting the bias has looked less strong in the most recent three seasons although the PRB figure is still 0.54 for low versus 0.44 for high during that time. That might be down to the fact that the going has been a bit softer in more recent seasons. In general, Goodwood biases over the years have been less prevalent on softer going. The stats back this up when we look at the good or firmer data from 2016 to 2021. Under faster conditions it can be seen that the low draw bias does seem to get stronger:
All categories (win%, place%, A/E, IV, PRB) see an improvement for low draws on better ground as compared with the 'all races' data; and, all categories deteriorate slightly for high draws.
In terms of wins, which essentially is key, the draw win percentages for each third on good ground or firmer can be nicely illustrated by the following pie chart:
Six in every 10 races have been won by the lowest third of the draw under these firmer going conditions.
The 7f bias also seems to strengthen as the field size increases. In fields of 14 or more runners (all going), the draw stats for each third read as follows:
Once again we see a 60% win strike rate for low draws, but higher draws perform very poorly. We have seen this before when analysing round course biases. In big fields high draws are likely forced wide meaning they have to run further. Alternatively they can track to the inside, but then they will be faced with several horses to pass in the straight potentially needing good luck in running. It should also be noted that tracking to the inside early on losing ground also. Goodwood has a camber in the straight off which many hard luck stories are founded.
In conclusion, Goodwood over 7f has traditionally seen lower draws having the advantage. This seems to get more potent on good ground or firmer, and when the field size gets to 14+. Unsurprisingly, combining firmer ground and a bigger field accentuates the low advantage and the high disadvantage:
3rd position – Pontefract 1m
Moving into the top 3 and we travel north to Pontefract and its 1 mile trip. This is another round course bias where low draws dominate:
This is a very strong bias but, as I noted in my first article in the series, punters and bookmakers alike are much more aware of the strength of the inside edge now. Consequently, prices on the lowest drawn horses have contracted considerably in recent years. Nevertheless, the two lowest stalls have both made a profit to SP (combined profit of 15p in the £, and 21p in the £ at BSP). This is due to the fact that the two lowest drawn runners have won a remarkable 31 races between them. That means nearly 44% of all races have been won by the two stalls closest to the inside rail.
Races with big fields are rare but when we get to 13+ runners the bias seems to strengthen further:
Yes, I appreciate the sample is only 18 races, but low draws have won or placed four times more often than high draws (31 to 8). This is an eye-catching stat, as is the 0.62 to 0.40 PRB advantage to low draws over high. I think one can be fairly confident the bias does indeed gain potency in big field races.
Moving onto ground conditions, and for races on soft or heavy going, low drawn runners have won 13 of the 22 races, with high draws claiming a single solitary score. Again it's quite a small sample but the trends are clear. A similar pattern can be seen from the data between 2009 and 2015.
Having reviewed all 71 handicap races over 1 mile with 8+ runners, I can report that the exotic bets have once again proved a winner. If you had backed the two lowest drawn horses in £1 reverse forecasts you would have earned a profit of £34.06 (ROI +19.9%). The reverse Tote Exacta returns were even better with £66.50 profit (ROI +46.8%). Perming the four lowest drawn runners in combination tricasts would have yielded a small 2.2% return, while the trifecta would have harvested a very impressive 52.8% return.
These types of bets are not for everyone and they come with a low strike rate coupled with a potentially big bookmaker’s margin, but for small stakes the potential returns can be worth it. One good pay-out can really boost the bank.
Pontefract over a mile has a strong low bias where the focus should be primarily on the two lowest drawn runners. Personally, I would avoid horses drawn 9 or higher – these runners have combined to produced just 6 winners from 199 runners, a measly 3% strike rate.
2nd position – Pontefract 1m 2f
Staying at Pontefract we move up two furlongs to the mile and a quarter trip. I looked at this bias briefly in my second article in this series using the racecourse map below to show readers there is an extra left handed turn at this trip helping low draws further:
The draw stats are strong as one would expect:
At this distance compared to mile range, the market is not quite as aware of the edge low draws have, so finding past profitable angles ought to be possible. For a start, you would have made a blind profit to Betfair SP backing all four lowest drawn horses in the 39 races in the sample. Those 156 runners would have produced a profit of £23.73 to £1 level stakes equating to returns of just over 15p in the £. Amazing when you think about it really – backing four horses in every race for 39 races, and you would have made good money. The bottom four stalls accounted for 24 of the winners from 156 runners; stalls located five or more away from the inside rail accounted for 15 winners but from 242 runners.
Earlier, it was noted that the stats indicated that over a mile on soft or heavy ground the bias seems to get stronger. That theory is given extra confidence when we see the same pattern over this 1m 2f distance. It should be said there have only been 10 qualifying races on soft or heavy since 2016 but just look at the win percentages for each third of the draw:
Nine of the ten races in this small sample were won by low draws. In addition to that, the win and placed stats combined correlate strongly as we can see:
I am confident that on soft or heavy ground the bias gets more potent.
Moving back to the ‘all races’ stats, one remarkable fact is that the lowest five draws filled the first three places on no less than 11 occasions, two of which happened within an hour and a half of each other!
It should come as no surprise therefore that perming these five draws in tricasts and trifectas would have landed favourable returns. Perming five horses in all possible combinations of 1st, 2nd and 3rd amounts to a chunky 60 bets per race, so using small stakes of 10p per line (bet) makes sense, bringing in the 'per race' cost at £6. If we had done this perm using the tricast in all 39 races there would have been an outlay of £234, with £281.96 returned, giving us a profit of £47.90 (ROI +20.5%). As we have seen thus far, the trifecta tends to outdo the tricast bet, and it does it here - in style. Trifecta returns would have been £529.13 giving us a whopping profit of £295.13 (ROI +126.1%).
Pontefract over 1m 2f is a course and distance on which to keep a close eye from a draw perspective this year. It will be interesting to monitor the prices of the lower draws in the next couple of seasons; if they contract more, then profits will be harder to come by.
And, finally, it’s time for my number one draw bias in Britain and Ireland...
1st position – Chester 5f
Yes, I fully appreciate this is not a huge shocker, but I am confident about its status as the number 1 spot: the award goes to the minimum trip at Chester. This is despite the fact that they are moving the inside rail from time to time in an attempt to negate the bias. The rail movement seems to affect this shortest trip the least, and draw bias fans should stick to the minimum 5f trip and not include the extended 5½f range in considerations.
Here are the stats:
As I've said, yes, the bias is well known, but as far as draw biases go, it is still the strongest. The problem, of course, is making a profit from this widely held awareness. I discussed in the first article in the series how the prices at Chester on low drawn runners have contracted in recent years. Ultimately, this is why it is hard to make profits at Chester any more. That is, low still wins as often as it ever did (give or take - see below), but the available prices are tighter these days.
Going back to how the rail movement may be affecting this minimum 5f trip, if we compare the PRB figures from 2016 to 2018 with 2019 to 2021, we can start to see a slight weakening of the bias.
High draws seem to struggle just as much as ever, but middle draws are a little more competitive as a result of the false rail. All in all, though, low draws continue to enjoy a very significant edge.
In terms of running styles, a low draw coupled with a prominent run style, be it leading or tracking the pace, is a potent combination here as the image below illustrates.
We can see that the advantage of a low draw disappears if you race near the back early. Low draws that led early or raced prominently have been responsible for 16 winners from 59 runners (27% strike rate), which compares very well next to middle or high draws that raced mid division early or were held up – they have provided just 3 winners from 126 runners (2.4% strike rate).
The evidence is clear: combine a low draw with early pace over 5f at Chester and then you have a very effective combination.
With these five top draw bias courses, then, I've demonstrated my personal top ten UK and Irish draw biases, as well as a few 'bonus' also ran's. Please share your thoughts in the comments, especially if you think I’ve missed one. Thanks as always for reading, and good luck.
So the age-old Derby formula will not be holding this year, writes Tony Stafford. Third in the 2,000 Guineas (well fourth it used to be, as I conceded last week) meant first in the Derby at Epsom, but Luxembourg is lame. He will therefore not be carrying the Coolmore/Westerberg colours into yet another very probable annexation of English racing’s most sought-after prize.
Just as well then that a legion of bench-warmers took the opportunity at Chester and Lingfield to step up into the principal positions. First it was Changingoftheguard, running all over Godolphin’s theretofore Derby second favourite, New London, in the Chester Vase. It was great to see a revitalised Ryan Moore dominating the entire three-day fixture with superlative tactical riding from start to finish.
Chester revealed Ryan back to his very best, remarkably so in the face of the continuing serious health problems of his younger brother Josh, which have brought universal messages of sympathy from all around the racing world.
Changingoftheguard won the Chester Vase by a wide margin and then, in picking up the Dee Stakes with Star Of India, the Ballydoyle team had already started stacking up the back-up squad for the first Saturday in June.
It’s probably worth mentioning that their other three runners at the meeting - the filly Thoughts Of June in the Cheshire Oaks (there’s a name to conjure with!), Temple Of Artemis in the three-year-old handicap on the Thursday, and a lone Friday runner, Cleveland, who picked up the Chester Cup almost as an after-thought - all also crossed the line in front.
Then on Saturday it was on to Lingfield for their Derby Trial and, faced by another Godolphin/Appleby/Buick favourite in Walk Of Stars, Ryan and his mount, United Nations, were comfortably the best on the day.
Paul Smith, son of Derrick, was quizzed at every call on Saturday (as was Kevin Buckley at Chester) as to where he thought the pecking order might now be behind Luxembourg, but that was before yesterday’s news that the favourite will not run. Now I’m sure if you were to ask Paul or Derrick Smith, or Michael Tabor, or John and the junior Magniers or Georg von Opel or even Peter Brant in whose colours he runs, they would all shout in unison, “Stone Age!”
Where did that colt suddenly appear from, you would be entitled to ask? Well, certainly not from the upper reaches of the Classic consciousness after his five winless, although not promise-free, runs as a juvenile.
They brought a couple of second places in Group races, notably a one-length defeat behind the James Ferguson-trained Kodiac colt El Bodegon in the Group 1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud over ten furlongs in testing ground in late October. If it proved Stone Age’s stamina credentials – as if they were ever in doubt – it certainly also hurried Ferguson into the upper stratum of international racing.
El Bodegon has yet to appear since, but he has a Dante entry at York this week and then is a 25-1 shot for the Derby. That makes him ten times the price of Stone Age after a 13-length reappearance win at Navan on March 22 and then a five-and-a-half length romp in the Derby Trial at Leopardstown yesterday.
Each successive winning triallist won with authority, with Changingoftheguard and Stone Age showing the most. It will shock nobody to learn that all four colts – and the Cheshire Oaks heroine, too, are by Galileo, his famed Classic-winning genes still as effective a year on from his death at the age of 23.
Talking of Chester, only one of the five O’Brien winners was not by Galileo. Cleveland, who was stepping up a mile from his longest previous race distance to win the great staying handicap, is by Camelot, also the sire of Luxembourg. Camelot will doubtless have other chances of siring the winner of the second Classic he won.
The hardest part for any trainer is to break into the big league. Last week George Boughey won the 1,000 Guineas with Cachet and Ferguson must also be harbouring that dream, probably first imagined in the years his father John was, with Simon Crisford, at the helm of running the Godolphin interests of Sheikh Mohammed.
Another young Newmarket handler who may not be too far away from joining them is Tom Clover. On Saturday Clover took the Oaks Trial at Lingfield, his first stakes win, with the unbeaten Rogue Millennium, a bargain buy for the Rogues Gallery from the Shadwell dispersal. She was bought on the strong recommendation of her previous handler, Marcus Tregoning, who never got her to the track. A beautiful, strong daughter of Dubawi, she cost 35,000gns at auction and with her pedigree, looks and above all ability must be worth half a million!
I’d love her to win the Oaks. Tom and his wife Jackie, daughter of the late and much-missed Classic trainer Michael Jarvis, are showing signs of moving smoothly onto racing’s top table;
*
One necessary ingredient in racing is luck. Another is the ability to take an opportunity when it comes along. On Friday morning in Kentucky, one of the original 20 horses in the field for the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, Louisville, was withdrawn owing to a late injury.
That left the way for the 21st acceptor on the list, Rich Strike, an 80/1 shot trained by Eric Reed and ridden by the unknown South American jockey Sonny Leon, to squeeze into the line-up and race from the widest draw of all.
His two best runs this spring had been placed efforts (third and fourth) in minor stakes behind Tiz The Bomb, favoured on both occasions, each time as a 20/1 shot or longer at Turfway Park. That horse was also in Saturday’s field and started a 30/1 shot.
Race commentator Larry Colmuss couldn’t have considered him much either because the second highest-priced winner of the race in the past 110 years had already run past the two favourites into the lead before he even noticed him.
Rich Strike bolted up and afterwards his trainer, who had the mortification of losing a large part of his string, his records, trophies and memorabilia in a stable fire a few years ago, said he had been very hopeful as he knew he would stay.
I don’t know what the horse is like in his stable but I can honestly say I have never seen so graphic a sight of one horse trying literally to savage another. For several minutes as Sonny Leon was trying to participate in a post-race interview his horse was attacking the pony, despite all the efforts of that horse’s rider.
Eric Reed certainly had luck on his side when he decided to claim the colt out of a race on the same Churchill Downs track last autumn. You pay your money beforehand over there, and if they run badly you have to bite the bullet.
Eric Reed and his owners didn’t have a bullet to bite, just the thrill of seeing the horse, bred and raced in the famed Calumet Farm colours, romp home by more than 17 lengths. Even then, thoughts of the Kentucky Derby must have been some way from even their optimistic minds.
It is hard not to sympathise with the jockey who rode him that day. That young man had to endure each of the two days of the meeting riding a single unfancied and unsighted horse, before watching the Derby. An Englishman who between 2010 and 2017 rode between a high of 39 and low of 15 wins over those eight seasons, he left for a new career in the US the following year.
Initially his move to the US brought great success and by early December 2018 he had ridden well over 50 winners, enough to put him second in the Fair Grounds, Louisiana, jockey standings.
No doubt he would never have expected to have ridden a Kentucky Derby winner in that horse’s only previous career win. The way Rich Strike finished on his return to Churchill Downs offers hope that the winning will not stop there.
Anyway, have you guessed the identity of the jockey? I think I’ d like to delay the revelation to allow me what I have always thought was the funniest moment ever at a disciplinary inquiry in the UK. Up before the terrifying if slightly out-of-touch gentleman in charge of the inquiry, upon being asked for his name, our hero said: “Beschizza” which the gent misinterpreted as “Biscuit, sir”. “Well Mr Biscuit,” he began. No wonder Adam of that name thought he’d better go elsewhere to ply his trade.
A nephew of Julia Feilden, he’s very much from a racing background and if he hasn’t quite made the big time in the US he will always be able to tell his grandchildren of the day he rode the horse that was to win the Kentucky Derby to a 17-length win also at Churchill Downs.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/StoneAge_DerrinstudDerbyTrial_Leopardstown_2022.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-05-09 07:50:102022-05-09 09:11:03Monday Musings: Shocks on the Derby Trails
In the next two articles in this series on the draw, I will share what I believe to be the Top Ten current draw biases in the UK and Ireland, writes Dave Renham. In this first half, I will reveal positions 10 down to 6; the follow-up one will examine ‘the top 5’. Of course, I appreciate that there will be people who disagree with my hierarchy, but ultimately all ten biases will be distinct and, with luck, profitable to deploy alongside more traditional form reading. As a bonus, I will also share some ‘near misses’ that just failed to make the top ten.
Now, just because a course and distance has a draw bias, that doesn't necessarily equate to a profit, as I have discussed already in the first two articles. However, having a fuller understanding of any biases does give us an edge over most other punters and enables us to factor this awareness into our wider considerations.
For each entry in the top ten, the plan is to begin by sharing the raw draw stats, and then to drill down into some interesting angles. These may be going considerations or larger field sizes. In all cases, I am looking at draw data from the last six full seasons (2016 to 2021) and, as ever, the initial focus will be 8+ runner handicaps. The profit and loss figures are calculated to industry SP, although where appropriate I will mention Betfair SP figures. With that said, let's begin the countdown...
10th position - Chester 7f
Ahead of the hugely popular May meeting on the Roodee, we go first to Chester and specifically the 7f trip. The draw breakdowns are as follows:
There is a distinct advantage here for those drawn low which may be little surprise given the tight configuration of the track. Lower draws have a definite edge here in terms of win %, placed % and Impact Value. In addition to this the PRB (percentage of rivals beaten) figure of 0.58 for low draws is strong. However, higher draws have actually proved to be the best value of the three sections despite lower draws winning nearly twice as often. Indeed, backing all high drawn horses would have made a profit to BSP to the tune of £48.61 (ROI +39.2%).
So why is this happening? Ultimately, Chester is well known for its low draw bias at various distances and the market naturally adjusts for this. It appears that at this distance it may have over-adjusted. The average SP of the lowest three draws has been 8.29/1; the highest three draws has averaged out at 22/1. This currently looks a case where it may pay to ‘go against the draw’ to find value.
I looked into whether perming lower draws in forecasts, tricasts, exactas or trifectas would have yielded any profit, but to no avail. In terms of possible profit routes, perming the lowest four drawn horses in trifectas came the closest, but would have lost 5% of overall stakes. However, if we had gone back an extra year and included 2015, this trifecta bet would have yielded an 8% profit. Exotic bets like these come with risk and low strike rates, so the odd decent payout can swing the balance.
9th position - Chester 7f 127 yards
This is the longer of two approximately seven furlong trips at Chester. With rail adjustments, from time to time this distance has been extended by up to 37 yards. For the record, when using the Geegeez Draw Analyser the distance to use is 1 mile (because of rounding, and to differentiate it from the flat 7f trip). Here are the raw draw splits:
Low draws once again hold sway as one would expect. However, it is not a profitable avenue backing lower drawn runners. Indeed there are similar losses across the board.
A similar pattern occurs over this ‘extended 7’ as we saw over 7f. Higher draws have proved slightly better value due to their inflated prices. In fact, the three ‘worst’ stalls in terms of the draw (the three highest draws), have combined to make a profit to BSP. They have produced a £34.95 profit to £1 level stakes which equates to returns of just over 21%.
Going back to the initial figures, horses drawn in lowest third of the draw have won 48.2% of all 8+ runner handicap races. This draw bias strengthens when the field size increases as the graph below shows:
There is a clear correlation showing lower draws perform better as the field size increases. Indeed, in handicaps of 12 or more runners the lowest three stalls have combined to produce a profit of £20.31 (ROI +52.1%) to BSP. At last some value it seems in backing lower drawn runners.
Chester’s low draw bias at various distances is clearly well known, and in general it is hard to make those low draws pay. However, in bigger fields over 7½f that might just be possible.
Finally a running style snippet for you: horses drawn low that lead early or race prominently win more than three times as often as all other draw and running style combinations put together.
8th position - Kempton 7f
I'm moving to the all-weather for #8. Kempton Park has a significant number of meetings each year with bundles of 7f handicaps. This gives us an excellent sample size to work with. All qualifying races give the following draw splits:
Horses drawn closest to the inside rail have the edge over middle draws, with middle draws out-performing higher draws. When we look at the individual draw positions we can see that once you get to stall 9 or higher, winning becomes more difficult:
Only horses drawn in stall 6 have proved profitable ‘blind’, which is entirely random; but it should be noted that, at Betfair SP, those drawn in stalls 1, 2 and 3 combined made a loss of just 1% (1p in the £).
The maximum field at Kempton is 14 and if we look at races with 12 or more runners, the bias strengthens:
In these bigger field races the lowest drawn horse, in stall 1, would have made a small 9.5% profit to BSP. Meanwhile, if you had backed the three highest drawn runners in handicaps of 12 or more runners, you would have seen a loss of £257.67 (ROI -50.5%) to SP; if using Betfair SP the figures improve a little but losses are still significant - £182.33 (ROI -35.8%).
There is some good news for those of you who like combining low draws in tricasts or trifectas. There have been 170 races with 12 or more runners at Kempton over 7f in the sample period. During those 170 races, the lowest three drawn horses have filled the first three places on five occasions. Now this may not sound many, just about 3%, but in reality this is quite remarkable given the huge number of possible three-stall combinations in each race. It is too complicated to go into the maths of it all, so let us look at the bottom line figures for perming the three lowest draws in tricasts or trifectas in these 12+ runner handicaps.
Let’s assume we had a 10p combination tricast on the lowest three drawn horses in these 170 races. Our outlay would be 60p per race (6 combinations / lines of 10p) and therefore an overall outlay of £102. Our returns would have been £345.11 giving a clear profit of £243.11. That converts to an ROI of 238.3%! The figures are even better for trifectas as the tote variant of the same bet would have yielded a clear profit of £311.50 (ROI +305.4%). As an aside, perming the three lowest draws in combination exactas would have made a profit too, with a modest but still eminently satisfactory 14% ROI.
From a running style perspective horses that lead early have a definite edge. Horses that race close to the pace (prominent) generally out-perform horses that run in mid-division or are held up. For those drawn in the lowest third here are the win percentages in terms of running style shown:
Leaders fare best and there is a sliding scale back to hold up horses from low draws which performed worst from the inside stalls.
To conclude, when betting at Kempton in 8+ runner handicaps, I would personally ignore horses drawn in stalls 9 or higher unless I could find a compelling reason not to, such as they had the early speed to get near the front (and they did not look to face too much early pace pressure inside). Bottom line: a horse drawn low that has early pace is the ideal type of horse we are looking for.
7th position – York 1m
Way back in the 1990s, York’s mile trip offered a strong draw bias and that remains the case today. As you can see from the racecourse map below, the 1 mile trip has a left turn that starts after about a furlong and a half, and the sweeping bend lasts for just over a furlong.
The result is that high draws can be forced wide, especially in big fields, meaning they have to run further. Alternatively they can take back and tack to the inside but then they will be faced with several horses to pass in the straight potentially needing luck in running. It should be noted that the finishing straight is quite long and therefore poorly positioned horses round the bend do have time to recover, but the draw stats illustrate the problem high stalls still have:
High draws have struggled across all categories, while the lowest draws have the edge over middle berths. In terms of wins, which essentially is key, the draw win percentages for each third can be nicely illustrated by a pie chart:
Nearly half of all 8+ runner handicaps between 2016 and 2021 were won by horses from the lowest third of the draw. Meanwhile, the highest drawn third won around one race in every seven (1 in 6.76 to be absolutely precise). Let's now look at the breakdown of individual stall positions as there are a few interesting patterns:
Firstly I note a cut off point at stall 6. According to the six-year data it is definitely an advantage to be drawn 6 or lower. That sextet of boxes have provided 33 winners from 282 runners (11.7%), while horses drawn 7 or higher have provided just 14 winners from 393 runners (3.6%). What this essentially means is that, since 2016, horses drawn 1 to 6 have been 3.3 times more likely to win than those drawn in stall 7 or higher. Also horses drawn in stalls 4, 5 and 6 have produced good returns to SP with excellent A/E values of 1.15, 1.59 and 1.36 respectively.
There also seems to be a second cut-off point at stall 14. The record of horses drawn 14 or higher has been dire – just 1 win from 111 runners. Backing all 111 runners would have yielded an SP loss of £102.00 – that means for every £10 bet you would lose £9.19. At BSP you would have been 1p better off (loss of £9.18 !!).
Why very wide draws struggle may be explained further by looking at how the stalls are set up at York. The picture below shows the stalls at York in a 20-runner 1 mile race. As can be seen, the stalls are split into blocks of ten which are joined together. In reality an extra two stalls width is added to the middle meaning that horses drawn 11 are effectively 13 stalls from the inside; those drawn 12 are 14 stalls from the inside, and so on.
On average, three to four races a year at York over 1m see fields of 16 or more; there have been 20 races during the period of study with this number of runners from which low draws have secured 12 wins (60%).
Sticking with races of 16 or more runners, there has once again been profit in certain tricast and trifecta perms. Knowing that the lowest six draws dominate these races, what would have happened if we had permed / combined these six stalls in tricasts and trifectas? The problem with six-horse perms, of course, is that there are a lot of combinations: 120 to be precise. Using 10p stakes once again, a combination tricast on the lowest six drawn horses would see an outlay of £12 per race with an overall outlay over the 20 races of £240. There were four winning bets and our returns would have been £361.20 giving a clear profit of £121.20 (ROI +50.5%). Trifecta returns, though, ‘win’ again; they would have yielded a huge profit of £417.72 (ROI +174.1%).
To conclude, York over 1 mile is a potentially playable bias, certainly in terms of narrowing the field down – in big fields I would ignore all horses drawn 14 or bigger. In all handicaps with 8+ runners my main focus would be on horses drawn in stalls 1 to 6.
6th position – Kempton 6f
Back to Kempton for our sixth best draw bias, this time a look at the 6f handicap draw statistics:
With the 7f trip showing a low draw bias, it is no surprise to see the same here. Indeed, this is an even stronger bias over the shorter distance and once more it comes from a large sample of races.
Looking at the win strike rate of individual stall positions the graph below has a clear trend:
As a general rule, win chance decreases as the actual stall position increases. We can see that horses drawn in stalls 1 to 3 have the edge over those drawn 4 to 6, who in turn have the edge over draws 7 to 12. Note that over 6f at Kempton Park, the maximum field size is 12, down from 14 for 7f races.
The placed percentage stats (win and placed combined) correlate extremely well as you can see:
When examining the 7f trip earlier, we saw the bias strengthening as the field size increased. This happens over 6f, too, as we get to near maximum fields (races with 11 or 12 runners):
For those tricast and trifecta fans out there, perming the three lowest drawn horses would have been profitable, although only just. Tricasts would have produced a small 2.6% return; trifectas a bit higher at 5.9%. The big winner from exotic bets would have been if you had backed the three lowest drawn horses in combination forecasts or exactas. If you had chosen the CSF (Computer Straight Forecast) for every £1 wagered it would have returned £1.30; exactas would have returned £1.38. Returns of 30p and 38p in the £ (30 and 38%) are certainly not to be sneezed at, and they occur more regularly than trifectas, too!
The Kempton 6f draw bias is a strong one and looks a playable one. The lowest four stalls always require very close scrutiny.
Finally a quick look at running styles combined with the draw. The heat map below shows the SR% for each draw/running style combination:
Front runners enjoy a good edge regardless of draw, although low drawn front runners are clearly the best of the bunch. Prominent racers from low and middle draws also perform above the norm. It definitely looks worth avoiding any high drawn horse that is likely to race mid pack or towards the back early.
So there we have the lower half of my top ten draw biases, #10 to #6... but I’m not quite finished yet!
Just outside the Top Ten...
Here are some biases that were close to the top 10 but just failed to make the cut.
Redcar 5f-1m (straight course) 14 or more runners
All the biases I have looked at so far have been round course biases, where the lower draws have the edge essentially due to the fact that they are in the best position to take advantage of the shortest route on the inside. But there are a few straight course biases as well, though - as I mentioned in a previous article - they are less prevalent these days due to better course management and watering systems.
At Redcar on the straight course lower draws have generally held sway, more especially when the field sizes get quite big. There is a decent amount of straight course data with 14+ runner fields at Redcar because they race over four trips on it – 5f, 6f, 7f and 1m. Here are the draw splits:
These stats look strong and definitely could have made the top 10 cut. In fact it probably would have done, but while I was doing the research there was a 20-runner race at Redcar early this season that went completely against the low draw bias script. It was a 6f handicap on the 18th April. Here are the first five finishers:
Draw 17 beat draw 19 with draw 16 back in third: three of the five highest stalls filled the first three places. Not only that, look at the prices – 40/1, 50/1 and 66/1. The tricast paid over £30,000! Also draws 13 and 18 filled 4th and 5th with stalls 10 and 12 rounding out the first seven home - all double digit stalls. The best finishing position from a low drawn horse was 8th, Jems Bond, who was beaten 5 lengths.
Now this could have simply been a one-off but, if it was, it is still not easy to explain. This type of occurrence does sometimes happen on straight courses. Some pundits believe it is down to pace bias on the day rather than draw bias. This is difficult to prove one way or the other, but it is certainly possible. What I can say is that this handicap was a very low grade affair (a 0-55) which may have been a factor in what might turn out to be a freak result. Keep your eyes peeled on upcoming big field straight track handicaps at Redcar!
Before moving on to the next course, here are some more six-year stats from 14+ runner handicaps at Redcar on the straight course. It is looking at the PRB figures for each individual distance. To remind you, PRB stands for Percentage of Rivals beaten which is a key measure when looking at draw bias.
A consistency /correlation can be seen across all distances adding confidence in the overall data.
For me, I would just like to see how a couple more big field races this year pan out before completely ‘nailing my colours to the low draws mast’. The six-year data is far more important than the one race on the 18th April but sometimes it is best to be cautious, especially early in the season, because things may have changed over the winter. I know from experience that draw biases can reverse, having seen it happen too many times over the last 30 years. My gut feeling is that low draws will still have the edge in the future, but I have been wrong before.
Brighton 1m (7f 214yds)
I have never really considered Brighton to be a course of draw bias interest but the 1 mile stats are interesting:
There seems to be an edge to high draws with low stalls seemingly at quite a disadvantage. It is not an easy bias to explain when you look at the course map:
Low is on the inside so if there were to be bias here the expectation would be that low draws would be favoured. There is one plausible explanation that Matt suggested to me when we were discussing it. He thought it may be to do with lower drawn horses hanging into the camber against the far rail and not getting a clear run, while those drawn wider either go forward or come wide in the straight thus guaranteeing clear sailing either way. That certainly makes sense and is perhaps the reason for this counter-intuitive bias.
If there is a true bias here then it seems to get stronger in bigger fields, but with a caveat that the sample size is small – below shows the 2016-2021 data with 13 or more runners:
15 races is a very small sample, but it is still statistically unlikely that these figures are completely down to chance. My plan is to keep an eye on Brighton’s mile trip this season in the hope that this ‘bias’ is replicated.
Chelmsford 1m
The final near miss to share in this article (there will more near misses next time) is Chelmsford over 1 mile. We have an excellent sample size here with 277 races:
Here we have a noticeable edge to low in all areas. For the record draws 1, 2 and 4 have all made a ‘blind’ profit to BSP ranging from 9% to 19%, so the bottom four stalls may be worthy of focus (it would make no sense whatsoever to exclude draw 3 simply because it was unprofitable).
When we get to near maximum fields (15+) high draws seem to really struggle albeit from a modest sample:
There have only been 22 races with this many runners, but there is good correlation across all the key ‘markers’.
There is not a similar low draw bias at either 5, 6 or 7f at Chelmsford which begs the question, why? I think the answer can be explained when we examine the racecourse map:
Mile races start from a separate ‘chute’ and thus wider draws have to negotiate an extra bend, which comes up reasonably rapidly, compared with the shorter distances. Therefore, if high drawn runners stay wide early, they will be travelling a greater distance than those hugging the inside. The reason the bias is modest is that wide horses still have around six and a half furlongs to recover from a potentially difficult start. This course and distance seems to be simply a case of low is best, though a higher draw is not insurmountable.
And that's it for the first half of my top ten draw biases (and near misses). Tune in next week for the five most playable biases. Until then...
Standing by the side of the paddock as the generally agreed handsome field for the 2,000 Guineas lined past, Alex Cole, son of trainer Paul and elder brother of joint-trainer Oliver, and Olly Sangster, grandson of Robert, were agreed that the three principals in the market were the biggest and the best-looking, writes Tony Stafford.
“Both Charlie Appleby’s are coming up to 540 kilos and Native Trail already was a giant as a two-year-old”, said Alex. “Dad always said it was better to buy a big horse. As long as you are careful with them, they usually have so much more substance.”
How the Cole stable would love to be back in the same milieu inhabited nowadays only by the likes of Godolphin, Coolmore and the biggest established teams like Varian, Balding, Hannon, Fahey and Johnston (father and son). The five supplied the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth respectively and the only absentees from their “two-hundred club” were William Haggas, and the Gosdens father and son, without a runner in the first Classic race of 2022.
For all the merit of the supporting cast, though, they could not match the three market leaders – the big, very big, three of Coroebus, Native Trail and Aidan O’Brien’s Luxembourg, of whom everyone immediately afterwards said, “The Derby!” If the old “fourth in the Guineas, first in the Derby” adage needs a little finessing, so be it.
Master Cole, still glowing after the Palace House Stakes success immediately beforehand of Khaadem, owned by Mrs Fitri Hay, to whom he is racing manager, will be an adherent of the formula.
Back in 1991, when Alex was but a lad, Generous, trained by his father for Prince Fahd Salman, finished fourth in the 2,000 Guineas and did indeed go on to success in the Derby a month later. I’m sure that Guineas is engraved on the family’s hearts and it is on mine, too.
As the semi-celebration of a Classic fourth place from the large Saudi entourage developed that day as I’m sure talk of the Derby took root, a tall elegant young gentleman beckoned me over from among the waiting press corps for an early chinwag.
That was Prince Fahd’s younger brother, Prince Ahmed bin Salman, and he told me he would like me to write some articles for the newspaper his family owned and still does three decades later. In Central London, on news-stands, the “green paper” as London’s Arabic community knows Asharq Al Awsat, is to this day highly conspicuous.
I did indeed thereafter write a column – translated of course – every week for a decade and that led to working with the Prince’s Thoroughbred Corporation which was also to win the Derby with Oath eight years later. Many international races also came its way including five consecutive US Triple Crown races (but oddly no Triple Crown) and many Breeders’ Cups. Then, in 2002, his sudden and untimely death, almost exactly a year after Prince Fahd’s, both men had been in their forties, ended an era.
For both Charlie Appleby and Coroebus’ rider James Doyle, this was a 2,000 Guineas first and, for Doyle, an initial success in any UK Classic. It must have been a wonderful family occasion all round and one that William Buick did not begrudge his friend as he filled second place on the favourite Native Trail.
Charlie’s mum, Patricia, and James’s mother, Jacqui, are constant companions on the racetrack at the major meetings. Former trainer Jacqui has been the biggest and strongest support for her son and elder daughter Sophie, riding with great success in the US for the last few years. Her pride in their success can only be exceeded by the knowledge that she has produced two wonderful, modest human beings.
When she was training in Lambourn at around the turn of the century, her biggest financial supporter was Tom Ford, coincidentally my former opening partner in the Eton Manor cricket side of the late 1960’s, but by then a big financial player in the City. Tom and Jacqui split after a few years’ intermittent success, and the way she battled to bring up her kids and kept going through various difficulties was more than admirable.
Long before those days, my former next-door neighbour in Hertfordshire, Roger Anderson, knew Jacqui from the pointing field and I remember chatting to her with Roger at Huntingdon races while the two very young children would be running around, playing in front of the grandstands.
On Saturday, James Doyle had his first British Classic. Yesterday, in the manner of London buses, a second comes along right after and, in guiding Cachet to an all-the-way success, he was returning the favour by giving George Boughey his initial Classic triumph in only his third full season with a licence.
Boughey’s rise from the time he was assistant to Hugo Palmer has been, to coin a hackneyed phrase, meteoric and anyone who thought it was only Amo Racing’s horses which represent football agent Kia Joorabchian that has got him there, think again.
It was fine that Godolphin and Coolmore would fight out the colts’ Classic ahead of the rest of the domestic major teams, but this was a victory for the small – probably not for long – man. George was listed with 104 horses in the latest Horses in Training and that is sure to go up – probably already has at the breeze-ups with some more to come.
This filly has modest antecedents as a daughter of the £6k National Stud stallion Aclaim, a horse raced and trained by Martyn Meade to win seven of his 15 starts, including the Group 1 Prix de la Foret on Arc day in his final race.
The £6,000 fee in 2022 is just below half his starting point and Cachet, a member of his first crop, is alone going to be responsible for sending him into orbit and providing Martyn with a healthy dividend for his massive investment in the sport. The biggest commitment has been the purchase of Manton, which even put a strain on Robert Sangster’s finances three decades ago.
When Cachet came up for sale as a yearling, she attracted a bid of 60,000 guineas and became one of the many successful Highclere purchases, master-minded by Harry Herbert and his brother-in-law (and Her Majesty’s racing manager), John Warren.
I have friends who have been with Highclere all along since they started and I’m hoping, Andrew, that you came into this one although I fear you probably did not. But again, a win for a syndicate horse of prosaic origins can be the life blood of the sport going forward.
James Doyle only rode at Newmarket for two of the three days of the Guineas meeting – he had a success at Goodwood on Friday – and he preceded Coroebus’ victory with a well-judged win on 22/1 Ian Williams-trained Cap Francais in a valuable nine-furlong handicap.
As he welcomed the former Ed Walker inmate into the enclosure, he reflected on what could have been at Ascot earlier in the week when Enemy got squeezed up the rail by the tough Irish mare Princess Zoe which allowed Quickthorn to pinch second place close home.
“At least we know now I was on the right track with Enemy”, said Williams on Saturday. “He’ll run in the Henry II at Sandown at the end of the month, then I’ll give him a long break before he travels out to Australia for the Melbourne Cup. He’ll have his prep as the best Australians do just before in the Caulfield Cup. You might as well run for a couple of million if you’re going to have a trial,” he said.
Before that for Williams and everyone else, it’s the small matter of Chester. Friday’s Chester Cup fell to his last Melbourne Cup challenger, Magic Circle, four years ago when he also won the Henry II Stakes. He fears the Cup may be beyond him this time but he has a plethora of possibles in Friday’s finale, and the Plate for Cup eliminations. I will be shocked if he didn’t win it but don’t ask me (or Ian probably) with which one!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Cachet_1000Guineas_Newmarket2022.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-05-02 03:18:502022-05-01 21:23:15Monday Musings: A Guineas Double Top for the Doyler
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