Don’t get tongue tied talking about tongue ties!
Firstly, let me apologise for the title of this piece, writes Dave Renham – it is simply my attempt at humour! However, it certainly points us in the right direction for the subject of today's article.
Introduction
A tongue tie is a piece of material, usually made of nylon or a rubber band, that sits over the horse’s tongue and under the lower jaw. There are a few reasons why trainers deploy tongue ties. For example:
- It helps to prevent upper airway obstruction.
- It can stop a horse from getting their tongue over the bit, increasing the jockey’s control.
- It can help prevent the horse from potentially swallowing its tongue.
- It aims to improve performance due to greater air intake.
The jury is out in terms of how effective tongue ties really are, so in this article I am going to delve into the stats in terms of performance for horses that have worn tongue ties in races and try to deliver a verdict.
The data has been taken from UK National Hunt racing between 1st January 2018 and 31st December 2025. Profits have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with returns adjusted for 2% commission on any winning bets. Around 90% of the stats I will share have been sourced from the Geegeez Query Tool.
Tongue Ties: Overall Performance
Let me start by sharing the overall data for all horses that have raced in a tongue tie during the period of study.
As can be seen there have been nearly 60,000 runs in total for horses wearing a tongue tie. Clearly, a lot of horses wear tongue ties at some time in their careers. Returns to Betfair SP have actually been slightly better for tongue tie wearers than for those which have not worn them – a loss of 2.7p in the £ versus a loss of 4.1p.
Furthermore, tongue tie wearers edged the strike rate battle 12.4% to 11.9%. Maybe tongue ties do improve performance very slightly? Let's do some more digging.
Tongue Ties: Annual Strike Rates
I want to share the yearly win strike rates first for horses that have worn a tongue tie, and the splits are shown in the graph below:
There has not been too much fluctuation over the years. 2022 saw the highest win rate of 14%; 2020 the lowest at 11.3%. But what about returns on investment?
The yearly splits for these have been thus:
2024 was somewhat out of kilter with other years with losses just a smidge under 9 pence in the £. Six of the seven other years saw returns lie between +2.4% and -2.8% so fairly similar.
Tongue Ties: Market Rank
A look at market rank now, and I have based the following table's betting positions on Industry SP:
Favourites snuck ‘into the black’ with some solid stats across the board, while second and third favourites also performed pretty well, producing relatively small losses across 7000+ bets each.
For the record there were 20 winners priced at BSP at 100.0 or bigger, so it again makes sense to put in place a price cap for the remainder of the article. That prevents a big-priced winner here and there skewing the bottom line. I will use an Industry SP price cap at 16/1 – so the remaining stats shared only include runners that were sent off 16/1 or shorter. Here are the results for all runners wearing a tongue tie that were priced ISP 16/1 or less:
Nearly 42,000 horses have still qualified using the price cap and, overall, runners have performed well - even nudging into profit if we had backed every single horse ‘blind’.
Tongue Ties: Handicaps vs Non-Handicaps
Let me look at handicaps versus non-handicaps – here is what the splits tell us:
Non-handicappers won more often, as would be expected, and both ended up in the black once more. That's pleasantly surprising.
Tongue Ties: Race Class
How about class of race? What has that shown? The table below reveals all:
The Class 1 stats were possibly to be expected: a relatively modest win percentage and a loss made. However, I must admit I had expected slightly bigger losses. However, if we restrict Class 1 races to non-handicaps only, we can see that horses wearing tongue ties struggled even with the bigger priced runners excluded. This cohort of horses priced 16/1 or shorter in Class 1 non-handicaps managed 175 wins from 1033 (SR 16.9%) for a loss of £98.09 to £1 level stakes (ROI -9.5%). Hence, losses were not far shy of 10p in the £.
Going back the table, Class 3 and 4 races both delivered sound profits; however, I cannot explain why this may have happened. If any reader has a logical suggestion, I would love to read it in the comments.
Tongue Ties: Age Factors
My next port of call was the age of the horses in question when priced 16/1 or less:
I find these stats the most fascinating so far. Three-year-olds have really struggled and, although the sample size was small compared to many of the age groups, 325 runners was still a decent number. Losses of more than 50p in the £ coupled with a low strike rate suggests that these runners can be safely ignored from calculations in the future.
Indeed, an additional 3yo stat connected with market rank is worth sharing: 3yos that started in the top three in the betting won 20.9% of races (37 wins from 177) for a hefty loss of £46.20 (ROI -26.1%). Before moving away from 3yos completely I had a look at their record when priced 18/1 or bigger – just three wins from 222 attempts.
The other age stats that caught my attention were those for horses aged 11 or 12. Both have produced similar solid profits and returns. My theory is that when talking generally some of these runners have been overlooked or ignored. Most bookmakers and punters would not immediately be drawn to horses wearing a tongue tie who were also aged 11 or 12, so I reckon a few have started a point or two bigger than their true price, giving us a value scenario over time.
Tongue Ties and Topspeed
One of the relatively new angles that can be tested in the Query Tool is the performance of the Topspeed speed ratings from the Racing Post. The graph below compares the PRB figures (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) for the top three rated/ranked runners as well those ranked fourth or bigger.
We see fairly strong positive correlation. Let me dig deeper by sharing the records in full for the top three rated/ranked runners:
All three have made a blind profit across the 2018 to 2025 timeframe, with solid looking strike rates to boot. Betting all of the top three ‘blind’ would have turned a profit in five of the eight years under review, with two small losing years and a borderline break-even year.
Tongue Ties in combination with other headgear
I next wanted to take a look at what happened when other types of headgear were used in conjunction with a tongue tie. For the record, there were a couple of scenarios where two additional types of headgear were combined with the tongue tie but, with only 48 and 12 qualifiers respectively, these have been ignored. The splits for the rest were thus:
Adding either blinkers or a visor has seen the worst outcomes in terms of both win rate and returns. In contrast, the hood/tongue tie combo performed very solidly.
Regarding the results for tongue tie only we see the following:
As can be seen, a small profit was achieved for the tongue tie only brigade.
Tongue Ties and Run Style
A quick look at the run style stats now – the PRBs for the tongue-tied runners were as follows:
We see the usual pattern with the graph sloping from left to right, and front runners clearly doing best. If we had been able to predict which of the tongue-tied runners would lead early in their races, we would have secured a huge profit of £2294.70 to £1 level stakes (ROI +29.3%). In contrast, hold up horses lost £2352 equating to losses of nearly 20p in the £.
Tongue Ties: Trainer Angles
The final area I want to explore is some trainer data.
First time tongue tie
Firstly, a look at trainer performance when their horses have been wearing the tongue tie for the very first time. Trainers with at least 75 qualifiers priced 16/1 or shorter are shown in the table:
These stats have been extremely positive for many of the trainers with ten of the 14 making a profit. The Kim Bailey (and Mat Nicholls) yard have had outstanding results with a near 23% win rate, returns of over 80p in the £ and a PRB standing at 0.63.
Two yards stand out from a negative perspective – the O’Neill stable’s performance has been very poor with losses of nearly 72p in the £. Likewise, the Greenall/Guerriero yard have had similarly disappointing returns (69p in the £).
Second time tongue tie
Let me now look at the same 14 stables and their record when horses are racing in a tongue tie for the second time:
This time the results are far less punter-friendly with just five of the trainers in the black. The stables of Bailey/Nicholls, Olly Murphy, Fergal O’Brien and David Pipe (just!) all again secured profits.
And the O’Neill stable performed much better with second timers, albeit from a smallish sample, while the Greenall/Guerriero yard also produced a much stronger performance this time, though their runners as a whole still recorded a small loss.
Summary
Overall, the stats for horses wearing tongue ties were a lot better than I was expecting. There have been a number of positive areas highlighted that we potentially can take advantage of in the future. Likewise, a few negative angles to be aware of too.
At some point in the future, I will have a look at flat racing data for tongue tie wearers to see what tells us.
Until next time...
- DR