Most male horses begin their life on the flat as an entire, writes Dave Renham. At some point sooner or later - usually sooner - most horses disappoint their connections with racecourse performance and thus, in search of improvement, are gelded.
Introduction
The term "gelded" refers to the process of castrating a male horse, and this procedure is common within the horse racing industry especially with horses that race on the flat. The main reason for gelding a horse are to improve temperament and focus which it is hoped will improve performance on the track. Further, gelding a horse can improve a horse's compatibility with other horses, reducing tensions and possible distractions during races and on the gallops.
First Time Gelding
Overall
In this article I will primarily focus on data concerned with a first run after being gelded. The data has been taken from six full years of UK flat racing (2019 to 2024) and any profit / losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission. The A/E indices have also been calculated to BSP.
Let me start by looking at the results for ALL horses that were having their first run since being gelded. The stats read as follows:
As we can see these horses win close to one time in every eight starts, and a small profit would have been made from backing them all. Of course, the chances are that we have had a few big prices which have skewed the returns a little. Below then are the results by different BSP price bands:
The best value has been with those horses priced BSP 7.01 to 19.00. In terms of the huge prices, there were five horses that won at three figure odds (BSP 100.0 +) with the biggest winning price being a whopping BSP 612.25.
It makes sense for the remainder of the article to have a BSP price ceiling in place to avoid skewing.
For the rest of the article therefore I will impose a BSP price limit of 19.00. This still gives us over 4000 horses to examine.
Age of horse
My first port of call with this price limitation is to look at different ages of horses to see if that had made any difference. The graph below looks at the BSP returns (ROI%) across different age groups:
Three-year-olds have by far the worst record (they also have the lowest win strike rate of all the age groups). The Classic generation have struggled particularly in Class 6 events. Their overall strike rate stands at 17% but in Class 6 races this drops to 13.8% as a result of just 70 winners from 506 runners. Backing all qualifiers would have seen significant losses of £117.03 (ROI -23.1%).
Juveniles (two-year-olds) having their first run after being gelded have done particularly well when contesting Novice races. Of the 123 runners, 33 have won (SR 26.8%) for a healthy BSP profit of £53.84 (ROI +43.8%).
Four-year-olds on their first run after the op have performed best in handicaps with 133 winners from 692 runners (SR 19.2%) for a decent profit of £178.61 (ROI +25.8%).
Career starts
One interesting finding relates to career starts. Horses that have raced three times in their careers previously and then were gelded have a good record. This is especially true when they race in handicap races as virtually all of them were making their handicap debut having qualified to run in handicaps for the first time. This cohort of runners have run 1044 times with 191 winning (SR 18.3%). Backing these runners blind would have produced a healthy profit of £188.03 (ROI +18%). This is especially impressive considering the BSP price limit that I imposed earlier.
Position LTO
Onto last time out performance now, specifically position last time out. Here are the splits:
It is interesting to note that 335 horses that won last time out were still subsequently gelded; that is a bigger number than I had expected. Having said that, they performed well on their next starts, making a solid profit – returns are just over 9p in the £. When we look at the strike rates across different finishing positions, there is not the drop off I had expected. Horses that finished sixth or worse have still won over 15% of the time which is a decent effort.
Days since last run
Horses that are gelded are rarely rushed back to the racecourse for obvious reasons. Only 3.5% of all horses that have been gelded return to the track within four weeks. The rest tend to be given much longer to recover. Indeed, 55% of all gelded horses are given at least five months until they are asked to race again, the surgery often coinciding with a horse's scheduled winter break.
In reality, the longer the break the better in terms of offering punters value, as the graph below displaying the A/E indices for different ‘days off track’ groupings shows:
Once we get to 85 days plus (more than 12 weeks), we can see an improvement in the A/E indices. Those off the track for five months or more (151+ days) provided good value. This cohort of runners had an excellent A/E index of 1.09 (as seen above), and their overall figures read an impressive 431 wins from 2294 runners (SR 18.8%) for a level stakes profit of £258.69 (ROI +11.3%).
Sires
I thought it would be interesting to see if any sires showed a pattern in terms of when their offspring were gelded. It is generally agreed that sires can influence their progeny from the perspective of distance requirements, ideal ground conditions, etc. I wondered if that also applied to behaviour, attitude, temperament etc? Below is a list of sires who have had at least 50 of their offspring running for the first time after being gelded coupled with the 19.0 BSP or lower price restriction:
Eight sires have turned a profit but two stand out, namely Iffraaj and Invincible Spirit. Both have seen strike rates of more than 30% (with Invincible Spirit nigh on 40%), and both have made excellent profits. Progeny of New Approach, however, have really struggled on their first run after being gelded.
I did take a quick look at sire performance when having their second, third or fourth runs after being gelded. Iffraaj and Invincible Spirit’s strike rates both dipped back to around 20%, but both still turned a profit. New Approach on the other hand saw a huge improvement in strike rate (22%), although backing all qualifiers would still have made a small loss.
Trainers
1st run after gelding
All trainers will have a slightly different approach to what happens after one of their horses has been gelded from the viewpoint of methods of recovery and rehabilitation. They will also plan out horses' return to the track slightly differently from each other. Below is a list of trainers who have saddled at least 50 qualifiers (1st run after being gelded / BSP 19.00 or less). The list is order alphabetically:
The first thing that stands out to me is the difference in the figures for the Godolphin trainers Charlie Appleby and Saeed bin Suroor. Appleby’s figures, by his high standards, are poor, while bin Suroor’s are excellent.
There do seem a be a handful of trainers to avoid; namely David Simcock (whose record is dreadful), Karl Burke, Richard Fahey, Charlie Johnston and David O’Meara.
1st vs 2nd run after gelding
Before winding this piece up, I would like to compare win strike rates for individual trainers comparing the first run after being gelded with the second run. I have split the data up into three graphs – the first one contains the eight trainers with the highest strike rates from the first run data shown earlier. The second graph shows the next eight trainers, and the final graph shows the nine that had the lowest strike rates. Presenting in this way makes each graph comparison easier to see:
As we can see William Haggas, Ralph Beckett and the Gosden yard have very similar strike rates. However, there is a marked difference with some of the others. Most have seen a significant drop, such as Marco Botti 22% down to 10.29%, Saeed bin Suroor down from 29.41% to 20.83%, and Archie Watson down from 27.66% to just 15.6%.
Roger Varian is the only trainer to really buck the trend with a big jump in the opposite direction from 21.74% to 33.09%. I will share the full figures of all the trainers including profit/losses/returns after the third graph.
Onto the second group of trainers now:
In this group we have five trainers with very similar strike rates, while Richard Hughes and Charlie Appleby have seen significant improvements in terms of win success. Michael Bell’s figures look more akin to the first group of trainers with a drop from just under 21% to 13.7%.
And finally to the third group:
This third group were the trainers with the lowest strike rates with horses having their first run after being gelded. As we can see, every single trainer improved their strike rate when the horses were having their second run. Charlie Johnston (9.84% to 23.21%), David Simcock (3.77% to 18.99%) and Clive Cox (15.38% to 26.92%) all showing significant improvements.
As promised, here are the full facts and figures for these trainers with their runners that are having their second run after being gelded:
There is a stark difference between some individual trainer performances when comparing first run versus second run.
To make it easier to digest, in the table below I have listed those trainers that have either a positive record or a negative one across both first and second runs after being gelded:
This article has thrown up a fair few positive angles – more than I had expected.
I hope it has been an interesting read, and it is time for me to start thinking about my next piece. Until then...
- DR