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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 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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Flying-Dutchman-1.jpg355480IanShttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngIanS2017-06-02 09:05:212017-06-03 09:48:37Time for a Middleham Derby
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.
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 Fivetwoeightsold 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:
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.
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.
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/breezeupdangers.jpg320830RoyalAcademyhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngRoyalAcademy2017-05-01 17:05:562017-05-01 17:05:56The Anatomy Of A Breeze Up Sale
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...
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.
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
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
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:
The home team had a higher percentage of their horses placed last week than in any other Festival in the sample.
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
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/douvan2.jpg320830Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2017-03-20 11:56:562017-03-20 21:57:00The REAL Reason The Irish Dominated Cheltenham
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
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/eddieharty.jpg320830TonyKeenanhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTonyKeenan2017-02-06 23:46:022017-02-07 14:21:25Irish Angle: The Value of Handicaps
In this post, I want to share a new feature which is going to be available very soon. I also want to politely remind you that today (Friday 27th January) is the last chance to secure your discounted (for life) Annual Gold subscription.
Let's cover that off first.
Geegeez Gold is continuing to invest in innovation. After this week's latest 'bell and whistle' enhancements - Pace Predictions on the pace tab, and Proximity Form on Full Form Filter - we have a much bigger enhancement in early stage testing. More on that below.
Unlike some publishers, we don't increase our prices for existing subscribers. Instead, we prefer to reward commitment and early adoption, by offering our best subscription rates to our most loyal community members, and by guaranteeing that the price at which you sign up is the price you pay for the lifetime of your subscription.
This means that, regardless of what new features we introduce or how much a subscription might cost in the future, you get the lot for the price now. That's only fair, after all, because without your investment in Geegeez Gold, we are unable to re-invest in you.
So, no big fanfare, but just to say that today is the last day you can lock in your subscription for 68p a day (£249 annually). From tomorrow, the annual price rises to £297 (81p a day), which still offers two months free against the annualised monthly subscription of £360 (99p a day). That's the very best value you can get, so if Gold is something you currently enjoy, and/or if the new feature highlighted in the video below excites you, then now is the time to upgrade.
Oh, and if you're currently a free subscriber, you can use that same link to upgrade directly to Gold Annual. One fee, swallowed (!) now, gives you full 'access all areas' for the entire year of 2017 - both flat and jumps, UK and Irish - and into January 2018. Nothing more to pay.
Enough already, because I think you probably already know if this is something you want to do... If you're still unsure, here's a sneaky peek at a 'COMING SOON' feature...
.
What do you think? Anything in particular you'd like to see included? Leave a comment and let me know.
I backed a winner yesterday. Believe me, if you've endured my recent form that's more a resuscitation than a boast or, heaven forbid, an aftertime.
Anyway, it won at 10/1 after I'd backed it at 7/1 (ever the judge, me), and it reminded me of an old post I wrote which was the inspiration for yesterday's bet as well as many other good ones in the interim.
That post is below, refreshed and updated - including a very appealing update on the systematic suggestion originally posited on 31st January 2014, three years less a fortnight ago.
**
Heavy horses are a breed apart
Rain, rain, incessant infernal rain. It seems just now - and, actually, at around this time most years - that pretty much all of the jumps racing is either abandoned or run on heavy ground.
Moan, moan, grumble, grumble, go the form students. "This ground throws up all sorts of freak results", etc etc, blah blah.
Well, guess what? It's a load of old cobblers. What those naysayers are implying is that they find it difficult to deal with a change in the ground. Me? I love it, because it often makes the job of handicapping easier, not harder.
Let me expound on that.
Heavy ground is the most extreme level of sodden turf on which horses are asked to race. Whilst it takes on varying degrees of mud and splosh depending on the track, it is always more testing than merely 'soft' ground. So, whereas most horses can be expected to perform, at least to some degree, on middling terrain - good to soft, good, and good to firm - only a subset of the equine population will perform close to their optimal on very quick or very slow turf.
In this study, I'm going to focus specifically on National Hunt handicap races, for two reasons:
1. There are not that many flat handicaps run on heavy ground (though results are similar to the below)
2. In non-handicap events - novice races and the like - it is as likely that a horse outclasses its rivals as it is that a horse 'out-acts' its rivals on the prevailing squelchy grass
Let's first look at the performance of horses in handicap races being run on heavy ground. The table below is sorted by number of previous heavy ground wins.
National Hunt Handicap performance by previous heavy ground wins
As we can see, the vast majority of horses have yet to win on heavy ground, and many of them will have never encountered such a test before. Indeed, after failing on a first attempt in the deep, many will never encounter such a test again.
Materially, note the correlation between number of heavy ground wins and the win percentage in subsequent heavy ground handicaps. Ignoring the small group of 5- and 6-time heavy ground winners that failed to score a further mud success, we can see a fair relationship between number of heavy ground wins and subsequent heavy win strike rate.
Whilst that is fairly logical and, in itself, not especially helpful, what is perhaps more surprising is that following multiple (two-plus) heavy ground winners in National Hunt handicaps run on heavy ground is a profitable strategy to embrace blindly, at Betfair SP or early prices at least.
Let me emphasise that with the following table:
Comparison of multi-mud winners versus 0 or 1 win
The American author, James Quinn, talks throughout his book, The Complete Handicapper, about 'the rule of two'. This rule, again entirely sensible and a very good way of avoiding bad value bets, is predicated on the market overreaction to a single instance of an event.
That could be a single good run, a single heavy ground performance, or a single bad run. Or anything else which has not been replicated or built upon before or since. Hence the two-plus heavy ground wins proviso demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that a horse is likely to run to form on that sort of surface, all other things being equal.
How to optimize this knowledge
Getting to within 5% of parity at starting price with a simple stat like that opens a window of research opportunity through which we may be able to spot pockets of value.
Poor run last time out
One trick here, from a value perspective, may be to see if horses with a poor finishing position last time can improve the ROI. Focusing only on those runners which finished outside the top five on their previous start has a profound impact on the figures.
2+ heavy wins, outside the top five last time out
Firstly, it reduces the number of bets to roughly a half. Secondly, it retains an acceptable strike rate of 11% win and 27% place. Thirdly, the ROI is now around 10% on a meaningful number of bets at industry SP.
Mature. But not over-ripe...
Without tampering questionably with the dataset it is worth evaluating performance by age, as there do seem to be a fair number of octogenarians (in horse years at least) asked to persist with a fading career on heavy turf. The data bear that out:
Multi-heavy NH 'cap winners, not top 5 LTO, by age
The strike rates for horses in the prime of their careers - from ages seven to ten (using the more reliable place strike rates as guidance) - are significantly better than their older and younger counterparts.
And, in case you were wondering, that shape is not replicated when one removes the 'heavy going' factor. Overall, horses tend to place at a fairly consistent percentage (c.25%) under the other conditions outlined above from ages four to six, before dropping to 24% aged seven, 23% at eight and 21% at nine and ten. Older than that and the general population running in this context hit the board at less than 20%.
It probably makes sense that most horses would mature into sloggers at a slightly later time than those naturally equipped to race on faster terrain, and that is certainly what the data say.
Focusing only on those horses aged seven to ten with proven (multi-winning) heavy ground form in NH handicaps who were outside the top five last time gives this:
Multi-heavy winners, aged 7 to 10, in NH handicaps, who missed the top 5 LTO
A 25% ROI on 1000 bets at starting price is pretty nifty. But, clearly, any approach with a 12% strike rate will suffer extended losing spells, and the figures above include two fairly painful downturns in 2010 and 2013.
One way to take the edge off that is to consider betting each way. Although not always a good strategy, with these fellows making the frame 30% of the time, it will definitely keep the shorter of bankroll engaged for longer, and help to ride out the worst of the inevitable corrections.
Backing each way at 9/2 or bigger in 5+ runner fields (i.e. each way races) gives 84 wins (10.1%) and 227 placed horses (27.28%) from 832 bets, for an SP profit of 335.12 points. Obviously, backing each way requires a two point stake (one win, one place), meaning the ROI is slightly diminished at 20.14%, but that's more profit overall and a more consistent draw.
"The Rules"
The 'rules' then, such as they are, go like this:
- Heavy ground National Hunt handicaps (hurdles or chases)
- Multiple (2+) previous heavy ground winner
- Finished 6th or worse, or failed to complete, last time out
- Aged seven to ten
In terms of explaining the 'system' in a sentence - something you should be looking to do when developing your own mechanistic approaches - we can say the following:
"On extremely testing going, look for proven ability from a horse in its prime that may have been badly outpaced last time"
I appreciate that, for some, the age brackets and last day finishing positions may seem too arbitrary. Fair enough, though it is worth noting a 'tapering' in the datasets at the edges of the ranges which lends a credibility to the numbers.
Regardless of that, one thing is clear: if a horse has shown it can win on heavy ground, and it ran a clunker last time, be prepared to forgive that clunker back on the quaggy stuff.
**
Finding this kind of horse
So, how to find these diamonds in the mud? Why, with the geegeez racecards of course! Here's an example from last week.
Courtown Oscar fits the bill snugly
The Instant Expert tab reveals that Courtown Oscar was one of only two horses to have previously won twice or more on heavy ground, the other being Bryden Boy. But looking at their respective last time out figures, we can see that Bryden Boy won whereas Courtown Oscar was pulled up.
Courtown Oscar finished outside the top five last time
Also, take a look at how Oscar performed on heavy ground the last time he encountered it.
Impressive handicap previous on heavy - he won again
Courtown Oscar won at 8/1.
And if you look at the top form line in the image above, can you see who was second? Yes, Bryden Boy, the other multiple heavy ground winner.
The exacta paid £87.60, and no, of course I didn't have it!
[As an aside, One For Arthur - who Oscar beat on his previous heavy start - won the Warwick Classic Chase at the weekend; and Bryden Boy sandwiched his second place to Oscar with heavy ground scores either side. The form looks pretty solid!]
So, to recap, in order to find these horses:
Look for meetings run on heavy ground (and be sure to check for going changes when the weather is closing in)
Check Instant Expert ('win' button) for two or more going wins on heavy
Check age and last time out finishing position on the card
Er, that's it
You might also want to look at the overall previous form profile on heavy ground and, obviously, the depth of competition in the race from a going perspective. Though, looking purely through the system lens, that is not necessary.
**
Instant Expert and Full Form Filter are two components of the Geegeez Gold visual form book. If you're not currently a subscriber and would like to know more about what we offer, you can discover us here.
Good luck!
Matt
p.s. there's one runner today of interest in the context of the above... 😉
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/heavyground.jpg350660Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2017-01-17 09:23:142020-04-30 17:59:07The Value of Heavy Ground Form
There is understandable excitement when a high-class hurdler proven in open company goes chasing, writes Tony Keenan. The horse may have been Champion or Stayers Hurdle level with a mark in the high-150s or even 160s and the expectation is that they will translate that form to fences. However, I’m generally sceptical of this kind of prospective chaser, working off the truism that it is difficult to teach older horses new tricks.
Just as in the human world where a young child can pick up a new language with relative ease, older people tend to struggle with learning a foreign tongue. It makes sense that this would apply with horses too. The typical national hunt horse might start its career in bumpers at the backend end of its fourth or fifth year, run two or three times before being put away for novice hurdles the following season where it might have four or five runs. As a then six- or seven-year-old, it would then go chasing rather than stay over hurdles. Those horses that do stay over hurdles seem at a disadvantage as a larger proportion of their short careers are spent doing something other than chasing and this lack of practice can prove detrimental to their prospects over fences.
That’s the theory at least but with all theories it’s best to test them against a body of evidence. Ideally, I wanted to look at the record of horses going chasing that had varying numbers of hurdles runs but unfortunately the excellent HorseRaceBase didn’t have the facility to run that system which must be the only thing missing from their database; if any readers have access to other databases they might like to look at the figures for themselves. So instead I took a different tack and decided to look at the records of the best chasers in Ireland along with the best hurdlers (non-novices) that went chasing in the same jurisdiction.
I began with the 50 top-rated chasers in Ireland currently, a listed that is topped by Don Cossack on 177 and completed by Mozoltov on 149. Of those top 50, only five were better over hurdles than over fences and in many cases the differences were minimal; they were Champagne Fever (chase 156, hurdle 157), Rule The World (153, 156), Shaneshill (153, 156), Zabana (153, 155) and Identity Thief (150, 159). Of the 27 chasers rated highest, only one (Un De Sceaux) had more than one season over hurdles and the average seasons spent hurdling across the top 50 was 1.2, the average hurdle runs being 6.6. The vast majority of our top chasers have gone over fences directly after their novice hurdle season with their average hurdles mark being 141.9 and their average chase figure 156.6, an improvement of just over a stone, and a number we’ll return to later. This improvement is readily explainable as there is only so high most novice hurdlers can rate given the races in which they run.
Next, I looked at the record of the best Irish horses who spent at least two seasons over hurdles that later went chasing. Starting with the 2006/7 season to present, there were 31 such horses and they are listed below with their peak hurdle and chase marks (for those that didn’t get official marks I made an estimate based on what they achieved):
Horse
Hurdle Mark
Chase Mark
Difference
Chase Runs
Chase Wins
Taglietelle
154
125
29
5
0
Monksland
157
149
8
7
2
Identity Thief
159
150
9
3
2
Alpha Des Obeaux
158
147
11
5
2
Diamond King
157
148
9
3
1
Lieutenant Colonel
156
149
7
4
1
Gwencily Berbas
151
130
21
3
0
Briar Hill
155
142
13
4
1
Kitten Rock
160
148
12
4
4
Tiger Roll
150
146
4
10
3
Rebel Fitz
155
155
0
9
6
Un De Sceaux
156
172
-16
10
6
Oscars Well
162
152
10
12
2
Rule The World
158
150
8
15
1
Tarla
150
144
6
6
2
So Young
158
115
43
2
0
Whatuthink
152
143
9
21
1
Donnas Palm
161
140
21
17
2
Blackstairmountain
152
147
5
6
2
Oscar Dan Dan
151
128
23
4
1
Shinrock Paddy
150
136
14
10
0
Powerstation
157
130
27
9
2
Muirhead
158
143
15
21
3
Catch Me
164
141
23
10
1
Aitmatov
160
131
29
8
0
Sizing Europe
167
177
-10
31
17
Jered
158
142
16
8
1
Harchibald
166
143
23
1
0
Sonnyanjoe
150
116
34
5
0
Adamant Approach
151
142
9
16
4
Rosaker
154
120
34
1
1
The most obvious point to make about classy hurdlers going chasing is that they regress for the switch to the tune of about a stone. There are exceptions, notably Sizing Europe, but also Un De Sceaux and Rebel Fitz; but as a general rule this is probably a negative move which brings up the question of why connections might want to do this. If the motivation is that the horse will improve for fences, the evidence suggests this is unlikely but if it is simply that they want to pick up some soft races back against novice chasers then it is probably a fair move; the horse may have reached its ceiling in open company over hurdles and be disqualified from races it can win whereas the switch to fences opens up other avenues.
Jumping would be a concern with these switchers but it is not necessarily backed up by the statistics; this group of classy hurdlers had a fall/unseat rate of 8.1%, which is below average. I covered this in an article last year and the national average in the period covered is around 10%. That said, I do wonder if these horses are more careful at their fences than those who went chasing earlier in their careers.
Of the 32 horses listed above, Noel Meade had seven of them (Monksland, Donnas Palm, Muirhead, Aitmatov, Jered, Harchibald and Rosaker) and it’s hard to make a case that any of them were much of a success over fences: Muirhead may have won a Munster National but that feels fluky along the lines of Tiger Roll’s win the in the same race and Rule The World’s Grand National victory this past year. If any punter found that pair, I admire your perseverance and hope your bank was still intact!
Willie Mullins had six such horses and Un De Sceaux has been a triumph, especially given his early jumping woes, but Henry De Bromhead is the one that stands out. From a single classy hurdler going chasing, he produced Sizing Europe which gives hope for the long-term prospects of currently injured Identity Thief who fits a similar mould.
It has been understandably difficult for these classy hurdlers, many of whom will have competed and even won at Grade 1 level over hurdles, to compete at the top level though there is an interesting contrast to how such horses do over different trips. Both Sizing Europe and Un De Sceaux won a number of Grade 1 chases around two miles as did Blackstairmountain, Barker and Mansony. The record of such horses over staying trips however is dismal with only Zabana at the most recent Punchestown Festival winning a Grade 1 chase over three miles or further.
Interestingly, this is backed up by the hurdles record of the winners of the feature chases at the Cheltenham Festival. Recent winners of the Champion Chase like Sire De Grugy, Dodging Bullets, Sizing Europe and Moscow Flyer all spent an extra season over hurdles but we have to go back to Imperial Call in 1996 to find the last Gold Cup winner who didn’t go straight over fences after its novice hurdle season.
All of which brings us nicely on to the current season where Thistlecrack is making a mockery of any such concerns in the staying chase division. But great horses will always make general rules seem silly and I’d be more interested in how the more typical classy hurdler going chasing will do. In the current season, we have seven such horses and the early returns have been ordinary. The group comprises Taglietelle, Identity Thief, Alpha Des Obeaux, Diamond King, Lieutenant Colonel, Gwencily Berbas and Briar Hill. While Identity Thief might yet make the grade over fences – he has both trip preference and trainer in his favour – most of the others are likely to compete over further and history points to them falling well short of their hurdles high in this sphere.
- Tony Keenan
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/thistlecrack.jpg320830Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2017-01-09 21:52:472017-01-09 21:52:47When Classy Hurdlers Go Chasing…
Saturday saw us reach the end of the fifth full calendar year for Stat of the Day, which was Geegeez' first real venture into daily tipping.
We know that we acquired lots of new subscribers over the year thanks to previous years' successes, so a brief overview of SotD is as follows...
Whilst form and other variable parameters come in to play when normally making a bet, SotD's first port of call is find runners who fit a stat ( or usually a number of stats) suggesting they will go well.
We aim to have the selection online by the time most people rise for breakfast, where possible and it's usually done well before midnight the night before the meeting.
We try to find runners priced around the 3/1 to 6/1 mark at BOG prices and look for some value in the odds achieved. A large proportion of our selections run at much shorter odds than we advise and constantly beating SP is a key in making long-term profits. Basically, our profit figures aren't massaged by some freakishly long priced winners, nor is our strike rate bolstered by a string of odds-on jollies.
What we do have is a consistent approach that aims to highlight one value selection per day and although this "one-a-day" stats-based approach to bet selection suffers all the obligatory peaks and troughs associated with betting on horses, we have managed to make a profit yet again this year.
Without blowing the collective trumpets of myself, Matt and now Steve, we're very proud of the figures accrued to date and we can safely say there aren't many (if any!) better services around. In fact, most paid-for services would kill for our figures.
Where possible, I'd like SotD to cover your subscriptions to Gold, making the rest of the site free to use as you see fit and in 2016, a level stake of £5.38 was all that was needed to cover a £249 per year annual subscription.
Number of bets/selections/pts wagered: 294 (quite a few non-runners this year) Winning Bets: 70 Strike Rate: 23.81%
Yearly Profit: 46.24pts Profit on Stakes Invested: 15.73%
These are quite impressive figures considering we give a selection every day rain or shine, if we say so ourselves and we'll be doing our level best to maintain our success in 2017.
Thanks for sticking with us/SotD,
Chris, Matt, Steve and the whole Geegeez team.
***Stat of the Day is just one component of the excellent package available to all Geegeez Gold Members, so why not take your £1/30-day trial now?
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/sotd2.png320830Chris Worrallhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngChris Worrall2017-01-01 01:14:052020-05-02 06:51:37Stat of the Day: The 2016 Review
'Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, etc. And in this post, I come bearing gifts. Taking my cue from the three kings in the nativity story, there will be Gold (natch!), punting sense, and mirth.
Gold
Our flagship service, Geegeez Gold, is now fully https after a few teething issues the last couple of days. Thank you for your forbearance with that, and I'm really sorry if you had to experience a few irritations during that process.
Everything is now even more secure going forward, and we will be further enhancing the Gold feature set in the New Year with some exciting upgrades.
As always, they are being designed with speed and ease of use in mind; and we have some interesting innovations that I've not seen anywhere else, so hopefully those will be fun and - more importantly - open up new windows of insight across the form study vista. More in January...
****
Punting sense: Reverse Handicapping
Intro: Screw The Trendy Kids; and Be Wrong More Often
There is a growing perception among the 'trendy kids' on twitter and the like that celebrating the backing of a good winner after the race is to be frowned upon, maybe even lampooned. I do not share that view. We all know life is hard enough without some smart arse pissing on your chips when you've had the ability/good luck to land on a nice price. So I say carry on celebrating... but please, no BOOMs, OK? 😉
Anyway, what has that to do with anything? This post is called 'Reverse Handicapping' for a reason, so let me get to it.
We all spend time, to varying degrees, before a race finding our selection. The smart ones spend time before that finding races which lend themselves to justifying the subsequent form study time investment - not all races do, right?
In a majority of cases, assuming you don't habitually back odds on shots to the exclusion of all longer-priced propositions, you will be wrong. So will I. Indeed, in my case, as someone who bets at average odds around 13/2, I'm wrong the vast majority of the time.
But that's not the point is it? The point is to make it count sufficiently when we are right to pay for all the losers and leave enough on the table for beer and chips. So if I average five losers for every 13/2 winner, and I have 600 bets in a year, I will return 750 and a profit of 150 points, or 25%.
In this fictional example I am backing 83% losers. Five out of every six bets are beaten. And it doesn't matter a jot, because the winners are covering the deficit with a healthy dollop of jam on top.
So the first thing to say is, allow yourself to back losers. Be comfortable with that. Not too comfortable, of course, but know that the route to profit is generally found buried beneath a bramble bush of beaten beasts.
In the above example, the true average odds of the backed horses should have been 5/1. That they averaged out at six-and-a-half-to-one relates that they were value plays, something we can only generally know with hindsight and once a body of evidence upon which to judge the value case has accrued.
So far so intangible, so let's attempt to nail this to the floor. How do we get better at spotting value?
How do we get better at spotting value?
When I worked as a software project manager back in the day, one of the buzz concepts was CI: Continuous Improvement. Like most management 'disciplines', and especially project management, CI was a cottage industry (there's another CI!) built around CS, common sense. That's not to be confused with BS, which was at least equally prevalent...!
Continuous improvement should be ubiquitous in our endeavours. In everything we do, we should strive to better ourselves. In relationships, in work, in our hobbies, and so on. You don't need me to tell you that.
But in order to measure improvement, we have to review two things: what we thought would happen, and what actually happened. When betting on horses, we have to compare our knowledge and awareness of the horse we backed (what we thought would - actually, could at the right price - happen) in the race that we backed it, and the result (what actually happened).
To do this we need three things:
A desire to understand, and evolve our punting ability
Experience to see what was right and wrong about a given wager/value opinion
Enough information to justify the initial view, and also to understand the outcome
When I started out betting on horses, I very soon got over the "they're all cheating" malaise that afflicts lazy punters. To be clear, some do cheat, but our job is to understand those operating within the shaded areas and to deploy that comprehension for our own advantage. We do that not by 'inside information' or anything surreptitious (real word) or skulduggerous (made up word), but by observation.
Ultimately, where experience is in short supply or, as in my case, the brain regularly fails, data - especially when it is presented as knowledge - saves the day.
What is reverse handicapping?
These are the keys to reverse handicapping, a simple process predicated on reviewing one's bets against the actual outcome of the race and asking questions of oneself.
Not all losers are bad bets. In fact, if you're about halfway decent at punting, about half of your losers will be good bets where you didn't get paid. Let me say that again, in a slightly different frame: most halfway decent punters will have more losing good bets than winning ones.
As I am fond of saying - ad nauseum to regular readers - any horse can win any race. Once you grasp that wholeheartedly, it comes down to whether the horse is more or less likely to win than his odds imply.
It is not then about backing the most likely winner, necessarily. It is not then about backing the best horse in the race, necessarily. It is about consistently backing the horse (or horses) whose true chance of winning is most favourably misaligned with the available odds.
The more you look at races that have been run; the more you commit to continuous improvement; the more you scrutinize your own selection rationale, the better you will get at punting on horses (or, indeed, at whatever activity in which you have committed to improve).
Examples
At this stage, my point is still rather general and theoretical. So let's take a look at some of yesterday's more unpredictable results - ostensibly at least - and see if they could have been backed and, separately, whether they represented value. Before that, though, one from the olden days...
Example 1: Foinavon 100/1
An apposite example from yesteryear, on the day after Foinavon's jockey, John Buckingham's passing is that horse's 1967 Grand National victory. Foinavon won at odds of 100/1, exclusively because of a pile up at the fence which now bears his name. He was a total no-hoper and should likely have been nearer 1000/1 - indeed, if Betfair existed then, I'm certain he would have been available for the max.
But a 'black swan' event, a totally unpredictable outcome half a rung down from an act of deus, bequeathed upon him an unimpeded passage not permitted to any of his rivals. He won because of that. In spite of him winning, and in spite of his apparently huge odds, he was rubbish value.
Takeaway: Big odds do not generally a value bet make
**
Example 2: Barton Gift 28/1
While we're on the subject of gifts, was Barton a gift from the layers? Or an ungettable rag? Before I answer that, let me say that I did not have a bet yesterday, so I did not back any of these horses and nor did I back any losers against them.
To Barton Gift, who was running in a marathon handicap chase. He was already a course and distance winner, had a win record over fences of better than 26%, won in better class/over a similar marathon trip three starts back, and had prevailed twice beyond three miles on the soft side of good in his last six starts.
Against that, he had been well beaten on his first two starts this season, and he was five pounds higher than his last winning mark (114 vs 109), but he should surely never have been 28/1.
If reading the form isn't really your thing - i.e. you don't really qualify under point 2. above - which horse or horses would you have wanted to side with based on the following? Consider their 'form fit' and their odds...
Looking at the prices and the form profiles, Barton Gift was over-priced.
Indeed, Steve flagged the same thing in his Race of the Day post which happened to look at this race.
Oh, and look, there's 28/1 Barton Gft on The Shortlist report, one of only four horses nominated on there yesterday:
So yes, this horse absolutely could have been backed. And he was terrific value after just two excusable defeats since his last marathon outing, a win.
Takeaway: Don't be put off by the price if the form is there, especially if recent reversals can be legitimatelyexcused.
**
Example 3: Tellovoi 16/1
In this Class 4 mile race on the all weather at Chelmsford, Tellovoi was winning for the first time in twelve starts, and for the first time on the all-weather for almost three years. I can tell you now that I would not have backed this horse. But I can see how he won here.
Firstly, Tellovoi has plenty of 'back class'. He was rated as high as 93 on the all-weather in April 2014. Since then he's had a couple of trainer changes, and has largely run over inadequate distances. The key to this chap though is the pace of the race. Tellovoi wants to be on the speed. In three of his previous four starts he raced at Newcastle, a track that is shaping up to suit closers down its interminable straight mile.
Here at Chelmsford, where pace is favoured - especially uncontested pace, things were more agreeable. So too was a draw in stall two. As we can see from the below, he was the clear pace angle on a track where that was advantageous.
So today was the day when the cards fell kindly for Tellovoi and his connections. This is one of those races where, if I had have had a bet, I doubt I would have backed the winner.
But, importantly, reviewing the outcome afterwards would have - has - reinforced my understanding that an uncontested lead on this pace-favouring course/distance combination is a powerful thing.
Was Tellovoi value? Not for me. He was probably a fair price, based on the shape of the race, but he has had a few other setups that ought to have suited since last he won, and he's failed to get the result.
Takeaway: You can't get them all right, but there is almost always a case to be made for the winner, and a lesson to be learned for the future.
**
Example 4: Arize 12/1
I love this filly. She's so game. I would have bet her had I taken a look at the cards yesterday. Virtually guaranteed the lead, she was a winner here under similar circumstances just three starts back. In between times she was forced to do too much to get her way on the front, and capitulated as most need-the-lead sorts do under such pressure. Also note that Arize had the highest speed rating (SR) in this field and had every chance of running her 'blaze, hang tough, then fade' fractions to replicate it.
Watching the race back, it's fair to say that Tegara was unlucky - undone somewhat by her inexperience, and perhaps by being such a big girl around these relatively tight turns - but the fact remains she's 0 from 2 in handicaps now and has only got her head in front once in five starts. Odds-on about that type is something I want to oppose habitually.
Arize was great value, and has now won two of her last four, both here, both from the front, both with uncontested leads, and both at prices (50/1 (!), and 12/1 here).
Takeaway: ALWAYS consider the pace set up. Any horse with an uncontested lead at a course/distance which favours pace is dangerous in handicap company.
**
Example 5: Master Of Heaven 7/2
It's all been a bit retrospectively rose-tinted to this point, so I wanted to consider a shorter priced horse whose value case could readily be argued againstbut who won anyway.
Jim Boyle's Master Of Heaven was very well backed in a poor race (Class 7) where he had stall one. Having shown a little more dash in his previous two races, he might have been expected to optimize the advantage of his inside berth. But he was far from the only pace angle in the race, even if the most obvious pressers were drawn very wide:
Master Of Heaven was a 13-race maiden coming into this, and had been beaten twenty lengths on his most recent start, over most of half a mile further than he raced today. He had been beaten only six lengths on his sole previous try at the course and distance, and that was off a rating nine pounds higher than here.
The reality is that plenty of people expected him to improve, or run to his best form - whichever it was - but I cannot touch horses like this with a bargepole. Nor indeed, generally, races like this.
Had someone put a gun to my head and forced me to bet, I'd have played White Dog, who had the pace to lay up and bits and bobs of form. He finished nowhere, having failed to defy a ten month layoff.
Takeaway: One of the greatest things about racing is that, unlike in poker, we don't have to ante up for every heat before deciding if we want to play. We can just skip to the races where we think we have a good 'hand' and leave the rest alone.
Summary: So what?
If we want to be better value judges, and give ourselves a genuine chance of turning a profit from betting horses, we have to learn from our victories, but especially our defeats (seeing as they will happen far more often).
There are takeaways from all races, even if occasionally it will be, "I have no clue how that horse won, and moreover my horse ran like stink because, with hindsight, my reasons for picking him were flawed."
If we understand why the reasons were flawed - perhaps (most likely) it was poor race selection, maybe we misjudged the pace setup, possibly we excused runs that we shouldn't really have forgiven (at the price) - then that experience goes in the bank and iterates our ability to gauge value for the next time. And so it goes on.
This process of 'reverse handicapping' WILL make you a better punter. It's an important process, a key stage in taking accountability for your betting, and might be something to which you'll commit yourself (if you don't do it already) in 2017.
Good luck!
****
Mirth: Merry Christmas from Geegeez (and good ol' Chinelope)
MERRY CHRISTMAS from all of the team:
Me (Matt Bisogno), Chris Worrall (Stat of the Day, Head of Reviews, right hand honcho), Nige Keeling (daily news), Mal Boyle (Placepot Pointers), Tony Keenan (Irish views), Tony Stafford (Monday Musing), Steven Oliver (Race of the Day, soshul meejah, support), Andy Newton (Saturday TV Trends), and the entire service review team.
Not forgetting our awesome website developers, Nige D and Paul C; and Peter May's marvellous speed ratings.
A big thank you from me to them, and to YOU, without whom none of this is possible.
Merry Christmas!
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/goldfrankincensemyrrh.jpg320830Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-12-23 12:04:312016-12-23 12:28:01Gold, Punting Sense, and Mirth
I wrote the below piece on 4th September 2014. But, in light of yesterday's verdict in the Jim Best case, it is both topical and prudent to revisit it, and consider - as well as the man himself - the wider implications, and what we as punters need to do to stay on the right side of such plots.
***
It was a contentious day at the office for British racing yesterday, as a plot unfolded in dramatic circumstances.
The race in question, a handicap hurdle at Southwell, looked a typically low grade Wednesday heat, the ten declared runners all being rated 100 or lower. Notably, trainer Jim Best was responsible for two of the ten. Tony McCoy was due to ride Into The Wind, the second favourite, and Rhys Flint would pilot apparent outsider, Saint Helena.
But, between declaration time on Tuesday and off time on Wednesday, a suspicious sequence of events transpired...
First, the more fancied of the two Best runners was withdrawn on account of the ground. Next, with McCoy now apparently without a ride in the race, Flint was 'jocked off' Saint Helena and the champion assumed the steering duties. All the while, market support for Saint Helena was strong, from before the notification of Into The Wind's absence right up until off time.
Saint Helena, a 9/1 shot in the morning, was eventually sent off the 11/10 favourite. As it transpired, she won, just, requiring all of McCoy's strength and race-riding nous to get the job done.
If you fail to see anything untoward in the above, that's probably because you're not party to Saint Helena's form history. A six year old mare, Saint Helena was good enough to win three times on the flat, off ratings as high as 79, and all on good to firm ground.
In her seven prior hurdle starts, she had run no closer to a winner than when a 69.75 length eleventh of twelve in her last race. That was a novice hurdle, and it was the latest bid from the trainer to get this horse handicapped.
**
The racing game in Britain and Ireland is predicated upon a few good horses running in stakes and conditions races, with the vast majority of the remainder running in weight for ability races once they've qualified.
The qualification criteria to receive an initial handicap rating are fairly straightforward, on the face of it at least:
In most cases a horse will have run on three occasions before being allocated a handicap rating. When handicapping a horse for the first time, it is necessary for there to be a clear correlation between the horse’s various performance figures and the handicap rating. Ideally from a handicapping perspective, the three qualifying runs would all be to a similar level, allowing a degree of confidence that the initial handicap rating is accurate.
If a horse returns performance figures of 60, 60 and 60, the Handicapper would almost certainly award an initial handicap rating of 60. The difficulty arises in three very different performance ratings, particularly in the case of a good run followed by two moderate performances. Generally the Handicapper will err on the side of caution with a handicap rating, giving emphasis to the best performance figure as long as that race looks solid.
Obviously, the official handicapper has a frequently horrific job in trying to nail form jelly to the ratings wall. And this was a case in point. Saint Helena, clearly a talented animal on the basis of her flat form on fast ground, had run seven times - four more than the minimum requirement - almost exclusively on soft and heavy, before being awarded an initial handicap rating.
Spot the difference between the win/placed flat form and the mark-seeking hurdles efforts. (Click the image to enlarge)
Saint Helena: Spot The Difference
The British Horseracing Authority, via the on course stewards, called Jim Best in before the race, to explain the absence of Into The Wind. They then called him in after the race to explain the 'apparent' improvement in form of Saint Helena.
The released notes on that second 'chat' are thus:
The Stewards held an enquiry to consider the apparent improvement in form of the winner, SAINT HELENA (IRE), ridden by A P McCoy and trained by Jim Best, which had never previously been placed. They interviewed the trainer who stated that the mare, who had been a very buzzy type in the past, settled better today and had benefited from a break of one hundred and twenty-five days since her last run. He added that the mare was suited by the firmer ground on this occasion. Having heard his evidence they forwarded his explanation to the British Horseracing Authority so that the previous performances of SAINT HELENA (IRE) could be reviewed. The Stewards ordered the mare to be routine tested.
It is almost certainly true that Saint Helena was "better suited by the quicker ground" - after all, her best flat form was on quicker. Equally, she looks sure to have "benefited from a break of one hundred and twenty-five days since her last run" on the basis that she might have actually been trained for race fitness during that time.
The case has been referred to High Holborn, and we'll see what the beaks in town make of it.
**
An interesting story for a Wednesday in its own right, the Jim Best plot saga is actually a little older than 24 hours or so. Indeed, Best has multiple 'previous' for such coups, almost all with a matching fingerprint.
A quick 'system builder' query for Jim Best-trained, Tony McCoy-ridden horses running in handicap hurdles without a prior win for the trainer reveals a 47% win rate (15 from 32). Amongst this group of horses, all of which received the McCoy assistance for the first time, were the likes of:
6/08Noble Minstrel form F0775 - mark of 72 awarded - 58 days off - wins at 4/1
1/09Rocky Ryan form 005 - mark of 90 awarded - 61 days off - wins at 15/8
6/13Planetoid form 089F70 - mark of 85 awarded - 169 days off - wins at 5/6
8/13Sugar Hiccup form 00070P - mark of 79 awarded - 239 days off - wins at 5/6
7/14Money Money Money form 40P0 -mark of 80 awarded-250 days off-wins at 5/1
8/14Kiama Bay form 09503 - mark of 104 awarded - 91 days off - wins at 7/4
9/14Saint Helena form PP9P080 -mark of 82 awarded-125 days off - wins at 11/10
And the similarities don't end there.
Consider Planetoid. This was a horse that was due to be ridden by Mattie Batchelor, a Jim Best stable stalwart, but with a (seemingly) lamentable record of 0 wins from 71 rides for the yard.
What atrocious luck then to experience "car trouble" on the day of Planetoid's success, having ridden him on three of his unsuccessful prior starts. Lucky for connections, at least, that McCoy was there to take the spare mount. Ahem.
Here are the stewards' notes from Planetoid's win after interviewing the trainer about the apparent improvement in form:
The Stewards held an enquiry to consider the apparent improvement in form of the winner, PLANETOID (IRE), ridden by A.P. McCoy, and trained by Jim Best, which had never previously been placed. They interviewed the trainer who stated that the gelding had problems with his jumping last year and has been given a break in order to re-school him over hurdles. He further added that PLANETOID (IRE) was suited by this quicker ground and running for the first time in a handicap. Having heard his evidence they forwarded his explanation to the British Horseracing Authority so that the previous performances of PLANETOID (IRE) could be reviewed. The Stewards ordered the gelding to be routine tested.
And these are the stewards' notes after Sugar Hiccup's win:
The Stewards held an enquiry to consider the apparent improvement in form of the winner, SUGAR HICCUP (IRE), ridden by A.P. McCoy, and trained by Jim Best, which had never previously been placed. They interviewed the trainer’s representative who stated that the mare was suited by the faster ground and, having been off the course for 8 months, had been freshened up. Having heard his evidence they forwarded his explanation to the British Horseracing Authority so that the previous performances of SUGAR HICCUP (IRE) could be reviewed.
Finally, here's Money Money Money's post race stewards chat:
The Stewards held an enquiry to consider the apparent improvement in form of the winner, MONEY MONEY MONEY, ridden by A P McCoy, and trained by Jim Best, compared with its previous run at Fontwell on 13 November 2014 where the mare finished tenth of thirteen, beaten 110 lengths. They interviewed the trainer who stated that the mare had benefited from a break from racing and appeared to appreciate the better ground.
**
What it means for punters...
So a very clear pattern emerges to these Best 'job horses' and, in a racing jurisdiction so heavily based around the art of handicapping, it is a part of the punter's job to be aware of trainer behaviour. Jim Best is not the only exponent of mark manipulation. In fact, some higher profile handlers on the level - Luca Cumani and Sir Mark Prescott, for instance - are positively admired for their ability to 'get one ready'.
When betting in handicaps, punters must ALWAYS be aware of the material differences between today's race and a horse's recent efforts. That's where value lies, perhaps not in heavily gambled animals like Best's, but certainly with the smaller stables who are having a few quid on but passing serenely under the radar.
First time in a handicap always merits attention, especially when combined with a material change in circumstance, such as a step up in trip or markedly differing ground. A break between qualifying for a handicap rating and running in a handicap can also be a sign of expected improvement. After all, if a horse runs a week after qualifying for a mark, that doesn't leave a lot of time to get the beast fit, does it?
A drop in class can often help, as can to a lesser degree the fitting of headgear (especially a hood). These are considerations the smart bettor must make, and they are part of the game. Making those considerations in the microcosm of trainer patterns can be most instructive, and there are no Jim Best's in the list of 'most effective first time in a handicap hurdle after a break'.
No, sir. That list, which in truth probably never existed until now, contains four high profile National Hunt trainers: Nigel Twiston-Davies, Evan Williams, Anthony Honeyball, and Philip Hobbs. How many Class 5 Taunton handicap hurdles do you suppose they've carved up between themselves? And yet, these events pass largely without comment or question.
I guess the key difference is that Best's modus operandi is to take a proven flat performer and 'bugger about' with it to get the mark, whereas the jumps boys are dollying around in novice hurdles and bumpers beforehand. Which is worse, or better? I'm not sure.
What it means for the authorities...
The exaggerated game of cat and mouse between trainers and the official handicappers is one of great importance to the sport, both from an integrity, and from an interest and engagement perspective. And, the truth is that there is very little the authorities can do about things, as they stand.
Jim Best operated within the current rule set.
It is perfectly acceptable for a jockey change to occur when a better option becomes available due to a non-runner in the same race (cf. "25.3.5 the substitute Rider was declared to ride another horse in the same race but the horse is unable to run" from the Rules of Racing).
It is perfectly acceptable for a horse to be self-certificated on account of the ground, or indeed anything else, as long as the trainer does not breach a 15% of declarations threshold (cf. "8.3 For any Trainer, where the rate of non-runners in Jump races measured as a percentage of the Trainer's declarations in Jump races is 15% or more, the Authority may suspend the Trainer's ability to self-certify non-runners in accordance with Rule 97.3 for up to twelve months." from the Rules of Racing).
It is perfectly acceptable for a horse to 'apparently' improve markedly, as long as the trainer or his representative can explain the improvement after the race, should the local stewards deem it appropriate.
To borrow that hackneyed Dickens quote from, I think, Oliver Twist,
If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.
The BHA's eyes have been opened by experience. They are all too aware of the issue here. They spoke to Best both before and after the race; and they are due to call him in again in due course to discuss the matter further. (That said, they're still due to discuss the Planetoid run with him, fifteen months after the race. Perhaps they can discuss them, along with Sugar Hiccup, Money Money Money, and Kiama Bay, as a job lot... with the emphasis on the word 'job').
The key question for the BHA to answer themselves, rather than necessarily bring Best to book, is around the allocation of a handicap mark. It is usual practice for a horse to receive a mark after three runs, if not winning once or placing twice before that time. The handicappers already have discretion to await further evidence, and this discretionary power has been invoked in six of the seven cases mentioned above.
I am led to believe by the twitterati that Saint Helena's seven runs before a rating was allocated constitutes something of a record. But, while that insistence of further evidence is to be admired - and may be the solution to the problem ultimately, at least in part - it is unclear why the 'capper relented after seven inscrutable efforts.
It should be reasonable for the official handicapper to require as many runs as is necessary to give an opening mark or, alternatively, to give a deliberately cautious mark - to the tune of two stone, let's say - in agreement with the trainer. All trainers have a dialogue with the handicappers, and I imagine the next chinwag between David Dickinson, under whose remit most of the above cases fell, and Jim Best will be interesting...
Perhaps a horse should be initially required to run in three handicaps within x% of the race distance of those it raced in to qualify for a mark. That might make it more difficult for trainers to run horses over the wrong trip. Or perhaps a horse must run over the trip for which it is most obviously bred - with a percentage of latitude - prior to being awarded a mark.
These suggestions are somewhat left field, and I'd hate to see any of them introduced for the simple reason that they'd be a triumph of job creation, whilst most likely opening up new loopholes for trainers to figure out and subsequently exploit.
Nope, I think that whilst the governance of self-certification and the allocation of initial handicap ratings can - and must - be improved, the game can - and should - be allowed to continue largely unimpeded by further legislation.
We now all know the hallmarks of a Jim Best punt, so at the very least, the next time one is afoot, we can get involved!
Matt
p.s. what are your thoughts on this most contentious of issues? Leave a comment and let us know.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/doyourjimbest.jpg320568Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-12-13 07:53:182016-12-13 11:30:18The Best Exploiter of ‘The System’?
My first memory of watching racing on TV is the 1991 Grand National. My father had backed the eventual runner-up, Garrison Savannah, but my puritan eight-year-old self was horrified at the thought of losing hard-earned money on horses jumping over things, writes Tony Keenan. My mother’s background as a banker and consequent financial rectitude played its part in that but dad was at pains to point out after his bet had finished second that he had backed him ‘each-way, the only way.’
I have no real recollection of racing on TV in years afterwards until the 2002 2,000 Guineas. For me, that will always be Hawk Wing’s Guineas regardless of who won, and the post-race discussion about whether or not he had been beaten on merit was fascinating. The complexity of pace, draw and race position - and their respective roles in the outcome - piqued my interest and when I found out you could bet on whose version of the race you believed I was hooked. So I followed Hawk Wing through that summer from the non-staying second in the Derby to the underwhelming Eclipse win to his defeat by Grandera at Leopardstown, a meeting I define as my first proper trip to the races and a losing one at that; I had not learned that ‘each-way was the only way’ though a starting price of 8/11 likely precluded against that bet in any case.
That initial race, covered at the time by Channel 4, was the start of something that is now an obsession. In the years since I’ve been down every rabbit hole of racing analysis imaginable, from trends to trainer patterns to pace to replays to sectional times. I’m just the sort of fan sports should aim for, committed to the game and willing to spend money and time, studying form, listening to podcasts, betting on horses and paying into racecourses. But that sort of consuming passion had to start somewhere and engaging the interest of embryonic fans is one of the many challenges that ITV Racing will face as the station starts its run as racing’s terrestrial broadcaster in 2017.
Racing can be an insecure tribe, constantly questioning its position in the broader sporting world, and this naval-gazing attitude has predictably emerged in the months leading into ITV’s return to covering the sport. We are comprised of so many different interests from owners to trainers to jockeys to breeders to punters and all have their own concerns about how the sport should be covered; just as everyone has an opinion on teachers, because everyone went to school, so too does everyone have a view on racing coverage as everyone watches it. I naturally tend towards the punters’ point-of-view who make up the majority of the TV audience but are often seen as a necessary evil by other parties.
No matter what our agenda may be, it is important to remember that there is a more general audience out there beyond the racing bubble that has, at best, only a passing interest in the sport. They need to be recognised to some degree. There is part of me that would love ITV to simply cater to the racing nerd audience and the people I speak to about horses would likely support that view wholeheartedly; whether it would serve the broader health of the sport is another matter. Striking the balance between this general audience and the more hardened racing fan is another major challenge faced for those stations covering racing.
There are difficulties arising from the inherent nature of the sport itself. In contrast to something like football, racing tends to be made up of frenetic bursts of action that last a matter of minutes interspersed with longer periods of analysis and chat; this is the case for terrestrial stations at least that rarely cover more than two meetings on a given broadcast and thankfully prevents it from becoming mere betting shop fodder with one race blending into the next over a period of hours.
Then there are more the more generic challenges that any sports coverage faces in the current media climate. We are in an age where we can watch sport live via devices other than television and we are told that viewing figures may not be trustworthy as so many people are watching through other channels than the traditional coverage. Points like that are fair but genuine fans will, in the main, still want to want to watch the coverage live if at all possible; it is impossible to miss the result in the social media age and in any case watching a sporting event on your phone is a deeply unsatisfactory experience with streams tending to be herky-jerky and unreliable. Mainstream coverage remains important and, as James Willoughby pointed in an excellent article on the Thoroughbred Daily News website, deserves to be treated with seriousness.
It is hoped that ITV will bring this sort of seriousness to their coverage. Their position as a legacy station, the button on the remote that people reach for out of habit, should provide a boost in viewing figures above what the less mainstream Channel 4 could manage. The hiring of Ed Chamberlin as host was a significant acquisition and gives the sport a broader appeal; that the presenter has a background in the bookmaking industry and odds-compiling is even better. But there are areas that I hope will be addressed by the station, chief among them being the excessive reliance on ex-pros on the broadcast team.
The initial list of ITV presenters comprises a hefty dose of insiders; looking at their press release, we have Tony McCoy, Francesca Cumani, Mick Fitzgerald, Hayley Turner, Jason Weaver, Luke Harvey and Frankie Dettori. Regardless of one’s opinions on the merits or otherwise of the individuals on that list, it’s hard to get away from the belief that such people bring a certain tone to the coverage. While I acknowledge the need for some insiders, the concern is that too many of them leave the general audience ‘on the outside’ which in turn leads to them changing the channel. While station chiefs will argue that these people bring insight to the coverage it comes at a cost and that is excessive deference and a tendency to close ranks when one of their number are challenged; no one likes criticising their friends after all, even when they are clearly in the wrong.
There are many other voices out there in the racing world that could be used to bring fresh angles. One such is the official handicapper, Phil Smith, who has his share of critics but has proved to be brilliant TV on his occasional ‘Ask the Handicapper’ slot with Matt Chapman. There is something fascinating about a man who believes he is never wrong and Smith has never been afraid to voice strong opinions which Chapman excels in drawing from him; as an aside, Chapman should prove a fine addition to the ITV team.
Smith’s area of expertise is of course ratings and I wonder if they could be incorporated more into the broadcast; the modern sports fan loves nothing more than some numbers that help build informed content. All too often broadcasters fall into the trap of recency bias and get excited about the winner of a race that has just happened without placing it in its proper context. If we had a handicapper, official or otherwise, putting a number on that horse in the minutes after the race, provisional though it would have to be, would it not add to the quality of analysis? Not only would we be able to understand where the horse fits in with its peers but also, in the case of championship races, where it falls in the pantheon. There are plenty who bemoan the pointlessness of comparing horses across generations but one of racing’s great selling points is the depth of its history and this should be embraced.
All this brings me inevitably onto the role of data. There is much good work being done with the use of data to analyse racing, blowing many of the myths about the sport up in the process, but the problem in putting this onto the TV is presentation. Data like sectional times needs to be presented in a palatable way that the audience can understand and not sound like an Open University tutorial. Punters make up the bulk of the viewership and they want to know how the numbers can help them to back winners. In general, I think you need outsiders rather than racing insiders to cover this part of the broadcast; the insiders are often sceptical of the numbers, entrenched as they are in the traditional approaches of the sport. Furthermore, these outsiders seem more willing to criticise the participants in the sport, something that in the main is sorely lacking. This is not to say there should be criticism for criticism’s sake but I would love nothing more than a well-argued case that a jockey gave a horse a poor ride backed up by a sensible sectional timing-based argument or the critique of a trainer’s handling of a horse that is based in fact.
Finally, there is the most basic aspect of any sports broadcast: the live pictures of the events themselves. ITV Racing should not suffer from having the terrible angles that AtTheRaces present from some of the Irish tracks - like Punchestown, Leopardstown and Down Royal - where all too often we are given prolonged shots of the backsides of horses running away from the stands. Arty close-ups are a complete no-no and as far a possible the audience needs to see the whole field, preferably in high definition. Some punter, somewhere, has had a bet on a horse in that race, even the 999/1 rag on Betfair, and he wants to see his horse and understand what is happening.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/chapmansmith.jpg320830TonyKeenanhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTonyKeenan2016-12-06 11:43:542016-12-06 11:43:54Tony Keenan: Some Views on Garnering Viewers
Trainer Snippets is one of the newer Geegeez Gold features, and it's a brilliant insight into how trainers operate. I've written about the content before here, but was asked if I could record a video on the subject of Trainer Snippets. Well, Barry, happy to oblige (and thanks for the prompt).
In this video, I explain what Trainer Snippets are, the two places to find them, and why and when they're useful. I also highlight a few examples using this afternoon's racing.
I also reference A/E and IV in the video, with a link to more info on that. For expediency, .
Anyway, on with the show. I hope you find it useful...
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Trainer-Snippets_101016.png4951080Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-11-21 11:10:482020-05-16 19:51:27VIDEO: Using Trainer Snippets for Profit
The ideal holiday for a National Hunt enthusiast in the late 1930s had to be a fortnight on the English Riviera, writes Ian Sutherland. It was long before the birth of summer jump racing, and August marked the start of the new season. South Devon had no fewer than five racecourses within 20 miles of each other, with Newton Abbot, Exeter and Buckfastleigh all early starters. Totnes, at the southern end of what is now the South Devon heritage railway, raced the following month, whilst Torquay held its annual fixture at Easter.
Buckfastleigh was the perfect place to watch racing. The track was a little over a mile around. The stands were at the highest point on the circuit, giving a panoramic view over the whole course. Most races were over a distance of either 2m 154 yards or 3m 418 yards, meaning they started just before the stands. This was followed by a downhill plunge to one of the sharpest bends anywhere – more a corner than a bend – which could catch out even the most experienced jockey.
Chris Pitt, in his account of lost racecourses, A Long Time Gone, had the problem described to him by regular Buckfastleigh jockey, Bernard Wells. "It had one of the sharpest bends on any track. After passing the winning post, you'd go down a sharp hill which felt like riding down a coalmine and then there was an acute right angled bend at the bottom. You had to go wide and swing into the bend. If you tried to follow the rails around you'd finish up outside the course on the A38, as happened to me once on French Knot. The first time I rode her was at Buckfastleigh when she jumped a wire fence and landed on the main Exeter to Plymouth road."
That was bad enough back in his day, but imagine it now, when vehicles are thrashing down the dual carriageway at 70 mph! Actually, if you can slow down a bit towards Plymouth once you pass the turn off for Buckfastleigh, you can see the remains of the stand up on the hillside. And if you want a closer look, pop into Dean Court Farm Shop to ask. There's a track that runs from what was the entrance to the course alongside the finishing straight to the stand.
The remaining stand at Buckfastleigh racecourse
This stand proved to be a bit of a white elephant, as it was built in 1950, only ten years before the racecourse closed, after 77 years of operation. In its very early days Buckfastleigh held just that one meeting in August, but in 1886, after just three years, a Whitsun meeting was added. This proved popular, and as the advertising poster of the time (kindly shown to me by Richard Cooper, whose family owns the racecourse site) shows, by 1901 special excursion trains were running to the local station from Exeter, Newton Abbot, Torquay, Plymouth and Kingsbridge.
It's no great surprise that a permanent stand was soon put up for spectators, though in fact, it proved to be anything but permanent. The wooden structure was dismantled in 1927 and sold to Torquay United FC, where it was ready for supporters’ days before their first ever fixture in Division Three South of the Football League. There it remained in regular operation until just five years ago. Why the racecourse sold it is a mystery. There's no indication that they needed the £150 Torquay paid; indeed, the regular good attendances argue that there was a continuing need for it. Instead, for twenty-odd years, temporary wooden stands were brought in for each meeting and then taken away and stored until the next one.
Racing at Buckfastleigh in 1955
There was no shortage of runners either. This photo, taken in 1955, shows a field of 13 passing the stands, and racecards of the time indicate there were regularly 12-18 horses competing. The stables on the course itself have been demolished, but a similar block still stands at Dean Court Farm at the bottom of the course. Between them they could house close on 100 horses, though they held little attraction for local trainer/jockey of the 1920s, Bert Gordon. He always walked his runners the four miles over the hills from South Brent.
The final day's racing, on 27 August 1960, drew in more than 4,000 spectators. Bernard Wells and French Knot successfully negotiated the sharp bend and, although they could only finish third in the handicap hurdle, the jockey did ride a winner on the day. The Whitsun meeting a few months earlier had seen a first training success for 21-year-old David Gandolfo, when Sunwood took the South Devon Selling Handicap Hurdle. How many of the 1500 winners "Gandy" had during his fifty year training career would have come at Buckfastleigh had it survived? And who would think that one of the ways the course would maintain a link into the future would be by the naming of a home on the housing development that now occupies the site of the trainer's old yard after his first winner?
By this time, Lord Churston, the landowner who had leased Dean Court Farm for three hundred years, had decided to sell off that part of his estate. Only after the land had been auctioned off, for what was felt to be an inflated figure of £150,000, did it become clear that the sale marked the end of racing at Buckfastleigh. Richard Cooper explained, "The investment company that bought the land also purchased the buildings, hurdles and other equipment. They clearly wanted to continue racing there. What they hadn't understood was that this did not include the licence to run fixtures under the rules of racing, and as the authorities were seeking to reduce the number of meetings, there was no chance of the licence being transferred separately”.
At the time, meetings were already in the calendar for 1961. These were moved to Exeter and Newton Abbot. Soon, the grandstand seats and turnstiles had also gone to Exeter, whilst the number board made its way to Newton Abbot.
Yet Buckfastleigh refuses to give up entirely. The Coopers, having bought Dean Court Farm in 1963, acquired the racecourse land some years later. The remains of the stand would likely fall down without the support of the trees, and it's taken a clever switch from running right to left handed for the two point to point meetings which take place each Spring. But the spirit of Buckfastleigh remains, and long may that continue.
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