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Jump Jockeys: How Are The Mighty Fallen?

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How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

- Samuel, 1:25

Perhaps more so than the terrific performances at Cheltenham this past weekend, or the death of National Hunt benefactor Alan Potts, jump racing's headlines have been hogged in recent days not by horses or owners, nor even trainers; but, rather, by the riders.

First Paddy Brennan was sensationally 'jocked off' Cue Card, sweetheart of so many fans of the winter game, after a tumble too many; then Sam Twiston-Davies broke his elbow in a fall at Sandown before, this past Saturday, Ruby Walsh broke his leg in what was, remarkably, his third fall of the afternoon.

It is of course the very essence of the National Hunt jockeys' existence to face down danger between ten and twenty - and as many as 32 - times per race. In that context, falls are a natural by-product of race outcomes. But what is a reasonable rate for a rider to become separated from his or her equine partner?

Let the data speak.

 

Fall/Unseat Rates: The Five Year Macro Data

Below are the faller rates for the last five years in UK/Irish chases by a number of the top jockeys, one notably since retired. To be clear, this is for steeplechase falls and unseats (FU's) only, and the table is sorted by number of rides.

 

Jockey Rides FU's FU %
R Johnson 1552 88 5.67%
S Twiston-Davies 1484 93 6.27%
N Fehily 1003 59 5.88%
P Brennan 999 56 5.61%
D Russell 800 57 7.13%
B Geraghty 740 40 5.41%
AP McCoy 724 41 5.66%
R Walsh 651 53 8.14%
J Kennedy 258 24 9.30%

 

To add more global context to this subset of superstars, the average fall/unseat rate in the last 10,000 starters in UK and Irish chases has been 6.59%. Solely in Irish chases, the last 10,000 starters there fell or unseated at a rate of 7.84%, presumably because of the heavier turf on which they predominantly race (a subject for another, wetter, day). It may then be fair to say that anything lower than that is outperforming the average, and anything higher than that is under-performing against the average.

But not all chase rides are 'average'. The likes of Ruby Walsh and Jack Kennedy are more frequently engaged in the kind of skirmishes for victory which may demand firing a horse at the last, or an earlier fence, in a more aggressive fashion than, say, a rider popping round for fourth place.

If that is to mitigate, the disparities in the table cannot be so simply swept from view.

We can see i the table that, on a large number of rides, many of them with winning chances, Richard Johnson, Sam Twiston-Davies and Noel Fehily have all kept their fall/unseat rate below 6.5%. So too have Paddy Brennan, Barry Geraghty, and the now retired Tony McCoy.

But across the Irish Sea, look at Davy Russell, who leads the Irish jumps championship this term, and his hitherto closest pursuer, Ruby Walsh. Note also Jack Kennedy, number one jockey at Gordon Elliott's powerfully ascendant yard.

Russell's tumble rate of 7.13% is on the high side compared with Britain, but not wildly out of kilter with the pan-national average and in the green zone against his domestic peer group. The same cannot be said of Jack and Ruby. Although the former is young and arguably still learning his trade - arguably because he's had many more rides than plenty of jockeys five years his senior - the latter especially looks a surprisingly precarious pilot. Now, before the hate mail starts, obviously I recognise that Ruby Walsh is one of the great jockeys of our time and that this is but one barometer of a jockey's ability.

But, all the same, if I want to bet at a short price - and his rides are almost exclusively offered at prohibitive odds - I need to know that I have to factor a higher than average likelihood of my selection not passing the post in a chase with the rider on its back. With Jack Kennedy, he's almost 20% more likely to be dumped on the turf than the Irish average.

Let me be clear again: this is not about Ruby or Jack or anyone else. I'm far too selfish for that. No, this is about me as a punter knowing what I'm up against. About being forewarned and, therefore, forearmed.

 

Fall/Unseat Rates: The One Year Snapshot

Five years is a long time and it makes for some statistically significant (in the context of racing's generally small samples at least) inferences. But how do we compare jockeys with themselves? One way is to look at a snapshot - a subset - of the overall dataset. For punting purposes, the most current subset seems the most sensible. Below then are the last twelve months for the same jockey grouping, again sorted by number of rides.

 

Jockey Rides FU's FU %
R Johnson 301 20 6.64%
S Twiston-Davies 300 16 5.33%
D Russell 210 9 4.29%
N Fehily 206 12 5.83%
P Brennan 182 7 3.85%
R Walsh 124 13 10.48%
J Kennedy 123 12 9.76%
B Geraghty 105 9 8.57%
AP McCoy NA NA NA

 

Whilst even more care needs to be taken not to make bold claims on the basis of flimsy sample sizes, there remain elephants in the room.

First, let's look at Paddy Brennan, recently relieved of his supporting role atop the gorgeous Cue Card. His 3.85% fall/unseat rate in the past year is comfortably the lowest in the group and almost 1.5 times better than his five year average. Was he thus unlucky to lose such a coveted ride? That depends entirely on whether you're a macro sort of guy or you have the nuanced eye to make decisions based on the specifics of a handful of rides. I certainly don't consider myself qualified in the latter context and can see arguments for and against the rider switch.

The British Champion Jockey, Richard Johnson, has seen his tumble rate increase in the past twelve months, though possibly not materially. It has crept above the 10,000 runner average of 6.59% by a tiny margin: Johnson's renewed appetite to forage for every ride will have introduced a greater element of quantity over quality to his diet and the variance may perhaps be explained in such a way.

Noel Fehily has been remarkably consistent while Sam Twiston-Davies, who amazingly (to me at least, he seems to have been around for a long time) has only just turned 25, has retained his partnerships on a notably more frequent basis according to the most recent evidence. Tough luck then to break his elbow earlier this month; he actually rode in a subsequent race, attesting to the no-safety-net trapeze swing between heroism and stupidity that many in the weighing room unquestioningly fling themselves.

Meanwhile, Ireland's champion jockey-elect, Davy Russell, is 27 winners clear of his nearest challenger if one excludes the sidelined Walsh from calculations. Russell is approaching veteran status, though still in his late thirties, and has courted controversy this year in the manner with which he attempted to correct a recalcitrant mount. That episode deserves no more than a footnote in a piece the focus of which is elsewhere, and it will indeed be a shame if a man shunned by his major employer less than four years ago does not receive the praise he deserves if/when winning the jockeys' championship. Fair play to him.

To the elephant or, more precisely, the trio of elephants, in the room. Barry Geraghty first. He is one of the best jockeys I've seen and, in his time at Nicky Henderson's, was a man never to be dismissed. But, since taking the green and gold coin of Team JP, misfortune has followed him like a very bad smell. Since last July, he has broken both arms, in separate incidents; cracked a rib and collapsed a lung on another occasion; and recently (late August) fractured a shoulder blade. You have to be tough to be a jump jockey - far tougher than to look at numbers and write words about the subject - but my admiration starts to wane when riders persist in the face of mounting fragility.

It's no more my place to suggest to a rider about when to retire as it is for a rider to enquire on the number of winners I've ridden. So I won't. All I'll say is that I imagine the partners and families of jump jockeys rejoice the news of their loved one's cessation of getting legged up in a similar vein to that of the partners and families of professional boxers on hearing of gloves being hung for the final time. And I sincerely hope BJG has a long, uninterrupted and fruitful spell between now and whenever he pursues alternative employment.

Yet still we've to address the figureheads of Closutton and Cullentra, Ruby and Jack. In the last twelve months, Kennedy has come unstuck a dozen times from 123 chase starts. That's as near to ten per cent, and as near to 25% above the Irish average, as doesn't matter. Walsh has fallen or unseated once more than Kennedy, from one more ride, in the same period, a ratio above 10% and almost 33% greater than the norm.

It seems churlish to kick a man when he's down - Ruby faces a race against time to be back for the Cheltenham Festival and, like all fans of the sport, I hope he makes it - so I'll let those data speak for themselves. All I will add is that, to my eye - and keep in mind I've never ridden a winner - Ruby takes too many chances with fatigued animals late in races. Mounting (or, cynically, dismounting) evidence seems to support that.

The pressure in the Elliott and Mullins camps must be enormous, not just from the trainers, but from owners, other jockeys in the yard and, increasingly, the omnipresence of (social) media. Much of the latter is unworthy of attention, but when you're accustomed to being told how good you are, the sharper brickbats probably leave a weal.

 

Final Thoughts

There is an inherent selection bias in the tables above. Each of the jockeys therein has earned his place by being at the top of his peer group; such elevation comes only from taking chances when they're presented, and occasionally fashioning them when they may not absolutely be there.

As sports gigs go, riding 600kg animals over five foot fences (apologies for mixed metric-phors) around fifteen times per race on average is down there with the worst of 'em. It would never be for a wuss like me. Although not big on machismo either, I have a robust respect for these turf-eating gladiators as a collective.

But when the wallet comes out, they are individuals. And I want to know which individuals will support my bottom line, in the same way that these jocks want to know which horses will provide the winners to propel them up the championship table. It's every man (and woman) for themselves. Nobody is more or less selfish than the next, either in the punting or riding ranks; and nor should they be.

To that end, the frailties of otherwise tremendous jockeys with enormous (and, in the main, well deserved and hard earned) reputations are power to the contrarian punters' elbow.

Ruby has won aboard 30% of the chasers he's ridden in the last five years. That's open water clear of the next best (McCoy 22%, Daryl Jacob and Noel Fehily 20%, Sam T-D and Paddy B 19%, Richard Johnson 18%). But, from a punting perspective, his negative ROI of 18.86% at SP during that time is surpassed by absolutely nobody in his Premier League peer group. Some of that, of course, relates to his stable's form with chasers, most of it to the over-exposure of the Mullins/Walsh/Ricci PR machine; that's neither here nor there in terms of wagering.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, the unfashionable Paddy Brennan not only wins at a 19% clip, he's also secured a profit of almost 60 points at SP in the same time frame, regardless of the Cue Card fallout.

Backing horses is not a beauty contest, nor is it about fashion. On the contrary, the value lies wherever the spotlight doesn't. And, even in the halogen glare of the media beam, punting pearls are left for those with peripheral vision. Always be asking questions, take nothing on trust. The data is here. Use it. It rarely lies.

I genuinely hope Ruby gets back in time for the Festival, and I further hope he has a fantastic time of it. But I'll not be touching his chase mounts there, or pretty much anywhere else. That's unlikely to trouble him, of course. Devil take the hindmost!

Matt

Tony Keenan: Ten NOT To Follow

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Horses to follow lists are a staple of this time of year, much more so than at the equivalent period on the flat in March and April. Whatever it is about national hunt racing, people get enthused about the months ahead and no one can be derided for that. They can’t all deliver on their potential however and I wonder if a more useful approach might be to collate a list of horses to oppose.

The power of the negative is underrated in horse racing analysis and I’ve long found one of the best ways into a race is to find a favourite you dislike and work back from there, the theory being that if it is underpriced there will be value somewhere amongst the rest of the field. Having a few horses in mind that are overrated or at least likely not to match market expectations could be useful as we start into the winter.

One final point on this: my opinion on any of these horses could change after they have had a run or two. One can have views at this point of the season but becoming hidebound to them is a mistake and I am a firm adherent to the John Maynard Keynes approach: ‘when the facts change, I change my mind.’

 

American Tom

There is a school of thought that horses who jump to their right or left are best-suited to racing at tracks with that configuration but I am more inclined to view it as a physical problem of some sort. That seems to be the case with American Tom judging by comments from connections and his fencing was certainly erratic in his novice season. He returned at Naas on Saturday but having travelled best, hitting a low of 1.62 in-running, he found little and finished third to Ball D’Arc. Some will argue this was a creditable return for a horse off for 10 months but he was getting 9lbs from the winner who really wants further and he could be one to oppose in two-mile chases this winter. I can certainly see him being put in short for such events in Ireland which, outside of Douvan, look paper-thin as we saw in Sunday’s Fortria.

 

Bristol De Mai

Though he won well enough in the Charlie Hall earlier this month, there has to be doubts about the value of that form; Coneygree was out of the race early while Cue Card fell when going pretty well, leaving Bristol De Mai with only Blaklion to beat. Cheltenham does not seem to be his thing and furthermore there is a concern that Bristol De Mai’s best efforts seem to come at Haydock, a track that can produce freak performances. He does at least get to go back there soon for the Betfair Chase but a win in that event could be the high-point of his season rather than a signal of better to come.

 

Let’s Dance

Failure is rarely seen as a positive but when Let’s Dance went without a win in four runs in juvenile hurdles it was a blessing in disguise as it left her with a significant experience edge against the novices last season. That was a campaign where she was well-placed to win five races on the bounce and, while it could be argued that she won against the geldings in January before landing the Dawn Run, holes can be picked in those runs: the Leopardstown win came when half the field jumped poorly while she only beat Barra at Cheltenham. Augusta Kate – herself no star – beat her afterwards and she has a long way to go to compete with the best mares like Apple’s Jade and Limini.

 

Paloma Blue

For whatever reason, our culture has a tendency to get carried away with the achievements of those that die young with the assumption being that their potential was certain to be reached. That seems to be the case with Fayonagh who has already been crowned a second Dawn Run since her demise, and fans of the mare may be inclined to overrate the horses that finished behind her last season. Paloma Blue is an obvious one for this treatment having finished second to her at Punchestown, but that looked a weak race with only seven runners and the winner was a clear victor; the third also makes this list while Someday simply didn’t run to form. The value of Paloma Blue’s previous bumper win is questionable, allowing that Henry De Bromhead doesn’t really train his horses for such races, and his jumping on hurdles debut was ordinary. He will likely be able to win a maiden hurdle somewhere but graded class may prove beyond him.

 

Petit Mouchoir

Evidence suggests that horses that spend an extra season over hurdles are less likely to become top-class chasers even when they have been very good over small obstacles and in the main I’m looking to oppose these horses with ones that have improved for fences all winter. Petit Mouchoir certainly didn’t look like he had any issue with fences on his chase debut but that slight niggle persists and more than that he has had a small setback which is likely to keep him out until early 2018. That puts him on the back-foot with a view to races like the Arkle, for which he remains second-favourite, as he will give up match practice to horses that will have been running over the next couple of months.

 

Poli Roi

A £300,000 price-tag meant Poli Roi was always going to be one with a reputation and the starting prices in his four runs under rules thus far suggest he is well-regarded by someone at least. The evidence of those runs has been less compelling though; he looked quirky in winning first time before being put in his place in the Punchestown Champion Bumper, while his two hurdle runs have been marked by temperament, flashing his tail on the way to victory last time. In general, I don’t think opposing ungenuine horses is the betting angle it once was – the markets have wised up to it and trainers seem better at working around it – but there are still cases when it can create value.

 

Sub Lieutenant

It seems reasonable to ask what Sub Lieutenant is at the moment, be it two-and-a-half or three-miler. Regardless of trip, he has started 2017/18 out-of-form which isn’t encouraging given he was particularly good in the early part of the previous season; furthermore, he seems to have gone back from first to second run which is a negative for any horse. He put up some good efforts last year, notably when runner-up in the Ryanair, but a deeper dive into his form suggests he may not be up to winning another Grade 1 or 2. He is two from fourteen in such races, the first win coming in a race Milsean threw away, the second in an event confined to second-season chasers. Unfortunately for him, these are just the sorts of races he has to compete in with a mark of 157 and he could have a season of frustration ahead of him that may culminate with reverting to staying handicap chases.

 

Thistlecrack

A late starter to chasing raises alarm-bells straightaway, even for one as lightly-raced and talented as Thistlecrack, and then there is his tendon injury from last season. Thistlecrack also lost a little lustre in his Cotswold Chase defeat in January as prior to that he seemed one with unlimited potential, not a horse that could be beaten by Many Clouds, granted that one had ideal conditions. That put a lid on how far he can go and facing a host of impressive novices from last season along with the likes of Sizing John and Native River, Thistlecrack looks a weak favourite for the Gold Cup. Perhaps he will again prove the exception to the rule but I wouldn’t like to be betting on it.

 

Tombstone

Following a pair of impressive bumper wins in 2015, Tombstone hasn’t really built on his early promise and the temperament that first surfaced in the 2016 Deloitte (didn’t go through with his effort when coming to challenge Bleu Et Rouge) now seems to be a feature of his make-up. He did win a Red Mills Hurdle last season but that was against a ‘bouncy’ Jezki and he failed to back it up with short-priced defeats at Cheltenham and Fairyhouse. Chasing has gone ok for him thus far but there was again a less than strong finishing effort on debut last month before being gifted a race at Down Royal last time. Put simply, he’s a horse whose reputation outstrips his achievements and he appears less than willing to boot.

 

Total Recall

Already favourite for the old Hennessy (now Ladbrokes) at Newbury, Total Recall might be worth taking on there and not only because of Willie Mullins’s record in UK handicap chases; he is 2 from 113 in such races since 2003. Total Recall was very good in winning the Munster National but that race fell apart quite early with a number of the field failing to complete and the seemingly-back-on-track second, Alpha Des Obeaux, ran just ok next time. I am also sceptical about how much further Mullins can improve this horse; he went up 18lbs for Limerick, and Sandra Hughes, allowing that her yard was out-of-form last season, is a competent trainer, better than some who previously handled the other improvers for the move to Closutton. Perhaps Total Recall has already reached his level for his new yard.

 

As always, these are only my opinions. Feel free to agree or disagree – with your wallet or in the comments below; and if you have any ‘to not follow’ suggestions of your own, do share them below with a comment.

- TK

The Ethics of Pacemaking

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Is racing a team sport? That’s the question that lies at the heart of any discussion on the rights and wrongs of pacemaking, writes Tony Keenan. The instinctive answer is no. Take a hypothetical horse race: ten runners each with a different trainer, owner and jockey, each wanting to win at the expense of the others. Tactics play their part in this imaginary race but team tactics shouldn’t as there are no teams as such, only individual concerns.

Obviously this simplistic argument is complicated by the presence of multiple horses trained and/or owned by the same person or group of people. In some of these cases, particularly in Group 1 races, we see jockeys using their horses as part of the team and expend their mounts to facilitate a stablemate, often one with a bigger profile or shorter price. Some would argue this is simply the nature of team sport; in any team, different players play different roles and not everyone can score the winning goal with some needing to contribute to the build-up in the hope there will be enough reflected glory to go around.

This would be fine in racing apart from one obvious problem: it is essentially forbidden by the rules. Consider the Turf Club’s Rule 212 (a)

every horse which runs in a race shall be run on its merits and its subsection (i) the rider of every horse shall take all reasonable and permissible measures throughout the race to ensure that his horse is given a full opportunity to win or of obtaining the best possible place.

Horses that are ridden to cater for another runner in the field are bending if not breaking these rules which is not the same as to say that they cannot win. Indeed, horses that are ridden with something other their own winning chance in mind will often come home in front but that doesn’t mean that the intent (or lack thereof) wasn’t there. Proving that intent is tricky if not impossible but all this does highlight a strange blind-spot for the sport; we talk about how a certain ownership cohort may attempt to scheme out a race beforehand and perhaps even praise them afterwards for a well-executed plan. I’ve done it myself but it is difficult to get away from the view that such an approach contravenes the rules.

Advocates of pacemaking will point to its chief benefit: a pacemaker ensures a fair and even pace where the best horse will win more often than not. This is a hollow sentiment and there are many examples of this not being the case. Take Churchill’s 2,000 Guineas in May, where his stablemate Lancaster Bomber set a steady gallop that would suit a horse who showed plenty of speed at two and work against the likes of Barney Roy and Al Wukair who wanted a stamina test at the trip. Regardless of your views on the relative merits of those three horses and their subsequent achievements, the Timeform sectional database suggests that the second and third were better on the day due to how fast they finished. Perhaps Churchill would have pulled out more – his style of running suggests as much – but I prefer to put my faith in the physics rather than the perception of idling.

At the other end of the pace spectrum is the overly-strong gallop and the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot is a reasonable if not perfect example. Harry Angel was forced to go a little faster than ideal in front with Intelligence Cross pressuring him (the sectionals suggest Intelligence Cross raced very inefficiently) which set things up for the closing Caravaggio who wanted a well-run race. That Intelligence Cross was spoiling Harry Angel and getting him racing a little keenly is another issue and the whole idea of manufacturing trouble and pacemakers dropping back to create lanes for stablemates coming through the pack is another grey area worth exploring.

A huge feature of jockey skill is in predicting how a race will be run; riders must be aware of how to ride the race as well as their horse and not be hidebound to the same tactics each day. The likes of Frankie Dettori have been roundly praised for setting his own pace in races where nothing else wants to go on but some of this skill is taken out of the equation when a percentage of the jockeys have a good idea about how the race will be run. This confers a massive advantage such as in the 2016 Epsom Derby when Ryan Moore on US Army Ranger was aware that Port Douglas was going to set fierce fractions and he could sit out the back and come late. This helped produce a clear career-best effort for his mount where Pat Smullen on the winner, Harzand, could only guess at what the pace might be.

Knowing the plan, and the plan working out, are of course two different things and often the internal chaos of a race will kick in and blow any predetermined approach apart; perhaps the intended frontrunner fluffs the start or maybe a really free-going sort tanks itself to the lead. We shouldn’t judge the issue on exceptional cases however and it is hard to argue that over time, broadly knowing how a race will be run is a huge edge for some riders and connections.

I realise all of this sounds horribly anti-Coolmore and Ballydoyle but that is not the intention; they are merely playing within the rules as currently applied and it is hard to fault them for that. Clearly the prime exponents of constructing a suitable pace (this might be a better way of describing it than ‘pacemaking’), they are not to be blamed as much as the authorities. As I wrote a few weeks back, the influence that Coolmore exert in Irish group races is growing all the time with their percentage of runners on the rise in recent seasons so we can expect to see even more of this in the near-future. There was even a Leopardstown maiden back in July where the pace was seemingly set to advantage their Coat Of Arms though he was ultimately unable to deliver!

As for solutions to this, I don’t really have any though less lionising of such team tactics might be a good place to start. No more than proving a non-trier, proving an attempt to choreograph a race is difficult for all that it may be obvious to onlookers. That is assuming a will to even go down that legislative route which seems unlikely in an Irish context; the Coolmore lobby in Ireland is powerful, prepotent even, and they are the ones that benefit most from the status quo. And even if trainers were asked to answer a case, they could argue – rightly – that their horse is simply a natural front-runner where the jockey got the fractions wrong or that a change in tactics was in order to spark an out of form animal. Unsatisfactory, that is for sure.

- TK

The Value of Scarcity in Race Reading

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Scarcity. An insufficiency or shortness of supply.

It's what makes stuff valuable: gold, bitcoin (depending on who you listen to), etc.

But it can also be manufactured to trick people into making bad investment decisions: fool's gold, bitcoin (depending on who you listen to), etc.

Returning to matters closer to home, how does it manifest in racing, and how can we use it to our advantage?

Scarcity in racing form terms equates to a trait or performance metric consistent in contenders but less prevalent in the race runner population as a whole. Put another way, the stuff which separates the winners from the also rans.

 

When trends are your friends

The most obvious use of this sort of scarcity metric is in big race trends. Most 'big races', be they major big field handicaps or top class Group races, have a scarcity about them as a matter of course: after all, there are only so many heritage handicaps, and the Pattern is only so big (though expanding inexplicably from year to year).

To compete in such a race a horse must either be within x pounds of the top-rated runner in the field (Class 2 handicaps), or possess either proven or implied class (Group races). Such animals are scarce and generally self-select - if a horse is good enough for a certain race, it will generally run in said race - but that doesn't help us punters.

We need a way to whittle the field once it is known, i.e. after the self-selection process. Trends are a popular means of doing this and, despite being bashed somewhat by employers of other methods, they can be a fine means of shortlisting.

The problem comes when data is misused. For example, knowing that nine of the last ten winners were chestnut in colour doesn't help if a) 95% of runners were that colour, and b) there is no logic to such an inference anyway.

However, knowing that nine of the last ten winners had been rested between 30 and 75 days, where only 65% of the runners matched that criterion is likely material. Better yet if such horses made the frame 78% of the time, or beat 60% of rivals - in other words, if they outperform bigger samples than just 'winners'.

We might deduce that horses entering such a race fresh are more likely to give their running than those who raced more recently or were rested too long.

With a trend like that, there is a logical scarcity. Some people like to use bigger populations of horses from which to infer meaning, for example using handicap chases over three and quarter miles or more as a starting point for Grand National trends analysis. I can see the general utility in this, but don't agree that it's a good approach for a handicap as unique in terms of distance, field size, number of obstacles and class as the National.

Another danger with trends - aside from 'unearthing' flawed patterns - is in throwing the winning baby out with the also ran bathwater. Again, this is a by-product of lazy rigidity. It can still happen of course, just as the ratings junkie can overlook the big-priced fourth top figure in favour of something with a sexier profile and a commensurately shorter price, or the form book guru can misinterpret the strength of a key formline.

As punters we have decisions to make. The vast majority of winning punters, and most losing ones as well, make many more poor - or at least ultimately incorrect - decisions than they back winners. Such is the nature of the game. But we're not in it for winners, are we? We're in it for profit. And the craic, natch.

Getting back to lazy rigidity and trends, if we unearth four or five solid looking angles which each filter out 15% or 25% of runners on a given characteristic, we can expect to be left with a short shortlist. Often zero, in fact. But the game is not to chisel away at our stone block until we have no sculpture, only chippings; rather, it is to produce the outline of a smart bet before digging into a bit of form or overlaying ratings or using some other method to cross-refer, sanity check and refine our early work.

There's no sense so uncommon as common sense, and it is that which we must apply to both the trends discovery phase and the shortlisting phase. Sometimes you'll be left with a long 'shortlist'. So what? That means you either need to take a punt at a price after further investigation, or pass the race. That, passing the race, is allowed, by the way 😉

 

Sensible everyday trends

There are plenty of schools of thought about what constitutes a solid basis for a 'trend'. I've intimated mine in reference to the National above and, for me, it's the bridge to bread and butter racing too.

The first thing I look for is what might be the most extreme element of a race. With the Nash, it's any or all of the distance, field size, number of fences and class/weight carried. I have to concede to filing that race under 'national spectacle' rather than 'punting vehicle' these days, however, and perhaps that is how it should be (except for the mug misconceptions visited on everyday horseracing as a consequence of that solitary exposure to the sport in most people's living rooms).

In more mundane - ostensibly at least: I'd rather back the winner of a Wednesday afternoon handicap than a faller at the first in the National! - events, there remain plenty of opportunities to spot material scarcity.

 

The winner of a Wednesday afternoon handicap...

Take this race from Beverley yesterday, for example, which conveniently enough popped up just as I was having a break and wanting a tiny interest dabble to recharge the flagging fingertips before round seven of my day's keyboard pugilism.

I checked the computer clock. It was 3.59pm. I had literally one minute to review the race, make a decision, and wager accordingly. Obviously stakes were kept to a minimum, but in that minute I could see it was a Class 5 five furlong soft ground handicap at Beverley. That immediately set me thinking about low draws and soft ground form.

Those, for me, are the two most important factors under such conditions. On quicker ground I'd replace going form with a speed rating over the minimum trip, but I'd still want a low draw.

Two horses, One Boy and Flash City, had plenty of soft ground placed form - at least 60% each on at least six soft ground runs - and they were drawn two and three of twelve. The clock had still not clicked over to 4.00pm by the time I'd staked a massive four quid on each. A moment later they were off. I was entertained through my tea break by the sight of the pair of them fighting out the finish.

They returned 16/1 and 16/1. My eight pound coins manifested into four twenty pounds notes, as near as damn it after the exchange had taxed it, which was all right for about 3o seconds analysis. I might have bet more if I'd taken longer to cogitate, but probably not: the wager was merely to revive the sagging synapses. [Click the images below to see my 20 second thought process visualised by Gold]

 

 

What's the point?

What's the point here? The point is this: look for those elements in a race which are both material and scarce.

In this case, there was a fixed scarcity, low draws, and a variable scarcity, soft ground lovers. There will always be low drawn horses in double-digit Beverley sprints and, all other things being equal, they will generally have an advantage up the hill and around that deceptively angular dogleg.

However, on another occasion, the ground may not be testing, or there may be an abundance of low drawn soft ground lovers, or the soft ground lovers may be drawn away from the low draws. None of those situations would have been as attractive as this setup. I'd have still wasted eight quid on the race, but I'd have been venturing far deeper into guesswork territory.

This is the way my brain looks at a race now. It is second nature, which is how I can assimilate the required intel in, literally, a few seconds. I also have tools which pinpoint what I'm looking for. So do you!

 

Example Scarcity Scenarios

Of course, it takes time to build up a picture of the requirements of a given scenario. So, in case you need a leg up, here are a few things I'm always on the lookout for. In each case, it is important to think about what is the least common, yet relevant, factor in the race.

Class 4 handicap hurdle on heavy ground: There are lots of handicap hurdles, and lots of Class 4 handicap hurdles. But there are not so many heavy ground races. The further away from middling going a track is, the more interested in proven ability to handle such terrain I am. Heavy and firm are polar opposite turf states and they tend to appeal to specialists. Better still, very often such horses will look moderate under most other conditions. Their unsexy form figures will add currency to their trading price, in the early go at least.

Instant Expert gives me pretty much all I need to know for a route in to such races.

Class 2 3m4f chase: Stamina and class are needed, but mostly stamina. I'd rather be with a Class 3 animal I know stays three and a half miles than a Class 2 beast stepping up from three miles flat, especially if the track is testing. The first thing I'm interested in is which horses have won beyond 3m2f and, ideally, between 3m4f and 3m6f.

Again, Instant Expert is my friend.

Class 2 3m4f chase, five runners: In small fields over longer distances, I'm on the lookout for a horse which might get a soft lead. A habitual front runner against hold up horses may steal four or five lengths with a quarter mile to go. If the leader is not outclassed, it will take a rare smart stayer to make up that sort of ground late in that sort of race. Almost all staying chasers are grinders; granting an easy lead to a horse in a staying chase and expecting to pass it late on would not be a good proposal for your mortgage advisor.

A two second glance at the pace map will reveal how things are projected to play out; check Instant Expert and the ratings to ensure the horse has the class and the contextual ability to contend.

Seven furlong heritage handicap, 22 runners: Big field, specialist trip. In big fields, I want to know if there's a track bias or a pace bias, or both (and are they aligned). I then want a horse drawn on what I believe to be the correct part of the track, that is proven in big fields; and I want them to have seven furlong form. If the going is soft or slower, or good to firm, I want evidence of effectiveness on that, too.

Draw tab first here, sorted by place for the bigger sample size that offers; then pace tab sorted by draw position to map out where the field looks likely to race; then Instant Expert (place view) Field Size column to see which horses have run into the frame consistently in big fields - and fit on other form-based credentials.

And so on.

 

Don't force it, and be careful...

It's important to remember that there isn't always an exploitable 'scarcity' element to a race. Indeed, there generally won't be such an angle. But on any given day they'll be lurking like truffles in the mud waiting to be snouted out by keen punters.

If you can't find anything material and scarce about the runners in the context of the race, then pass and move on. Or use a different approach to the puzzle.

Also note that this approach works best - perhaps exclusively - when all runners have exposed levels of form. That is, when all runners have had at least a couple of attempts at most of today's race factors.

Caution is advised when looking at horses doing things for the first or second time, especially if their human taskmasters have 'previous' in a given context. Horses can, and very often do, step forward markedly on their first or second run in a handicap; it is rather less common to see a horse improve ten pounds on its twelfth or fifteenth start in weight-for-ability races.

 

Summary

This post has attempted to offer a morsel of food for thought regarding an approach to the search for value in a horse race. We're looking for horses whose overall recent profile may not be terribly compelling but which are noteworthy against a material race factor where many/most rivals are not.

Demand a price about a horse in this context. If the market has already factored in significant improvement, move on.

Work out what your key differentiators - material elements - are; they're probably different from mine.

Have fun with it. This is just another of the myriad routes into picking a horse in a race. It can be done in very short order, which is part of the attraction for a busy person like me and, most likely, you. As well as the nags flagged at Beverley above, I used the same approach to snaffle those recent big-race Saturday winners (25/1 Mattmu, 14/1 Nakeeta) as well as last week's 8/1 runner up, Vibrant Chords. And each time I invested no more than five minutes into the process.

Now, sure, I fired two darts at those targets; and sure, over another three week period they all run rank. That's not the point at all. The point is the process - as Tony Keenan mentioned earlier this week in this excellent post, "Trust the process".

Don't expect instant success; don't use just one approach: different types of puzzle demand different tools from the box. Do enjoy mucking about with it. Don't bet the farm. Do look for some meat on the odds bone.

Hone your handicapping skills, and enjoy the trip. After all, if it's not fun we may as well get a job, right?

Matt

Appendix

For whatever it's worth, some of my 'material factors' - the ones which spring to mind while penning this - are listed below. Don't take them on trust; do your own digging, but hopefully there is enough herein to help you turn the first few shovels of soil.

Course Form: Ascot, Bath, Cartmel, Cheltenham, Epsom, Fakenham, Hexham, Kelso, Stratford, Towcester, Worcester

Going: Heavy, Firm

Distance: 5.5f, 7f, 1m1f, 2m2f, 3m4f+

Field size: 6 or fewer, 16+

Class: 1, 2, 3

Draw: Numerous, check Draw tool

Front runners: Catterick, Chester, Chelmsford, Newmarket, Pontefract, Yarmouth

 

Four Traits of Effective Punters

/in /by

Literary events in the gambling world are infrequent to say the least, writes Tony Keenan. Unless twice-yearly horses to follow annuals are your thing there’s little to get excited about in books on the subject but the launch of Harry Findlay’s autobiography ‘Gambling for Life’ earlier this month was an exception. Few who like a bet will have failed to pick up a copy and I’ve been reading with a strange mix of fascination and fear at the tales of Findlay’s life.

Some of the events described might draw out the swash-buckling punter in us all but in truth most of it is far removed from the world of the typical gambler. It’s much more about Findlay’s extraordinary character than a how-to manual (thank god for that!) but as is the case when I read any such material it sets me reflecting about gambling in general. What are the things that make gamblers tick? Are there traits that are common across those who succeed in the punting world? Here is my best guess about the four aspects of character that might be most important though excuse me if the paragraph titles sound like they come from an ill thought-out self-help book.

 

  1. Consistency

‘Trust the process’ is a phrase beloved in American sport and has been most recently used by the Philadelphia 76ers executive as their basketball team was mired in bad results for seasons as they accumulated draft picks to rebuild the side. The process became such a tagline that one of their stars Joel Embiid took it on as a nickname but it is ultimately an approach that worked as the 76ers are now on an upward curve for the first time in years.

Punters would do well to nurture a similar attitude and concentrate on process rather than results. This is easier said than done, especially when on a losing run, but as someone who writes a weekly tipping column on a busy website it is one of the only ways to get back on an upward curve. If you have a method that works over time, you need to apply it consistently regardless of short-term outcomes. Ironically, betting profits tend not to come in dribs and drabs but in large globules and their spaced-out nature can be challenging to deal with.

But sticking to consistent methods of form study, staking, time taken studying a race meeting and such like is important with ‘rinse and repeat’ the phrase to remember. Real life can obviously impinge on this if there are bins to be put out or a crying baby to be soothed or simply real work to be done [God forbid! – Ed.] but the punter that can keep things pretty level tends to prove more effective than those that cannot.

 

  1. Creativity

Imagination would hardly be high on the list of things one might think as important for a punter but I defer to the great Andy Beyer in his book ‘Beyer on Speed’ about the topic of creativity: ‘handicapping is an art, a test of man’s creative intelligence, not merely a puzzle to be solved by applying the right formula.’ In recent years I have come to believe that betting is at least as much art as science and that feel and intuition are vital tools to getting an edge; the unfortunate thing for novice punters is that these things only come with time.

We live in the big data age where seemingly every aspect of life can be boiled down into a number or a chart and betting is no different. High-end punters are using figures to get ahead as we have seen in articles about Tony Bloom and his quants crunching data at Starlizard. One cannot but admire their rigour and many good bets will come from such a grind but against that a more subjective approach will always provide an edge for the very fact that it is personal to each punter.

Maybe you have seen something in a replay that has been missed by everyone else, a hood that was removed half a beat too late or a subtle bit of shuffling back that has not been commented on anywhere. Perhaps you’ve read an insightful trainer comment on a low-key website that has provided a new angle into a horse. Sometimes a horse or a bet has all the figures and the model may say it will win but there is something more intangible that plays against it winning; when you have the imagination to spot this, you are on to something.

 

  1. Openness to Change

It is a truth universally acknowledged in betting that edges dissipate and eventually disappear whether it is through growing bookmaker awareness or sheer weight of market support. Punters need to be on the look out for the next edge and likely guard it closely to prolong its longevity. I cannot understand why some are dismissive about newer approaches to racing like sectional times when as a gambler this is exactly the type of angle you want to be developing; perhaps it will all turn out to be a nonsense (though I doubt it) and clearly no method of tackling a race is going to work in every case but doesn’t it at least make sense to explore the possibilities?

This brings us on to the question of what might be the next big edge in racing analysis and in truth it is likely being practiced quietly by a few sharp operators at this very time. I wonder if it might be something to do ground loss and gains around turns and the impact that it has on races. The use of Trakus for racing in Dubai has revealed the importance of how far a horse travelled in a race and the effect it had in the finish but we in Ireland and Britain find this type of thing harder to grasp as it is so difficult to quantify.

Another thing at play might be that the lost ground angle works against our natural thinking biases. I suspect the eye is drawn to the horse tanking along the rail that is struggling to get a run rather than the one that has been trapped out wide conceding ground all the way; at the very least we have been conditioned to view the former in a more positive light than the latter by the racing media. But that horse has not only drawn all the attention and thus will be a shorter price than it might merit next time but it has also had the benefit of going the shortest way and having the all-important cover that can be key to getting a horse to settle.

 

  1. Ruthlessness

I’ll begin this final section with a disclaimer; I am probably nowhere near ruthless enough myself as a gambler though that is probably a good thing in life in general! But a ruthless streak can be important for gambling success as we have seen in a number of high-profile cases where punters have exploited bookmaker weakness through spotting loopholes in their risk management systems and hammering them for all they were worth.

This necessitates burning bridges with bookmakers – you might catch them out once but not a second time – but the truly ruthless punter doesn’t care about this; he has other ways of getting on. The whole getting on process is another area where we can see this ruthlessness at play. The ruthless punter may use the accounts of others for a period of time – these things always have a shelf-life – but these people are kicked to the curb when their usefulness is exhausted. Some would argue this is simply the gambling food chain, and there is probably merit in that view, but while cutting ties with bookmakers is one thing, doing the same to friends whose accounts you might have burned is quite another, especially if they are fond of a bet themselves.

Your stance on this issue might say something about your whole attitude to gambling and indeed your broader personality. Some see gambling as being all about going for the one big touch, ‘the face-spitter’ as Steve Palmer might call it, but the problem with reaching for that single epic punting moment is that it cannot be achieved without first putting in the grind to build up your skills. I’ve always been more about the grind, not least because I enjoy it; let’s face it, studying a good race meeting is more stimulating than sitting down to a night in front of ‘The X-Factor’!

Perhaps this brand of ruthlessness is born of the fact that gambling at its heart is a selfish endeavour; it is your money that you are wagering and ultimately the responsibility stops with you. My own experience tells me otherwise however. I find gambling is much more satisfying when done in concert with a few close betting partners where you can share successes; perhaps you don’t maximise profits completely but there are more important things in life. I might be alone in this but I would rather win less and enjoy the experience more.

- TK

Pace Maps: Predicting the Future Just Got Easier…

/in , /by

The whole point of betting on horses - betting on anything - is being able to accurately predict what will happen in the future. The more 'yesterday' information we have, the better able we are to forecast 'tomorrow'.

In Britain, horse racing punters were traditionally in the dark: for years, there was nothing more informative (ahem) than the little alphanumeric sextet of recent finishing positions to the left of a horse's name. 'Professionals' bought the Sporting Life and, more recently, Racing Post. This gave them a huge leg up on other newspaper readers, but was still seriously deficient in terms of projecting what might actually happen in a race.

The advent of the internet has, slowly it must be said, changed things; finally, punters are able to access a raft of insightful data which genuinely can give them the edge over the bookmakers. This edge is greatest in the early markets, where many of the horse race odds lines are algorithmically constructed: Deep Blue versus Kasparov this is not. The software creating the early markets is not exactly sophisticated, which means we don't need to be chess grandmasters to find the ricks.

Looking at past form cycles and profiles - that is, when a horse comes into form and under what conditions - is a blind spot in the algos, which focus too heavily on recent form. The starting price markets are much more efficient of course, but nobody bets SP, do they? Do they?!!

One of the last major vestiges of unpublished form, in Britain and Ireland at least, is pace. Pace can mean different things: it can be precise, by virtue of sectional times; or it can be more general, defining a horse's run style. In most of the established racing betting nations - Hong Kong, Japan, US - sectional times are ubiquitous. Commentators are able to quantify the speed of the horses in-running by a split time stopwatch in the corner of the screen.

Here, we have no such aides - the usual "who's going to pay for it?" arguments - but what we do have, and more so than in many of the aforementioned racing jurisdictions, are detailed in-running comments. These allow a bettor to work through past performances and develop a picture in the mind's eye of each horse's run style. It's laborious, for sure, and I know for a fact that most jockeys riding in Britain gather their understanding of how the races they're riding in will unfurl in this manner. Until now...

Geegeez Gold has had pace information, in the form of a data table, for quite some time. And, yesterday, we moved things up a notch by converting the numbers into a picture: a pace map. Pictures are much easier for us humans to understand than words and numbers. Consequently, we can get the gist of something - like, for example, how a race will be run - in just a second or two when the data is presented in pictorial format.

So, welcome to Geegeez Gold's new Pace Graphic view. It's not Deep Blue, and nor was it imagined by the genius of Kasparov (it was me, actually), but it does instantly visualise how a race might be run based on the last four UK/Ire runs of the horses in it. And that means its users have a significant edge on other punters, either in time or awareness terms or, in most cases, both.

It lives in the existing PACE tab, and looks like this:

In this race, Whos De Baby looked like he'd get a clear lead. That's exactly what happened, allowing him to finish 2nd at 12/1

In this race, Whos De Baby looked like he'd get a clear lead. That's exactly what happened, allowing him to finish 2nd at 12/1

 

In this example from yesterday, Whos De Baby was predicted to be 'Probable Lone Speed', meaning he was expected to be able to set his own pace and try to make all. He very nearly did, finishing a good second at odds of 12/1.

Below is a video where I show you the what and how of the new Pace Graphic. If you're familiar with pace and how to use it in horseracing there may be little new therein. But if you're still trying to get to grips with the importance of pace, and which scenarios to look out for, you really should watch it.

 

 

There is more information in the User Guide, which can be downloaded from your My Geegeez page here; and there is an 'introduction to pace' video here.

Geegeez Gold continues to be committed to provided the best information for punters in the most consumable, readily understandable format, so you know more than your competition (other punters, not bookmakers) in less time.

If you're not yet a Gold subscriber, you can join us here. That page includes a link where readers who have never tried Gold before can get their first 30 days for just a pound. Thereafter, Gold is £30 per month. If you're serious about getting ahead with your horse racing betting, I don't know how else you can have this sort of a chance for less than a pound a day. Granted, I am a tiny bit biased... 😉

Good luck, and thanks for reading/watching.
Matt

An End To Blinkered Thinking?

/in /by

The relationship between racehorses and equipment - especially headgear - is often misunderstood. That can be mainly credited to two factors. Firstly, some equipment, such as different tack (sheepskin or cross nosebands, for example), is not required to be declared. And secondly, the general public have nothing more than a notation in the racecard relating to the wearing of other equipment.

Some publications do make a point of highlighting that a horse is, for instance, blinkered first time. But is the initial fitting of blinkers a positive? If not, what about subsequent runs?

The Tongue Tie: A Precursor to the Blinkers Study

I did some research a while back on the fitting of tongue ties and, specifically, whether a first time tongue tie was advantageous. The findings - reproduced below - were surprising, to me at least.

 

 

The first application of a tongue tie, shown here in the top row, A) 0, has the lowest win strike rate of all. It also has the lowest place strike rate, and the highest negative ROI.

What was really interesting was the linear progression in performance thereafter. The second application of tongue tie - B) 1 - was better than the first, but not as good as the third; the third was better than the second but not as good as the fourth; and so on.

These observations were made on what, in racing terms, is a vast sample size of 115,000 runners, and it is clear that, in general, it takes time for a horse to learn to breathe with its tongue tied down. There is also a point - somewhere between the 10th and 25th application - beyond which the tongue tie's effectiveness wanes.

**

"Wait, I can't see much! What's that behind me?!"

So why put blinkers on a horse anyway? I was re-reading Nick Mordin's brilliant Betting For A Living for the nth time recently, and stumbled upon his version of the origination of racehorse blinkers. It goes thus:

Reproduced from Nick Mordin's Betting For A Living

Reproduced from Nick Mordin's Betting For A Living

 

More recently, US turf writer, Marcus Hersh penned this 'qualitative' article, quoting many top American trainers as well as John Gosden, who began his training career in California.

Both Mordin and Hersh make the point that blinkers replicate the 'fight or flight' (in this case, 'flight' being the hoped for response) instinct in a domesticated herd animal.

Before a horse sports blinkers, it is almost always assumed not to need them and is given a chance to run unencumbered by headgear. For many, though, this is a temporary hiatus before some sort of garb is reached for, generally in search of hitherto undiscovered improvement.

Variations on the blinker theme exist in the form of eye shields, visors, and cheek pieces, as well as actual differences in the 'cup' on a pair of blinkers. The research below focuses solely on blinkers in all their forms (British racing does not require trainers to declare, for example, half cup blinkers, or full cup blinkers), and uses 'no headgear' as a control.

'No headgear' means the horse did not wear blinkers, or an eye shield, or a visor, or cheek pieces, or indeed anything. By extension, then, the study does not include all runners: those sporting equipment other than blinkers, or in combination with blinkers are excluded from this research.

I have included short form comparisons with equivalent data from Irish racing.

UK Blinkers vs No Headgear, 2014 to 2016

The first dataset I looked at was 'all UK racing' for the three year period 2014 to 2016.

During that period, the average win strike rate for a blinkered horse was 10.43% compared with an average for horses wearing no headgear of 11.76%. It should surprise nobody that horses wearing blinkers typically under-performed in strike rate terms compared to horses without headgear of any sort.

But I wanted to dig a little deeper. My experience with the tongue tie dataset had led me to wonder whether there were any similar patterns for blinkered horses: did familiarity with the equipment improve performance?

As you can see from the table below, there was an improvement in the win strike rate for blinkered horses through their early runs in blinkers.

 

 

Horses having their first run in blinkers - i.e. with zero previous blinkered runs (Prev Blkrd Runs) - won just 9.53% of the time, compared to 11.76% for horses not wearing headgear.

But, on their second run in blinkers (i.e. one previous blinkered run), that improved to 10.96% winners. Whilst still lagging some way behind the control this represented a significant step forward, and can reasonably be put down to the benefit of experience.

Now here's the interesting thing: horses having their third start with blinkers won at a rate of 12.74%, markedly better than runners without headgear. Moreover, their place strike rate was higher and their ROI was much closer to zero than other group. The second best ROI group was 'first time blinkers'.

For some reason, the sixth run in blinkers was also very close to the 'no headgear' group. That was odd and my first reaction was that it is happenstance.

 

Blinkers vs No Headgear, 2012 to 2013

That initial look piqued my interest for a deeper dive, so I went back another couple of years to see if the fairly strong patterns were replicated on a separate sample.

Here, the control - i.e. no headgear - group won at a rate of 11.15%. Again the blinkered first time subset performed poorly, scoring just 9.56% of the time albeit for a very respectable -5.6% ROI at starting price.

Second time blinkers showed an improvement on the initial effort in win and place strike rate terms, and third time blinkers was another step forward. Indeed, as with the first dataset, third time blinkered outgunned the 'no headgear' group by a statistically significant margin: 11.83% vs 11.15% is an improvement of more than 6%.

Note as well that both fifth and sixth time blinkered also fared better than the control sample, especially sixth time... again. Weird.

 

 

There seemed to be quite strong similarities between the two UK datasets, so I extended my analysis to Irish racing for the same period. The results were again similar, though this time no blinkered sub-group beat the control:

 

The group that came closest to matching the control was - you guessed it - the third time blinkered set. Quite why the 'no headgear' set had the edge this time, I'm not sure, though I suspect it may be something to do with the might of the Mullins and O'Brien yards which dominate Irish racing and rarely use blinkers (just 300 blinkered runs collectively versus 5122 'no headgear' runs, or 5.5%).

 

Blinkers vs No Headgear, Handicaps (All Codes), 2012-2016

Having looked at the five year supersets for all races, I then honed in on handicaps. Below is the UK story for number of blinkered runs in handicaps under all codes (i.e. flat, all weather and National Hunt).

Here again, perhaps unsurprisingly given the related contingency nature of the subset, that third run in blinkers shows a marked improvement over 'no headgear'. This time it is 12.29% vs 11.18%, a 10% advantage; and both place strike rate and ROI are notably better than those without facial accoutrements.

The best performing group in ROI terms was 'first time blinkers', again.

And again we see that odd sixth time in blinkers group outperforming the rest. Weeeirrd...

 

 

The Irish comparison was interesting. When looking at all races above, I surmised that a possible reason for the 'third time in blinkers' group performing less well than the 'no headgear' group was the preeminence of the Mullins and O'Brien stables. If there was any truth to my conjecture, we might expect to see the handicapping third time blinkers group fare better: after all, most of those super power batallions race in open company (80% in the survey period vs 20% handicaps).

Sure enough, we do see the third time blinkered Irish handicappers outperform the 'no headgear' handicappers, and by a sizeable margin: the same 10% as the UK handicappers.

 

Blinkers vs No Headgear, Handicaps (Flat Turf & All Weather), 2012-2016

Finally, I wanted to split out flat (turf and all weather) handicaps from National Hunt handicaps. You'll be familiar with the view by now...

 

 

The same themes emerge yet again: third time in blinkers significantly outpoint UK flat handicappers without headgear - by 9.34% this time (11.94% vs 10.92%). The best ROI performance comes from those blinkered first time once more. And those sixth time blinkered UK 'cappers almost match the 'no headgear' mob. Quirky...

 

Bringing in the Irish scene, we see more of the same:

 

Third time blinkers had a nigh on 10% strike rate, compared with 8.74% for those wearing no headgear. That 13.84% uplift is the largest of all the disparities in my research, but I can't logically apportion it to anything other than variance. Nevertheless, the core principle is alive and kicking: third time lucky for many in blinkers.

 

Blinkers vs No Headgear, Handicaps (National Hunt), 2012-2016

The last subset under scrutiny was National Hunt handicaps. And it was the group for which blinkers seemed to be the most consistently advantageous, at least when compared to not wearing headgear of any description.

Here we see that, after that initial blinkered start - perennially an under-performing run in strike rate terms, regardless of dataset - those wearing 'the blinds' outran those unfurnished for almost all of their next five runs (excepting fifth time blinkered - go figure).

Top of the pile, on place strike rate at least, is the third run in blinkers brigade. They were actually marginally usurped in win strike terms by the sixth run crew. Again, I have no idea why that might be.

From an ROI perspective blinkered first timers went closest to breaking even, as they have done throughout my analysis.

 

 

The Irish National Hunt handicappers perspective has a familiar look to it:

 

Third, and especially sixth, time blinkered horses were in front of those without headgear. Again.

 

Conclusions: Winners? Or Profit?

This was a fascinating, and to some degree, surprising study. When I set out, I expected to see some improvement from run to run as per the tongue tie research I'd previously performed. What I didn't really expect was such a strong correlation in the data, regardless of race type, time frame or racing jurisdiction.

That slicing and dicing of the dataset adds a layer of credibility which is quite rare in horse racing research. Normally, samples are too small or conclusions too obvious. But here we can clearly see something which I've not seen expressed anywhere before:

Horses wearing blinkers for the third time, on average, win significantly more often than horses wearing no headgear.

Horses wearing blinkers for the third time, on average, win significantly more often than horses wearing no headgear.

Whilst that is worth knowing, and can be the starting point for making a bet, or at least marking up the chance of a horse with a borderline value case, it is not profitable in or of itself.

Indeed, it is interesting that, while first time blinkered horses perform comparatively very poorly in strike rate terms, their starting price return on investment is closer to zero than those without headgear across almost all samples above. That implies they are sent off at bigger odds than ought to be the case.

Remarkably, backing all UK blinkered first time horses from 2012 to 2016 would have yielded a positive ROI of 10.66% at Betfair SP.

Remarkably, backing all UK blinkered first time horses from 2012 to 2016 would have yielded a positive ROI of 10.66% at Betfair SP.

That's 675 points on 6338 bets. Granted, the results are skewed by Morning Post's 100/1 win in 2013, which returned 470 on Betfair!

Looking only at handicaps - Morning Post ran in a conditions race - still gives an ROI at BSP of 9.28%. That's a profit of 440 points from 4743 bets where no winner returned bigger than 75 on the exchange.

Irish handicaps also returned a profit at BSP, though it was as a result of three triple-digit payoffs.

At the end of the day, then, it comes down to the age old punters' dilemma: do you want winners, or profit? First time blinkers will give you less winners than any other group in the sample. But... they are your best chance of turning a profit.

Given the size of these datasets and that there are brain dead angles contained within, the scope to develop profitable micro-systems is vast.

 

What Next?

This research is merely the tip of the iceberg. I haven't looked at trainers who fare especially well (try Gary Moore and Tim Easterby first time blinkered in handicaps); or compared with last time out headgear (blinkers off to blinkers on, switch from another headgear type); or looked at how exposed horses were prior to the fitting of blinkers; or looked at the donning of blinkers in conjunction with other equipment; or indeed looked at the general effect of other types of headgear.

In other words, there are many routes to explore from here. Each may be a profit-sucking cul de sac or an expansive value boulevard. Go forth, and let this be an end to your blinkered thinking... or perhaps just the beginning!

To help your exploration, we've now added numerical suffixes to horses wearing equipment, as follows:

Geegeez racecards now have a count on the number of times equipment combinations have been deployed on a horse

Geegeez racecards now have a count on the number of times equipment combinations have been deployed on a horse

In this example, we can see that Piazon is wearing the combination of hood, tongue tie and cheekpieces for the first time (h,t,cp1). Meanwhile Artscape and Taajub (on his 77th career start!) are wearing cheekpieces and blinkers respectively for the first time, Coastal Cyclone has a second run in blinkers, while Mad Endeavour has run at least five times in blinkers.

We know from the above research that first time blinkers have a low strike rate but a profitable bottom line, such is their 'marmite' impact. And we know that 'bl3' may be something to look out for from a win strike rate perspective, notwithstanding that value judgements will have to be made about the animals deploying such kit.

To assist with such judgements, clicking the 'TODAY'S HEADGEAR' check box on the Full Form tab will shine a light. Here's Mad Endeavour's record with blinkers:

Select TODAY'S HEADGEAR to see a horse's record with the same equipment

Select TODAY'S HEADGEAR to see a horse's record with the same equipment

Matt

FOOTNOTE: I was reminded that there is an inherent 'sampling bias' in the progressive number of blinkered runs. That is, a horse which has a positive experience in blinkers is more likely to retain them for a subsequent run/runs; conversely, a horse with a negative experience is more likely not to run in them again.

Whilst that is undoubtedly true, it does nothing to invalidate the findings which are, as stated, intended as a) food for thought and b) a starting point for the curious among you to undertake further research. Moreover, the only element of 'directly profitable takeaway' concerns first time blinkers, for which there is no such sampling bias.

Horse's racing careers are necessarily bound by sampling biases in that their trainers and owners will want to replicate successful outcomes and avoid repeating failed ones.

The Ten Worst Group 1 Winners in Recent Memory*

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(*since 2003)

You could come up with a metric to figure out the worst Group 1 winners of recent times, writes Tony Keenan. Performance ratings on the day would be a good starting point while subsequent achievements matter too, as would those of the horses around and behind them. You could look at the nature of the race, knowing full well that certain Group 1s – those confined to fillies or over staying trips, say – are less competitive than others. But none of this is as much fun as trawling through the records of the 638 Group 1 winners since 2003 in Britain and Ireland and figuring out who the hell was that horse that won the Middle Park in 2009 (Awzaan, in case you didn’t know) and looking at what became of them.

2003 is taken as the starting point because that is as far back as the excellent HorseRaceBase database goes and it neatly coincides with the time I started following racing properly. This is an utterly subjective list and the idea behind it is not to offend; it needs pointing out that every bad Group 1 winner is s triumph for someone, be it trainer, jockey or breeder, the by-product of a certain set of circumstances on the day. And that’s basically what I’m doing: looking for horses that were patently inferior to the usual level required to win a Group 1 but who for whatever reason were able to maximise their ability in a narrow window of the mere minutes it takes to run a race.

Honourable Mentions: Rajeem – 2006 Falmouth (a Clive Brittain 50/1 special, need I say more!); Vintage Tipple – 2003 Irish Oaks (one for the sentimentalists but worth remembering that she and the filly she beat in the Oaks finished the season racing in a backend Curragh Listed contest); Camelot – 2013 Racing Post Trophy, 2014 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Irish Derby (surely one of the worst four-time Group 1 winners ever, beat Zip Top, French Fifteen, Main Sequence and Born To Sea in his Group 1 wins yet nearly went down as a great), Encke – 2014 St Leger (the one that stopped Camelot’s Triple Crown bid but later banned for positive drug test), Parish Hall – 2011 Dewhurst (immortalised for trying to give his nearest rival a love-bite on his penultimate start in 2015).

 

  1. Jwala – 2013 Nunthorpe

Starting price isn’t the best guide to finding bad Group 1 winners with the biggest-priced winner in this period proving the point; that horse was 2010 Nunthorpe winner Sole Power at 100/1 who went on to triumph in five more top-level contests. He was third to the 40/1 shot Jwala this day with Shea Shea in second, the softened ground suiting neither, while the Robert Cowell-trained winner also benefited from an excellent ride with Steve Drowne making more or less all. Her previous best was a win in a Listed race, also at York, but this was a shock in a race that has produced a few over the years, the short distance and big field often bringing in some randomness. To Jwala’s credit she did back up her win with a good fourth in the Abbaye next time but that was one of the lesser runnings of the French race.

 

  1. My Dream Boat – 2016 Prince of Wales’s Stakes

It is truth universally acknowledged in European racing that bad horses don’t win Group 1s over ten furlongs; races over this trip have long been the most competitive in the calendar. There are some lesser Group 1 over the distance, notably the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh and some of the early season French races, but by and large you need to be good to win one. My Dream Boat isn’t very good looking at his overall form and managed to find a particularly bad renewal of the Prince of Wales’s Stakes last year, a race that tends to be among the best of Royal Ascot. Soft ground meant a field of just six took part with A Shin Hikari looking nothing like the beast that had blown the Prix D’Ispahan apart by 10 lengths on his previous start. Found was in her phase of finishing second every time she ran while the rest of the field was made up of the doggish Western Hymn, a regressive The Grey Gatsby and all-weather horse Tryster. My Dream Boat loved the ground, Found didn’t love the battle and the rest is history.

 

  1. La Collina – 2011 Phoenix Stakes/2013 Matron Stakes

Including a dual Group 1 winner is probably a bit churlish – can something be a fluke if it happens twice – but La Collina was just three from sixteen overall in her career and is one of those horses that seemed blessed with luck. Kevin Prendergast has won Group 1s with some strange horses, Termagant in the same colours for instance, many of whom never produce the same level of form again. La Collina was never better than when beating subsequent National Stakes and Irish 2,000 Guineas winner, Power, in the Phoenix Stakes, allowing that one was a sitting duck with how the race unfolded. Her Matron Stakes win got within a few pounds of that form but she was rated only 106 going into the race, very much at the low end of the spectrum of official ratings for older horse Group 1s, and the filly she beat was rated just 105.

 

  1. Reel Buddy – 2003 Sussex Stakes

Connections of Reel Buddy didn’t think much of him in 2003, running him twice within three days over the Lincoln meeting at Doncaster where he was beaten a combined 46 lengths, and his best win prior to the Sussex was a Group 3. This was a race that set up well for him even before post time, Dubai Destination redirected for France while Kalaman and Where Or When came out that morning. The race itself was a mess pace-wise but Pat Eddery gave his quirky mount a fine ride and never used the stick. Goodwood is a track that gets a bad name in terms of luck-in-running but bad winners of the Sussex are rare with the Nassau at the same meeting more likely to produce a shock.

 

  1. Frozen Fire – 2008 Irish Derby

Seamie Heffernan has made a career out of winning races he shouldn’t have and Frozen Fire was one of the early ones, landing an ordinary renewal of the Irish Derby where he came wide and avoided traffic that led to some of the placings being reversed. There were some decent horses in the field: Casual Conquest won a Group 1 afterwards while Tartan Bearer was second in a King George, but this was very much the high point of Frozen Fire’s career arc. The only other race he won was a Gowran Park maiden while he went on to show little with Mike De Kock. Returned 16/1 on the day, these big-priced O’Brien Group 1 winners rarely go on, with Homecoming Queen, Was and Qualify also failing to win again afterwards.

 

  1. G Force – 2014 Haydock Sprint Cup

The Sprint Cup is the weakest of the UK’s Group 1 sprints and by some distance; in fact, the prospective Champion Sprinter will often miss the race for a later target. That has left the way clear for recent winners like Goodricke, Regal Parade and Markab to come from handicaps and while that’s clearly not a bad thing in itself, you probably don’t want to be heading back for handicaps afterwards. That’s exactly what has happened to G Force, excellent for peak David O’Meara in 2014, rumours circulating of his taking over the mantle at Ballydoyle in fact. G Force was found to be sub-fertile when sent to stud and is 13 starts without a win since the Sprint Cup. He was last seen at the Curragh on Saturday where he finished last in the Scurry Stakes, a handicap.

 

  1. Madame Chiang – 2014 Fillies and Mares Stakes

British Champions Day is a brilliant idea and there have been some brilliant winners at the meeting, notably King Frankel and all his princes like Cirrus Des Aigles, Excelebration and Farhh. With any flat meeting run in October there is always the chance of really deep ground and freak results and so it proved in the second running of the Fillies and Mares as a Group 1 in 2014. The leaders went off far too hard and there was a pace collapse – the finishing speed for the winner was a crazy 94.4% - with the most talented filly in the field, Chiquita, going bananas [geddit?!] in the finish and earning the immortal in-running comment ‘threw it away’. The mud-loving Madame Chiang was there to pick up the pieces having been dropped out completely.

 

  1. Pether’s Moon – 2015 Coronation Cup

Trainers and owners might be willing to chance their best three-year-olds at Epsom, the prestige of the Oaks and Derby outweighing the obvious risk of the track, but with the notable exception of Aidan O’Brien and some French handlers many seem less keen on running their older horses in races like the Coronation Cup. Such wariness reached its peak in the 2014 Coronation Cup where just four went to post and the market was dominated by Dolniya and Flintshire; this was the pre-US Flintshire however. It was more a race Dolniya lost than anything else, emptying in the finish having traded at 1/50 in running, and Pether’s Moon came through to win, his previous best effort having come in the Bosphorus Cup at Veliefendi. Incidentally, he was the Hannons’ first Group 1 winner over further than a mile since Assessor in the 1992 Prix Royal-Oak.

 

  1. Palace Episode – 2005 Racing Post Trophy

Doncaster stages two of the weakest Group 1s of the season in the St. Leger and the Racing Post Trophy and it would challenge even the best racing historian to list off the last 20 winners of each race. The ground was heavy in October 20o5 which helped Palace Episode’s case and hindered that of Dylan Thomas who was to prove much the best horse in the field but who didn’t operate on soft. Palace Episode was quirky, flashing his tail in the finish, and won just once in the rest of his career, in a Saratoga claimer. His career at stud proved little better.

 

  1. Pedro The Great – 2012 Phoenix

There have been some eminently forgettable winners of the Phoenix Stakes like Sudirman, Alfred Nobel and Dick Whittington, but none more than so the unfortunately named Pedro The Great. His immediate victims on the day were the ungenuine pair Leitir Mor and Lottie Dod, the former 2/32 in his career though he did at least act as a pacemaker for Dawn Approach, the latter 1/14 lifetime and rated 89 when last seen. Pedro The Great’s task was eased when his stablemate Cristoforo Colombo slipped up while the other fancied runner Probably found little. Soft ground and Irish Group 1s can throw up some weird results.

 

As I've said, this is a subjective list and no offence is intended. If you disagree, or feel another has a legitimate claim to top ten 'bragging' rights, leave a comment below.

- Tony Keenan

The Irish at Royal Ascot 2017

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Aidan O'Brien spearheads the Irish challenge at Royal Ascot

Aidan O'Brien spearheads the Irish challenge at Royal Ascot

Irish indifference, be it from the general public or the mainstream sporting media, is given when it comes to Royal Ascot, writes Tony Keenan. Whereas the Royal meeting is a central cog in the social and sporting calendar in the UK, commanding column inches describing the who’s who of attendees and being the only meeting of the year where every race is on terrestrial TV, the attention it gets in Ireland is minimal; Galway remains the highpoint of the racing summer.

Perhaps this is due to the coverage given to other sports. The US Open has just finished, we’re in the middle of a Lions Tour and both the football and hurling championships have proved surprisingly competitive. Others will say that for all Aidan O’Brien’s achievements at the meeting and in flat racing generally, his record-breaking has become blasé; brilliance is diminished when it is expected. But most of all it is not Cheltenham despite being a fixture that is obviously more important in a global racing sense than any jumps event, the horses that run making their mark in the history of the sport through their own actions across the five days and in breeding sheds later.

None of this will stop flat racing people in Ireland going hell for leather at the meeting. Irish runners at Royal Ascot have been gradually rising since 2010 and it’s a surprise there aren’t even more Irish horses entered. Not only do our horses consistently overachieve here – a general rule is that betting Irish runners at the fixture comes with a positive expected value – but for owners it must be a fantastic experience, unique among racetracks around the world. As seen below, it is a long time since there were only 24 Irish runners and one winner back in 2003.

 

Irish Runners at Royal Ascot by Year
Year Winners Runners Strikerate Level-Stakes Actual/Expected
2010 4 46 8.7% -10.00 0.81
2011 6 35 17.1% -6.45 1.04
2012 8 47 17.0% +41.55 1.19
2013 8 62 12.9% +11.83 1.15
2014 8 63 12.7% -14.09 1.14
2015 8 50 16.0% +0.03 1.01
2016 10 69 14.5% +30.15 1.10

 

Apart from the flashy winner totals, Irish participation at the meeting has been consistently increasing; from 2010 to 2016 the percentage of Irish runners at Royal Ascot has gone: 9.6%, 7.4%, 9.3%, 11.9%, 12.9%, 11.3%, and 14.6%. 15% of all runners might even be in play this year as the record for Irish-trained winners at the meeting was set last year after four years of plateauing at eight winners, and William Hill rate Irish trainers to have 10 or more winners nmo more than a 13/8 shot.

The week before last the Racing Post headlined with ‘Green Army’ in an article about how Ireland’s jumps trainers like Jessica Harrington and Willie Mullins would also be sending multiple runners to add depth to the panel. As with this past Cheltenham, the record total for Irish winners at the meeting again seems possible with short-priced ‘bankers’ like Churchill, Order Of St George, Caravaggio and Winter helpful in that regard.

 

Aidan O’Brien

The recent story of Irish runners at Ascot necessarily begins with Aidan O’Brien. Consider his record here since 2010 [and unless otherwise mentioned all numbers in this article refer to the meetings since 2010].

 

Trainer Winners Runners Strikerate Level-Stakes Actual/Expected
Aidan O’Brien 27 153 17.7% +50.69 1.03

 

In the period referenced, O’Brien is well clear of the next best, which is John Gosden on 17 winners, with Michael Stoute third on 14 winners. No other trainer has reached double figures. With O’Brien not having had fewer than two winners at any Royal Ascot meeting this decade, he is understandably no bigger than 2/7 to be top trainer in 2017.

When breaking down his runners in search of a betting angle, there seems to be a lot more noise than signal. His record with short-priced horses is decent – of the 22 horses sent off 2/1 or shorter, 11 won for a level-stakes profit of 1.69 points and an actual over expected of 1.03 – but we are not talking Willie Mullins at Cheltenham levels.

23 of his 27 winners were the first string or only runner in the race, ridden by the main jockey at the time, be it Johnny Murtagh, Joseph O’Brien or Ryan Moore; the exceptions were Ishvana (2012 Jersey), War Command (2013 Coventry), Brave Anna (2016 Albany) and Sword Fighter (2016 Queen’s Vase). Letting O’Brien do some of the work for you makes sense.

It was a little surprising to note how few fillies he ran relative to colts and a very small number of geldings.

 

Gender Winners Runners Strikerate Level-Stakes Actual/Expected
Male 21 122 17.2% +21.81 0.95
Female 6 31 19,4% +28.88 1.41

 

A niche angle here – though one that could just be a fluke – is looking for fillies and mares than ran against the males; there were just four qualifiers here with two winners (Ishvana and Maybe) and two seconds (Found and Ballydoyle). I suspect this was the plan with the likes of Minding, Seventh Heaven and Alice Springs at the meeting but all three appear to be on the sidelines just now though Clemmie and/or September are possibles for the Chesham.

The other potential approach here was looking at his horses in the lower-profile races rather than the Group 1s and 2s. There are a couple of things that could be going on here. Firstly, the Ballydoyle horses look overbet in the very best races as O’Brien is a recognised Group 1 trainer; he was not far away from the record of top-level wins in a single year for much of last season. Furthermore, he seems inclined to have more runners in those better races to increase the chance of a winner despite those races being more competitive.

 

Race Type Winners Runners Strikerate Level-Stakes Actual/Expected
Group 1/2 15 94 16.0% -6.79 0.86
Group 3/Listed 11 46 23.9% +59,48 1.47

 

Distance/Age

In a similar article last year, I covered the records of all Irish horses at Royal Ascot by age and distance and it is worth reprising them now as they again proved profitable last year [again, table is since 2010].

 

Age Winners Runners Strikerate Level-Stakes Actual/Expected
2yo 10 77 13.0% +0.61 0.87
3yo 18 151 11.9% +1.91 0.93
4yo+ 24 144 16.7% +50.50 1.37

 

The juveniles and three-year-olds are doing fine but it’s the older horses that are excelling and it is not as if the winners were impossible to find; 18 of the 24 were returned 10/1 or shorter. This is supported by the records of Irish horses in races of different distances with the stayers coming out particularly well; these races are generally for the older horses.

 

Distance Winners Runners Strikerate Level-Stakes Actual/Expected
5-6f 13 98 13.3% +35.38 1.08
7-8f 15 136 11.0% -17.66 0.97
10-12f 9 61 14.8% -13.15 0.86
16f+ 15 77 19.5% +48.45 1.42

 

Irish sprinters return a decent number of winners but that is more to do with two-year-olds than horses running in the King’s Stand and Diamond Jubilee by now; there was a brief golden age of Irish sprinting a few seasons back with Eddie Lynam’s 'Power' horses, and Gordon Lord Byron, but outside of Caravaggio there are no top-class Irish sprinters and indeed Gordon Lord Byron remains the second-highest rated sprinter trained in Ireland.

The stayers are a different story and last year the Irish horses swept the board in races over two miles and further; Jennies Jewel won the Ascot Stakes, Order Of St George the Gold Cup, and Sword Fighter the Queen’s Vase before Commissioned took the last race of the meeting, the Queen Alexandra Stakes. Aidan O’Brien has played a major role in this dominance with seven winners in staying races but he has been aided by a number of national hunt trainers like Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Charles Byrnes and Jarlath Fahey. That at least might get the normally indifferent jumps boys to tune in this week!

- Tony Keenan

Time for a Middleham Derby

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The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman

The decision of trainer Mark Johnston and owner Sheikh Hamdan to stump up the £85k to supplement Permian for tomorrow's Derby opens the door to a rare event in racing: a Derby winner trained at Middleham, in the heart of Wensleydale. Indeed, so unusual would it be that I can assure you that none of you, your parents, or your grandparents would have been able to remember the previous occasion.

The 1840s was the decade when the first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued; the first Morse code transmission took place, and Jane Eyre was published. In 1843 Richard Wagner conducted the premiere of his opera, The Flying Dutchman, and in 1848 a horse of the same name began his racing career. Unbeaten in five races as a two year old, The Flying Dutchman faced a tough task in the Derby the following year, not least because it was his first race of the season and took place at an Epsom racecourse that had been drenched with three days of rain beforehand.

The Flying Dutchman went straight into the lead and continued in front for the first mile. Then he was to be tested. Hotspur was the strongest of his 26 (!) rivals, and appeared to have settled the race as he took over and pulled a length clear. It was time to see what the Dutchman was made of. He had never really been extended in his juvenile races, so when jockey Charlie Marlow picked up his whip, nobody could be sure how the horse would respond. Two taps showed the onlookers, and close to the finish The Flying Dutchman put his nose in front once more.

The Rubbing House

The Rubbing House

The most unusual feature of his success was the approach taken by trainer John Fobert. His stables, Spigot Lodge, where Karl Burke now trains, lay midway between the Low and High Moor gallops. Go to the High Moor now and you can see the Rubbing Houses, a block of five stalls, one now fallen down, where horses were subjected to the Yorkshire Sweats. An explanation of them can be seen on a panel close by.

"The main use of the Rubbing Houses was during the training of the horses and the method known as the Yorkshire Sweats. The horses would be well wrapped in blankets and galloped over long distances before returning to the Rubbing House to have sweat removed and blankets replaced.

In the 18th century horses did not run just one race on race day. They ran in heats. Rubbing Houses were used between the heats when the sweat was scrubbed off and horses were kept warm until the next heat.

The Rubbing Houses were used for this purpose for a very short period of time as the Yorkshire Sweats method of training fell into disfavour and was replaced by other more favourable training routines."

Running a horse in more than one race a day continued for many years, and The Flying Dutchman had won two of his juvenile races on the same day.

What of this year's Wensleydale contender, Permian? I have to own up to hoping he wins, as I was staying in Middleham barely 100 yards from Mark Johnston's base when Permian won the Dante the other week. It's a connection of the heart for sure, but there are good racing reasons to support him. He knows the track and has no bother with the expected good ground. It won't bother him if it firms up or if there's rain.

Permian is priced at 11/1, whereas Cracksman, who beat Permian by only a short head in the Epsom Derby Trial in April, is only 4/1. And Cracksman missed the Dante because of the soft ground, and so comes to Epsom after only one race last season and one this. I'm with Permian to join the likes of St Paddy, Shirley Heights, Reference Point and Golden Horn and complete the Dante/Derby double.

Oh, and by the way, if you are at Epsom, you can visit The Rubbing House for yourself. It's the pub on the inside of the track just beyond the winning post. Have one for me.

- Ian Sutherland

The (Occasional) Influence of Draw

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In today's video post, I've looked at the paucity of meaningful draw information on horse racing websites.

Naturally, geegeez.co.uk is an exception - in fact, I strongly believe we have the most detailed and user-configurable draw tool for British/Irish racing.

But as punters, we have to be careful around draw data, because much of it is half-baked or plain wrong.

Take a look at this short video...

 

 

Register for Geegeez Gold £1 Trial

Updated User Guide, including Draw and Query Tool 'how to'

 

The Anatomy Of A Breeze Up Sale

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“There are no two-furlong races” 

It seems a simple concept: prepare a young two-year-old to run for his or her life over two furlongs, impress the judges sufficiently, then sit back and reap the dividend in the sales ring a few hours later, writes David Skelly.

Breeze-Up sales have been very fashionable for some time now and have developed a long way since they were regarded as the clearing house of last resort for those pinhooking traders unlucky enough not to offload their foal investment during the previous autumn’s yearling sales. One interesting development has been those same pinhookers selling one set of (foal invested) yearlings and replenishing their boxes with yet more yearlings considered suitable material for breezing from March to May just a few months later.

The above quote  - "there are no two-furlong races" - is from the doyen of bloodstock agents, Bobby O’Ryan, who claims he is uninterested in the exploits of what might be labelled 'quarter horses' and will rely on his tried and tested criteria of physique, pedigree, demeanour, vendor and general observational conclusions; and not a little eye on value. It is inevitable that the horses that are clocked with good and exceptional times will be in greatest demand but, somewhat similar to the young four-year-old maiden winners in point-to-points, one has to judge if the two-year-old has been “fried” beforehand and this gallop will represent his own Derby, perhaps emulating the greatest breezer flop of all time, The Green Monkey, who never returned a cent of his $16m purchase price when bought by Coolmore at the Fasig-Tipton Calder sale in 2006.

 

What can we learn from these sales that may help the investor, owner or the punter?

In an effort to advance my understanding of this market I selected the first Breeze-Up sale that is traditionally held in early April and is now handled by Tattersalls Ireland, who took over from Brightwells in 2016, the latter having conducted the previous versions of the sale since 2000. The auction has grown immeasurably in the past two years and in 2017 £2.04m was traded, up 7% from the previous year’s total of £1.91m. The average for the sale is £30,472 (2016: £32,449).

As recently as 2013 only £147,300 changed hands at this sale for 20 lots so it is now recognised as a solid start to the Breeze Up season annually. The Wow Signal – from the first crop of sub-fertile Starspangledbanner - gave the sale a timely boost in 2014 when this £50,000 purchase won the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot just a few months later. This would be one of the established assumptions of breezers: that they are ready to run for their lives and a lively Royal Ascot contender can be acquired “oven ready”.

 

Does the reality match the hype?

I examined the records and results for the British and Irish 2016 season in full and the results, as ever, were illuminating.

102 lots were catalogued and of these 17 were withdrawn prior to sale. Only two of these withdrawals subsequently managed to win races although one – Peter Chapple-Hyam’s Fivetwoeight sold for €155,000 at Goresbridge and is a modest maiden winner rated 75. The only other two-year-old “withdrawal” winner was the €50,000 foal purchase, Magical Fire, who wasn’t re-entered for any sale and following a Fairyhouse maiden win for Michael O’Callaghan was second in the Group 2 Cherry Hinton Stakes at the Newmarket July meeting and is rated 102. Ironically, this is the highest rating achieved by the 102 catalogued lots entered for the sale and this filly subsequently disappointed in York’s Lowther Stakes.

Equally, a study of the 26 horses that failed to sell or were recorded as bought back by their consignor/vendor indicates that eight of them (many sold privately, afterwards) were winners of 12 races including the 101-rated Madam Dancealot who, following a pleasing debut second, was sold as a Queen Mary runner at Royal Ascot for £100,000 (finished ninth) and subsequently won a maiden and a Group 3, before changing hands again for £260,000 and being shipped to the United States. Her three appearances in America so far have been as an “also ran” in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf last backend, and twice in Listed turf sprints this spring. The filly was originally listed as a buy-back for just £5,000 so someone has done well financially out of her in the meantime.

Lots that changed hands for cash amounting to £2m+ saw 17 winners (29%) of 23 races from 59 lots sold. They have been a fairly uninspiring bunch so far with Willie Muir’s Nuclear Power (98) and James Tate’s Kyllang Rock (91) about the best of them, on official ratings. Four of the top five lots have won – Eddie Lynam’s apallingly-named, Slumming Angel, who was the sale topper at £180,000 being the exception. And five of the top ten lots have won and four of the second decile have also scored but I have to admit I can see no discernible pattern emerging for future punting purposes with large losses accumulating at level-stakes betting and neither is there an angle on each horse’s first three starts.

The top five lots (average cost €127,600) have run 21 times as two-year-olds but four victories have yielded pretty miserable starting price returns of 2/13, 4/5, 9/4 and 11/10 and it suggests to me their auction prices were an influence on their early SP returns.

A notable feature of this sale was the purchase of four yearlings (average cost £57,000) by Tinnakill Stud’s Dermot Cantillon, former HRI board member and husband to the Chief Steward of The Irish Turf Club, Meta Osborne. Each of that quartet, acquired for some then un-named private Arab clients, managed to win on their first or second outing for Palmer, Cowell, Margarson and Crisford. This looked a very promising angle but, alas, Cantillon was not in evidence at the recent version of the sale.

 

The latest sale occurred just three weeks ago so can we apply any of the lessons from 2016 in an effort to return a betting profit?

Somewhat similar to Cantillon’s one-off spending spree mentioned above, Rabbah Bloodstock bought two winners in 2016 (from just two purchases) but also failed to feature as buyers in 2017. This year’s sale has an odd look to it with the Irish National Stud’s stallion, Worthadd, responsible for the top lot at £130,000 and this from what is probably a very modest crop indeed as he covered a small book in his first year at stud.

However, I am keen to provide some clues as to what may provide some punting interest in the year ahead and, with that, I make the following suggestions:

  1. Keep an eye on future current Breeze-Up sales and take note of any buying Mr Cantillon may do for some “private” clients. Although it is perfectly possibly no more than coincidence, I will be watching this closely myself. The average from the Tattersalls Ascot sale is well behind the Newmarket Craven and Guineas Breeze-Ups so it would be enlightening to discover if his clients have increased his spending power.
  2. As four of last year’s top five lots won races of some description, this year’s top-five qualifiers are: Lot 15 Worthadd/Malayan Mist colt, Lot 91 Street Cry/Force One colt, Lot 5 Panis/Kadiania (now named Kanizzi), Lot 89 Zoffany/Flamenco Red and Lot 57 Kodiac/Akuna Magic. At the time of writing, only one has been named or returned in training. I will update this section at future dates as the information comes to hand.
  3. Finally, perhaps the most interesting angle in this research is that just 2 two-year-olds sold last year that were by stallions located in the USA. There is an ongoing debate as to how well current American blood lines transfer to the British Isles and I am aware that a number of prominent pinhookers have cut back on their American imports in recent times as the track results have been a trifle disappointing. However, what catches my eye is that just two American-bred imports (by Lonhro and Elusive Quality) sold at this venue in 2016 and both Serengeti Sky and High Acclaim won on their second starts for Charlie Appleby and Roger Teal respectively. There are four such imports in the recent sale and these are Lot 91 by Street Cry, Lot 54 by Arch and Lots 18 and 74 by More Than Ready. Time may show that this North American import business will become fashionable once again but some study and attention is required to track these potential winners. Generally speaking, the Racing Post Bloodstock website is the best source for tracing updates.

 

I hope the above observations offer something of interest to the reader. I am also tracking profitability trends for both the mare owner and foal and yearling investor but this information will be presented once the Breeze-Up season terminates after Goresbridge in May.

 

David Skelly is a chartered accountant and Ballydoyle/Coolmore graduate who now dispenses pearls of wisdom to private bloodstock clients. Likes to look beyond the headline and the obvious to offer insights to professionals and punters alike. Can be contacted at ds*****@*********ly.ie and @djskelly1

NEW: Draw Analyser Tool

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We've added a new tool to the Geegeez Gold arsenal. It's called Draw Analyser and its layout will be familiar to those of you who already use our cards for flat race purposes.

Within each flat race card is a 'DRAW' tab. The data in this tab relates specifically to the course and distance of the race in question, and is broken down by draw thirds, constituent stalls and, most interestingly (perhaps), by draw/run style combination.

Well, we've taken the race specific draw tab, and created a more generic tool that can be used to view draw information for any course/distance combination. You can also group distances together (make sure you do it sensibly, so you're comparing apples with apples!), change the going range, view by advertised or 'actual' (i.e. after non-runners) draw, and by all races or handicaps only.

We think it's pretty neat. Much more than that, Gold subscribers are telling us they think it's very useful. Here's a short video showcasing what it can do for you...

 

The Draw Analyser can be found here and it is available to Geegeez Gold subscribers. If you've never tried Gold before, you can take a 30 day trial for £1 here.

Matt

The REAL Reason The Irish Dominated Cheltenham

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Last week, British-trained horses received a 'doing' the like of which had never before been witnessed. The Irish minority rode, almost literally, roughshod over the vast numerical superiority of the domestic defences in a manner that suggested this was more than a mere perfect storm.

One leading Irish trainer has mooted that the root cause lies in British racing's infatuation with high value handicaps, but that feels wide of the mark. Others argue that the Irish are better at 'plotting one up': even if that's true, the extent to which they outmanoeuvred both the BHA handicapping team and the British training ranks also feels somewhat of a convenient pigeonhole.

No, as always, the answer is likely to be far more nuanced than 'this' or 'that'; more likely a combination of elements which have been brewing for some time. To understand what went wrong this time, a spot of historical context is required. Let's start with the most basic of barometers, the UK vs Ireland tally for the last five Cheltenham Festivals.

 

Trainer location of winning horses, Cheltenham Festival 2012-17

Year Races UK Ire
2012 27 22 5
2013 27 13 14
2014 27 15 12
2015 27 14 13
2016 28 13 15
2017 28 9 19

 

This chart tells the story rather more succinctly:

 

Ireland's dominance is no overnight shock

Ireland's dominance is no overnight shock

 

In terms of pure winners, Ireland has been improving its tally significantly since 2013, and actually only enhanced their win score by four this term. That, of course, equates to an eight race swing and the smallest number of prizes for the home team ever.

But win samples are typically small, however, and this one is restricted to just 28 (27 prior to the introduction of the mares' novices' hurdle last year) races. So what of the place data?

 

Trainer location of placed horses, Cheltenham Festival 2012-17

Year Places UK Ire
2012 91 58 33
2013 90 53 35
2014 92 56 36
2015 92 48 44
2016 93 48 45
2017 94 53 41

 

Here's the chart for the place data:

 

The place data is a little more equivocal

The place data is a little more equivocal

 

Notice how there is convergence in the place data but not the overlap of the win graph? This is significant because it suggests that the emerald dominance of 2017, while hardly a surprise, has been magnified somewhat by the microcosm of the winners dataset.

[Incidentally, I prefer places to percentage of runners beaten because, aside from the challenges of quantifying non-completions, many horses are eased off significantly when their chance has gone, thus further muddying what is already at best translucent water]

Before moving on, let us also consider the number of placed horses as a percentage of the number of runners from UK and Ireland. This obviously requires us to know the number of runners from each 'country' taking part, which gets interesting. Check this out:

 

Placed horses as a percentage of runners (right hand columns)

Year Runners UK Ire Places UK Ire UK% Ire%
2012 483 356 126 91 58 33 16.29% 26.19%
2013 464 355 106 90 53 35 14.93% 33.02%
2014 487 363 121 92 56 36 15.43% 29.75%
2015 468 321 146 92 48 44 14.95% 30.14%
2016 492 346 143 93 48 45 13.87% 31.47%
2017 488 325 160 94 53 41 16.31% 25.63%

*there have been a few non-UK/Irish runners as well, hence the small disparity between total runners and the UK/Ire aggregate

 

In case you missed it, let me help you out:

  1. The home team had a higher percentage of their horses placed last week than in any other Festival in the sample.
  2. Ireland registered its lowest percentage of placed horses to runners in the six year sample period last week.

 

Why? Simple. Ireland had their biggest raiding party since 2012 (at least), and Britain had very close to its smallest defensive battalion, 2017's 325 only surpassed by 2015's 321 (spread across one fewer race).

The graph of places as a percentage of runners looks like this:

 

Cheltenham Festival places as a percentage of runners: UK vs Ireland

Cheltenham Festival places as a percentage of runners: UK vs Ireland

 

In terms of the numerical strength of the Irish team, between 2012 and 2014 their runners amounted to circa 25%, against a British squad of 75%. From 2015 to 2017, that quarter to three-quarters was more like a third to two-thirds. Last week, Irish runners accounted for 32.8% of the entries, their highest figure as a percentage of runners in the sample, and fully ten per cent more in absolute terms than any other year (160 versus their next largest team of 146, in 2015).

So it may actually be the quantity as much as the quality of the Irish runners that is responsible for their huge margin of victory in everyone's favourite pointless contest, the Betbright Cup.

Why?

We now join the ranks of the hand-wringers to ask why the Irish are winning more Cheltenham Festival races. As noted above, the question doesn't relate solely to the most recent renewal, but to each one since 2013. What has changed during that time to bring about such an upturn in Irish fortunes? Let's consider three possible contributory factors:

- Prize money

- Handicap ratings

- Purchase price / source of acquisition

Prize Money

Willie Mullins posited over the weekend that perhaps owners want to have horses trained in Ireland due to the greater prize money, and because of the lesser programme book reliance on higher value handicaps. A quick review of last week's winners lends some credence to Willie's mullings: of the 19 Irish-trained winners, eight of them by my reckoning - Special Tiara, Supasundae, Sizing John, Yorkhill, Nichols Canyon, Let's Dance, Penhill and Rock The World - are owned by 'Brits'.

But with the exceptions of exiled Americans, Susannah Ricci and Mrs Rowley-Williams (now moved back to US), owner of Special Tiara, the others all have horses trained in Britain as well. True, the Wylies seem to be phasing out their Paul Nicholls team, but this looks more in the Gigginstown vein of performance-based decision-making rather than as a result of prize money, though a case can certainly be made for the latter...

The below table shows the five year prize money accrued by four of the top owners to have split their teams across UK and Ireland (figures derived from ownership data at RacingPost.com).

 

Owner Ire Prize Ire Runs Ire £/Run UK Prize UK Runs UK £/Run Differential
Ricci £4,262,102 545 £7,820 £2,462,702 116 £21,230 2.71
Potts £1,644,110 456 £3,606 £769,725 50 £15,395 4.27
Wylie £1,910,689 174 £10,981 £1,701,885 209 £8,143 0.74
McManus £8,960,364 4238 £2,114 £7,994,949 2669 £2,995 1.42

 

Although there is unquestionably some 'cause and effect' as a result of these owners having won at Cheltenham, that's precisely why they're included in the table. The 'Differential' column shows that, while the Wylies won only 74% as much from their UK endeavours compared with their Irish portfolios, Teams Ricci and Potts did much, much better with their British teams.

But probably the best barometer of this line of argument is JP McManus. Ol' Green n'Gold supports racing to a huge degree on both sides of the pond, and it can clearly be seen on which side his bread is best buttered. McManus' UK contingent net him 42% more per run than his Irish legion.

The fact is that Willie Mullins has performed incredibly well - peerlessly, in fact - at the Cheltenham Festival for a number of years. That success brings 'overseas investment', regardless of whether there are valuable Graded pots or handicaps in the run of things. Indeed, owners like Ricci are on record as saying that they are not interested in winning outside of Cheltenham in March, a week which is the alpha and omega of their involvement in the ownership game.

So whilst there is some smoke to Mullins' contention, it seems unlikely there is much in the way of fire generating those plumes.

Handicap Ratings

More interesting, perhaps, and going beyond the handicap races, is the allocation of handicap ratings. Much has been made - before, during and since the Festival - of the re-assessment of Irish horses for British races. The consensus beforehand from the Irish camp was that this was unjust. With the raiders claiming seven of the ten handicap prizes, there is less crabbing now than before, but the question remains: why were the Irish horses largely elevated from their domestic perches?

The answer may lie not in the errancy of the Irish handicapper's work, but perhaps in a general overstatement in the British figures. Put another way, it may be that the British horses are rated too highly by the BHA 'cappers rather than the Irish too low by theirs.

To be brutally honest, I struggled to think of an effective (and time-efficient) method to test this hypothesis, and so will leave it as a question that others of appropriate informational means may crunch and confirm/refute the suggestion.

I definitely have a 'feeling' that some horses, especially in the two mile divisions, both hurdle and chase, have been significantly over-rated. Such conjecture should have no place in a pseudo-empirical article, so I'll leave it at that.

UPDATE: I've been made aware of two articles from last year covering the inflation in UK ratings. This one is from Simon Rowlands, and this one from Kevin Blake, are both excellent corroboration of the perception which, it seems, is more than that.

Purchase Price / Source

One thing that fascinates me, as a jealous owner peering through the windows into the Tattersalls Cheltenham sale and the like, is how purchase price and source impact on Festival prospects. As more largely untested stock changes hands for north of £300,000 a head, is there any evidence of a correlation between purchase price and performance in the Cotswolds in March? Or are the winners arriving in the hands of their owners by other means than public auction?

To evaluate this, I looked at the winners of the last six renewals of each of the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, Stayers' Hurdle and Gold Cup. That's the same time frame used above for the UK / Ireland comparisons and gives us 24 horses - minus multiple winners - to look at. Remarkably, the only multiple winner in the period was Sprinter Sacre, whose story is an interesting one to which we'll briefly return shortly.

Of the 23 individual winners of the four main Championship races since 2012, 15 were acquired privately. The remaining eight including two home-bred's - Synchronised and Coneygree, both Gold Cup winners - and six purchased for or by their current owners at public auction.

The highest price paid at public auction for a winner of the Champion Hurdle (one), Stayers' Hurdle (two), or Gold Cup (three) was the £75,000 Jim Culloty (on behalf of Dr Ronan Lambe) gave for Lord Windermere.

This year's Gold Cup winner, Sizing John, was bought as a yearling for just €16,000, Thistlecrack cost €43,000, and Bob's Worth (RSA and Gold Cup winner) was a mere £20,000. Using 90p to €1 as a conversion metric, the six Championship winners sold at public auction averaged at £32,717. The median was £24,100.

We also know something of some of those acquired privately. For example, we know that Champion Chaser, Sire De Grugy, was bought for €50,000. And it is reputed that Sprinter Sacre, who won two Champion Chases, was part of a 'job lot' of 22 horses purchased from France for €300,000. While it may be unwise to apportion that price tag equally across the whole draft, we do arrive at a figure of €13,636, or £12,272 using the 90p/€1 conversion principle. For us small-time syndicateers there is something comforting in such mathematical folly.

Perhaps Cole Harden is worth a mention, too. He was led out not sold at £30,000 after winning his debut bumper. Acquired privately soon after, it is highly possible that the purchaser paid in the region of £35,000 given that the auctioneer will usually 'phantom bid' up to just below the reserve price.

It seems that only fools rush in via the sales ring and, although the auction houses probably don't want to admit it, they appear to be doing considerably better than purchasers from these multi-hundred thousand pound/euro deals over jumps: most of the best horses are either bought privately or snapped up for relative pennies.

In Summary...

There are a number of key takeaways from the data posted in this article. Probably the hardest to swallow is that Ireland actually under-performed against their numerical representation this year, in spite of 'winning' 19-9 in terms of race victors.

The natural selectivity of Irish runners - it's a long, expensive journey for a horse with no chance - is also a factor, though this year was one where expense was waived in favour of 'having a runner' more than ever before. This was supported by those higher Irish handicap ratings, meaning more of their horses actually got a run than would have been the case of their domestic pegs.

Tully East (Ire 133, UK 138), winner of the Close Brothers Novices' Handicap Chase, was the most notable beneficiary as his Irish mark was insufficient to make the cut for the race.

There is unlikely to be anything material in the Mullins line about British fascination with a handicap-driven programme, certainly if the major owners are anything to go by. But I'm fascinated by the evidence published by Messrs Rowlands and Blake around potential inflation in UK handicap ratings: it looks like there may well be something in that.

And if you love the idea of owning a Cheltenham Festival champion, it would appear that your best chance is to either a) acquire privately, either from France or from a small stable out of an Irish bumper; or b) buy a relatively cheap ticket at the sales and hope that your luck is in!

So here's to next year, when I expect Ireland to have less winners, perhaps significantly less on the evidence of their overall performance rather than merely the microcosm of the winners' enclosure.

Matt

Irish Angle: The Value of Handicaps

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When writing about the Mullins/Elliott title race last time, something that stood out was the importance of high-value handicaps in the outcome of the trainers’ championship, writes Tony Keenan. Those races seemed worthy of a study all of their own, not least because I love them myself; give me a classy handicap with a host of runners over a small-field graded race any day of the week. That said, these races invariably being sponsored by bookmakers probably isn’t the best sign; Ladbrokes back an inordinate number of valuable handicaps in Ireland like the Troytown, and Boyle has the Irish National while big Leopardstown events are named after Paddy Power and Coral.

Even so, there are some angles that can be exploited, not least trainers. Below are the trainer figures for Irish national hunt handicaps which were worth more than £20,000 to the winner (I used the Horse Race Base database which works off pounds sterling), including only those who had more than 30 runners, since the 2010/11 season:

 

Trainer Wins Runners Win % Place % Level Stakes A/E
W. Mullins 22 310 7.1% 27.4% -139.37 0.74
G. Elliott 17 249 6.8% 12.3% -73.50 0.79
T .Martin 11 154 7.2% 27.5% -78.77 0.69
N. Meade 9 195 4.6% 18.0% -95.50 0.53
T. Mullins 7 80 8.8% 28.8% +8.75 1.10
E. Harty 7 49 14.3% 30.6% +19.5 1.26
A. Moore 6 87 6.9% 23.0% -37.00 0.70
M. Morris 5 89 5.6% 18.9% -47.50 0.79
T. O’Brien 4 30 13.3% 36.7% +7.00 1.75
J. Harrington 4 83 4.8% 25.3% -30.00 0.57

 

It’s the usual suspects at the top with Mullins, Elliott and Martin filling out the podium positions, while both Dessie Hughes and Colm Murphy were in the list too but I stripped it down to those training currently.

Tom Mullins and Eddie Harty are the surprises; Harty does well across the board and his patient style of campaigning his horses clearly pays off. Minella Foru won last season’s Paddy Power for the trainer in the manner of one that could go in again – it was his first start over three miles – and there was some promise in his return at Naas last month.

Of the major trainers, Henry De Bromhead comes out badly, his numbers reading 3 winners from 81 runners with an actual over expected of 0.43, the lowest in the top 20 trainers. He did however improve his record with Champagne West winning the Thyestes, and Stellar Notion went close to winning the Leopardstown Chase in the same week.

Another angle worth considering here is the record of trainers in both hurdle and chase races; I’ve gone a bit deeper with the chases as there are more of them.

 

Valuable Handicap Hurdles

Trainer Wins Runners Win % Place % Level Stakes A/E
W. Mullins 11 140 7.9% 27.9% -53.50 0.83
G. Elliott 6 91 6.6% 23.1% -20.00 0.73
E. Harty 4 25 12.5% 28.0% +12.50 1.44
N. Meade 4 65 6.2% 15.4% -12.50 0.67
T. Martin 4 78 5.1% 28.2% -58.37 0.46

 

 

Valuable Handicap Chases

Trainer Wins Runners Win % Place % Level Stakes A/E
G. Elliott 11 158 7.0% 20.3% -53.50 0.83
W. Mullins 11 170 6.5% 27.1% -85.87 0.66
T. Martin 7 75 9.3% 26.7% -20.40 0.95
A. Moore 6 71 8.5% 28.2% -21.00 0.83
N. Meade 5 130 3.9% 19.2% -83.00 0.46
T. O’Brien 4 24 16.7% 28.9% +13.00 2.11
T. Mullins 4 45 8.9% 28.9% +6.00 1.08
T. Walsh 4 20 20.0% 45.0% +6.50 1.61
M. Morris 4 83 4.8% 15.7% -49.00 0.67
J. Ryan 3 28 10.7% 39.3% -12.00 1.41

 

Harty comes out well in the hurdle table but the real notables are with the chasers where Terence O’Brien is a revelation, so much so that his excellent record takes him into the top ten overall. It’s not as if his four winners were all with the same horse; Ballyadam Approach won two but there were also wins for She’s Got Grit and Farrells Fancy. Ted Walsh, when taking time out from media duties and telling his kids how to ride, does really well from very few runners while John Ryan sneaks in at the bottom. He’s a trainer that likes to run his horses plenty but to good effect – note his excellent place strikerate – and Kylecrue looks one that can win another good handicap judging on recent efforts; he has earned over €200,000 already.

While all the races covered here are valuable, this does not mean they are as competitive as each other. Part of this may simply be to do with the shape of the calendar; in the 2016/17 season, there are 44 national hunt handicaps in Ireland worth more than €50,000 with the breakdown being 29 to 15 in favour of chases. Trip also plays a big part in this. The glamour races over hurdles are invariably over the minimum distance while over fences they are mainly for stayers; it seems we, or at least the racing authorities, want our hurdlers to run fast and our chasers to run, if not slow, then at least long. Few remember the winners of the Proudstown Handicap Hurdle (2m7f, Navan, November) or the Kinsale Handicap Chase (2m1f, Cork, October) but they will recall winners of the Galway Hurdle or Thyestes Chase.

Consider the breakdown of races by distance below per this season’s calendar; I’ve divided them into four categories: speed (16-18f), intermediate (19f-22f), stamina (23f-26f) and extreme (27f plus). There are no extreme distance hurdles in Ireland though I do wonder what they would look like. Sadly, given many people’s general disdain for the division, I doubt there would be much interest. I’ve also included the average field size for each type of race going back to the 2010/11 season.

 

Distance 50k plus races 100k plus races Average field size
Hurdles      
Speed 8 4 16.8
Intermediate 4 1 18.9
Stamina 3 0 18.3
Chases      
Speed 6 1 11.6
Intermediate 10 4 15.0
Stamina 9 7 17.6
Extreme 4 1 20.0

 

With the hurdle races, the field sizes are pretty consistent across all trips with the two mile races having the lowest average of the three; this may be a product of there being more opportunities in these types of races while there are also many options in the UK too. The speed races over fences come off as the poor relation by a long way and it has consistently been the weakest division of Irish handicap chases; I’m surprised an enterprising trainer hasn’t bought a few half-decent UK handicappers to run them in these races. As the chasers go up in trip, the field sizes (and the prizemoney) get bigger though the maximum field Irish National every season plays a big part in these numbers.

Given all this prizemoney that is available, one would think that these competitive races would produce horses that were up to competing in graded races. On the whole, this has not been the case with most of the big handicap winners experiencing their career zenith on the day of victory. Of the 92 winners of the top Irish jumps handicaps since 2010/11, only 16 went on to prove bona-fide graded class by my reckoning. They did include Gold Cup placers like Djakadam and On His Own but perhaps the most interesting thing was the quality of the Galway handicaps with Overturn, Rebel Fitz, Carlingford Lough, Missunited, Road To Riches, Quick Jack and Clondaw Warrior all emerging from the Plate and Hurdle recently. Not bad for a summer jumps meeting!

- Tony Keenan

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