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When you are a grandson of the great show jumper Harvey Smith, what do you do other than become an international show jumper, like your father Steven Smith before you?, writes Tony Stafford. As Yorkshire as they come, Harvey was showjumping’s equivalent to another blunt speaking but highly talented man of his county, in his case from cricket in the middle of last century, Fred Trueman, in the days when both sports got plentiful live coverage on the BBC.
Add the surname Parkinson – remember the chat-show legend? – and the county theme continues. But if you want some historic nomenclature from horseracing, how about your parents call you Joel, recalling the Classic winning owner-breeders Jim and Stanhope, whose family made its money from gold mines in South Africa.
For those of more tender years, Harvey was as famous for a single V-sign to the judges after he won the 1971 British Show Jumping Derby as anything else. They withheld the £2,000 prizemoney for the “obscene gesture” which Harvey explained was merely a homage to Winston Churchill’s wartime victory salute. When Fred was asked by 13-year-old me as the players milled about in front of the pavilion on a rain-ruined day at I think Valentines Park, Ilford, “Please Mr Trueman, can I have your autograph?” “Fook off sooon!”
Twenty years later, standing in for Jonathan Powell doing the People weekly racing article, I was invited to sit in Fred’s seat. I declined.
It was to surprise in many quarters when Harvey joined with wife Sue to set up a training stable at High Eldwick, near Bingley in West Yorkshire. They opened for business in time for the 1989/90 season and, for the next 36 winters, Sue Smith was a regular winner of major races – mostly chases. The highlight of course was the victory of Auroras Encore in the 2013 Grand National.
For the past few years, her young relative Joel acted as her assistant before she had notched a single winner at the point in her final solo season when the joint training agreement came into play. Sue had gone from a peak of 70 wins at one stage to more modest high teens returns in her two final campaigns in sole charge.
The benefit of the new arrangement where, as in several other well-publicised partnerships, the younger element takes increasingly more prominence, was soon evident. Last season, the pair added 27 to Sue’s solo single and, after the weekend, with four wins in the last 14 days, they have already collected 22 and are within a jot of matching that season’s improved prizemoney tally.
Why the preamble? I’m getting to it. A horse trained by Joel Parkinson and Sue Smith was backed as if defeat was out of the question on Saturday and won accordingly. The race, the Tommy Whittle Handicap Chase at Haydock Park, is a three-mile contest named in honour of one of Haydock’s chairmen.
It was inaugurated in 1982 and among its first dozen winners were northern-trained Cheltenham Gold Cup heroes Little Owl, Forgive ‘N Forget and The Thinker, along with the phenomenal grey One Man. Sue Smith won the 2004 race with Chives, ridden by Dominic Elsworth.
It’s now a 0-145, so the likelihood of its ever offering a hand-up to another Gold Cup winner – they tend to be rated in the high 170s – is remote, except possibly in the case of Saturday’s extraordinary winner.
If ever a chase of this fame – however slightly tarnished the Tommy Whittle might be by that upper limit of 145 – has been won by a horse that had never previously won any race, I’d need someone with better historical records to remind me.
Six-year-old Grand Geste had been bought by Harvey Smith for £13,000 at the Goffs UK Spring sale in 2022. Before Saturday, he had run 11 times without winning, in two bumpers, seven hurdle races and a couple of chases.
On Saturday he was 2lb out of the handicap, so running off 119 in a 12-runner race which featured Nicky Richards’ previous Tommy Whittle winner Famous Bridge. That rival was never in contention as Danny McMenamin sent Grand Geste to the front from the off, jumping with amazing alacrity and agility.
There’s something about a front-running, bold-jumping grey horse – Desert Orchid? – and while it might be premature to talk about these two horses in the same breath, come a couple of years down the line, the relevance of Saturday will have been reinforced many times over, I’m sure.
A six-year-old as I mentioned, he is one of five of that age to win the race, more common nowadays with its being an event for emerging talents rather than established stars that have gone beyond the upper limit bracket.
Yet, in a way, Grand Geste should have probably been operating off far more advantageous marks – to begin with at least. Many shrewd handicap trainers who know how to play the system would describe as “unfortunate” on the one hand or “idiotic” more likely the day at Carlisle when Grand Geste narrowly failed to record a 200/1 win in his final novice hurdle race before collecting a handicap mark.
That day, the grey entered the uphill run-in with two lengths to spare over the field, but Sean Bowen on Olly Murphy’s Barlavento conjured one of his flying and all-action finishes to foil the grey, who in the process probably added 30lb to what would otherwise have been his opening mark.
He operated decently enough last season, with a couple of third places in a light campaign, but when he returned to Carlisle for a first run over fences, he got within four lengths of Ben Pauling’s useful performer The Jukebox Kid. Next was a narrow defeat at Newcastle, caught late on by Alcedo, trained by Venetia Williams.
Here though, in his first race beyond three miles, from start to finish all that remained in the mind was the vision of that exuberant jumping and the six-and-a-half-length winning margin that Danny could have stretched if needed. Expect maybe 14lb or even a little more to be lumped on the 119 he ran off when the new ratings come out tomorrow. If anything, on present evidence, Parkinson/Smith will be saying, “the more the merrier” and “handicapper, bring it on!”
The way he galloped all the way to the line, something like the Peter Marsh Chase back at Haydock next month would be ideal. Sue Smith has won it five times, but Grand Geste needs to go up even more than the harshest assessor could contrive to get in the weights. Mr Vango, one of the favourites for next year’s Grand National won it last year off 140 – and he was bottom weight! Who says he couldn’t win it from 10lb wrong? The trainers and the market are unlikely to be bothered at all.
Talking of Mr Vango, he came back to action this month and just failed in a thrilling tussle to win the Becher Chase over the Aintree Grand National fences. I can picture Grand Geste going over those before long, too.
Mr Vango was done on the line by Ben Pauling’s Twig and I remember when Twig got his first handicap mark a few years back, Ben was bemoaning the fact that he had started off with a far higher figure than was necessary.
After two unplaced runs from Ben’s yard, he switched to point-to-pointing, winning six times, all for stable owner Mrs Georgia Morgan and ridden each time by Georgia’s son Beau. Before rejoining Pauling from the Matthew Hampton yard, he added a comfortable hunter-chase win at Warwick. Had he run three times rather than two in that initial spell, he would already have had a mark and running in that hunter chase might have been avoided. As it was, he started off with 132.
That Ben could win to date nine times, three over hurdles and six chases, with him from that difficult starting point, shows that if the talent is there, the wins will follow given the abilities of trainer and rider.
On a lower level, on Saturday I was talking to Hughie Morrison about a filly of his that was lining up for a third run later at Wolverhampton. He said she had been working much better of late and that he expected her to run a decent race, despite the massive morning odds.
She still started at 40/1 but ran nicely all the way, only beaten by a once-raced Godolphin filly ridden by Billy Loughnane.
Hughie expected that this home-bred daughter of St Mark’s Basilica, for the Arbib partnership, would “blow” a potential favourable mark, but for such owners showing something on the racecourse, especially a two-year-old filly, transcends such trivialities.
Judging by the smooth way she travelled around the inside at Dunstall Park, and remained well ahead of the rest of the field, suggests she won’t be too far off in another fillies’ maiden, especially if Charlie Appleby suffers a touch of heat stroke during his winter sojourn in Dubai and forgets to enter against her.
Hughie got a result just over half an hour later when nursery winner Tinsel provided an apt moment for the Christmas season. With no racing after today until Boxing Day, he can sit back and enjoy the festivities.
I would like to wish all my readers a lovely holiday season. I’m happy that, as you may have noticed, the days are getting longer at last! Roll on Royal Ascot.
Mentioning Ascot, I must drop in a line about Sir Johnny Weatherby, the late Queen’s representative at the Royal course for many years. It was as much a shock to learn that that he was 66 when he died as that he had passed away at all. Many who knew him much better than I did have spoken so highly of him. His loss will be sorely felt throughout the racing world, but especially at the family firm, Racing’s secretaries, that carries his name. Nice man.
TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/yorkshire.jpg4091280Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-12-22 08:02:542025-12-22 08:02:54Monday Musings: Things Just Grand in Yorkshire
An analysis of Racing Post’s Topspeed (TS) on the All-Weather, Part 2
This is the second article of two looking at the performance of the Racing Post’s speed ratings, known as Topspeed, in races on the all-weather (AW), writes Dave Renham. In the first piece, which you can read here, I looked at a variety of general Topspeed stats before focusing on non-handicap races. In this concluding half, the spotlight falls on handicap races and, from now on, I will use the abbreviation TS when talking about the Topspeed ratings.
Introduction
The next paragraph is basically a carbon copy of what I wrote in the first article as it gives some background information regarding the TS ratings. Feel free to skip it if you have read the first one.
The raw TS figure is a measure of the speed a horse achieved in a particular race. It is amended slightly considering things like distance, weight carried, and the ground conditions. Essentially the TS is calculated by comparing a horse’s time with a standard time for the same course and distance. The TS figure we see in the Geegeez Racecard are known as adjusted TS ratings with the main adjustment made for weight carried in the current race. I believe the TS handicapper also tweaks this adjusted TS rating for the current race conditions. The adjusted TS figures we see in the Racecard are based on the best raw TS performance in the past 12 months. These performances must have occurred in the same ‘Race Code’, so for all-weather races only past TS raw figures in AW races have considered. Likewise for turf flat races, only past turf flat raw TS figures will be considered. For the jumps past hurdle race TS raw ratings will be used for hurdle races only, while past chase TS ratings will be used for chases only.
As I mentioned in the first paragraph this article examines all-weather racing analysing the performance of the TS figures in handicap races only. The time frame covers January 1st, 2019, to November 30th, 2025, and it includes both UK and Irish racing with any profit or loss being calculated to BSP less 2% commission.
Overall Performance of TS in All-Weather Handicaps
I noted in the first piece how it is generally considered that, for a set of ratings to be effective, the win rate is key. The top-rated runner should have the highest win percentage, gradually reducing for the remaining runners. Ideally, the top-rated runner will also be the best performer in terms of returns. However, it is important to point out that regardless of how good a set of public ratings is, be they speed or form-based ratings, it is unreasonable expect the top-rated runner to secure a blind profit over a long period of time.
Let's start in a similar way to last time by looking at win percentages (strike rates) for different rated runners in handicap races. This covers all such races on an AW surface over the period of study. We saw in article 1 that for the ‘all races’ data the graph showed the right type of correlation between the rating position and the strike rate. Let’s see if that has occurred when focusing on handicaps only. In terms of understanding the graph, the horizontal axis is labelled from 1, the top-rated runner, to 2, the second rated, and so on:
The win strike rate for TS top-rated runners has been just under 15% and, more importantly, the win percentages have correlated positively once more with the TS ordinal rank. We have the left to right sliding scale that is the ‘ideal’.
If we look at the Each Way (win & placed) strike rates, we have a similar pattern:
The top-rated runner has the highest percentage once more, albeit only just, and the sliding scale is replicated once again.
The third graph looks at Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB). Being able to share these is down to another of the recent Geegeez additions of having PRB figures available in the Query Tool Results Summary. Here are the splits:
We can see exactly the same type of correlation once again so it seems therefore, that in handicap races, the TS ratings have been very accurate in terms of predicting the overall performance of the horse in relation to their TS ranked positions.
Top Rated TS Runners in AW Handicaps
For the remainder of the article my main focus will be the handicap race performance of the TS top-rated horses to see if any positive or indeed negative angles can be found. Firstly, let me share the record of every single TS top-rated runner since the beginning of 2019:
We see a close to break-even situation, which is an excellent starting point. Let me now break down the TS top-rated performance in more detail.
Annual strike rates – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps
In terms of delving deeper I want to start looking at the TS top-rated runners in all-weather handicaps by comparing their annual win strike rates and win & placed (Each way) strike rates to see how they matched up.
Both the win and EW strike rates have been extremely consistent and this has also been the case with the yearly PRB figures that have ranged from a high of 0.59 to a low of 0.56.
Market Rank – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps
Below is a table highlighting the performance of the top-rated runners in terms of market position / rank. The splits over the period of study were as follows:
Favourites made a small loss but those ranked two to four in the betting market all edged into profit. Returns were slightly less good when horses were fifth or higher in betting.
One potential issue when looking at data across all prices is that some bottom lines can be skewed by winners at big BSP prices. Interestingly, though, out of the 2445 TS top-rated winners only five had a BSP price above 50.0 (52.07, 54.15, 61.52, 126.19, 145.1). Even so, as in the first piece I am going to use a price cap hereafter in case any of those bigger priced winners skewed certain findings. For non-handicaps my price cap was 10/1 (ISP), for handicaps I think we should go slightly longer at 12/1 (ISP).
Sex – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
This is an area I feel is always worth checking out. The splits over this timeframe were thus:
These stats do not correlate with the usual male/female stats found on the AW where males tend to win more often within their group than females. Here we have witnessed a different scenario where female TS top-rated runners priced 12/1 or less have been very good value going back to 2019. TS top-rated female runners aged four and five have done particularly well, combining to win 19.8% of the time (280 wins from 1416) for a healthy profit of £295.21 (ROI +20.8%).
Age of horse – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
Onto the age splits now. We know from the previous paragraph that the female four- and five-year-olds performed well, but they only made up about 25% of the total runners for both those age groups. Let me share the full breakdown combining male runners with female runners:
Each individual age from three to six made a blind profit which is interesting, but it was clear that once we got to 7yos and older the performance dipped markedly, despite still being top-rated. Losses of 16p in the £ are steep at the best of times, so TS top-rated runners aged 7 or older are probably best swerved in the future.
Course – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
Do the TS top-rated runners in all-weather handicaps have similar records at each course? Let's review the PRBs first:
The Irish track of Dundalk has seen the strongest PRB figures, and I wonder will that correlate to better returns?
*Southwell data based on results on the tapeta surface which had its first race in December 2021.
Don’t be fooled when seeing that Dundalk had the lowest strike rate; their races had the biggest average field size compared with all the courses. There were blind profits for Dundalk and for three other courses, with only Kempton TS top-rated runners producing disappointing losses. I am not sure why the Kempton figures were so disappointing compared with the others.
Race Distance – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
A look at the results across different distances now. The figures were as follows:
TS top-rated runners performed well at the minimum distance, which may be because five furlong handicaps are generally run at a good clip and hence speed ratings should be fairly accurate. All in all, though, the table suggests that speed ratings work to a similar level regardless of distance. [The six furlong data looks an anomaly and is hard to explain otherwise]
Field Size – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
My next question was could anything be gleaned from the data for different field sizes? It was a slight surprise to me that the number of runners in a race did seem to make a difference. Below are the ISP A/E indices for different field sizes:
As can be seen, the better value has clearly been in smaller sized fields as far as the TS top-rated all-weather handicap runners have been concerned. This was also reflected in the profit and loss figures as the table below shows:
Based on the past few years it does seem that fields with eight or fewer runners provide the best value when it comes to the TS top-rated runners. The performance of the 6-8 runner group was extremely good.
Headgear – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
The splits between the number of TS top-rated runners that wore some sort of headgear / equipment and those that didn’t were almost the same. Hence, I thought it was a good idea to see what the results were for each group. They are shown in the table below:
The numbers clearly favour horses that did not wear any headgear securing a better return - over 8p in the £ - coupled with a 3% better win rate. This is something to note for the future I feel.
Run Style – TS top-rated runners in AW handicaps (ISP 12/1 or less)
When I looked at the run style for TS top-rated in all-weather non-handicaps, I noted the traditional edge to more prominent styles of runner. Hence, let me take a look at the win strike rates (within their specific run style groups) to see if the usual pattern has been repeated:
In terms of win rate early leaders have done best, albeit the gap between them and prominent racers has been closer than we usually see. There was a clear dip in strike rate from prominent racers down to horses that raced midfield or were held up.
As I mentioned in the first article, we do not know pre-race what the run style of each horse will be and hence any profit/loss data shared in this section is essentially hypothetical. However, if we had been able to predict which TS top-rated runners took the early lead in handicaps when priced 12/1 or less, they would have made a decent BSP profit of £359.41 to £1 level stakes. This equated to an impressive return of over 17 pence in the £. Prominent racers made a profit also with returns of just over 6p in the £.
I want to share the A/E indices next for the TS top-rated runners in terms of run style. They are shown in the graph below:
Early leaders / front runners have offered the best value, surpassing the 1.00 figure. Indeed, these A/E indices are calculated from ISP so the BSP A/E index would be around 1.16 which would be considered excellent value.
What was especially interesting was when I looked at the performance of TS top-rated horses that had led early in 5f handicaps. If we had known pre-race which TS-top rated runners would have led in these sprints, we would have seen 104 winners from 308 runners (SR 33.8%) for a huge profit of £330.41 (ROI +107.3%); PRB 0.69.
Finally, one last run style fact worth sharing is that when we look at all runners priced 12/1 or less roughly 14.3% of these runners led early. In 5f handicaps however, the TS top-rated runner led early 20% of the time. Hence, when trying to predict the front runner in 5f handicaps, the TS top-rated horse will lead much more often than those runners TS ranked 2 or lower. Combining this information with the Geegeez pace score totals for each 5f handicap should enable us to improve our chances of predicting the front runner more often – should we wish to do that.
*
Before embarking on this research, I had not expected the Topspeed top-rated runners to have performed so well in all-weather handicaps. For a set of public ratings, the top-rated performance has been extremely good. I, for one, will take more stock of them in the future, especially on the sand; and the beauty is that they appear right where I need them, on the Geegeez racecard!
In the near future, I will dive into Topspeed ratings for NH racing. This will happen probably sometime in January 2026. Until then...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Giavellotto_Kalpana_SeptemberStakes_Kempton_2025.png319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-12-17 09:36:512025-12-17 09:36:51Topspeed Ratings on the All-Weather, Part 2
At a time when interest rates for savers seem woefully low, especially if those savers enjoy having a bet, there must have been people enviously looking across to Sha Tin racecourse early yesterday, writes Tony Stafford. They were calculating what they might win on the Dream Double.
Yes, here was the chance to couple Hong Kong’s two international-class stars. Ka Ying Rising, the world’s best sprinter fresh from winning the £3.46 million Everest in Australia (and a cheeky domestic Group 2 in between), with Romantic Warrior, winner of 19 of his 25 turf starts. They both won, of course, and I can reveal that the safe-as-houses double would have realised £15.50 profit for every £100 staked.
There were few alarms during either race as Ya King Rising (1/20) pulled almost four lengths clear of his field under Aussie Zac Purton to mop up the £1.613m to the winner Longines Hong Kong Sprint over six furlongs. Three races later 1/10 shot Romantic Warrior and regular New Zealand-born partner James McDonald was as efficient as usual running almost two lengths clear of the field for the £2.304m Hong Kong Cup over ten furlongs.
So a 15.5% yield with a little less than two hours between the races for the racing-mad Hong Kong public to work out their expected profits. A handsome windfall indeed for the mathematicians who could translate it to 180% in a day while the present interest rates worldwide equate to nearer 0.01% per day.
Of course, all that is nonsense. They have to win! Romantic Warrior paid 11 HK dollars for a 10 dollar win bet and understandably, only 10.10 dollars, that’s 100/1 on, for a place.
Ka Ying Rising also paid 100/1 on for a place as he sped home for win number 17 of 19 starts, the last 16 in a row. Indeed, his two reverses came in races two and three in January last year, by a nose then a short head!
He is now on £11.7 million for those wins, a figure dwarfed by Romantic Warrior’s £24.3 million after the latest windfall yesterday. That son of Acclamation is a testimony to the veteran UK-based sire and an encouragement to a friend about to go into a partnership with trainer Roger Varian in a yearling by the stallion.
Ka Ying Rising’s win bet, in arithmetical terms, depending on how close to the off it was placed – let’s say within a couple of minutes – took 67.70 seconds to come to fruition. So 5HK dollars’ profit (from the 100 HK dollars stake) in three minutes equates to a rate of 100% in an hour. The snag? You need to find another 19 certainties to maintain that rate.
https://youtu.be/30tScLujPP8?si=VN7Vsd-Sq5aKIecz
It is extraordinary how consistent these two champions have become. Romantic Warrior lost little of his sheen with two defeats early this year, both at the hooves of Japanese-trained horses. First, he was collared late on by subsequent Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Forever Young in the £8 million to the winner Saudi Cup in Riyadh; then Soul Rush denied him, again on the line, in the Dubai Turf on World Cup night at Meydan in March.
Trainer C S (Danny) Shum gave him an eight-month break after Meydan, and he returned with an easy win on his home course last month. Had he won the other two races where he was so narrowly denied, his earnings would have been boosted by another £7,720k, thus a mind-bending £31.5 million!
Both horses are geldings, Romantic Warrior a seven-year-old and Ka Ying Rising two years younger. They are the best examples of the Hong Kong Jockey Club recruitment system in Europe, Australia and the United Stakes, principally confined to geldings, that has proved the blueprint to success.
Further east, Japan’s racing culture produces horses, like these two Hong Kong examples, capable of mixing it with the best that Europe and the US can muster. There, though, it is with a vast preponderance of entire horses that stay effectively in training for many years yet continue to run at a high level.
In all, seven Japanese geldings travelled across to contest the four international races, and their connections will have been delighted with a couple of second places. Soul Rush, avoiding Romantic Warrior this time, didn’t have the chance to confirm that win last spring, switching instead to the Mile race. He was denied by half a length by another local winner, Voyage Bubble, a second victory after Ka Ying Rising for Purton.
Harry Eustace’s Docklands was a creditable fourth here, but the Lion In Winter and Ryan Moore were never in contention and finished only eleventh.
Bellagio Opera also did extremely well for Japan, following home Romantic Warrior in second place and collecting more than £800k as a result. Only a five-year-old, he can be expected to be back again for the big races – probably in Riyadh in February and on World Cup day in Dubai the following month.
Harry Eustace has been enjoying a wonderful time over the past 13 months or so with Docklands, who apart from unexpectedly winning the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, has also performed well in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong, to where this was a second visit.
This trip will have given him time to catch up with brother David, who after a spell as joint trainer with Ciaron Maher in Australia, now operates under his sole proprietorship in Hong Kong.
David Eustace had a nice handicap win early on the card, whereas at the other end of the day, Hollie Doyle came very close to adding to her HK tally, finishing second in the finale on Drombeg Banner. She, Richard Kingscote, David Probert and longer-standing Hong Kong resident Harry Bentley, have a tough time getting on the right horses in this tight community.
The one major race that did evade the home team was the 1m4f Vase won by the Andre Fabre-trained Sosie, for the Wertheimer brothers. Sosie had been a strong fancy for the Arc where he was a fast-finishing third and that form ensured he would start favourite here.
In the event, the first five places went to the Europeans: Marco Botti’s Giavellotto, ridden by another recent UK export Andrei Atzeni, maintained his high level of form in second ahead of Goliath, Joseph O’Brien’s Al Riffa and Aidan’s Los Angeles.
Back in the UK, Saturday’s most valuable prize was the one-time Massey-Ferguson Gold Cup, the companion race in those days to the month-earlier Mackeson Gold Cup. It was very nice that a race of this stature was chosen as the vehicle for the Support the Hunt Family Fund, with Gold Cup Handicap Chase added for good measure.
Everyone has heard of the awful tragedy that John and his family endured, with his wife and two daughters killed in a pointless, brutal attack in their home just as John was driving back from his commentating duties at Lingfield that afternoon.
I bumped into John and his surviving daughter Amy the other day and for the umpteenth time wondered how they can keep control of their emotions as they appear to.
The race was something of a fairy tale, with Sean Bowen making all the running on a 33/1 shot for trainer Faye Bramley. Glengouly was 5lb out of the handicap, hence the big price despite the riding arrangements, and his history tells another tale.
After three wins during a busy career with Willie Mullins and an unseat when tiring a long way into the 2024 Grand National, he came up for sale in this May’s Tatts online sale, changing hands for 16,000gns.
He started off in his new yard with some modest efforts and then a wind op, but gradually things got better, yet hardly well enough to collect such a big prize. No wonder Sean Bowen reckons he can win 300 races this season, if he can have such a transforming effect on what might have appeared a tired old veteran. We never thought Tony McCoy’s best would ever be under threat, but Sean reckons otherwise. So far, it’s 155 and counting!
Dan Skelton didn’t win that one but collected another 13 during the past fortnight including a late double on the Cheltenham card. Harry looked especially good and he obviously gets a special kick coming up the hill first at Prestbury Park. Maybe he’ll think of a new celebration if that happens at the Festival. Perhaps standing up on the saddle as he crosses the line first after one of those minutely targeted handicaps?
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Sosie_HKVase_2025.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-12-15 04:04:482025-12-14 15:15:38Monday Musings: Hong Kong Rising
An analysis of Racing Post’s Topspeed (TS) on the All-Weather, Part 1
One of the reasons Geegeez has won the Best Betting Website award eight times since 2017 has been because it has not stood still, with upgrades and improvements made on a regular basis, writes Dave Renham. We have seen that again this December with some new additions to the Query Tool. One of these additions is the subject of this article, namely the Topspeed Ratings (TS) from the Racing Post.
Introduction
Topspeed ratings are the Racing Post’s Speed Ratings. The raw TS figure is a measure of the how fast a horse got to the finish in a particular race. It is amended slightly considering things like distance, weight carried, and the ground conditions. Essentially, TS is calculated by comparing a horse’s time against a standard time for the course and distance of the race. The TS figures we see in the Geegeez Racecard are known as 'adjusted TS ratings' with the main adjustment made for weight carried in the current race.
I believe the TS handicapper also tweaks this adjusted TS rating for the current race conditions. The adjusted TS figures we see in the Racecard are based on the best raw TS performance in the past 12 months. These performances must have occurred in the same Race Code, so for All Weather races only past TS raw figures in AW races have been considered. Likewise, for turf flat races only past turf flat raw TS figures will be considered. And, for the jumps past hurdle race TS raw ratings will be used for hurdle races only, while past chase TS ratings will be used for chases only.
It is not for me discuss the pros and cons of how the TS figure we see in the racecard is calculated. Ultimately, this is a method that the Racing Post have been using for many many years, so we need to assume they know what they are doing... or ignore it completely!
So where on geegeez.co.uk do we find the TS figures on a daily basis? In the screenshot below I have highlighted in the blue box where the adjusted TS figures can be found on the Geegeez Racecard.
My focus today is All-Weather racing and analysing the TS figures for this specific race code. The time frame used goes from January 1st 2019 to November 30th 2025, including both UK and Irish racing, with profit/loss calculated to BSP less 2% commission. This is the first of a two-parter and is slightly more of a general piece / overview, whereas the second will drill further into the stats.
Topspeed All-Weather Performance by Ordinal Rank
I have spoken to numerous respected analysts who have compiled ratings in the past, be them speed or ability ratings and, for them, to judge the effectiveness of their ratings the win rate is key. The top-rated runner should have the highest win percentage gradually reducing for the others. Obviously, it is hoped the top-rated runner is the best performer in terms of returns. However, it is important to point out that regardless of how good a set of ratings is, be they speed or form-based ratings, we cannot expect the top-rated runner to secure a blind profit over 1000s of races.
Let’s start with looking at the win percentages (strike rates) for different rated runners. This covers all races on the all-weather over the near seven-year period of study. The horizontal axis is labelled from 1 which stands for the top-rated runner, 2 the second rated and so on:
The win strike rate for top-rated runners has been slightly better than one win in every six races which is solid for any set of ratings. More importantly perhaps, the win percentages correlate positively with the rated positions showing the sliding scale I was talking about earlier.
If we look at the Each Way (win & placed) strike rates, we see a similar pattern:
The top-rated runner has the highest percentage once more, and the sliding scale is replicated showing strong positive correlation with the win only figures.
Finally, for this opening section, let me share the Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) figures. Being able to share these is down to another of the recent Geegeez additions of having PRB figures available in the Query Tool Results Summary. The splits during this timeframe were thus:
The same sliding graph appears again. So we can say that the TS ratings seem to have been accurate in terms of predicting the overall performance of horses in relation to their ordinal ranked positions.
Topspeed All-Weather Performance for TS Top Rated Runners
From here, it made sense to mainly focus on the TS top-rated horses to see if we could find any positive or indeed negative angles. Hence let me look at the record of every single TS top-rated runner since 2019:
A loss of less than 3% at Betfair SP is a solid figure considering this has included every single qualifier over almost seven years. Time now to dig a bit deeper.
Annual strike rates – TS top-rated runners
Let me start the digging process by comparing the yearly win strike rates, and the yearly win & placed (Each way) strike rates to see how they matched up. The graph paints the picture.
Both lines are fairly straight indicating that the performance of the TS top-rated runners has been consistent year in year out when it comes to winning and placing. In terms of the PRB figures they have ranged from a yearly low of 0.59 to a yearly high of 0.62, again highlighting their consistency.
Market Rank – TS top-rated runners
I would now like to share the performance of the top-rated Topspeed runners in terms of their market rank. The splits over the period of study were as follows:
Although TS top-rated runners have not made a profit when they were also the market leader, it has seemed that a position nearer the top of the betting market has been preferable. Looking at TS top-rated runners that started in the top four of the betting we can see that they would have proved profitable if backing all ‘blind’. OK, a profit of £132.90 to £1 level stakes over 14,422 bets would not have been a massive return but it was a positive return, nonetheless.
Race Class (handicap races only) – TS rating of average winners
I want to delve into class of race for a bit, focusing on the TS top-rated runners racing only in handicaps. The reason for using handicap races for class analysis is simple, because a non-handicap race could be a maiden, it could be a novice race, and when we get to class 5 or lower it could be a claiming race or indeed a seller. Hence, when we group non-handicaps together, we get a mix of different race types so it makes less sense. Of course we do see the occasional handicap selling race, but the horses are still carrying the correct weight that they would in a normal handicap.
Before looking at the TS top-rated runners, I first wanted to look at the average TS rating for the winning horses across each race class classification. To do this I simply added up the ratings of each individual winner within each class bracket and divided it by the number of winners. The graph below shows the results:
As we would expect we get a similar looking graph to previous ones. The higher the class the higher the average winning TS rating and there has been a similar differential between each ‘next door’ class classification.
Race Class (handicap races only) – TS top-rated winners
Now it’s back to focusing on the top-rated winners and their averages. Let me share these splits.
Of course, these were always going to be much higher than the average figures for all winners, but these average winning ratings gave me an idea. What about looking at the performance of top-rated runners that had a TS figure higher than the winning class average for all top-rated runners? In other words, for class 2 handicaps where the average top-rated winner was rated 98.1, how did the TS top-rated runners rated 99 and higher do as a cohort? Likewise for class 3 handicaps where the average top-rated winner was rated 90.6, how did the top-rated runners rated 91 and higher do etc, etc. Here’s what I found:
In the higher classes of race (class 4 and above) we see positive profits and returns. The two lower classes (5 and 6) both showed losses, although the class 6 figures were close to breaking even. So perhaps the TS ratings work better in class 4 or higher as far as the TS top-rated runners are concerned? Indeed, if we look at those classes again and tweak the rating of the top-rated runners up a little more, we see even stronger returns:
Certainly, for classes 2-4, it seems that the higher the rating the better when it comes to the TS top-rated runners. Also, this has been the case too for class 6 handicaps where the TS top-rated runner was rated 70 or more (rather than the 63+ tested earlier). This cohort of TS top-rated runners would have secured 138 wins from 1058 qualifiers (SR 13%) for a profit to BSP of £76.77 (ROI +7.3%).
Handicaps versus non-handicaps – TS top-rated runners
I now would like to examine the difference in handicaps and non-handicaps in terms of the TS top-rated horses. The splits were thus:
As we would have expected top-rated non-handicap runners have had the better win rate but overall losses have been quite steep, edging towards 10 pence in the £. However, if I introduce an Industry SP price limit of 10/1 we see a different story:
This time the bottom lines are very similar, with a tiny profit for handicap runners and an even tinier loss for those TS top-rated in non-handicaps. Unsurprisingly, non-handicap TS top-rated runners priced 11/1 or more have a shocking record, winning just 29 times from 1133 qualifiers (SR 2.6%) for hefty losses of £526.61 (ROI -46.4%). These look worth avoiding in the future based on this dataset.
For the final section of this piece, I am going to concentrate on some further non-handicap stats looking at the ISP 10/1 or less cohort.
Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by Price (ISP 10/1 or less)
Let me look at TS top-rated qualifiers in terms of Industry Starting Price bands with the limit of 10/1 in place. Below I share a graph showing what the BSP returns would have been in four price bands – 2/1 or shorter, 9/4 to 7/2, 4/1 to 6/1 and 13/2 to 10/1:
The shortest prices (2/1 or less) were close to breaking even to BSP, while the 9/4 to 7/2 and the 4/1 to 6/1 groups saw similar losses of around 3½ pence in the £. The best value across the timeframe were those priced 13/2 to 10/1 which showed a healthy return of over 11 pence in the £. This price band has definitely offered value since 2019 for TS top-rated runners in non-handicaps.
Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by sex of horse (ISP 10/1 or less)
A look at the gender of horse now. Anyone who has read my previous contributions on geegeez.co.uk will know that male runners tend to have a edge on the all-weather. I wonder if we will see that happening again here. Let’s take a look at the splits based on the 10/1 price limit:
Males have outperformed females, by a fair amount in win strike rates but only just in terms of returns. Hence, there has been no significant edge to males under these circumstances over the past few years.
Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by age of horse (ISP 10/1 or less)
Onto the age splits now, and a table showing performance in non-handicaps of top-rated Topspeed horses by individual age group.
As can be seen, the majority of non-handicappers were aged two or three, and TS top-rated 3yos have performed well. They have secured a win rate close to one win in every three, while showing a small BSP profit of £60.49 (ROI +3.8%). Older top-rated runners, those seven and older, fared the worst in terms of both strike rate and returns with losses of around 7½p in the £.
Non-handicap races – TS top-rated runners by run style (ISP 10/1 or less)
Finally for this article I will share some data for run style – possibly my favoured area of research. Firstly, a look at the win strike rates (within their specific run style groups):
We see a familiar pattern to previous run style research where early leaders/front runners have comfortably attained the best win percentage within their group while hold up horses having the lowest.
As I have mentioned many times before, we cannot know pre-race what the run style of each horse will be and hence any profit/loss data shared is essentially hypothetical. However, I always like to show the splits in the hope that one day I buy a crystal ball that actually works!
Those numbers speak for themselves really. The PRB figure of 0.78 for early leaders has been the highest recorded in the whole article. If the TS top-rated runner leads early in a non-handicap when 10/1 or shorter, then we have a value selection.
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This article has uncovered some interesting and positive findings. From what I have gleaned so far, when looking for selections in AW races top-rated Topspeed runners should be noted and potentially shortlisted for further investigation.
In the next article I will delve deeper into the performance of Topspeed in handicap races. Until then…
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/David_Marco.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-12-09 19:33:492025-12-10 10:34:40Topspeed Ratings on the All-Weather, Part 1
A week ago, when talking to Nicky Richards in the morning when he had sent three horses to Ayr – he won in the afternoon with 4/1 on shot Upon Tweed - we had a quick chat about one of his other runners, writes Tony Stafford. Red Cadillac had narrowly won his previous race at Carlisle and as a result he was carrying 11st13lb in this £4k to the winner handicap hurdle.
“I expect our horse will run well, that is unless Gordon Elliott’s boys are coming with their betting boots on”. Like three other runners on the day, King Gris was to be ridden by Sean Bowen. Running off 73, therefore in receipt of 25lb from Nicky’s horse, King Gris, owned by the Sette A Milano Syndicate, was 5lb wrong, as his official mark was a bargain-basement 68!
By the time of the race at 2.45 p.m., as the Editor and I were just about on the dessert course at the Horserace Writers and Photographers Association lunch in London, Elliott and the champion jockey already had two wins on the board. At the off, King Gris, 5/2 against at one point in the morning, was 11/4 on and won comfortably doing only what was needed by Bowen to land the odds.
The official margin, which could clearly have been extended if Bowen (and no doubt Elliott) had wished, was two lengths. After that in the seven-horse affair over the minimum trip it was 7 lengths, 6½, 9½, 3¾ and half a length. Strung out like washing on the line as the pre-race market suggested they would be.
Probably struggling to keep a straight face afterwards speaking to Racing TV, Gordon Elliott said, “It was nip and tuck going to the last, but King Gris won which is the most important thing, and he has a good attitude. That was a low-grade race but hopefully he'll be able to win a couple more.” No doubt! Richards’ guess is that he could be a 120 horse.
Red Cadillac, of course, was second and having done his best against what clearly were virtually impossible odds, his connections are going to have to pay a price. As Richards said yesterday, “No doubt after this he’ll go up in Tuesday’s new ratings and from there it will be harder for us to find another race with him.”
Reflecting yesterday morning in response to my reminding him of the event, he said, “There’s been hell on about it. I’ve had calls about it, but I think the BHA are to blame for allowing such a situation to arise.
“This was a Class 5, 0-100 race. During Covid, the rules were changed to prevent Irish stables having runners in races over here at Class 5. That has since been rescinded, but why I’ve no idea. We struggle enough to beat their horses in the top races – look at what Il Etait Temps did to Jonbon and co at Sandown. If we must contend with apparent set-ups like King Gris, what chance do we have?”
So, how did King Gris, a former Irish pointer with a very close third as the best of three runs on his card for owner-trainer Denis Paul Murphy, manage to arrive at a jumps rating of 68, equating to a flat mark in the early/mid 20s?
A short time after that promising pointing third I referred to, King Gris was gelded and it was only a few weeks later that he turned out in a hurdle race at Bangor under the auspices of Merseyside trainer Patrick Morris. He was a 25/1 shot, reflecting that point-to-point effort just a couple of months earlier but finished ninth of ten and was beaten a mammoth 90 lengths.
Next came Morris’s local track Aintree, where King Gris was fifth of six, beaten 63 lengths at 150/1. The final qualifying effort was at Cartmel. There, starting 250/1, and ridden as at Aintree by Charlie Todd, he was last of nine finishers. Job done – three runs from April 24 to May 28.
That was the last we saw of him until Monday a week ago.
The most intriguing element of the story must surely be why he was sent to Morris after the gelding operation if he was eventually destined for one of the top Irish jumping yards. Indeed, the stable that is second only to the magical Willie Mullins.
Morris has been training since 2002 with runners on the flat since 2004 and, apart from two blanks during that time, he has been a regular winner. In 2025 he boasts a decent strike-rate with 14 winners, a tally beaten only three times with the peak of 19 coming in 2011.
Coincidentally, the day of King Gris’ Ayr coup, Morris had a winner later on at Wolverhampton, then one the following day at Newcastle, and another on Saturday back at Dunstall Park. No reason then not to send a horse to Morris? Maybe, but here’s another coincidence. The trainer has run only two individual horses over jumps last season and this. They are King Gris and the useful chaser Royal Deeside who has won twice this term.
The coincidence? Morris’s last jump runners before King Gris and Royal Deeside had been as long ago as in 2011, the time of his best flat season. In all, before 2024/25 he sent out a total of 29 sporadic runners over the quarter-century for a single jumping success.
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If you want a strike-rate at the other end of the scale, how about Sara Bradstock, widow of Mark Bradstock and daughter of my long-term Daily Telegraph colleague John Oaksey. After the Bradstocks’ Mr Vango won a 3m6f chase in testing ground at Exeter two seasons back by 50 lengths, I thought he would knock the Irish off their collective perches at Cheltenham in the National Hunt Chase.
That proved beyond him at that stage, but last winter he went unbeaten through a forensically chosen three-race campaign, culminating with success in the Midlands Grand National over four and a quarter miles at Uttoxeter, a couple of weeks before the Grand National.
Mr Vango will now have the big race on his agenda next March, having come through a trial go over the big-race fences in Saturday’s Becher Chase (3m2f). Having looked beaten and running off top weight of 12st, from a peg 32lb higher than when winning that race at Exeter and 9lb higher than Uttoxeter, he was as unlucky a loser as you can find.
That said, in Twig he met an equally determined and deserving runner from the Ben Pauling stable, ridden as usual by Beau Morgan, son of Twig’s owner.
Twig had been my long-priced nap for the 2025 Grand National and, in running tenth of the 34, was the second home-trained finisher intruding on the Irish juggernaut’s private carving up of the £1 million prizemoney. With Ben saying he “wouldn’t swop him”, for some reason I preferred to look elsewhere for my best bet on Saturday and grimaced as the close-up showed his head down with his rival’s up to get the better of a wonderful finish.
Every time Sara sends out a runner under Rules, I think back to all those years when her father and I comprised the Sunday Telegraph writing team at the Grand National.
While John was crafting his wonderful words for the larger, later editions in terms of readership, I was the “sprinter” charged with doing the fast version of events for the Irish, Scottish and Northern readership.
We operated from a house across the road from the track, with a phone in every room and shared with Brough Scott and others those facilities in Chasandi, the home of a very nice Scouser family. No phones in the track, no computers to put the words together, just a disembodied telephonist taking your words back in Fleet Street to send on to the printers.
One of the top writers at the time was Christopher Poole, a giant, genial, rotund chap who worked for the London Evening Standard. If you thought our system in today’s world would be considered tortuous, Chris had to relate his to his own travelling telephonist, Max, who would then repeat the words back to Fleet Street! If Mr Vango does beat all those Irish stars next spring, even I won’t be able to resist a tear or two remembering John and quite a few others too.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ElliottGordon-143171.jpg316592Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-12-08 07:34:142025-12-08 07:34:14Monday Musings: A Grey Area
I have been researching horse racing for just over 25 years now, so I have delved into a lot of different areas and ideas, writes Dave Renham. Some have provided profitable angles, some have not. I tend to write up an article after I have done the research so that I have all the stats in front of me to help decide if it is worth converting into a piece. When ideas have offered little or no significant edge, I have tended to ‘bin’ them, as a fair proportion of readers are concerned more with profit than interesting ideas which do not offer any long-term edge.
This time, however, I am playing it slightly differently by researching and writing my findings up as I go. The risk here has already been mentioned: that there is little or no punting nutrition in the angle and associated research; but it is good to mix things up from time to time. I have penned one or two this way before, but it is a rare occurrence.
Today I am examining a new idea, for me at least. It is based around recent trainer form. This is regarded by many as an important consideration when it comes to betting on horses. Indeed, on Geegeez we offer Trainer reports where members are able to study 14-day or 30-day trainer form for all trainers who have runners on the day. The screenshot below shows an example of this:
My idea is to look at some individual trainers during specific months to see if their win strike rates showed correlation with their percentage of runners that had been pulled up.
The theory is that the fewer horses that were having to be pulled up, the higher the win percentage, and vice versa. Of course, I appreciate that the percentage of pulled up runners could impinge on the win percentage to a small extent, but we are not generally talking about pulled up monthly percentages of 30 or 40%, so the effect should be minimal. I estimate that in some instances it may make a difference of around 1% in terms of the monthly win SR%.
Data have been taken from UK National Hunt racing spanning from 1st Jan 2021 to 20th November 2025.
I will be looking at five trainers who each have a significant number of runners per year, which should make the findings more robust. The trainers are Nicky Henderson, Olly Murphy, Paul Nicholls, Dan Skelton and Nigel Twiston-Davies.
Let me start by sharing the overall percentage of horses for each trainer that were pulled up during the period of study:
As we can see there is a range of figures, with Nicky Henderson’s horses being pulled up roughly one race in every seven, whereas Olly Murphy’s runners have been pulled up roughly one race in every 14. These are the base figures I will work from for each trainer. I will move in alphabetical order and start with Henderson.
Nicky Henderson
We have seen that 14.1% of all of Henderson's runners were pulled up which seems quite a high figure. In fact, the overall percentage of pulled up runners for all trainers, not just these five, stands at just under 10%, (9.6% to be precise). Indeed, what inspired my research for this piece was the form of this particular yard in March 2024. It was when the stable was really struggling with an unexplained illness that saw numerous withdrawals and several very poor runs. Indeed, in March 2024 over 35% of Henderson’s runners were pulled up and they only had two winners across the whole month. Here we saw in black and white the possible strong link between the percentage of pulled up runners and stable form.
To test my correlation idea over the longer term I have come up with the following plan. For each stable I will use the overall percentage figure for pulled up runners as my starting point. So, for Henderson it is 14.1%. Then I will decide upon a lower ‘Pulled Up’ percentage (PU%) for specific months in an attempt to determine when the stable has potentially had a ‘much better’ month in terms of win rate, and then a higher monthly PU% when hopefully the stable has had a ‘much poorer’ month. The upper and lower figures I will choose for each trainer will be chosen by gut feel more than anything else. Also, once I have chosen these figures, I won’t tweak them in any way. It would be easy to back-fit the results slightly to help fit the narrative, but that defeats the object.
For Henderson then, my higher monthly PU% will be 19% and my lower monthly one will be anything under 10%. Hence, any month where the PU% was 19% or above, I will combine the results for all such months and work out the overall win strike rate across those months. I will do the same for months where the PU% was under 10% and work out the overall win strike rate across those months. My hypothesis, I guess rather obviously, is that we should see a much higher win strike rate in the months where the monthly PU% was under 10%. Here is what I found for Nicky H:
The results are at least the right way round in terms of the hypothesis. A 4.2% differential in win rates is fairly significant, especially as the sample sizes were large for each group – 488 runners and 609 runners respectively. It will be interesting to see if the other trainers follow a similar pattern.
Olly Murphy
Next, we head to the Wilmcote-based trainer, Olly Murphy. For Murphy the overall percentage figure for pulled up runners is much lower than for Henderson runners, down at 7.2%. Hence, I need to once more decide upon my PU%s in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ months. For a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 11% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month 4.75% or lower. Here are the strike rates based on these limits:
We see similar strike rates to the Henderson ones. Again, the figures are the way round I was hoping for with a 3.9% differential between the two. So far so good in terms of my original hypothesis.
Paul Nicholls
Paul Nicholls is approaching 4000 winners in the UK and has been Champion trainer a remarkable 14 times. It will be interesting to see what his stats show us. The overall percentage figure for pulled up runners from the Nicholls stable stands at 10.4%. Therefore, for a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 14.5% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month I will look for a percentage figure under 7%. Here are the relevant strike rates for both:
Wow! This is a significant difference. When the stable’s runners are being pulled up far less often than usual, the win percentages are off the charts. In contrast, when the PU% hits a much higher monthly figure than the average, the win rate drops markedly.
At this point, the research is showing what I had hoped for, but with two trainers left to check, this could 'go south' pretty quickly. Let’s see.
Dan Skelton
Dan Skelton has been banging in winners in vast quantities over the past few seasons. I wonder if this coming year will be the year when he finally wins the Trainers’ Championship. The overall percentage figure for pulled up runners from the Skelton yard over the period of study stands at 8%. Therefore, for a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 11% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month I will look for a percentage figure under 5.5%. The graph below shows the splits:
We see similar splits to Henderson and Murphy with a differential of 3.5% between the two strike rates. Again, the lower PU% group have the higher win strike rate.
Nigel Twiston-Davies
The final trainer to check is Nigel (and Willy) Twiston-Davies. His overall win percentage across all races is slightly below the other four so we should expect slightly lower percentages when we examine the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ month splits. The overall percentage figure for pulled up runners from the yard stands at 8.6%. Therefore, for a ‘bad’ month I will look at data where the PU% was 11.5% or bigger; for a ‘good’ month I will look for a percentage figure under 6%. The graph below shows the strike rates:
We see similar results to the ones we saw for Paul Nicholls with the ‘good’ month strike rate nearly double the ‘bad’ month one. All five trainers have seen a edge for the ‘good’ PU% months, with two showing a very clear win percentage edge.
So far so good, but there is another thing I need to check: Betfair returns (BSP ROI%) for each trainer. Obviously, based on the findings so far, I am hoping to see better ROI percentages for the months where the PU%s were lower. These figures will be in the middle column of the table shown below. The high figures will be in the column on the right. I have highlighted in green the best ROI% of each pair:
Four of the five have correlated positively with the win strike rates showing higher returns in the months where the PU% was low. Not surprisingly, two of them, Nicholls and Twiston-Davies, have a huge differential between their two respective figures. Both see a difference close to 40 pence in the £. The outlier is Dan Skelton whose figures are ‘around the wrong way’. However, it should be noted that two of the winners in his ‘high’ group were priced BSP 44.2 and 36.8. His ‘low’ group did not have winners anywhere as high as these two prices. Hence, the ROI%s are skewed a little based on this evidence.
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This has been an interesting journey, despite it not being that quick a piece to research and write up; I hope it's been an enjoyable ride. Ultimately, from my original hypothesis perspective, that proved to be quite a good one. If only the Skelton ROI% figures were around the other way, then I could claim it was a very good hypothesis!
Based on the findings of this piece, it does seem that the percentage of horses from a stable that are pulled up each month has an impact on the win rate of said stable.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Frodon_BadgerBeer.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-12-02 16:13:132025-12-02 16:40:36Thinking Out Loud: Trainer ‘P’ Form
A short post, with some video content if you'd like it, to let you know that we'll be updating Query Tool today. We're adding some new input variables as well as a new output column.
Details of those can be found in this recent post. Or in the videos below (first one is a general overview including the new variables; second one outlines a couple of important changes to the way QT Angles works).
IMPORTANT: QT may be unavailable for a period this morning (Tuesday 2nd December) while we make the upgrades.
These changes are also reflected in the latest version of the User Guide, which you can view here.
Lots of us thought he was a dog! As the series of second places built up to four, many people including me were quick to brand the Francis-Henri Graffard-trained four-year-old Calandagan ungenuine – at the very least a gelding that perhaps didn’t try as hard as he should, writes Tony Stafford.
For a while his biggest claim to fame was that as a gelding, he wasn’t qualified to run in his home country’s greatest race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Graffard and regular stable jockey Mickael Barzalona won that this year anyway with the year-younger Daryz, like Calandagan a home-bred from the late Aga Khan’s studs.
Their owner died earlier this year, so missed one of the most glorious chapters of his lifetime as an owner-breeder. Calandagan’s rise to being officially the top racehorse in the world gained a fitting gilding to that accolade when he became the first overseas winner of the Japan Cup for 20 years at Tokyo racecourse yesterday.
The last one was Luca Cumani-trained and Frankie Dettori-ridden Alkaased, whose winning time of 2 minutes 22.1 seconds in 2005 was then the record time for the race. That succumbed only once in the intervening years, to the great Almond Eye, but her figure was trimmed again as Calandagan rallied to wrest victory close to the line from the home-trained favourite Masquerade Ball in the 17-runner affair.
His time for the 12 furlongs was 2 minutes 20.3 seconds, more than three seconds faster than Found recorded in the quickest-ever Arc for the Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore team in 2016. Just think of it, yesterday’s winner averaged fewer than 12 seconds per furlong (11.67 to be precise) over a mile-and-a-half: not much below sprinting pace!
Thus, after that quartet of second places, it is now four Group One victories in a row - and how - for Calandagan, following the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud in June; the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in July; and the Champion Stakes, easily from Ombudsman, again at Ascot in October. Some hound!
https://youtu.be/L5sUW79JlQo?si=hvrngEGBpFCWBQZ0
It took a battling performance from the winner, and the exciting thing for international racing is that the son of Gleneagles – whose 2026 fee has remained at €20k for the forthcoming season - will almost certainly remain in training with the expectation of boosting his already lavish earnings figure.
Yesterday’s version carried a first prize of £2.6 million, but under the race conditions, the King George was one of several incentivised qualifying races which brought an invitation to the race and a £2.3 million bonus for any horse that followed by winning the Japan Cup.
No doubt that possibility had been insured and equally the fact that it had been 20 years since an overseas horse had won, the unlikely eventuality had been largely discounted. Even though he was the best horse in the world on ratings Calandagan was only second best in the market at 11/4. He won’t be as big as that for any race that Graffard chooses to point him at any time soon.
For a Coolmore team still having to adjust to losing their number one Galileo replacement, Wootton Bassett, who died in the early autumn while on his off-season stint in Australia, Gleneagles’ son’s exploits are a reminder that Coolmore is far from a one-sire outfit.
They are almost embarrassingly well-stocked with top-class new sires that entered stud this year and several other high-class performers from the 2025 Classic season that have followed them on.
Mickael Barzalona had to overcome his compatriot Christophe-Patrice Lemaire on the favourite and the pair passed the finish two and a half lengths ahead of third-placed Danon Decile. Lemaire has been riding in the biggest races in Japan combined with his domestic duties for many years and has won the Cup four times, starting with Vodka (2009).
He won twice on Almond Eye (2018, in that record time, and 2020) and also partnered the exceptional Japanese champion Equinox two years ago. Ryan Moore and Oisin Murphy are other top riders to have won the race in recent years, but the last French-trained horse to win was Le Glorieux way back in 1987.
Barzalona has come a long way from that day at the Derby when he started celebrating before passing the line to win for Andre Fabre on Pour Moi in the Michael Tabor colours. That was probably just youthful exuberance, and he has proved himself a top-flight international pilot with increasing regularity since, like a slow-maturing French red wine.
A year after Pour Moi, Brian Meehan booked Barzalona to ride Ray Tooth’s Catfish in the Vodafone Dash on Derby Day and the rather headstrong filly probably lost all chance when her saddle slipped as they left the stalls. Far from making her usual fast start, she was always fighting a lost cause it seemed, with her jockey rather precariously perched.
She rallied to such good effect that she was flying home in third, not much more than a length behind the John Best-trained Stone Of Folca. Stone of Folca won the five-furlong sprint in a time of 53.69 seconds, then and still a record for an electronically timed five-furlong race. How close must Catfish have gone to being the world record holder!
Coincidentally, I was with Raymond and his long-time right-hand man Steve Gilbey on Friday celebrating Steve’s landmark 70th birthday. He certainly doesn’t look it! We love going to the Mandarin Kitchen next to Queensway Station and the food as ever was first class. The talk quickly turned to Constitution Hill’s comeback run in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle the following afternoon and, rather ungraciously, I suggested I thought he would fall.
Nicky Henderson has a wonderful record in the race with nine wins starting from 2001 with Landing Light. His second was Ray’s Punjabi in 2008 when the race was switched to Wetherby while Constitution Hill won it as a five-year-old in 2022, by 12 lengths from smart stable-companion Epatante.
That superb mare was again in second when Constitution Hill won the Christmas Hurdle by 17 lengths next time and had future champion State Man seven lengths adrift when winning his single Champion Hurdle in March 2023.
I was at a Cheltenham Preview on a Saturday evening in March in Central London this year, feeling obliged from the floor to suggest that I reckoned Constitution Hill was the best hurdler I’d ever seen, so why are we even discussing it? Lydia Hislop, one of the panel experts on the evening, was far less sure, citing that his jumping had become much less secure.
Of course, Constitution Hill fell when still in contention four from home on the big day and then State Man, poised for a follow-up to his 2024 success, fell at the last when five lengths clear. It was left to the mare Golden Ace, trained in the West Country by Jeremy Scott, to come through and seize the prize.
Rarely can a winner have been received with such scant praise, but Scott persevered, sending her over to Punchestown where she put in another brave show to follow home State Man for a further lucrative payday as Constitution Hill laboured home a remote fifth.
Runner-up when an odds-on shot and undercooked at Kempton on her return in the autumn, Golden Ace turned up once more in the Fighting Fifth with Jeremy going against the market, this time she was a 22/1 shot. Again, she benefited from others’ failings, Constitution Hill coming down as early as the second flight at Newcastle, and then his market rival, Dan Skelton’s The New Lion having to be rousted when narrowly ahead and falling two from home.
From there, it must be a cakewalk we reckoned for Willie Mullins’ hitherto unbeaten Anzadam, but after being brought with a smooth run by Paul Townend, he was a bit untidy at the last. Meanwhile, Golden Ace under Lorcan Williams, kept going in her usual fashion to win by one and a half lengths with the other outsider Nemean Lion getting within a neck of the runner-up at the line.
It’s hard to get rid of pre-conceptions but to say Golden Ace has been lucky in collecting both of her big prizes is to perhaps forget that this was her seventh win (plus three places) in her 11 starts over hurdles. The hurdles are there to jump and for some reason all the signs from Constitution Hill to his trainer that he was a different horse this year meant nowt. He seemingly restricts his errors to the racecourse.
I was surprised when he went to Punchestown last spring after the Champion Hurdle debacle. I would not be shocked if Nicky and owner Michael Buckley decided to finish him off now before that wonderful career is tarnished further. [Rumour is that he might run on the flat - Ed.]
Over at Newbury, it didn’t take long for Dan Skelton to wipe away the disappointment of The New Lion’s defeat in the Fighting Fifth. Two weeks earlier he had seen a long-laid plan come to fruition when his nine-year-old mare Panic Attack ran away with the Paddy Power Gold Cup over two and a half miles at Cheltenham.
Now, going up six furlongs in distance and carrying a 4lb penalty, she was theoretically 3lb well in after being raised 7lb for Cheltenham. With Dan’s brother Harry riding at Newcastle, 3lb claimer Tristan Durrell took over the reins and the mare skipped easily clear to pick up the £142k first prize. Come on Willie, wake up, Dan might soon be out of sight!
Just as keen on the cuisine of the Mandarin Kitchen are Maurice Manasseh and son David, who were both in Ireland yesterday for the comeback run back over hurdles of part-owner David’s Ballyburn, whose season over fences proved such an anti-climax last winter.
He returned for the Mullins team in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle and although he didn’t quite prevent previous dual winner Teahupoo’s getting home for the hat-trick, in another stride he would have done. David can look forward to another Cheltenham Festival win, this time in the three-mile championship! He is only a 2/1 shot, but on the day that might look generous.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Calandagan_JapanCup_2025.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-12-01 07:54:592025-12-01 10:20:34Monday Musings: Woof No More
From time to time, not very often, I buy a horse to syndicate among fellow racing fans and geegeez.co.uk readers. Last week was one such occasion and a few shares are available, more on that in a moment. But first, a little history on geegeez syndicates.
Geegeez Syndicates
I've been involved in racing syndicates since a horse called Love's Design, trained by Julia Feilden, was bought in the year 2000. He was a bit of a legend, winning seven times for us and providing numerous more memorable days on track. Over the intervening 25 years, I've gone from being a syndicate member to being a syndicate member... and manager! Always taking a share myself, we've had a lot of success. In fact, looking at the new OWNER variable in QT (landing very, very soon!), I can see that we've had 42 winners from 295 runners since 2009. That's about one win for every seven runs, and a place rate of better than one in three.
Overall in the UK, the average in that time is around one win in nine, and just lower than three in ten placed; so we've done pretty well since the start.
More recently, however, I've tried to buy better stock, especially over jumps (my main passion). Unsurprisingly, that has usually meant spending a bit more - but not always - and investing earlier. That's rewarded us handsomely, as this next image shows.
Let me point a few things out from that table.
Firstly, our jumps horses over the past five years have won at a rate of almost one in four, 23.08% to be precise. That's more than twice the average win rate (see IV figure, 2.14). They've made the frame almost 44% of the time and have been profitable to back at both BSP and starting price. We've had a lot of fun!
The undisputed flag bearers have been Coquelicot, a dual Listed and nine-time winner in total (also 2nd eight times), from just 28 career starts; and ten-time winning Sure Touch, whose big day was the Summer Plate last year. Total earnings for 'Cookie' were £97,000 before she was sold as a broodmare for £40,000 in January this year; Sure Touch, a winner last month on his most recent start, has amassed £130,593 so far and is being aimed at the veterans' series in the spring.
As an aside, Coquelicot is the joint-winningmost horse Anthony Honeyball has trained, alongside those magnificent veterans Regal Encore and Sam Brown; and Sure Touch is the joint-winningmost horse Olly Murphy has trained, alongside the brilliant Brewin'upastorm. We've been lucky as well as good.
The current team is comprised of Sure Touch, Dartmoor Pirate (rated 118), who we think will nearly win next time before tilting at something a touch more ambitious; and Gee Force Flyer, given an opening mark of 118 and for whom a maiden hurdle ought to be a near formality on his next run: we'll again then map out a route for the rest of the season.
The Pirate was a close up fourth in a G3 handicap hurdle two seasons back, and 5th in another G3 as well as second in a Pertemps qualifier last season. He had a few issues which we think we've sorted now. The Flyer won an Irish point to point which is working out brilliantly - winners everywhere - and has run against two of the smarter UK middle distance novices this season in races that didn't remotely play to his strengths (both were quarter-mile sprints off very slow fractions).
As well as that trio, we have a pair of unraced three-year-old fillies, Ashburton and Luna Lux. Ashburton is a big filly who will probably need a year or two to fully grow into her frame, but she's ready enough to have an outing at Doncaster on Saturday in a juvenile bumper. It's likely more for experience than anything, but she's surprised us a lot at how forward she's been. And Luna Lux, a filly I really love, was ready to run earlier in the month before succumbing to a dose of the snots - very common this time of year, especially with the youngsters. She'll be on track before long and I'm very excited for that!
And now we have one more...*
*incidentally, I buy fillies with good pedigrees not only because there is an excellent race programme for them but also because, even if the racing project doesn't quite work out, they have residual value as broodmares.
The Arqana Autumn sale is one deep in quality with packed pedigrees aplenty and, allied to the success we've had there before, it’s why I’m prepared to swing the bat a little in terms of hammer price. We had such good luck with Coquelicot, who was bought at the 2017 renewal, and we think we have another potential top-notcher from there in Luna Lux, sourced at the 2023 Arqana Autumn Sale.
The Back Story
Since 2017, we were having so much fun with Cookie that we didn’t return to Deauville until two years ago, November 2023, at which Luna Lux raised her pretty little head in our direction. We don’t yet know how that story will play out, but so far so exciting, and she’s developed into a filly of real quality – “a belter” in trainer Anthony Honeyball’s words – who’s lived something of a storied life already. She’s taken us on a journey even before her racecourse debut and that, of course, is the wonderful nature of projects like this.
A side point on Luna Lux is that she is the second foal from her dam, Black Luna; the first foal sold as a three-year-old for €150,000 last June. This is important because I am trying to buy six-figure quality youngstock 'off plan' as it were. If Luna Lux came to market, I'd unhesitatingly expect her to fetch at least £100,000. [It does need to be kept in mind that there are keep costs from November yearling to June 3yo, but nothing like the difference between €50,000 and £100,000, still less €150,000]
To now, and exciting news from that pretty and horse-y enclave in northern France. A filly we (me, Anthony and Tessa Greatrex of Highflyer Bloodstock) loved went through the ring last week, the first of only three on our shortlist. I wasn’t quite up together enough to bid on her at the point she went through but, fortunately, she was bought back by her vendors at €42,000 because they thought she was worth more. They wanted €50,000 and were adamant she wouldn’t leave them for less. She’s an absolute beauty as you'll see in a moment so I can understand why they felt that way.
Anyway, having discounted the second of three on my list and then watched the third one make too much money (she’s a cracker, too, but budget is not infinite!), we were in the strong position of being able to attempt an ‘amiable’: a deal with the vendor post-auction at a price acceptable to both parties. So, the imaginary hammer dropped at €45,000, a full €5,000 less than the vendor wanted but a fair price for them and a value one for us.
The Trainer
She'll be trained at the geegeez-sponsored Potwell Farm Stables of Anthony Honeyball. Anthony is having another excellent season and is on track to again break his personal best, which saw a new high last campaign.
The yard's rude health is not reflected by numbers alone. Honeyball has also been delivering in quality, with the trainer fresh from success at Cheltenham's November meeting and a second success in the Badger Beers a week earlier.
Big winners on big afternoons are becoming the norm for the 45-year-old, who is finding he now has the ammunition to fire more than one bullet at some of the season's more lucrative affairs. Such was the case at Cheltenham this month, where a heartbreaking final-fence blunder from favourite Jordans Cross was made more palatable when his stablemate Kdeux Saint Fray was able to snag the win instead.
Anthony is extremely personable and it's a great pleasure for me that most of his runners sport the geegeez.co.uk logo across the jockey's chests. He is also, more importantly, a brilliant judge of a horse and outstanding at bringing along youngstock to be ready early.
The Filly
Introducing lot 557, an unnamed (our job to name her, when most French yearlings come pre-titled as was the case with Luna Lux) filly by Nirvana du Berlais out of a winning mare from a deep Black Type family. She was an early February foal and she looks forward and racy: she should be ready early all other things being equal.
Let’s talk about that pedigree.
Father
Nirvana du Berlais might not be a name you’re familiar with, but he’s the coming man (in the same way that Masked Marvel was two years ago when I bought Luna Lux - now he's a household name and one of the absolute most sought after stallions in the jumps game).
On the track he was a hurdler himself, winning a Grade 3 and a Grade 1 from just seven starts - all placed bar a debut fall, and the final four in Graded company.
His first crop is just four years old currently, but they include two Grade 1 winners already: the machine that is Lulamba, and Leader Sport, who won a Grade 1 chase the weekend before last in France. The 3rd in that Auteuil G1 was, you guessed it, another notch on the Nirvana du Berlais bed post, this time a filly called Nirvalla.
Keep in mind that he has had very few runners to date and his oldest progeny are not yet five years old!
Here are the past week or so's UK/Ire results for the sire:
Three winners, a second and two thirds - from only seven runners!
But there's also the French winners... the image below shows all of his winners in less than the last six weeks.
Dad, of course, is only half of the gene pool, so what about mum? Her name is Futura, and she was a nine-year-old primetime mare when bearing our filly. On the track Futura won once from just six starts and, since going to the paddocks, she’d had one previous foal: a Goliath du Berlais colt who sold as a foal for €31,000 – and then resold as a 3yo this summer to Venetia Williams for €60,000. It’ll be very interesting to see how he develops.
The second dam, Funny Feerie, was a phenom: she was a dual Listed winner over obstacles before throwing THREE GROUP/GRADE 1 WINNERS, ALL OF WHICH WENT ON TO BE STALLIONS! That’s virtually unheard of.
The pick of them is Fuisse, who won the Group 1Prix du Moulin and was second in the G1 Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) - all class.
Next is Full Of Gold, who won the 2yo staying (10f) Group 1, the Criterium de Saint-Cloud: precocity and stamina.
And, lest you were thinking it’s a bit too sans obstacles, the third was a full brother to Futura called For Fun. He won the Grade 1 Prix Alain du Breil (2m3f, hurdles), among a further plethora of podiums in Pattern races.
It really is a stacked and loaded pedigree as you can see below:
Nirvana du Berlais is by Martaline, himself a champion sire in France; and Futura is by Motivator, another pre-eminent NH influence. The point is laboured by now, but it’s clearly a wonderful page.
The Filly Herself
All that pedigree counts for nothing if the actual horse to which it relates is too small, walks wrong, has poor conformation, or is otherwise less than perfect. That's how we discounted one of the trio on my final shortlist (and several before her). This filly, as you can see below, walks and trots beautifully.
She has arrived safely at Anthony's yard on the Dorset/Somerset border, had her vaccinations and is now out in a field covered in mud with a couple of other yearlings to keep her company. She's settled in really well and will have a very quiet time of it until the spring.
The Plan / Syndicate
The Plan
So she's in the field for a few months, after which, in spring next year (it's not far off, you know!), she’ll benefit from the full scholarship programme at the Potwell Academy. That involves being broken in (being 'laid over', having a saddle put on, ridden around her box, and then ridden in the indoor school and on the local roads) before being turned out for the summer. After the summer next year, she's likely to continue her education with some trots on the round gallop and building to a gentle trot up the searching Seaborough hill gallop; there will also be some jumping practice next year.
And then, in 2027 - it'll be 2026 in a minute - she'll be ready to race granted normal luck.
The Syndicate
She is being syndicated into ten 10% shares and seven six are available now.
Each share costs £4,500 with monthly fees of £125 starting January 1st 2026, and full training fees of £250/month from spring 2027.
There are no hidden costs - all funds go into the syndicate account and any residue is returned to syndicate members.
Owners benefit from stable visits, a dedicated WhatsApp group with regular updates on progress, and, when the time comes, owners' badges for the races. Of course, each 10% share earns a 10% return on prizemoney and eventual sales proceeds.
She’s an absolutely gorgeous filly with a tremendous page, and a really exciting prospect for the track and beyond. This is a genuine opportunity to be involved with a 'could be anything' project and learn about how a young horse because a racehorse.
What a run for young, up-and-coming French National Hunt sire Nirvana Du Berlais.
The Haras de la Hetraie resident, whose oldest crop of foals are aged only four, supplied Leader Sport, an impressive winner of the Grade 1 Prix Maurice Gillois over fences at Auteuil on Sunday for trainer Daniela Mele and joint-owner Walter Connors, and Nirvalla, who defied odds of 101-1 to finish third in the same race for Mickael Seror.
Nirvana Du Berlais' well-touted son Lulamba, who had already put his sire’s name up in lights by scoring in the Punchestown Champion Four-Year-Old Hurdle after finishing second in the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham last season for Nicky Henderson, then coasted to victory on his chasing debut in a beginners’ event at Exeter on Monday.
To put an exclamation mark on it, Manganese, a three-year-old from the sire’s second crop, overcame significant interference from a loose horse to score easily in a fillies’ juvenile maiden hurdle at Leicester for Max Comley on the same afternoon.
Nirvana Du Berlais’ hot streak didn’t come out of the blue, either. There is supporting evidence to suggest that it is the start of a successful stallion career.
His debut four-year-olds, of which there are 79, also include Semper Fortis, who took a Listed handicap hurdle at Auteuil last month for Noel George and Amanda Zetterholm, and Victory Valley, who finished second in a Listed chase at the same track in April for Arnaud Chaille-Chaille and Francois Pamart, along with 14 other winners and 11 placed performers under rules.
His second generation of three-year-olds, which totals 100, has meanwhile already yielded five other winners besides Manganese. Among those are Nicos Invicta, who struck in an Auteuil hurdle in April and wasn’t beaten far into fifth in a Listed event at the track in September for Francois Nicolle, and Juste Prix, who scored by three lengths over hurdles at Senonnes in August for Isabelle Pacault.
If Nirvana Du Berlais does take his place in the hallowed ranks of elite French National Hunt sires alongside the likes of Doctor Dino, No Risk At All and Cokoriko, as it looks increasingly like he will, it won’t be the biggest surprise. He has always had an awful lot going for him, after all.
First, he has a terrific French jumps pedigree. He is by Martaline, Haras de Montaigu’s much-missed son of Linamix who is the source of numerous stars on either side of the Channel and another big-race winner in Marble Sands at Cheltenham on Sunday.
Martaline’s other sons at stud include Beaumec De Houelle, who is one crop ahead of Nirvana Du Berlais but hasn’t made nearly as explosive a start, although it does look like he has a good one on his hands in Letos, the brave winner of the Brown Lad Handicap Hurdle at Naas this month for Tony Mullins.
Nirvana Du Berlais is, furthermore, out of Katioucha, a daughter of Mansonnien who finished third in the Listed Prix Finot hurdle at Auteuil for newcomers and is now developing into a real blue hen for her owner Haras du Berlais and partners.
She is the dam of five other winners, including Toscana Du Berlais, a son of Shantou who struck by six lengths in the Grade 1 Prix la Haye Jousselin at Auteuil on Sunday; Triana Du Berlais, a daughter of Presenting who scored at Grade 3 level over hurdles and fences at Auteuil; and Aubusson, a son of Ballingarry who was saddled by Nick Williams to take a Grade 3 handicap hurdle at Haydock and to finish a nose second behind Thousand Stars in the Grade 1 Grand Prix d'Automne at Auteuil.
Nice To Meet You, a placed full-sister to Nirvana Du Berlais, has meanwhile produced dual Auteuil Listed chase winner and Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris fourth Niko Has (by Great Pretender) and last season’s young French hurdling ace Nietzsche Has (Zarak), who showed his prowess to British racegoers when he bolted up by eight lengths in the Grade 2 Finale Juvenile Hurdle at Chepstow last December.
Nietzsche Has received an enthusiastic reception in his first season at Montaigu this year, covering 102 mares in total, and his supporters will no doubt be delighted to see his ‘uncle’ Nirvana Du Berlais showing it to be a sire-producing family.
There is quality all the way down this page, too. Katioucha is a half-sister to high-class French exports Ma Filleule and Mon Parrain out of Kadaina, a daughter of Kadalko who won a Listed hurdle at Auteuil.
Kadiana was in turn one of five black type-winning jumpers out of the Lyfko mare Kogina, along with Katoune, Klark, Madame Stella and Samson. Madame Stella is the dam of Waitnsee, who won the Imperial Call Chase at Cork four years ago.
Nirvana Du Berlais then lived up to that outstanding breeding in his seven outings for Chaille-Chaille, all over hurdles at Auteuil at three. He won twice, in the Grade 3 Prix Aguado and Grade 1 Prix Cambaceres, on the latter occasion surging 14 lengths clear of the classy pair Kool Has and For Fun.
Nirvana Du Berlais has the good looks to match, being a powerful sort standing 16.2½ hands, although he’s somehow overcome being born chestnut, a towering obstacle to siring talented jumpers in Britain and Ireland. Apparently.
It is no surprise, then, that he has always received strong support from breeders. He covered books numbering 125 and 131 mares in his first two seasons, and word must have spread about the appearance of his early foals as he was sent 185 mares in his third year, 189 in his fourth and 160 in his fifth.
With Lulamba having dropped a big clue in the winter that Nirvana Du Berlais’ progeny have the ability to match their looks, the sire covered a bumper book of 211 mares in his sixth season this year, including quite a few notable names in British or Irish ownership such as Maria’s Benefit, Stormy Ireland and The Glancing Queen.
This year’s Weatherbys Return of Mares also features nine foals by him registered in Britain or Ireland in 2025. Take a bow, the breeders of those horses, for being so ahead of the game: Elms Bloodstock; Scarlett Knipe; Longner Bloodstock and Peel Bloodstock; JP King and Patrick Turley; Phil and Jan Mathias; Olney Bloodstock; Scandinavian Equine Services; and Evergreen Bloodstock – twice, so that outfit must be doubly shrewd.
King and Turley have already received their reward, selling their Nirvana Du Berlais colt foal out of the Grade 2-placed Helissio mare Our Dot’s Baby to Dick Frisby for €68,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland November National Hunt Sale this month.
Knipe is selling her colt out of Lucie Du Berlais, a Saint Des Saints mare from another black-type-packed Berlais family, in the unusual arena of the Tattersalls December Foal Sale in Newmarket next Wednesday. Such a well-bred offering is unlikely to be missed among the Flat bluebloods, though.
Several of the other British and Irish-bred Nirvana Du Berlais foals feature among the eight lots by the sire set to be presented at the Goffs December National Hunt Sale next month, alongside the inevitable French pinhooks. They will no doubt be even more closely examined by traders and end users after the exploits of Leader Sport, Lulamba and co.
Pinhookers certainly seemed keen to lay their hands on Nirvana Du Berlais yearlings at the Arqana Autumn Sale in Deauville yesterday, with Carrigeen Bloodstock paying €30,000 for one colt and Brown Island Stables giving €16,000 for another.
It might prove wise to have bred to the sire before now, with his 2026 covering fee still to be announced but sure to go up, and to buy his stock before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon.
It is still early days for Nirvana Du Berlais, but he looks like the real deal to me.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/nirvana7.png4371154Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2025-11-26 14:17:342025-11-26 16:36:59New Racing Syndicate: Seeking Nirvana?
We know that trainers have their own personalised methods of training horses, as well as how they go about placing horses in terms of which races they are going to run in, writes Dave Renham. In this article I will examine the records of certain trainers in terms of the distance they travel with their runners to the racecourse.
Introduction
Clearly, the location of training facilities impacts where the racecourses are in relation to the racing yard; trainers that train in Scotland for example are somewhat restricted in terms of short journeys to courses. Nick Alexander, who trains in Fife, has two courses within 40 miles (Musselburgh and Perth), and he still has to travel more than 90 miles to get to the other two Scottish tracks, Ayr and Kelso. Compare this to Nigel (and Willy) Twiston-Davies, Fergal O’Brien and Kim Bailey to name but three, who all train within 40 miles of six different racecourses.
In terms of data for this piece I have looked at UK National Hunt racing from 1st January 2019 to 11th November 2025. Any profit/losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission.
How a journey impacts a horse is hard to say. Logically, we could argue that the less time the horse has to travel the better: there's less chance for it to become unsettled on the journey and such like. However, the counter argument would be that for a trainer to send a horse on a very long journey there must be a good reason. There are a few situations in which a trainer might look further afield including more suitable race conditions, a less competitive looking race, targeting a specific prize, or looking to increase the profile of the horse or indeed the yard by entering at bigger meetings. There are also cases when the owners might want to run somewhere, either because it's convenient for them or because of any associated prestige/good day out. Trainers' and owners' intentions are not always 100% aligned!
When considering how a horse is likely to fare on a shorter or longer journey to the track, I am hoping that digging into individual trainers will help to give some answers. My assumption is that each trainer will be different with some trainers primarily targeting races close to home, whereas others happier to travel the length and breadth of the country in search of what they deem to be better opportunities.
My approach will be to first look at distances of 40 miles and less to the racecourse, as most of these journeys involve a horse travelling for about an hour or less. I will then look at runners travelling distances of 175 miles or more, which I estimate means a minimum journey time of around four hours given the likely vehicle speed restrictions.
40 miles or less
I'll begin by looking at shorter journeys to the track, and below are the figures for all trainers combined when travelling 40 miles or less to the racecourse:
This gives us a benchmark to use as a comparison when looking at individual trainers. Below is a list of the all trainers who saddled at least 250 runners in total with travel of 40 miles or less from stable to racecourse. I have restricted qualifiers to horses that were a BSP price of 12.0 or less in order to try and avoid potential skewed profits from huge-priced winners. The table is ordered by Betfair SP Return on Investment.
21 of the 36 trainers made a profit with their runners priced BSP 12.0 or less, while 23 had A/E indices of over 1.00. A few handlers stand out, namely Rebecca Menzies, James Moffatt, Ben Pauling and Matt Sheppard. All four secured excellent profits over the timeframe. Looking in more detail at the record of Rebecca Menzies, there are three courses within 40 miles of her stables and her breakdown for each was as follows:
Profits at all three with the Newcastle record being particularly strong. What is also worth noting is her consistency year on year with these runners. The graph below shows Menzies' yearly win strike rates in this context:
Every year has seen a win rate better than one in five and in addition to this she recorded a blind profit in every year.
There are six tracks within 40 miles of Ben Pauling's yard, and he secured a profit at five of these. His record at Worcester was particularly impressive with 21 wins from 75 (SR 28%) for a profit of £37.37 (ROI +49.8%). He has been a rare visitor to Ludlow but of his 20 runners there, eight won (SR 40%) for a profit of £15.25 (ROI +76.3%).
All of James Moffatt’s qualifiers raced at Cartmel, while Matt Sheppard made a profit at four nearby courses - Hereford, Ludlow, Stratford and Worcester.
Moving on to some of the ‘big guns’, Nicky Henderson’s record looks quite modest for him but, to be fair, the only courses within 40 miles are Ascot and Newbury, two tough tracks at which to attain profitability. Like Henderson, the yard of Paul Nicholls has only two courses within 40 miles, Taunton and Wincanton. Nicholls has hit a strike rate of over 30% at both with his runners priced BSP 12.0 or less, Taunton producing a small positive return of just under 10 pence in the pound.
Dan Skelton has six courses within 40 miles (Cheltenham, Hereford, Stratford, Warwick, Wolverhampton and Worcester) but only Hereford has seen a positive return with these shorter priced runners. His record there was 26 wins from 69 (SR 37.7%) for a profit of £26.50 (ROI +38.4%). However, with favourites across all six courses Skelton has done well thanks to 122 winners from 286 (SR 42.7%) for a profit of £25.95 (ROI +9.1%). With those market leaders he has proved profitable across the three main race types and the BSP ROI percentages for each race type are shown below.
As can be seen, he has fared especially well with favourites ‘on the level’ in NH flat races/bumpers, returning nearly 19 pence in the £.
Before moving on, let me share the trainers who have secured returns of over 10% (10p in the £) with horses that started in the top three in the betting when travelling 40 miles or less. The graph below shows the 11 who made the cut:
It is perhaps no surprise to see Messrs Moffatt, Pauling and Sheppard in the line up based on the earlier data, and it may also be interesting that none of the perceived big guns make the list. From a punting perspective I feel it always gives us an edge when some of the lesser-known trainers have potentially profitable angles to exploit.
175 miles or more
As we did with the shorter distances, let me set the scene by sharing the overall figures for all UK NH trainers who travelled 175 miles or more to race. The total number of qualifiers is roughly half of those in the '40 or less' group which is no surprise:
We see a higher strike rate than the 'short distance travelled' group, but almost double the losses. Here, backing all runners blind would have cost us 8.3p in the £ compared with 4.4p with the other group.
As before, when looking at individual trainers I will be using a price cap of BSP 12.0. To qualify for this list, trainers needed to have had at least 100 qualifiers within this price bracket, and I have again sorted the table by BSP ROI:
This time, only 11 of 34 trainers made a profit with their runners priced BSP 12.0 or less, while 13 had A/E indices of over 1.00. These percentages of 'positive' trainers are not as good compared with what we saw earlier. In general, at this juncture, it does seem that a shorter trip to the course has been preferable to a longer one. Of course, not all trainers have had enough qualifiers to make both lists but, for those who have, I have produced a comparison of their data at the end of the article.
Looking at trainers with positive records with long distance travellers, Laura Morgan’s figures have been extremely impressive. Her record during this timeframe was particularly good when she sent runners to Scotland: such entries (BSP 12.0 or less) combined to win 34 of the 101 races (SR 36.7%) for a healthy profit of £64.05 to £1 level stakes. Returns equated to over 63 pence in the £. The majority of her Scottish raiders travelled to Perth, but all four courses north of the border returned a profit as the table below shows:
It seems that any of Morgan's runners heading to Scotland in the near future demand close scrutiny, unless the market suggests otherwise.
Paul Nicholls was another trainer to make a blind profit during this timeframe with longer travellers. When stable jockey Harry Cobden was on board the record was even better hitting a strike rate of close to 37% (82 winners from 222) for a profit of £58.36 (ROI +26.3%). They combined to ride at least 20 times at four different courses – Aintree, Ayr, Musselburgh and Southwell – and all four produced decent returns. Indeed, when we examine the value metric (A/E index) at these four courses, we see that the runners proved to be outstanding value.
In terms of other big names, Dan Skelton, like Morgan, has performed well when sending runners to Scotland. His raiders have provided returns of over 23p in the £ thanks to a strike rate of nearly 32%. Nicky Henderson rarely sends runners to Scotland, especially Kelso, Musselburgh and Perth. However, he has had five winners from nine at Kelso, three from four at Musselburgh, and four from eight at Perth. Returns combined at these three courses were over 50p in the £.
Finally, in this section, let me share the trainers who had the best records with long travellers sent off in the top three in the betting. Five managed ROI percentages of over 10% and these are shown in the table below:
Short vs Long: A Comparison
The last thing I want to do is compare trainers who had enough qualifying runners to make both main tables, short and long. Obviously, readers can look at the separate tables above, but having the key figures next to each other is more convenient. I have used the following metrics: win percentage, ROI% and A/E indices. ROIs that were negative are coloured in red; what I deem to be positive stats are highlighted in blue:
This table helps to highlight some potentially useful pointers such as Henderson, Lacey and Murphy’s stronger records with longer travellers; compared with Pauling, Team Twiston-Davies, Evan Williams and Venetia Williams who all have much better records with horses running closer to home.
I hope this article has offered up some interesting and useful facts and figures that we can take advantage of over the coming months. With trainers we need to be aware that ‘one cap does not fit all’, and I believe the more we dig into individual trainer records the better.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/LauraMorgan_MarketRasen.png318830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-11-25 15:22:432025-11-26 11:16:59NH Trainers: Short vs Long Distance Travellers
When you happen to be 78 years of age and own a racehorse that not only is the best you’ve ever had but also could be a future steeplechase champion, it’s hard not to be impatient, writes Tony Stafford. It must have been excruciating for Harry Redknapp to have to wait 331 days for his hitherto unbeaten young chaser The Jukebox Man to make his reappearance over the weekend after injury kept him away from last March’s big spring festivals.
The year before, The Jukebox Man and his trainer Ben Pauling had tried valiantly to keep the Irish at bay with second places at both Cheltenham and Aintree. He got to within a head of the Gordon Elliott-trained Stellar Story – no relation Wilf! – at Cheltenham, then was five and a half lengths behind Mullins’ Dancing City at Aintree, but more than seven lengths ahead of third-placed Cherie D’Am for Dan Skelton.
The two novice chases he contested last winter were comfortably annexed. First, he dropped to 2m4f for a Grade 2 at Newbury and beat Alan King’s Masaccio a couple of lengths before winning Kempton’s big Christmas novice chase, the three-mile Kauto Star with another similarly controlled performance.
So now it was Haydock and an Intermediate Chase over an intermediate distance of 2m5.5f, but that track takes plenty of stamina and jumping prowess. Again, the margin was modest, once more a couple of lengths, but Ben Jones always had everything under control and the Greenall/Guerrerio-trained and J P McManus-owned Iroko is no ordinary horse to brush aside.
His last run before Saturday was a few miles west along the East Lancs Road at Aintree where he started as the 13/2 favourite for the Grand National and finished a creditable fourth. Iroko predictably kept galloping all the way to the line under Jonjo junior’s urgings on Saturday but never looked like getting to the winner.
The King George, which would be a Boxing Day return to Kempton for Harry’s horse, is the hope but as a former much-respected manager of Tottenham Hotspur and other football clubs, he knows well that injuries to man or horse can happen at any time.
He was talking with friends about his increased involvement in racing on Champions Day at Ascot last month. And it was clear that it was fingers crossed that nothing would go wrong before Haydock. It didn’t, and now there’s no doubt this Poplar-born phenomenon has no wish to slow down, kept solid by his 58-year marriage to Sandra.
There must be something about a working-class upbringing in that part of East London that instils permanency. <I started life a few miles north of there at Hackney Wick in the early days after World War 2>. My mate Harry Taylor beat me by a few months, half a mile away and he celebrated an 80th birthday bash with friends and his lovely family on Saturday afternoon.
Organised as ever, I’d lost the original invitation but checked with him on Saturday morning. “Yes, it’s Northwick Park Golf Course.” Rain made the journey tortuous but once I got to the place, near Harrow in West London, my phone’s Maps feature sent me to a golf venue of sorts. I went inside, asked at reception where was the party and I was directed to a room hosting an Indian wedding! The food smelled great, but I thought I’d better persevere.
Harry had me going around in circles up and down the roads around the massive Northwick Park Hospital, once saying “I know where you are!” and I was just about to give best when his grandson Connor called on Harry’s phone. “It’s at a different golf club, near where we live in Harpenden <that’s Hertfordshire!>. You should make it in an hour!” I did and loved the Englebert Humperdinck tribute guy. If only school mate Tony Peters (my exact birth twin, formerly known as Zahl) had been there; he’s been doing unwitting tributes to the singer for years!
A much more venerable son of that part of East London is 92-year-old Bill Gredley, who while still very active with flat-racing home-bred horses from his well-established operation at Stetchworth Park Stud in Newmarket, has also developed a formidable jumps team. Almost everything nowadays is in training with James Owen. Tim Gredley, Bill’s son, after a spell riding as he modestly says, “Rolls Royces in point-to-points, I didn’t need to be much good!” is back with his first love and is hoping to get into the Great Britain show-jumping team for the next Olympics.
A much better-known veteran of show jumping obviously has a major connection with the foremost UK jumps training operation. Nick Skelton, for decades one of the best show jumping riders in the world and winner of a gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, was at the time finalising plans for his sons’ burgeoning enterprise in Warwickshire.
That has become extremely powerful and their Grey Dawning, the impressive winner of Haydock’s Betfair Gold Cup an hour or so after The Jukebox Man’s romp, looks very over-priced to me at 16/1 for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Day after day, illustrations of the skills of three recent champion jockeys, in order Harry Skelton, Harry Cobden and the latest Sean Bowen are offered to an admiring public. All three can be devastating, especially when riding waiting races, to the extent they often don’t get involved in their winning races until many in the stands have probably already given up. Grey Dawning on Saturday just breezed up (to coin a cliché) to last year’s winner Royale Pagaille, drew alongside and then won with a fair amount in hand. How much, you’d have to ask Harry?
This performance will have added to the Redknapp/Pauling team’s confidence in The Jukebox Man as runner-up Iroko had been second to the Skelton horse in his pre-National warm-up at Kelso last March.
Royale Pagaille also took plenty of beating as a horse with four Haydock wins. Before you say that surely as an 11-year-old his powers might be fading, that’s not to understand Venetia Williams’ training, especially of her experienced chasers.
In Horses In Training 2025, her 79-strong stable had 18 horses aged ten or older and another 22 age eight or nine. Don’t be shocked if the softer ground we’re getting heralds a characteristic midwinter bonanza for the Hereford handler.
Talking of venerable phenomena, Willie Mullins, having been putting his feet up over in Ireland after his killer pounce on the Breeders’ Cup, eased back into action with a nice little Euro 88k for the Morgiana Hurdle at Punchestown.
It wasn’t that surprising an outcome. Lossiemouth, in making it eight Grade 1 wins in her career, started 5/1 on for the four-horse affair. The one surprise was that the nine-length runner-up, collecting €28k was not the second favourite and Mullins second string Irancy in the McManus colours, but Glen Kiln, a 28/1 shot trained by David Harry Kelly. Some turn for him!
Lossiemouth is around 3/1 for the Champion Hurdle but we’re waiting to see what Nicky Henderson and Constitution Hill will have to say about that in Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle on Saturday.
Mullins also won the beginners’ chase on the Punchestown card with odds-on Kitzbuhel, running for the first time since he put eight grand into the Mullins coffers for his third place on the final day of the season at Sandown last April. The way Dan Skelton’s going, though, I doubt there will be as much in it at the finish this time around between the respective powerhouses of the UK and Ireland – or even that the result will be the same way around.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/TheJukeboxMan_Haydock_2025.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-11-24 06:07:372025-11-24 06:07:37Monday Musings: It’s Hard to Wait
Top ten front running biases in handicap chases, Part 2 – 5 to 1
In this second article of two, I will be sharing what I believe to be the Top Five run style biases in handicap chases in the UK and Ireland, writes Dave Renham. In the first article, which you can read here, I revealed positions 10 down to 6; they all had very strong biases towards front runners. The five shared below I feel have been even more advantageous to early leaders.
I have used data for handicap chases only as they tend to offer more robust data; and I have gathered data from 2018 to 2024 with no minimum runner consideration. To assist with the correlation I have used two tools from this site, namely the Pace Analyser and the Query Tool. Having access to them is a huge benefit to Gold membership in my opinion.
The run style / pace data on Geegeez is split into four - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. A quick recap of the four run styles:
Led – essentially horses that lead early, usually within the first furlong or so; or horses that dispute or fight for the early lead.
Prominent – horses that lay up close to the pace just behind the leader(s).
Mid Division – horses that race mid pack.
Held Up – horses that are held up at, or near the back of the field.
OK, let me kick on starting with number five.
5 Kelso 2m5½f-2m6½f
We start in the Scottish borders at Kelso, essentially over a trip of 2m6f. They sometimes race over a half furlong more or less then 2m6f. The stats for 2018 to 2024 were as follows:
Strong prominent stats make this a course where a position at or near the front early has been a huge advantage. There were slightly stronger Led stats at some other course and distance combinations that I looked at last week but, for me, the additional strength of the prominent figures cemented a very robust overall run style bias.
Horses trying to mount their challenges from off the pace have really struggled over the past few years here, as the win and placed stats clearly show. The struggles of horses racing off the pace early can be highlighted further when sharing the PRB stats. PRB stands for ‘Percentage of Rivals Beaten’.
I grouped the Mid Div and Held Up stats together; their figure of 0.40 (40% of rivals beaten) is a poor one and, to coin a phrase, ‘well off the pace’.
The bias to horses up with or close to the front was stronger on good or firmer ground, or at least the stats suggested this:
17 of the 20 races were won by either early leaders or prominent racers. The 'Led' A/E of 1.87 indicates that front runners were very good value on better ground during this timeframe.
Having started in Scotland we now travel south to Cheltenham.
4 Cheltenham 2m4f–2m5f
It is the middle distance range again, around the 2m4f mark, at Cheltenham (both courses, Old and New, combined). Perhaps not a track that initially would scream out front running bias, but the stats were very strong:
The comparison that caught my eye was the Led versus Held Up win ratios. Front runners won 26 races from just 96 runners, while Hold Ups won just seven from 260! If we had been able to predict the front runner(s) pre-race we would have made a fortune to SP, let alone BSP. Even backing each way would have been extremely profitable.
On good or quicker ground the bias seemed to strengthen as these stats suggest:
Of the 20 races with 15+ runners, just one win was achieved by a hold up horse from 114 qualifiers. The bias has still been strong on easier ground but not as strong.
Onto the PRBs (all going conditions):
I had expected a slightly higher Led PRB based on the placed stats but they have still been comfortably the best. A higher PRB would have probably edged this track/trip further up the list.
Finally, I felt the stats for races with bigger fields (10+ runners) were worth sharing:
Front runners have offered huge value in these races (A/E index 2.53), with potential returns to BSP of nearly 200%!
There have been 11 races so far this year, with just a single win from 16 front runners. However, they have had three further placed horses including a place BSP of 37.55!
3 Tramore 1m7f-2m
The Irish course of Tramore may not be that familiar to some UK punters but run style stats for handicap chases over the 1m7f/2m trip there are well worth sharing:
Yes, the sample size was relatively small but it was potent in favour of front runners with an extremely high A/E index at 1.79 and IV of 2.56. The PRBs correlate strongly and underscore the bias:
The 0.64 figure for front runners, compared with 0.42 for Mid Div/Held Up runners, over this timeframe indicated that the edge was huge. The big advantage of PRB figures is that they effectively help to make small datasets bigger. In racing we often deal with modest sample sizes, relative to what general statistics would consider so at any rate. Hence, when we then try to discern knowledge from the data by using PRBs we are examining all the runners in all the races, rather than just the winners and/or the placed horses. It's not a perfect metric - what is? - but it adds depth to shallow cohorts.
For the record, of the four qualifying races held in 2025 to date, two have been won from the front, at odds of 7/2 (BSP 4.99) and 6/1 (8.2). A third front runner in that quartet was still leading when unshipping his jockey five out.
2 Killarney 2m4f-2m5f
Staying in Ireland for number two, we head to Killarney over 2m4f-2m5f (use 2m4f when using the Pace Analyser / Query Tool):
The Led group of runners hit 2.14 in terms of A/E index and 2.88 in terms of IV. There was a huge 58.6% placed figure to boot. Horses that were held up managed a place percentage of just 13.3%. As with Tramore the sample size was relatively small so let me share the PRB figures:
The 0.66 figure for the Led group compared with 0.39 for Mid Div/Held Up runners helps to confirm the huge front running edge there has been over the past few seasons.
Each year we mighgt reasonably expect four or five qualifying races, which is fewer than ideal, but when they do occur they are races we need to try and take advantage of.
And now for my number 1...
1 Uttoxeter 2m4f-2m5f
Top spot goes to Uttoxeter and its mid-range handicap chases. The majority of races were at 2m4f, but a handful were contested over an extra furlong. These are grouped together in Geegeez (using the 2m4f distance) and stats were as follows:
There were over 100 races in the sample, making this set of data extremely robust. Front runners won better 31% from within their group, had strong metrics across the board and potential profit levels were high. Front runners and prominent racers won 73% of the 112 races from 46% of the runners; and front runners alone won 38% of the races from just 16% of the runners!
The PRBs confirmed the pattern:
The front running edge is clear to see by looking at the bars on the graph, especially noteworthy due to the large number of races at this course and distance.
Ground conditions have made little difference with the win rate for front runners on good or firmer being 32.2%, while on good to soft or softer it was 30.8%.
At the time of writing, 2025 had seen 14 such races of which seven were won from the front.
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Incredibly, run style bias in NH racing is something that still goes under the radar for many punters. There are not many clear-cut edges we can still get as punters these days, but knowing which course and distance combinations offer the strongest biases will almost force us to improve our bottom line.
Until next time...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Mysteree.jpg320627Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-11-18 18:09:302025-11-18 18:09:30Top 10 Front Running Biases in Handicap Chases, Part 2: 5 to 1
It's getting darker earlier, and there's a distinct chill in the air this week. The turf flat season is a fading memory and close at hand now is the National Hunt season proper as well as a serious programme of all-weather racing. Both make for excellent punting!
While it might seem like we've been quiet on the development front this year, we've actually added some big (and small) features in 2025.
The TRENDS tab was introduced in January, and has become part of my 'go to' considerations for a race.
In April, we rolled out Betfair data (Betfair SP, Place SP, in running high and low prices) across the site.
And in September we added 'AvOR', the average official rating of each race, to help you compare today's race quality with runners' recent outings.
You'll also have noticed this year that parts of the site have had a 'facelift' - updating them to be easier on the eye as well as instructive to your wagering.
And we're not done yet!
We're currently working on some further Query Tool updates, as well as more costmetic upgrades. Allow me to show you a few things from the development site.
Query Tool
We'd originally decided on a small number of new variables in QT to release as soon as possible... but once we started digging we found a few technical elements that ideally needed improving. That has delayed release unfortunately, but I'm still able to show you a couple of bits here.
New Variables
We've added some new variables for you to interrogate. These are:
Season
You'll soon be able to search by season, across flat, all-weather, and National Hunt seasons in both UK and Ireland. This is great for analysing, for example, trainers' and jockeys' progression (or regression!) and - especially for the non-flat seasons, where things are not aligned to calendar year - looking at overall stats more generally.
Below for example I've selected the trainer Anthony Honeyball, whose yard geegeez.co.uk sponsors and with whom we syndicate a number of horses, and 'grouped by' season (having only selected UK and NH race types - Anthony has also had flat winners and winners in Ireland during this time).
Anthony Honeyball stats by season
Owner
You'll also be able to drill down by owner before long. And, because some ownership entities have, literally, hundreds of ownership names, we've added a 'select all' button within the search facility. Here's an example using the geegeez.co.uk ownership entities. You'll be able to dig in the weeds of J P McManus, the Ballydoyle cartel, and/or anyone else you fancy.
Racing Post Rating and RPR Rank / Topspeed and TS Rank
And we've added Racing Post Rating and Topspeed, as well as RPR/TS Rank within a race (e.g. RPR rank 1 means the top rated horse on Racing Post Ratings). This image shows the top two ranked Topspeed horses' collective performance over the past two years in UK handicap hurdle/chase races. This is bound to include some big-priced winners skewing the data, but it's not a bad starting point for further analysis by any means!
PRB
The eagle-eyed may have noticed that we've added a new column on the right hand side of the results output in Query Tool for PRB (Percentage of Rivals Beaten). This is a very useful metric, especially for smaller sample sizes, where a number from around 0.55 (55% of rivals beaten) is a positive, and anything below (0.45) is somewhat of a negative. It's definitely a number to keep an eye out for when creating your QT Angles.
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A New Look for the Reports
As well as QT upgrades, we're also working on our report suite and, specifically, on making it a little more modern in look (the data remains the same excellent content you're already familiar with). They'll look like this:
Timeline for Implementation
I've already got this wrong once, which is annoying/embarrassing, and so I'm loth to make the same mistake again. However, I'd be very hopeful they'll appear on your screens - the report changes at least - by the end of the month.
Query Tool upgrades should be an early Christmas present, expect them online in the first half of December with a following wind.
And... in January, we'll be kicking off the New Year in style. More on that another day.
Thanks as ever for being a geegeez subscriber, it means a huge amount to me - to all of us - and it enables us to continue to invest in your racing site. Thanks again!
In this game it’s never too late, writes Tony Stafford. As the rain poured down rendering Saturday’s Cheltenham card in jeopardy after an awful drowning Friday, one Irish trainer was firmly keeping his fingers crossed that the much-vaunted drainage system of Prestbury Park would pass muster.
It did, enabling both the Saturday and Sunday cards to proceed, indeed in slightly less testing ground conditions than expected. While overall the meeting was a glittering triumph for the Dan Skelton yard, it will forever live in the memory of Tom Cooper, a veteran journeyman Irish trainer with 37 years in the game as a licence holder.
Suppose you had been training horses for that length of time and had reached double figures only twice, it would obviously have been something of a struggle, as it is for so many trainers. Overall, those 37 campaigns have yielded 121 wins with just the two from 12 individual horses this year. That was Tom Cooper’s story before Saturday, but two days at Cheltenham over the weekend have pushed away a lot of that endless toil.
Tom was undeniably best known for a while as the father of Bryan Cooper, who in his late teens and early 20s was one of the fastest rising stars of the Irish weighing room. He had the privilege, earned by precocious skill, to ride many top horses including Don Cossack, Apple’s Jade and the 15-length 2016 Triumph Hurdle winner, Our Conor.
In that season of 2015/16, he won 94 races in Ireland, his best score, and his mounts earned more than €2.2 million. His career entered a gradual slowdown before he retired from the saddle at the age of 30 in March 2023.
Tom Cooper had sent horses across to England in 30 of those 37 seasons, winning twice from 50 runs in all. Back home his 12 individual runners in 2025/26 had picked up two first prizes earning a total of €25k.
It’s funny how luck can turn on such a knife-edge. As the crowds left Cheltenham last night, Tom Cooper had not only doubled his entire UK career win score but exceeded his Irish earnings for the season to date by notching two wins from his only UK runners of the year so far.
I say so far advisedly, as both Saturday’s successful 4yo filly Celestial Tune and yesterday’s gelding Saint Clovis are guaranteed to be back for more. Saturday’s winner cost €80k at Tattersalls Ireland in the summer of last year, the bid signed for by Bryan Cooper. She was one of the two Tom Cooper winners in Ireland this season, by nine-and-a-half lengths at Listowel in late September.
Saint Clovis was much more modestly priced at €22k, but the style of his win will have had those big-money operators swirling around. Easy Cheltenham Listed bumper winners do not grow on trees, and such are the resources of those owners at the top of the game, it sometimes can appear that their money does. Expect Tom and probably Bryan’s phones to start ringing – no doubt they already have – though owner Andrew Brooks likely has enough pennies to fend off all but the most tempting of suitors.
Cooper junior also signed the ticket for his father’s other winner this season: the filly Amen Kate was successful at 3/1 on for a Galway maiden hurdle last time out. When Celestial Tune followed up the win on home soil with that taking success on Saturday under Sean Bowen, she was paying a healthy compliment to one of Saint Clovis’s yesterday opponents.
He had finished second in a big field behind Gavin Cromwell’s Bud Fox, so it was understandable with the close at hand endorsement, that he should lead the market.
But it fell to another UK champion jockey, this time Harry Cobden, who sent the Cooper four-year-old to the front, never to be headed. The near five-length margin was being stretched all the way to the line. Bud Fox looked to be galloping all over the winner turning for home, but he ran out of puff up the hill and had to be content with third. Maybe something is not quite right with the Cromwell horses just now, their score of 1 from 51 in the past fortnight – and three from 107 in the last 30 days – miles down on longer-term strike rates.
Saint Clovis is regally bred by jumping standards. His sire Clovis De Berlais was a high-class performer in France and sired Friday’s last-race winner French Emperor. That five-year-old put in a massive performance under top-weight for Somerset trainer Nicky Martin and the Bradley Partnership.
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When people take a view on a purchase at the sales aiming at resubmitting their buy at a future auction, there is often a salutary lesson to be learned. But Sam Haggas, son of William and Maureen, has inherited some very positive genes from his parents (not to mention grandfather Lester Piggott) as his recent exploits in the New Zealand sales ring bear out.
Last January he joined with two pals, Adam Potts of BBA Ireland and Barry Donoghue’s BMD Bloodstock, to buy a colt by the dual hemisphere sire Hello Youmzain. It was before the stallion became champion New Zealand first season sire, and he also had an excellent year with his progeny in Europe.
The trio paid NZ $90k and after a very fast 200-metre breeze at the Ready To Run sale, received an eye-watering NZ $700k. He was bought to race in Hong Kong.
You’ve probably noticed that there hasn’t been any flat racing for a few days but that hasn’t stopped Karl Burke or George Scott from adding to their already impressive 2025 records.
Burke supplied the favourite and winner, the seven-year-old gelding Royal Champion, to collect the £480,000 first prize for the £1 million Bahrain International Trophy on Friday over ten furlongs, ridden by James Doyle. Joseph O’Brien’s Galen (Dylan Browne McMonagle) and Charlie Appleby’s Military Order (William Buick) followed him home, also for some chunky place money.
Scott clocked up a best 43 wins in the UK but expanded his overseas challenges to such an extent that he won eight notable prizes, the most prestigious being the Prix du Cadran with Caballo de Mar at Longchamp and last weekend’s Group 1 in Munich, the Grosser Allianz Preis von Bayern, with Bay City Roller.
The latter, a three-year-old, had been sent across to Longchamp for three important races this summer/autumn but had to be content with place money each time. That clearly was a disappointment after his unbeaten sequence in a trio of juvenile starts, but the seven-length victory in Munich has brought its reward with a stallion job next year.
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Finally, I am most disappointed that I cannot fulfil a long-planned visit to Plumpton today. The course’s owner, Peter Savill, is dedicating the meeting to his late daughter Charlotte who died at the tragically young age of 22 having suffered uncomplainingly with fibrolamellar liver cancer.
Peter explains that FLC is one of many lesser known but highly aggressive cancers mainly affecting young people that get little attention from major pharma companies. It leaves families and generous sponsors to provide support.
The day is aimed to bring attention to the disease and even if, like me, you could not manage to get to Plumpton for its early start today, you can call the team at Plumpton on 01273 890383 to donate.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/TomCooper_trainer_BryanCooper_jockey_agent.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-11-17 07:47:582025-11-17 07:54:38Monday Musings: Just Like That, Cooper’s Back
The Top 10 front running biases in handicap chases Part 1 – 10 to 6
Over the next two articles I will share what I believe to be the Top Ten current run style handicap chase front running biases in the UK and Ireland, writes Dave Renham. In this first half, I will reveal positions 10 down to 6; and next week I'll reveal my top five. Of course, I appreciate that there will be people who disagree with my hierarchy but, ultimately, all ten biases have shown themselves to be profitable to deploy alongside more traditional form reading. As a bonus, today I will also share three near misses that narrowly failed to make the top ten.
Introduction
To compile my top picks, I have used data for handicap chases only as they are not so prone to distortion by the ability range of the horses competing. Data are from 2018 to 2024 with no minimum runner consideration.
I mentioned in a recent offering that Gold members of Geegeez have so many benefits and one of these is access to the Pace Analyser. This allows users to dive into run style / pace biases at any racecourse in the UK and Ireland. The data can be filtered based on going, field size, distance and race type. There is also the option to separate hurdles and chase (and NH Flat) data at jumps courses; and across all courses the data can further be filtered by year to allow for possible changes in any bias. The Pace Analyser is ideal for research such as this, and it was the main source that I used to produce what follows.
The run style data on Geegeez is split into four groups - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. A quick refresher of which type of horse fits each profile:
Led – horses that lead early, usually within the first furlong or so; or horses that dispute or fight for the early lead.
Prominent – horses that lay up close to the pace just behind the leader(s).
Mid Division – horses that race mid pack.
Held Up – horses that are held up at, or near the back of the field.
Near Misses
In general, the ‘led’ group has an edge in most handicap chases. Some courses offer a stronger edge than others and hence let me start by looking at the C&Ds that were near misses:
Exeter 2m3f
To get this distance on Geegeez we need to use the 2m4f distance figure on the Query Tool / Pace Analyser as distances are grouped every two furlongs. It should be noted, too, that some race distances at a track change slightly sometimes due to rail adjustments. This happens more and more these days, or at least it is more accurately reported these days!
Let me share the Exeter figures taken from the Pace Analyser:
This is a good time to note that not all run style groups have the same number of runners; there are always going to be far more hold up horses than front runners / early leaders. However, despite the ‘led’ group having just 82 qualifiers compared with the held-up group of 161, they have still won 20 races compared with 15. The Win%s in the table show the strike rate within each run style group, and for this article that is how I will quantify ‘win strike rate’.
The ‘led’ group produced by far the highest percentage at 24%. That is, 24.39% of the horses that led early went on to win their races. (They actually won 31.25% (20/64) of all races in the sample).
Leaders' place percentage was comfortably the best too, with 47.6% of early leaders still in the frame at the finish line; while their A/E index of 1.39 indicates that front runners were very good value.
If we considered favourites only in these races and their performance by run style, we have seen the following win strike rates splits (I have combined favourites whose run style was either Mid Div or Held Up):
Front runners / horses that contested the early lead had an outstanding record when favoured by the market. However, it's a different story for those favourites that raced mid pack or at the back early. As can be seen, the bias over this course and distance has been very strong indeed, but still it wasn't quite enough to make my top ten. Exciting times ahead, then!
Before moving on, in terms of what has happened in 2025, of the eight races to date, five have been won by front runners.
Sedgefield 2m5f to 2m5½f
Using the Geegeez tools we use the 2m6f distance.
Front runners have hit a win rate in excess of 30% and the only reason this track/trip did not make the list is due to the relatively strong stats for horses that raced in midfield early. Also, the 2025 stats to date have seen horses racing mid-pack early doing well and winning three of the six races to date.
Lingfield 2m
The stats were as follows:
Strong figures again for front runners, although this is another course and distance (C&D) where qualifying races were relatively infrequent (only four races per year on average). Indeed, at the time of writing there has been just one qualifying handicap chase in 2025, but it was won by the early leader as we can see:
It is also worth noting that he was projected as the 'probable lone speed' in the race:
OK, near misses shared; onto position ten in my list.
Top 10, 10 to 6
#10 Chepstow 3m
Some readers may expect front runners to be at a disadvantage over longer distances in handicap chases: surely for a horse to lead from start to finish in a 3-mile race would not be any easy assignment, right? However, looking at the Chepstow breakdown I suspect might change a few minds!
Front runners have bossed these races over the past few seasons, while prominent racers have been clearly second best with much better stats than horses which raced off the pace. 68 of the 96 winners raced close to the pace or at the front - that's 71% of the winners from 47% of the runners. And a front runner has been over four times more likely to win than a hold up horse when analysing the win percentage within their respective groups (25% versus 5.7%).
Now, as stated earlier, we get more hold up horses than front runners in most races and there were just over twice as many hold up horses compared to front runners between 2018 and 2024. That means therefore that when talking purely about race wins, front runners have won just over twice the number of races than hold ups.
There have been seven races this year so far with two being won from the front.
#9 Sandown 2m4f
It is time to head to Surrey now, and specifically Esher, to look at the 2m4f stats from Sandown. The run style splits for this time frame were as follows:
It's a similar story to Chepstow’s 3-mile trip but front runners have had a better place record here, hitting over 53%. There have not been that many qualifying races per year (roughly five to six) but keep an eye out for confirmed front runners when they race over this C&D. Those on the early lead have had an even stronger edge on soft/heavy ground as can be seen below:
From Sandown we head up country to Haydock.
#8 Haydock 2m3f-2m5f
Haydock seemed to have 'played around' a little with the usual 2m4f trip occasionally adding or dropping a furlong. Hence, I have combined results together a furlong either side of two and a half miles. Let me share the run style stats:
There has again not been a huge number of races each year, but the front running numbers were extremely strong over the period of study. 11 of the 29 races were won from the front and that cohort also had an outstanding place record. Hold up horses really struggled in terms of winning, though they fared better from a placed perspective.
Haydock, like Sandown, has seen the front running bias strengthen on softer ground. On soft or heavy the run style win strike rates were as follows:
It should be noted the sample size stands at only 17 races. The A/E indices correlate strongly as the graph below shows:
All in all, Haydock over 2m4f has strongly favoured horses racing at the front end.
#7 Carlisle 2m4f
Staying north for number seven, as we head to Carlisle next. The run style splits were:
It could be argued that both Haydock and Sandown should be positioned higher than Carlisle in the list; but Carlisle’s overall sample size was bigger and that swung it for me, along with an outstanding A/E index of 1.57 and excellent IV of 2.4. The figures for both of these metrics were the highest of the four C&Ds shared to date, and comfortably so.
In terms of underfoot, once again we have seen a strengthening of the bias on softer ground. I will share the win strike rate percentages and the A/E indices once more. Firstly, the win stats:
Clearly, as with the 2m4f trips at Sandown and Haydock, on soft or heavy it has been hard to make up ground from further back. 21 of the 27 races were won by front runners (12 wins) or prominent racers (9). Hold up horses had a win rate of under 3% within their run style group which is the lowest figure seen to date.
The A/E indices positively correlate with the win SR%s as we would have expected:
A ‘led’ figure of 1.79 suggests huge value; not so for the 0.26 hold up A/E index.
One final front running stat to share for this track and trip combination is connected with those early leaders that were in the top three of the betting market. This collective won 16 races from 36 qualifiers which equates to a win rate of over 44%.
This year, at the time of writing, there have only been four qualifying races over this C&D (all going conditions), and three of the four have been won from the front.
#6 Doncaster 2m3f to 2m4½f
Onto Donny now to close out the first half of my top ten. They have races over similar distances from 2m3f to 2m4½f so all races within that distance band are included (2m4f for all on Geegeez Pace Analyser):
Front runners have won 20 of the 51 races and have an excellent placed record to boot. The ground is rarely testing at Doncaster, but on good to soft or softer the bias does seem to get even stronger:
11 of the 25 races, which equates to 44% of all races, were won from the front under these conditions.
If we considered favourites only at Doncaster and their performance by run style, we have seen the following win strike rates splits (I have once again combined favourites whose run style was either Mid Div or Held Up):
Favourites that led early have been far more successful than other run style groups.
And that rounds out the lower half of my top ten. Next time it will be the top five, some even stronger biases than these! Until then...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Waiting-Patiently.jpg320689Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-11-12 09:24:292025-11-12 09:24:29Top 10 Front Running Biases in Handicap Chases, Part 1: 10 to 6
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