Tag Archive for: Charlie Appleby

Monday Musings: On Buick’s Title Charge

/in /by

The last time I saw Tony Hind, the super jockey agent who shares his time between being a Tottenham Hotspur fanatic and grooming jockeys into becoming champions, three weeks ago at Newmarket, he wasn’t taking anything for granted, writes Tony Stafford. “No, we’ll be going full on until it’s mathematically impossible for William to be beaten.”

Three weeks later, maybe even Bony Tony will believe the race is won. Buick, after a remarkable eight wins from 12 rides on Saturday and yesterday at Goodwood, has a lead of 42 over nearest rival Hollie Doyle – 118 to 73 and with a prizemoney haul of almost double at £3,966,000 to £2,065,000.

Ben Curtis with 70 is the leader in the north. Doyle’s husband, Tom Marquand, is next, his 68 wins bringing in £2,465,000, a fair distribution of earnings between the couple. “I’ll let you be the principal bread-winner,” says Hollie, “as long as I ride more winners and get the bulk of the press and media coverage.” Something like that anyway – they seem to be in a blissfully happy state all the time, however, so I doubt those issues concern them.

It might surprise many that fifth place in the table belongs to another Northern-based jockey but one without a vestige of a northern accent, unlike his pal, Keith Walton, who is Leeds through and through. A former pro boxer who now trains a stable of fighters, Keith also finds time to run his own electrical business while being a regular on northern racecourses and boxing coach to several jockeys. Mulrennan is on 67 wins, but those and the other 316 mounts he has benefited with his undoubted skills have generated only £708,000, a measure if ever it were needed that shames the prizes generally on offer at most minor meetings away from the big tracks.

It's just as well that Paul’s wife Adele has so quickly become a valued member of the ITV Racing team’s coverage, having been head-hunted after her excellent work as a racecourse rep for the BHA in the north. Like the Marquands – or is it the Doyles? – two incomes will be handy as the price of energy spirals out of control from October and beyond.

Hind’s concern about the mathematical possibilities may have smacked of belt, braces and even bicycle clips, but were understandable. I contend though that the actual moment when William Buick won the 2022 Jockeys’ Championship, a contest which runs for less than half the calendar year – in 2022, April 30 to October 15 – arrived on February 22, a full two months before hostilities were to resume after Buick’s near miss as Oisin Murphy only narrowly saw off his rival in a last-day thriller on Champions Day at Ascot last October.

Oisin Murphy, do you remember him? Three times in a row he was the champion who had managed to stave off the implications of the tortured existence that only was to become fully evident after that exhaustive enquiry by his bosses last winter.

In the way of such matters, until last night I had never closely read the line-by-line conclusion of the case presented by the BHA which itemised the various breaches of the jockeys’ code and the misdemeanours which the BHA chose to layer on to the hapless miscreant.

In brief, Oisin was given a year’s ban until February 2023 for having been found to have, in order, breached Covid Rules, misled the BHA, indulged in prejudicial conduct, and incurred two alcohol breaches. The charge of “prejudicial conduct” covered the conclusion that he had acted in a manner that was prejudicial to the proper integrity, conduct and good reputation of the sport.

Note the order of the charges. Two breaches of the Covid rules, pretty much in line with what was considered one of the most heinous forms of law-breaking in the UK at the time, understandably took the headlines.

Murphy, as champion jockey, enjoyed considerable earning possibilities away from the UK, notably in Japan where he was a regular and most welcome visitor, enjoying rides on fancied horses in many of the well-endowed races there. At the 2021 Breeders’ Cup he was clearly very happy when the Japanese horse Loves Only You won the Filly and Mare Turf race, as he could be seen smiling away in the background when she returned to the winner’s circle.

That was the case, too, when he rode the 50/1 Japanese-trained winner of the Distaff race that same day in California, Marche Lorraine’s success bringing a £759k prize to connections. Oisin will have collected - if in line with UK percentages- maybe £50k from that.

The Covid breach involved a holiday in Greece, at the time in the Red Zone, while instead he said he was holidaying in Lake Como, a less offensive part of the world in those dark days. That was the “misleading the BHA” part of his ‘crimes’. Three months after his ban, Murphy might have smiled inwardly upon learning of the £50 fixed penalties meted out to Boris and Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak when they were found guilty of being present at Downing Street parties which also breached those same Covid Rules.

True in the end, that sequence where in all 100 fines were meted out to various drinks party goers, resulted in the Prime Minister’s eventual fall. Oisin was probably fined effectively at least one thousand times as much in terms of potential earnings over the year as the PM’s rebuke. By putting all his bad eggs in one basket the BHA has probably given him his best chance of retrieving his reputation and self-esteem.

During his sabbatical, he did go on at least one of the racing-themed mercy horsebox convoys to Ukraine, organised by Charlie Mann earlier in the year, but he has pretty much kept a low profile. Everyone who admired his riding will hope he has been able finally to end the alcohol dependence that was an all-embracing companion.

The riders of yesteryear had many formidable drinkers in their ranks – ask Henrietta Knight about the early version of Terry Biddlecombe before he became a reformed man as her husband in his later years. In the post-war days the top jockeys would be regulars in the night clubs in the West End of London, feted by owners, gamblers and bookmakers before going to the saunas at the public baths early in the morning to dry out.

They would still report for action at the track the next afternoon, showing little sign of their lifestyle, easier in those days as there was no fear of being tested.

Hopefully Murphy will be starting with a clean slate, but he may find he is returning to a sport where, largely through outside influences, it has become more difficult for him to attain a similar level. Much debate lately has been about the paucity of horses of a sufficient ability level to match the number of races framed in the higher echelons.

Small fields have been a constant for the last few weeks but that has been as much a function of the impossibly dry weather of the summer. What has been clear is that some of the top stables seem to be able to provide runners in pretty much all the valuable races around the country, leading to the domination by those jockeys connected to them.

William Buick’s rise, apart from his talent, has needed him to be associated with a top team and it has taken 16 years to graduate to the number one spot. By the time he rode his first ten winners in 2006, Kieren Fallon and Frankie Dettori had already finished their years as champion. In that year, Ryan Moore collected his first title, after which Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer, a previous winner, shared one. Paul Hanagan, Richard Hughes, Silvestre De Sousa, Jim Crowley and Murphy all had their turns in the intervening period.

Buick achieved it with the constant support of his father Walter, a Scots-born jockey based originally in Newmarket who migrated to Scandinavia where he was a multiple champion jockey and later a trainer in Germany. William was born in Norway but frequently came over to England for the summer holidays and I remember his father bringing him and sometimes his brothers to the press room at Newbury in his early teens. When he took his first rides, aged 16, he weighed five stone wet through.

Those early trips involved spending time at Kingsclere riding out on the gallops, developed by Mill Reef’s trainer Ian Balding and further improved by Andrew, Ian’s son, to whom the young Buick was apprenticed. Over the years he has expanded his client base to the extent that only one of the Goodwood winners was trained by his principal employer, Charlie Appleby. Three were for his original boss Balding, with one each for Eve Johnson Houghton, Roger Varian, Simon and Ed Crisford and George Boughey, powerful allies all.

His annual haul of 140 wins – so 22 gained before the Saturday of the Guineas meeting, the official start of the championship – is a fair tally considering he spent most of the winter and early spring in Dubai, and has been shared between 33 different trainers. The best of all worlds.

With the power of Godolphin and the skill and support of Charlie Appleby to fall back on, Buick looks set for a good spell at the top with this most emphatic of titles behind him. Maybe Oisin Murphy will have something to say about that? Maybe Hollie can continue her progress and possibly have a major thrust for a first female title? The future though seems all about William Buick. Then again, after our experiences in the UK in particular and the greater world in general in 2022, what can we ever take for granted?

- TS

Monday Musings: A flip flopping title race?

/in /by

Last week I said something ill-advised, writes Tony Stafford. What’s strange about that you ask? I put it down to my infrequent acquisition of the tangible paper version of the Racing Post. When it was my first act every morning, even before the long-discarded and much-lamented bacon sandwich, I quickly turned to the stats and particularly the trainers’ tables.

Having chanced upon one at Goodwood, I noticed how far Charlie Appleby had stretched clear in his attempt to back up last year’s first title. No sooner had my comments hit the web site last Monday, I chanced a look at the online paper and noticed the lead had shrunk, hardly surprising in retrospect given the flurry of winners that flow every week it seems from Somerville Lodge.

Partly to purge my guilt at such sloppy work, I vowed to get the latest possible state of play and was somewhat surprised to discover that three trainers are within £1,000,000 of the Godolphin maestro as we went into the three days that lead into the four-day York August meeting.

Monday morning will reveal how many horses will be taking on the William Haggas 2-5 shot, and the world’s highest rated racehorse, Baaeed, going for his tenth unbeaten career run in the Juddmonte International on Wednesday.

Eight were in at the latest acceptance and these include two other Haggas nominees, Alenquer and Dubai Honour. All bar one of the remaining quintet is trained from stables in the top five. This year, with barely half the prizemoney haul of Appleby, Aidan O’Brien is still in fifth, but his pair are both 33/1 chances, along with recent York Group 2 winner Sir Busker, poised to pick up another chunk of change for trainer William Knight who would not mind a withdrawal or two this morning.

As Monday morning is upon us, Charlie is on £4,055,331; Haggas £3,643,155; John and Thady Gosden – John won the three previous titles with only moral rather than official help from his son – has £3,166,384 and Andrew Balding £3,006,850.

The first observation is that Haggas need only win with Baaeed not only to claw back the deficit in one go – the Juddmonte carries a first prize of £567,000, the most valuable of the 28 races of the week – but move some way clear.

That eventuality is not lost on Appleby who has Irish 2.000 Guineas winner and Newmarket 2,000 runner-up Native Trail in the race. He is third favourite behind the Gosdens’ Mishriff, who will be aiming to restore his reputation after his weaker than expected finish when third to Pyledriver and Torquator Tasso in the King George three weekends ago.

That race was even more notable for the abject flops of the two star three-year-olds in the field: Irish Derby winner Westover and Oaks runner-up Emily Upjohn. Yesterday at Deauville, Coroebus, denied a run at the last minute behind Baaeed in the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood – stablemate Modern Games stepped in to land the £215k consolation spot that day – was a weakening fifth as the Gosdens’ filly Inspiral bounced back under Frankie Dettori to win the Prix Jacques le Marois for her breeders, Cheveley Park Stud.

If Appleby cannot win the Juddmonte he will be deadly serious about trying to get a similar figure for second thus limiting the shortfall to £350k or thereabouts. Should Mishriff have a similar bounce back as his younger female stable-companion contrived yesterday, he might still be in with a shout.

York’s importance in the context of the trainers’ title race is stark. None of the four days offers less than £1.4million in total purses. Overall, it’s slightly north of £6 million.  All four of the leading trainers have multiple entries over the first three days; Appleby with 15, Haggas 17, the Gosdens 12 and Balding 13.

The final figure for Saturday will not be known until lunchtime today but Haggas has three of the first half-dozen in the betting of the Ebor, making my weak joke last week of “what’s he got in the race?” little help to anyone. I bet if he could arrange it he would love to win it with Hamish for his dad, Brian.

Now a six-year-old, Hamish must have had a litany of injuries to restrict his career after four seasons – all he did as a two-year-old was to undergo a gelding operation – to 11 runs. He would have delighted the Yorkshiremen, father and son, when he won the Melrose as a three-year-old and it is with some surprise that he heads the weights for this ultra-competitive race over course and distance on Saturday.

Many though will prefer the chance of Haggas’ ante-post favourite Gaassee, backed down to an almost suicidal price of 6/4 for the Old Newton Cup at Haydock last time. He was a creditable third after getting the kind of interference that favours the bookmakers when they seem most certain to be victims of a massive punt.

A son of Sea The Stars running in the Ahmed al Maktoum yellow and black, he had won four in a row after a debut third leading up to Haydock. Over an extra two furlongs here he could be even more devastating.

Win or lose, the spice in the trainers’ title race – which should boil down to a private battle – will liven up York and it is hoped that Maureen Haggas is on the mend after a fall from her horse in Newmarket. It happened when the animal became unsettled in face of a dog on the training grounds at an unpermitted time of day.

It seems Maureen broke two vertebrae in her neck. If she is out of action for long that will be as big a handicap that her husband could countenance, such is the influence of Lester Piggott’s elder daughter within the family stable.

Having been at Ascot for a non-runner on Shergar Cup day, and the resulting loss of my phone in the car park, I’m fully fitted up with a new device and number. I’m also going to York on Wednesday. I had hoped the same horse, Dusky Lord, would be getting in the sprint handicap which opens Wednesday’s card but 37 were entered and I made a miscalculation as to where he might end up in the long list.

I guessed 27 or 28 but happily it was 24 and we need two to come out. Another near miss would be very frustrating as he’s only an 8-1 or 10-1 shot in the market after his great run over five furlongs when second at Goodwood. Fingers crossed.

One race I always enjoy on York’s opening day is the Acomb, a seven-furlong juvenile contest that is nowadays a Group 3. All 27 runners have run either once or twice, many having won, and the qualification is that they cannot have won before July 7.

Five of the last six winners have been trained in Yorkshire, Kevin Ryan, Tim Easterby, Richard Fahey and Mark Johnston the last twice, doing the honours. Charlie Hills was the one “foreigner” in that period, with subsequent Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Phoenix of Spain four years ago. He is now a stallion at the Irish National Stud.

Last year’s winner Royal Patronage runs in the Highclere colours and, after beating Coroebus in the Royal Lodge at Newmarket last autumn, he was second to Desert Crown in the Dante before finishing miles behind that colt in the Derby. He is now with Graham Motion and recently made his US debut at Saratoga.

The 2020 winner Gear Up followed the Acomb by winning the 10-furlong late-season Group 1 in Saint-Cloud but did nothing as a three-year-old. Switched to Joseph O’Brien, he has now won twice, last time in a Group 3. He has the Melbourne Cup as his objective.

It hasn’t always been thus for Acomb winners. In Hong Kong they love to buy English-trained horses for loads of money and then change their names, so much so that trying to trace them through the Racing Post library can be troublesome.

I spent quite a time tracking down the 2019 winner Valdermoro, who won the race on his third start having already been successful the previous time. The Post record shows the race to have been won by a beast called Perpetuum. He does surface with Valdermoro’s pedigree in Hong Kong 16 months later having been gelded and presumably bought for a small (or maybe a not so small) fortune.

His new owner Mr Kameny Wong Kam Man had the doubtful pleasure of witnessing his pride and joy running four times, the first three at Sha Tin, the last at Happy Valley, adorned each time with a tongue tie, for the Tony Cruz stable.

He finished 13th of 14, 14th of 14, 9th of 9 and 12th of 12, after which he never appeared again. Win the Acomb, it can lead to feast or famine! I hope Kameny has had a bit more luck in his horse recruitment since then. Maybe he should stick to the old adage in future: “Change the name, change the luck!”

- TS

Trainers in Two-Year-Old Races, Part 1

/in /by

This is the first in a new series of articles where I will examine the performance of certain trainers over the past few seasons, writes Dave Renham. I will be using data from 1st January 2016 to 31st December 2021 giving us six full seasons to examine (UK racing only). For this piece my focus will be two-year-old races and I have used the Geegeez Query Tool as the sole source to gather the initial data. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. Therefore one would expect that we could significantly improve upon the figures by using early prices, Best Odds Guaranteed and / or the exchanges.

Many punters latch on to specific trainers or groups of trainers as trainer patterns are quite a popular strategy for trying to beat the bookies. And there's logic in this: like all of us, trainers are creatures of habit, and follow a similar path year in year out. They generally stick to the same training methods, have favoured jockeys that they use where possible, know which races to target, and so on. This offers at least a reasonable chance that future results will correlate with prior ones. Let’s dig into the stats.

Trainer Performance in all 2yo races

First, let's look at all 2yo races. Below is a table for the top 20 trainers in terms of win strike rate (minimum 150 runs across the six seasons):

 

These are ordered by strike rate and it is no surprise to see that a good proportion of the top trainers in the country are present. Only five of them have made a blind profit to SP, which is to be expected. For the record, yards of the Crisfords, Beckett, Palmer and the Charltons also nudged into profit if using Betfair SP.

Charlie Appleby’s record stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of strike rate, his 30% strike rate with 2yos over six years being remarkable.

If we order by the A/E index, a measure of the perceived sustainability of profitability, then we get the following top 20:

 

Six of the trainers in the top 20 two-year-old strike rate table appear here as well. However, we have a much more mixed bag of strike rates as A/E indices focus on ‘value’. Any A/E index higher than 1.00 indicates the trainer gets more winners than expected which is why 10 of the 20 trainers in the list have been profitable to SP. 17 of the 20 would have been profitable using BSP.

 

Charlie Appleby's 2yo record

Time to drill down into a couple of individual trainers starting with that man Charlie Appleby. Firstly let us compare his strike rate performance by season:

 

These figures are relatively consistent considering the type of races we are dealing with. Appleby made a profit at SP in 2017 and 2020 – the years with the highest strike rates. Also in those two years the A/E index went over 1.00 both times.

In terms of the sex of Appleby's 2yo runners, he has been more successful with males as the table below shows:

 

A higher strike rate by about 18% relatively and 5% in absolute terms, and much better returns - losing just 2.5 pence in the £ - on male runners is noteworthy. The A/E index and the IV figures also give male runners the edge. Why this is I am not sure; what is interesting though is that I had a quick look at Appleby's three-year-old data and males out-perform females there in virtually identical fashion. I am always hoping for these supporting elements when performing this type of research.

Appleby’s runners tend to start on the short side, in other words near the head of the betting market. This pie chart illustrates this neatly:

 

Nearly half of his 2yos - 396 runners out of 813 (49%) - have started favourite. Just 96 runners (12%) started 4th or bigger in the betting. The breakdown of top three in the betting versus 4th or bigger is also worth sharing with you:

 

 

It looks prudent to avoid any Appleby 2yo that starts 4th or bigger in the betting, with significant losses of nearly 60p in the £ having been incurred. Conversely, the Godolphin trainer has gone close to breaking even at Industry SP with horses that started in the top 3 of the betting lists.

The Shadwell Stud sire Dubawi is a popular one when it comes to Appleby 2yos. This stallion has been responsible for 121 of the 2yos in Moulton Paddocks stable over the past six seasons. These 121 horses have run 254 times for Appleby in 2yo races, registering an impressive 89 victories, a 35% strike rate. Backing all Appleby Dubawi 2yo runners would have seen a break even situation at Industry SP. For the record, when we look at these 121 individual horses, 70 of them managed to win at least one race (58% winners to runners).

 

Aidan O'Brien's 2yo record

Let’s dig down a bit into the Aidan O'Brien stable next. Remember, we are looking only at UK form and, clearly, O'Brien sends over from Ireland many of his better 2yos, the majority of which race at either Newmarket or Ascot. Indeed, Newmarket runners account for more than half of his 2yo runners on these shores. What caught my eye the most was his record when contesting the top two tiers of race, namely Group 1 or Group 2 prizes. His record in both read as follows:

 

 

These are eye-catching strike rates considering the competitiveness of such races, and there is a commensurately excellent return on investment in both.

I also looked at O'Brien's performance in terms of market rank. His favourites have done extremely well, but what was interesting is that when comparing 2nd, 3rd favs etc, there is not that much in the figures:

 

By way of comparison, the second favourite strike rate for ALL trainers is close to 21%. O'Brien's is down at 15.15%, whereas I would have expected it to be nearer 25%.

Before moving on, I would be wary of backing any O'Brien 2yo that had any type of headgear (blinkers, tongue tie, etc). 39 of his runners raced in headgear in the six years of study but only five won. Backing all of them would have yielded a loss of just over 38 pence in the £.

 

Non-handicaps versus handicaps

So far I have not split the data into non-handicap and handicaps. This is mainly due to the fact that non-handicaps account for roughly 80% of all 2yo races. Also, for many of the top performing 2yo trainers, this 80% figure tends to be higher. For example, 93% of Charlie Appleby 2yos have run in non-handicaps; and others at 90% or more include Roger Varian (93%), Sir Michael Stoute (95%) and John Gosden (94%). Hence for the remainder of this article I will be narrowing my focus only slightly to focus on the large non-handicap subset.

[The second article in this series will look at some of the 2yo handicap data]

 

Non-handicap performance by race distance

Juveniles have a ceiling in terms of how far they can race in Britain, the reason being that they are young horses in their first season of racing. They generally have not built up the necessary stamina to tackle longer distances. Here is a graph showing the breakdown of 2yo non-handicap races in terms of distance – it looks at the percentage of races run at each distance:

 

This shows us that 83% of all 2yo non-handicaps are contested over seven furlongs or shorter. A mile and a quarter, ten furlongs, is generally the longest distance 2yos have to race, but there has been a race at Kempton in December of the past two years over 1m3f. One of the pair was won by a 100/1 shot and the first four home in the other were priced at 22/1, 50/1, 9/1 and 50/1!

It should also be noted that for the first two full months of the two-year-old season (April and May) races are primarily over the sprint trips of 5f and 6f. Indeed there have been just five 7f races run in May over the past six seasons. Races of a mile-plus don’t properly kick in until August.

It's time to break trainer juvenile non-handicap performance down by distance now. I am going to split the distances into three: 5 to 6f (including 6.5f); 7f to 1m; and 1m 1f or more.

 

2yo non-handicaps over 5-6 furlongs

So, sprint distances first. In the chart below the top 15 trainers are shown, in terms of strike rate. The data is restricted to trainers who have had a minimum of 70 runners in the sample period:

 

 

Charlie Appleby tops the list once again and his runners actually made a tiny profit at Industry SP (ROI 1.25%). Others trainers to make a blind profit were Owen Burrows, Clive Cox, Andrew Balding, Martyn Meade and Ralph Beckett. Let's now look at the A/E indices for these 15 trainers, which will help to show the trainers who have proved the best value:

 

 

Six trainers have exceeded the 1.00 value benchmark, while three trainers have low figures - Saeed bin Suroor (0.79), Roger Varian (0.81) and Hugo Palmer (0.8). In ROI terms, bin Suroor runners lost 36 pence in the £, Varian’s lost 26p in the £, and Palmer’s runners lost 29p for every £ staked.

When examining most racing statistics we need an overall view – strike rate, ROI%, A/E indices and Impact Values need to be used in conjunction with each other.

 

2yo non-handicaps over 7f to 1 mile

In general, these longer distances are contested by better 2yos so it will be interesting to see how individual trainers fare. Again I have used 70 runs as a minimum threshold to qualify. Let’s look at the top 15 trainers by strike rate first:

 

 

In terms of profitability, only the Charlton stable have made a blind profit and barely at that. Perhaps this shows the overall competitiveness of 7f-1m races. Moreover, just two have hit over 1.00 in terms of the A/E index (the Charltons and David Simcock).

Sticking with the Beckhampton Stables yard of Harry and Roger Charlton for a moment there are three further statistics I want to share. Firstly, when saddling the favourite in these races they have won an impressive 22 races from 40 (SR 55%) for a profit of £12.37 to £1 level stakes (ROI +30.9%); secondly, when his runners start second favourite they have also made a profit thanks to 10 wins from 28 (SR 35.7%) for a profit of £7.50 (ROI +26.8%); and thirdly, 2yos that race at Newbury in 7f-1m non handicaps have done well winning 12 races from 45 (SR 26.7%) for a profit of £35.41 (ROI +78.7%).

Of course, it is extremely useful knowing which trainers have the best records, but it is also worth looking at those trainers with the poorest records. Here are the trainers with the lowest strike rates in 7f-1m 2yo non-handicaps:

 

 

Although a couple of these trainers have made a profit, this is down to a random big priced winner or two; in general, the figures for these trainers are very poor. Hence I personally would avoid them in such contests.

 

2yo non-handicaps of 1m 1f or longer

With these races making up less than 4% of 2yo non-handicap races in the UK, it means we have limited data to work with. Indeed, only seven trainers have had 40 or more runners at these longer distances in the past six seasons. For the record here are their stats:

 

 

That man Charlie Appleby is impressive once more, while the Gosden and Johnston stables have had the greatest number of runners but neither has been profitable to follow.

 

Individual trainers: comparison by distance

I thought it would be interesting to end this article by comparing the data for all trainers who have had at least 50 two-year-old runners in both 5f to 6f non-handicaps and 7f to one mile non-handicaps. It should be noted at this point that 7f-1m races have a slightly bigger average field size: 9.3 runners on average compared with 9.0 for 5-6f races. Hence this will have a small effect on trainer strike rate comparisons. For that reason, I will not only compare strike rates, but A/E indices and Impact Values too.

The right hand three columns compare the short trip data with the longer trip data by creating a ratio of one to the other. The greater the number above 1.00, the more sprints are favoured; the smaller the number below 1.00, the more longer races are favoured. For example, Andrew Balding won 1.35 times as often with his five- to six-furlong juvenile non-handicappers as he did with his seven furlong to mile ones; while David Simcock won 0.87 times as frequently (i.e. his 7f-1m non-handicap runners won at a higher strike rate than his 5f-6f equivalents).

 

 

Taking these distance data into account may assist when analysing 2yo non-handicaps races in the future.

There are some trainers who clearly perform better in 2yo non-handicap sprints as compared to 7f-1m races. A handful stand out to me when it comes to having a real edge in sprints compared to longer races – they are Jane Chapple-Hyam, Paul & Oliver Cole, Marcus Tregoning, Owen Burrows, Clive Cox, Ismail Mohammed, Stuart Williams, Jedd O’Keefe and David O’Meara. In terms of an advantage in the longer races there is not too much to go at: perhaps Sir Michael Stoute would be one to note but it is a marginal preference rather than a very strong one.

I hope this article will prove useful when evaluating 2yo races in more detail. My next piece will share more facts and figures relating to trainers and two-year-olds. Until then...

- DR

Trainers and Run Style: Part 2

/in /by

This is the second article in a series in which I will be looking at run style bias, writes Dave Renham. The first article was quite a general piece, although it did drill down into some of the key stats of three trainers – Eric Alston, Mark Johnston and Tom Dascombe. This follow up piece looks at success rates for trainers with front runners including breaking down the data by distance. Once again I have looked at the last eight full calendar years of data (1/1/14 to 31/12/21) including both turf and all weather racing in the UK. The focus is all race types (handicaps and non handicaps) and all distances, races with six or more runners.

Run style is all about the position a horse takes up early on in the race, normally within the first 100-200 yards. There are four basic positions a horse can adopt in a race and these are categorised on the Geegeez website as Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score that is assigned to each section.

Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:

Led – horses that get to the front early or horses that dispute for the early lead often simply called (front runners);

Prominent – horses that race just behind the leader(s);

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack or just behind the mid-point;

Held up – horses that are held up at, or near the back of the field.

Run style is often linked with the word pace because the early pace shown by horses in a race determines their early position. Hence for many the words run style and pace are interchangeable.

On this site you can find plenty of run style data in both the Pace Analyser and the Query Tool. These can be found from the Tools tab anywhere on site. Additionally, each racecard has the last four run style/pace figures for each runner. Inexperienced horses may have less data as they may not have run four times.

Benchmarks: Overall strike rates for run style

To begin with I want to look at the average win percentage strike rates for all trainers / runners in terms of run style. In other words what percentage of front runners / early leaders win on average, what percentage of prominent runners win etc. Here is the breakdown:

 

 

These raw stats illustrate why run style is so important and why it staggers me that some trainers are clearly averse to sending out their runners to try and lead early.

Front runners do best at shorter distances as the graph below shows. (It should be noted that the small number of 6½f races, just 43 in total, were included in the 7f-1m data):

 

 

The advantage to front runners is very strong in sprints (5-6f) and quite potent at races up to a mile, also. The advantage is less pronounced over longer trips but those on the lead still win more often than any other of the overall run styles shown in the first chart (13.91% for leaders over 1m1f+ vs 12.3% for all prominent racers).

Data for hold up horses, as you may expect, shows the reverse. The longer the distance the more chance horses from the back of the field have of coming thorough to win:

 

 

Still, even the best strike rate for hold up horses is lower than those racing midfield overall, much lower than the prominent racer superset, and more than half as low as the early leader overall group. More materially, perhaps, the just better than 8% hit rate for hold up horses in 1m1f+ races compares highly unfavourably with the nigh on 14% rate for early leaders in the same races.

 

Best Front Runner Trainers: All Races

Moving on, let us look at the trainers who had the highest strike rates with their front runners in ALL races of 6+ runners (minimum 80 runs / top 30 trainers):

 

This table really knocks the eye out! There are some seriously impressive figures here with 14 trainers having strike rates of 25% or higher, five of them hitting 30%+.

The Win PL figures show how profitable front runners are, and that trying to find the best way of predicting them is something all punters should want to achieve.

Saeed Bin Suroor tops the list, and combining a front runner of his with a fancied runner is a potent combination as this table further illustrates:

 

 

As the table shows, bin Suroor front running favourites score nearly 54% of the time, while the top four in the betting all have good strike rates and would have produced excellent returns. Remember, all such returns shown on Geegeez are to SP. Using BOG and/or Betfair would see these figures looking even more impressive.

Best Front Runner Trainers: Non-handicap Races

Now let's drill down a level and look at the top trainer strike rates in non-handicap races only (minimum 60 runs / top 20 trainers):

 

 

There are few surprises here, with 18 of this top 20 having already appeared on the ‘All Races top 30’ list. Just David and Nicola Barron and Richard Fahey new names to the party.

 

Best Front Runner Trainers: Handicap Races

Onto the top 20 trainers in terms of front running strike rates in handicaps only (minimum 70 runs) and the key players are as follows:

 

 

Here we see slightly lower strike rates, but this is to be expected in handicaps where field size is generally larger (9.85 runners versus 9.26 runners in non-handicaps during the study window).

This time, there are some new names to be aware of - Chris Wall, John O’Shea, Malcolm Saunders, Julie Camacho, Stuart Kittow, Ismael Mohammad and the Coles father and son team (research based on father, Paul Cole, only).

 

Best Front Runner Trainers: By Race Distance

In this next section, we are going to look at different race distances; specifically, the top 10 front running trainers in terms of win strike rate in each division:

5f / 6f races

Simon Crisford, now training with his son, Ed, is the king of front-running sprinters, his speedballs that go forward immediately winning a whopping 40% of the time. Crisford is one of the more active trainers at the breeze up sales and tends to specialise in two-year-olds generally; perhaps that early education for his runners is a material component. Regardless, many of them clearly know their job from the starting stalls.

Crisford used to be racing manager for Godolphin, and the next three entries in this table are all Godolphin trainers, two of them on the payroll plus John (and Thady) Gosden.

 

 

7f / 1m races

Those familiar names appear again when the race distance ramps up a touch, though there are interlopers in the top five now. Sharing top honours with Messrs bin Suroor and Appleby, C. is William Haggas, the trio all winning at this range with around 39% of their front runners.

 

 

1m1f or longer races

As we get towards the longer distance races, the strike rates curtail somewhat - to be expected based on the overall data I shared in my introduction; and yet Saeed bin Suroor still managed to achieve a better than one-in-three win rate with early leaders in races of nine furlongs-plus. He's well clear of the wily Sir Mark Prescott and the quietly excellent David Menuisier.

 

 

Front Runner Trainer/Jockey combinations

As well as how a trainer likes his horses to be ridden, a key consideration must be the actual rider!

Here, I have collated a list of the top 50 trainer / jockey combos with front runners. For this table I have not added profit/loss data (minimum 40 races), though the A/E column may be used as a proxy (where a number above 1 implies future potential profitability).

 

As you might expect, there are some very strong stats here with many of the very top trainers and jockeys combining. However, perhaps of more interest are a few combinations that may have sailed under the radar, such as Channon and Bishop, Osborne and Currie, Quinn and Hart, Griffiths and Allan, Midgeley and Lee to name but five. Feel free to do your own sleuthing in the table above!

Front Runner Trainers: Led Win Rate compared with Held Up Win Rate

To finish, I would like to compare individual trainer strike rates for their front runners with the percentages for their hold up horses. Earlier in the piece we saw the average win percentage for front runners was 17.02% between 2014 and 2021 in 6+ runner flat races, while for hold up horses it was just 7.16%.

The aim of this exercise, then, is to create a 'led to held up ratio' (L:H for short) using individual trainer percentages. So, for example and using the overall figures, I divide the led percentage of 17.02 by the held up percentage of 7.16 to create the benchmark trainer L:H ratio of 2.38. From there, we can see which trainers differ markedly from the average figure.

Trainers with a high 'led to held up ratio'

This first table shows those trainers with a much higher L:H ratio. I have also included both win percentages (SR%) to aid the comparison:

 

 

Adrian Nicholls tops the list mainly due to his dreadful record with hold up horses – just 1 of the 102 such runners have won. It is also worth noting that Nicholls has a 14.3% strike rate with prominent racers which, considering his overall record, is a real stand out figure.

Phillip Makin’s stats are interesting as he has saddled 21 winners from 84 front runners (25%); compare this with his record with the other three run styles combined which has seen 31 wins from 648 runners for a strike rate of only 4.8%. It might be worth scouring the daily racecards to find potential front runners from the Makin yard.

I also will keep an eye out for other potential front runners from the following stables - Jedd O’Keeffe, Sir Mark Prescott, William Stone, Staurt Kittow, Richard Hughes, John Quinn and Karl Burke.

Trainers with a low 'led to held up ratio'

Let’s now look at the trainers with the lowest L:H ratios:

 

 

One trainer worth mentioning here is Lucy Wadham. Her flat race win strike rate across all run style categories is remarkably even:

 

 

Not many trainers whose overall SR% exceeds 10% have figures like this.

*

There is plenty to digest in this article and I hope it has given you plenty of food for thought. The next piece in the series will look at run style data for two-year-olds. Until then, and as always, thanks for reading.

- DR

Monday Musings: Charlie’s Guineas Hat-Trick

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He might have got the 2,000 Guineas the wrong way round for UK punters, but Native Trail’s defeat by stable-mate Coroebus left the way clear for the vanquished Newmarket favourite to gain his own piece of Classic hardware at The Curragh on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford.

In between, of course, Charlie Appleby, who trains both colts for Godolphin, also stopped off in France. There, he saddled Modern Games, the third of his elite three-year-old milers, to annex the Poule d’Essai Des Poulains and become the first trainer to win all three one-mile colts’ Classics in the same season.

Each is very talented and while for a time it looked as though Native Trail might have to be fully extended in the Irish “2,000”, he was well on top, going away steadily, at the finish. He beat two longshots, Sheila Lavery’s New Energy, almost two lengths behind, and Imperial Fighter (28/1), who was three-quarters of a length further back in third for Andrew Balding.

One trainer who would have been heartened by the result was William Knight, who went into the 2,000 at his home course of Newmarket with high hopes for the previously unbeaten Checkandchallenge. His colt made his move at the same time as William Buick on Native Trail – on the opposite (stands) side of the course to Coroebus – and got squeezed out by him and then hampered as he dropped into the pursuing pack.

He had beaten Imperial Fighter previously at Newcastle and Saturday’s result would have encouraged Knight in advance of Checkandchallenge’s likely target of the Jersey Stakes over a furlong shorter at Royal Ascot.

Appleby has only the three horses entered in the St James’s Palace Stakes on June 14, the first day of Royal Ascot, and the Newmarket 2,000 Guineas winner is usually the prime contender for that Group 1 prize for the colts. With the other pair running (and winning) more recently, one would expect Coroebus to be the one to take his chance.

No doubt their trainer will have more than a passing interest in the meeting’s opening contest where Baaeed transports his unbeaten record to the Queen Anne Stakes for trainer William Haggas and owner, the Shadwell Estate Company. Interviewed during a string of winners from his stable earlier in the week, Haggas, quite realistically talking about his present form and how that will go forward to the biggest meetings, simply said: “They might not be in that form then!”

Saturday proved a rare blank but a Group 1 international double yesterday with Alenquer in the Tattersalls Gold Cup on The Curragh and Maljoom in the Mehl-Mulhens-Rennen (German 2,000 Guineas) in Cologne brought his tally over the past fortnight to 17 winners.

This was a third success in a row for the unbeaten Maljoom, who made his debut only two months ago. The unbeaten Caravaggio colt may carry Ahmed Al-Maktoum’s colours in the St James’s Palace Stakes.

I enjoyed a nice chat during the sales at Newmarket earlier this year with Dermot Weld, one of the very senior Irish trainers but still one to target the big prizes over jumps as well as on the flat. Yesterday, in the Irish 1,000 Guineas, his filly Homeless Songs sprinted away from the Aidan O’Brien pair Tuesday, the favourite, and Concert Hall, winning by five-and-a-half lengths with the rest trailing way behind.

As the field approached the last two furlongs, Chris Hayes on the Weld filly could be seen coasting along on the outside and the daughter of Frankel, out of a Dubawi mare, accelerated from there and won pulling the proverbial cart.

Whatever preconceptions might be held by connections of Emily Upjohn, they will not be reassured unless Dermot decides not to send his filly to Epsom. Here was a performance to match that of Love in the same Classic race two years earlier although, to be fair, Love had already won the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket.

Love clearly made spectacular progress from two to three and Homeless Songs is making similar strides. Seven weeks ago she beat Agartha, a filly she also overcame when making a winning debut last year, by a length. Yesterday, the margin to the fifth-placed Joseph O’Brien filly was more than six lengths.

Love of course won by nine lengths at Epsom and last year’s Ballydoyle winner Snowfall extended that to a record 16 lengths. It would need her owners, the Moyglare Stud Farm, to fork out the supplementary fee to allow her to run. Her near-at-hand entries are the seven-furlong Ballychorus Stakes on June 4 and the Coronation Stakes over a mile at Royal Ascot.

Dermot seems to be treating her as a miler, but the sign that that might be a moving feast is suggested by later entries in the ten-furlong Pretty Polly and eventually at last over a mile-and-a-half in the Irish Oaks.

There was never a moment to question the veracity of Homeless Songs’ victory but there was plenty of questioning of the York stewards on Saturday when they allowed Believe In Love to keep the Group 3 Bronte Stakes after she weaved across causing interference to a couple of her rivals.

Inside the last two furlongs, Believe In Love, who at that point was on the inside of the whole field in the middle of the wide expanse of York, started to edge to her right. Admittedly Ray Dawson had his whip in his right hand, but when his mount continued to veer over, she was causing considerable discomfort to Ed Walker’s Glenartney who was carried all the way to right under the stands rails.

 

The measure of the stewards’ disapproval of Dawson’s ride – he didn’t take any corrective measure, say, stopping using his whip and grabbing hold of his mount’s reins to try to arrest the drift – was the eight-day ban he received.

Because the winning margin over strong-finishing runner-up Urban Artist was just over a length, the verdict was allowed to stand, but Believe In Love’s errant course gave Glenartney, who did well in the circumstances to finish third, no chance to win the race so badly was she discomfited.

Both Walker and Urban Artist’s trainer Hughie Morrison were considering appealing the result – and with £51k rather than £19k for second and £9k for third at stake, you can understand their irritation, not least with the kudos of a Group 3 win on the board for an older staying filly being denied them.

This rule of thumb whereby any interference in the case of a win of more than a neck is not normally reversed is like many issues in racing, a flawed convention. I still would prefer in the case of a horse badly interfered with by another, the offender should be placed behind the horse to which it caused that interference.

If that means, as in this case, the runner-up getting the prize, too bad. Without the ground towards the rails where she raced being badly compromised by the antics of the winner, Urban Artist could have won the race judged on how she finished once off the rail and getting a little clear running room for the last half furlong.

*

When Torquator Tasso won last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, it woke up many people to the talents of German horses and horsemen. The five-year-old is among the entries for this year’s Arc – yes, they’re out already! He will begin his season with runs at Baden-Baden a week today and then at Hamburg during the weekend of the German Derby according to his trainer, Marcel Weiss.

Meanwhile, yesterday in Rome at the Cappannelle, another talented German trainer, Markus Klug, sent Ardakan, a son of Reliable Man, to win the Derby Italiano and a prize of £244k. There was no English challenge for a race which in the past was always a target for horses perceived to be just short of winning at Epsom. Maybe we’ll be seeing him over here later in the year, or perhaps supplemented for the Arc.

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Ryan, and Raiding Parties

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“It’s a long way to Tipperary”, the first world war British army recruits used to sing as they trudged along the blasted fields of France, writes Tony Stafford. More than a century later, Ryan Moore fitted in an afternoon there sandwiched in between two successful days in Surrey, with a winner apiece at Epsom and Sandown Park.

Tipperary also provided a victory for Aidan O’Brien on Thursday but when the private jet touched down for its second Irish hop for Navan on Saturday, the serious business began. It is, after all, Guineas week – yes April 30th rather than the first Saturday in May - and the barely started flat-race season will be two-fifths of the way through the 2022 Classic races by May Day.

If we needed a sign that O’Brien senior, like his main adversary for the first Classic, Charlie Appleby, has his team in form, then Navan would tell us. Before the meeting Ryan told a mutual friend that all the maidens would run well.

In the event Ryan got on three of O’Brien’s five winners, Aidan matching stay-at-home Paul Nicholls’ tally on the final day of yet another victorious jumps championship at Sandown. Understandably, Nicholls preferred saving his best horses for the two four-runner and one five-runner highly-priced (if not as highly-prized as the swollen jumps pattern would wish) contests largely free from Irish interference. *Note: If you would like a detailed, reasoned evocation of the negative effect on the sport of the ever-growing jumps pattern, read editor Matt Bisogno’s highly informed piece on the subject.

Where the Irish did challenge, in the £90k to the winner Bet365 Gold Cup (nee Whitbread), they mopped up the prize, via 16/1 shot Hewick, trained by Shark Hanlon. Why he, of the flaming ginger hair, should be called “Shark” remains a mystery to me.

Indeed why he alone should have that designation when so many of his compatriots make an equally skilled job of matching and bettering his exploits by turning equine base metal into gold is probably a case for the Monopolies Commission, assuming of course that his nickname was acquired from his training days. But then it sometimes feels like there are other aspects of Irish stables’ domination of the major British jumps prizes every season that need referring to that body. All else seems to be failing as this year’s early false dawn at Cheltenham soon reverted to the usual bloodbath for the home team.

As a domestic aperitif to their top teams’ coming over at the weekend to Newmarket, there is the small matter of Punchestown, five days starting tomorrow and concluding on the day the 2,000 Guineas welcomes Luxembourg from the Coolmore boys to challenge the two prime Godolphin candidates, red-hot favourite Native Trail and market second-best, Coroebus.

Coroebus’ style had many admirers on the day he and Native Trail both won their 2021 finales, the favourite in the Dewhurst and the back-up in a lesser race.

But Native Trail is the only unbeaten colt of the pair, a distinction shared by Luxembourg and just two others from the 24 that stood their ground before the field is whittled down once more at noon today. I dealt with the case of William Knight’s Checkandchallenge, winner of a deep race at Newcastle last weekend. Coincidentally the other unbeaten colt is also trained in Newmarket, in his case by David Simcock. He is Light Infantry, twice a winner last year, and like Checkandchallenge, a son of the deceased Fast Company.

At the time he was in training as a juvenile with Brian Meehan, Fast Company showed many of the attributes of a potential Classic winner, but after an excellent half-length second in the 2007 Dewhurst behind the following year’s Derby winner, New Approach, he never raced again.

I was a regular on Thursday work mornings at Manton in those days and it was a great disappointment to Brian when Fast Company was sold to Godolphin and sent to be trained by Saeed bin Suroor. If either of these relative longshots wins on Saturday it will be a long-awaited accolade for a horse that had been under-valued for all his stud career despite being in the care of Darley throughout.

In the manner of such things, now Fast Company’s son Checkandchallenge has inevitably been attracting interest from people who could more easily shrug off the disappointment of a below-expectation run in the race – be that fourth or eighth as anything better would be a triumph - than Mr Hetherton whose colours he has carried hitherto.

I recall a last-minute pre-Derby sale by Karl Burke around a decade ago that probably made all the difference financially to his training career which at the time looked to be stalling or probably worse. I hope this very smart, sweet-travelling colt does his owner (whoever he may be on the day) and his talented trainer proud.

I make no apology for interjecting here on the Nicholls plans for Punchestown this year which are miserly in the extreme. Nicholls has never been as enthusiastic a Punchestown challenger as Nicky Henderson – I travelled to see Punjabi at the meeting four years in a row for two wins, a nose second and a pulled up (wind).

At time of writing on Sunday afternoon, Clan Des Obeaux, the impressive Aintree winner, is ranged alongside Allaho, Minella Indo, Galvin and Al Boum Photo in Wednesday’s Punchestown Gold Cup. He is a 3-1 shot, a short-enough price for all the domination of Aintree if that quartet turns up.

The only other possible for the UK jumps champ is Monmiral, slated to take on the two wonderful mares Honeysuckle and Epatante, the latter another Aintree winner, in her case over further. With around €160K to the winner in each of a dozen Grade 1 races over the five days, you would think sending a horse with place chances might be worth the risk even for cautious Paul.

Yet tomorrow’s card, worth in all €735k, hasn’t attracted a single English, Welsh or Scottish challenger. It will be great to watch on Racing TV all week but with the wistful thought that surely things should be different.

Back in the Guineas, Camelot, by Montjeu rather than the more influential Galileo (both sons of Sadler’s Wells) but hardly his inferior in terms of producing Derby winners, is Luxembourg’s sire.

When asked about his abilities, Aidan O’Brien said he has superior speed to Camelot, a horse that just saw off French Fifteen in an epic battle for the 2,000 Guineas ten years ago. He followed up in the Derby and the much-sought third leg of the Triple Crown was denied O’Brien and son Joseph when Camelot lost the St Leger by three-quarters of a length to Encke, a horse trained by the subsequently disgraced Mahmood Al Zarooni for Godolphin.

That was Camelot’s first defeat after five successive wins and prevented the first English Triple Crown since Nijinsky graced the 1970 season for an earlier O’Brien – the revered Vincent.

It's always great when the champion two-year-old gravitates to winning the 2,000 Guineas and after his bloodless Craven Stakes return that is entirely possible. Charlie has the horse with the form, but Luxembourg has the Coolmore badge all over him, not just on the sire’s side, but the dam is by Danehill Dancer, a sprinter that ran in Michael Tabor’s colours but far exceeded his decent racing ability when sent to stud.

The mare Attire provides another major link to the glorious past of Ballydoyle. Ben Sangster, her owner-breeder, is of course a son of the late Robert Sangster whose inheritance from his Vernons Pools-owning father funded the domination of the international bloodstock market in the 1980’s and 90’s. Along with Vincent’s supreme training skills and the business acumen and animal husbandry of Vincent’s son-in-law, John Magnier, they were an unbeatable partnership for more than two decades.

I’m with Luxembourg to prove on Saturday that blood is thicker than form lines and take him and Ryan, not to mention Aidan and the Coolmore team, to beat Native Trail with the underdog Checkandchallenge coming from the pack late on to clinch third. Easy, really, this flat racing.

I have loved the 2021-22 jumps season as my little daily job editing fromthestables.com which involves sharing the thoughts of around 15 trainers, ended with a nice win in the William Hill Radio Naps table. The 2022 summer table started yesterday and we were off to a flier when Rogue Millennium won for Tom Clover at 9/2. Only seven months to go!

- TS

Racing Systems: Flat Trainers, Part 2

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In my last piece I looked at trainer based systems in flat racing (turf and all weather combined), writes Dave Renham. I will be revisiting the same idea in this article and in one more that follows next week. As before I have analysed UK data from January 1st 2009 to December 31st 2021 with all profits quoted to Betfair Starting Price.

In terms of the systems discussed here, my plan is to provide some facts and figures from which we may make an informed choice. Systems can be flexible; nobody is ‘forcing’ us into backing every selection!

The first trainer offering this week is based on an idea that I shared last time with a different trainer. Then it was Roger Varian; this time it's...

Saeed Bin Suroor – Six month system

Saeed Bin Suroor somewhat exploded onto the racing scene with the Godolphin outfit in the mid-1990's. He had won four UK trainer titles by 2004 and looked unstoppable. As the years have passed, however, his success in Group races has diminished; nevertheless, he still regularly hits a strike rate of over 20% (all races) in Britain. In fact, since 2009, in ten of the 13 seasons bin Suroor has achieved this. Overall his strike rate is an impressive 22% and backing all his runners to BSP would have yielded a loss of only around 3p in the £.

That is a fairly good base therefore to find a profitable system. Here are the rules I have used:

  1. Flat racing (Turf / All weather)
  2. Trainer – Saeed Bin Suroor
  3. 180 days or more since last run
  4. SP 10/1 or less

Let us have a look at how this system has fared since 2009:

 

 

These are a very solid set of figures comprising an impressive strike rate, good profits, and a healthy return on investment. His overall results are quite similar to the Roger Varian equivalent angle, but bin Suroor has a slightly stronger bottom line with returns equating to an extra 3p in the £.

For the record, all his horses priced exactly 10/1 lost (17 in total) but I was not going to change the SP cap just to improve his results. As stated in previous articles, back-fitting is to be avoided at all costs if you want to have any confidence in your research.

The chart below shows the annual breakdown using profit figures to £1 level stakes.

 

bin Suroor has enjoyed ten winning years out of 13 and, importantly, shows excellent year to year consistency. The counter, however, is that two of the last four seasons have ended up in the negative. 2020 was the worst but, as I have mentioned before in other articles, we have to be a bit wary about 2020 data due to COVID and the truncated flat season that ensued. 2018 saw the Godolphin trainer hit the post several times including a spell when he had four seconds from four starters so he could easily have posted a small profit that year. He certainly bounced back in 2021 producing returns of 62p in the £.

Another barometer of consistency is when we look at his results across different classes. He has made a profit at every single level:

 

 

His Class 2 results are weaker, but he is still in profit; only two runners raced in Class 6 company but he still has sneaked into profit there, too. Saeed Bin Suroor is still a trainer to have on your side and this system looks very promising.

Roger Charlton (& Harry Charlton) – 2yo system

Roger Charlton trains in my neck of the woods in Wiltshire and has enjoyed good success since he started in 1990. He served his apprenticeship under Jeremy Tree for 12 years. That was a stable that contained such greats as Rainbow Quest and Danehill. Indeed, in Charlton's first season in charge in 1990, he won the French Derby with Sanglamore and, less than a week later, he had landed the English Derby with Quest For Fame. It's only downhill from there! Nowadays, he is formally assisted by his son Harry, the pair sharing the licence.

When you look at Charlton’s overall record (all UK races) going back to 2009 he has been the model of consistency.

 

 

His strike rate has been above 16% in all but two years and, even then, the lower returns were still a highly acceptable 14.6% and 15.6%.

The Charlton stable has done particularly well with their 2yos in non-handicaps. Hence the system to share reads:

1. Flat racing (Turf / All weather)
2. Trainer – Roger Charlton
3. 2yos in non-handicaps

Here are the system results:

 

 

An impressive set of numbers here, with returns close to 30p in the £, and a solid strike rate considering they are juveniles. Onto the yearly breakdown by profit / loss to £1 level stakes at BSP:

 

 

There have effectively been four break-even years, two losing and seven winning years. 2017 produced just over 40% of the overall profits but even without this outlier year the figures look solid. Crucially, there have been no really bad years at all, his worst - in 2016 - losing just £6.29 to £1 level stakes.

When looking at Charlton runners in more detail, the best returns have come from debutants and those having their second career start. These runners have also made up nearly 80% of all his starters, suggesting the yard does not over-race their young horses. Males and females have both done well; males have returned 33p in the £, females 25p in the £.

If you wanted to tweak the system to give a higher strike rate and even greater consistency then you may wish to consider a price cap. As we know price caps can be tricky to implement at times, but Charlton's 2yo non-handicap starters sent off 3/1 or shorter have produced the following results:

 

 

These are similar returns to the original system but provide players with a slightly smoother ride due to the much improved strike rate. Also, there are no big priced winners skewing the results.

Working with a higher price cap, then if we use the same one as the Bin Suroor and Varian systems, 10/1 or less, the results still look good:

 

 

The Charlton system in its raw form is not one I would use blindly as personally my betting portfolio does not involve many two-year-old bets. However, I would not put anyone off using it, with or without price cap considerations.

Charlie Appleby – 3yo system

Charlie Appleby is, like Saeed bin Suroor, a trainer who operates under the Godolphin flag. He was appointed by the stable in July 2013 so the data crunched starts from then rather than 2009. His strike rate in ALL races has been an impressive 24% and in four of the last five years that win rate has exceeded 28%. The system I wish to share is as simple as it gets:

1. Flat racing (Turf / All weather)
2. Trainer – Charlie Appleby
3. 3yos

There have been nearly 1500 qualifiers as you can see below. This is a good chunk of data:

 

 

This system has produced very modest returns on investment of just under 3p in the £ but, considering its simplicity and Appleby's high profile, a blind profit is still mightily impressive. The graph below shows the yearly Return on Investment % to BSP. I am using ROI% due to the bigger sample size:

 

 

There have been five winning years and four losing losing ones. The overall performance is stronger since 2016, which is a positive (profit of £110.16 and returns of 13p in the £ from 2016 to 2021). Also there have been no really big-priced winners that have skewed the stats.

I see this system as an excellent starting point, with system qualifiers worth further scrutiny from a form reading perspective. Here are a few more stats / facts about Appleby three-year-olds that may help with that process:

1. Appleby has three jockeys he uses regularly – William Buick, James Doyle and Adam Kirby. Two of the three have made blind profits as the table below shows:

 

 

Combining the three would have given a profit of £121.04 with returns close to 14p in the £. Decent A/E values for all three riders add to confidence, so when one of these jockeys is booked I would see it as a plus.

2. I touched briefly on the fact he had no big priced winners previously. To give the meat on the bones, any horse that started bigger than 16/1 SP has lost. Charlie Appleby is 0 from 59 with such horses.

3. His male runners have outperformed female runners from a strike rate and profit perspective: a win strike rate of 26.2% for males and 21.4% for females, with correlating placed strike rates of 51.6% for males and 42.5% for females. Looking at returns we see males making a profit of 8p for every £ bet, whereas females have lost just over 12p in the £.

4. Horses that were odds on last time out have performed very well with 56 wins from 168 runners (SR 33.3%) for a profit of £47.90 (ROI +28.5%).

Sir Mark Prescott – Low Grade 3yo handicap system

Sir Mark Prescott is still going strong aged 74, but that might mean any Prescott system is on borrowed time. The wily baronet has always done well with 3yos in handicaps and this system exploits that fact. Sir Mark has made a decent overall profit with ALL 3yo handicappers since 2009 (£198.89 to £1 level stakes with an ROI of 15.1%), but he seems to excel when tackling lower class races. Hence the system reads:

1. Flat racing (Turf / All weather)
2. Trainer – Sir Mark Prescott
3. 3yo's in handicap races
4. Class 6 or 7 (NB. Just one qualifying Class 7 race, so essentially Class 6)

The results are shown in the table:

 

 

Those are some very strong looking figures, with a win rate close to 1 in 3 and returns of a whopping 41p in the £. The annual breakdown by profit to £1 level stakes to BSP is shown below:

 

 

There have been nine winning years, one break even (a 51p profit in 2019), and three losing years with those three having each seen only very small losses (less than £6 each time). Last year (2021) saw a small reverse, but Prescott had several near misses including placed runners at BSP prices of 12.7, 22.0, 15.0 and 12.5. If just one of those had won it would have been another profitable year.

The consistency can also be seen when we break the results into time of year. Splitting the years into quarters we get:

 

There were not many qualifiers in the first three months of the year but still a good profit and a remarkable ROI. Indeed, the numbers are very solid across the board with positive A/E values as well. All in all I do not think there is any need to modify this system - it's not broken, so let's not try to fix it - although, again, exactly if/how you deploy it comes down to personal preference.

*

So, four more systems for your consideration. I'll have another quartet to share next week in the final part of this mini-series. If there are any trainer-based systems you would like me to look into, do leave a comment below.

- DR

Monday Musings: Williams truly a man for all seasons

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The Dubai Carnival 2022 has crept up on me, but I had a quiet day at home on Friday and had a good look as William Buick and Charlie Appleby dominated their home meeting with a hat-trick in the last three of six at Meydan, writes Tony Stafford. They cleaned up with Lazuli, 8-11 in a Group 2 sprint; Manobo, 4-9 in a Group 3 over 14 furlongs; and a “handicap” where Valiant Prince bolted home at 13-8 with stones seemingly to spare in completing the set.

The Racing UK coverage for Dubai has never been over-critical of the hosts but the way Angus McNee and Rishi Persad over-gushed after Manobo’s undoubtedly impressive performance in the 89k to the winner Nad Al Sheba Trophy, at the exclusion of all others in the 15-horse field, was an exercise in stating the obvious.

Here was a horse unbeaten in four runs in Europe, starting when a 5-1 scorer under Adam Kirby at Newbury in May – from Mojo Star whose next outing was when runner-up to Charlie’s Adayar in the Derby. He followed up the next month with Buick in the saddle, emphatically by six lengths at 4-11 at Kempton.

Charlie then gave him a break before moving him up in grade, collecting a Listed race at Saint-Cloud at 7-10 by ten lengths with James Doyle riding in September. Doyle again had the mount, and 7-10 was also the price when he out-pointed fellow Appleby three-year-old Kemari, the Queen’s Vase winner from Royal Ascot, in the Group 2 Prix Chaudenay at Longchamp’s Arc meeting.

Over-qualified to a degree then for a ballast-filled race nominally a notch lower, actually rather more so. Thus it was hardly unexpected when he drew away easily to make it five from five given his rating of 114. The winning margin was almost six lengths. A second Godolphin runner, Global Heat ridden by Frankie Dettori for Saeed Bin Suroor, was third. He was just bettered for second favouritism by the regular Group performer Rodrigo Diaz, trained by David Simcock, who finished a modest sixth.

Totally unnoticed, or if he was, never mentioned in all the time I waited for it, were the identities of the other money-earners.  Even after they came back from the domestic action for the next Meydan race, Rishi was revealing: “We’ve been talking about Manobo the whole time!” I’ve no doubt they were.

Anyway I’d like to keep you in suspense for a little while longer. On the day of Manobo’s Newbury debut, a six-year-old gelding fresh from the UAE where he had been trained for all of his 14 career starts, none successful, lined up in one of the handicaps at Newbury with an opening UK rating of 70.

I remember looking on the morning of the race thinking that was stern enough especially when taking it in the context of a £6k (30k AED) sale price out of Doug Watson’s stable more than two years earlier.

The horse was called East Asia, the new trainer Ian Williams and his owner Sayed Hashish, a businessman in Dubai, wanted to give him a chance in the UK. Partnered by Richard Kingscote, the 16-1 chance shot clear two from home in the mile-and-a-half mile handicap and won by almost five lengths.

Stepped up in trip for his next two races at Goodwood, Williams turned to William Buick and, riding him with great confidence, he won twice more, comfortably each time as his turf rating rose.

Buick was not employed in the immediate aftermath with the obvious difficulty of timing the races with his Godolphin commitments and East Asia had a relatively quiet spell. Then, coming to the last rites of the turf season, Buick became available for a race at Nottingham and normal service resumed. All that remained was a tilt at the November Handicap where Buick was otherwise engaged riding a double at the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar; so Kingscote stepped back in.

This time there was no happy ending: East Asia, held up a long way back, hated the cloying mud of Town Moor and finished just below halfway. That left him with a mark of 90 and anyone who has ever sent a horse out to the Carnival with a rating as low as that will know how difficult it can be to get into a race.

But Sayed Hashish is an optimistic chap and fuelled by the four wins from nine starts his UK trainer had supplied him from the previous non-winner in 14, he decided to take the risk. Balloted out in the early weeks, Williams found the answer with Friday’s Group 3, in which East Asia had the lowest rating of all.

He also gave the same entry to a second stable runner, Enemy, there on his second run since being bought in November in France for €92k out of the stable of Francis Graffard, the Aga Khan’s new principal trainer.  Enemy had been running over a mile and a furlong or less in France and started at that trip a week earlier. He finished unplaced, albeit barely five lengths behind Lord Glitters.

Williams told me he thought he would stay and that the much-increased trip would suit but he too was among the lowest-rated in the line-up. The pair, understandably both 66-1 shots, turned for home in the last trio with Enemy right at the back. They both took a rails course coming home and if East Asia had not been slightly blocking his stablemate at a crucial stage, according to Williams: “They might have finished the other way around.”

Anyway East Asia stayed on for second under Richard Mullen, greatly out-running his rating (24lb less than the winner) with Enemy and Andrea Atzeni an eye-catchingly closing fourth. In case you hadn’t noticed, Racing TV – and, don’t worry, I still prefer your coverage to ITV, except of course when they show Ascot or Doncaster on a Saturday – this was a monumental training performance.

Ian tells me he thinks East Asia, who collected almost 30k for those efforts might now be getting an invitation to the Gold Cup on Dubai World Cup Day. No wonder Mr Hashish is telling his friends what to do with their old handicappers. Meanwhile, Enemy’s new owners, Tracey Bell and Caroline Lyons, have the prospect of an exciting season ahead with their five-year-old.

It might seem much longer ago, but it was as recently as the autumn of 2017 that Williams encouraged Dr Marwan Koukash to buy the apparently fully-exposed Magic Circle from Ralph Beckett towards the end of his five-year-old season. Few trainers would expect to induce much improvement from that trainer’s skilled handling but, for 70,000gns, Williams had a project.

First up, six months later, it was the doctor’s Holy Grail, the Chester Cup, and with Fran Berry in the saddle Magic Circle ran out a six-length winner from Hughie Morrison’s Fun Mac. The Group 2 Henry II Stakes at Sandown came next and it was another six-length romp for the six-year-old, this time excellent yardstick Red Verdon took second for Ed Dunlop.

Immediately after (or probably knowing the connections, sometime before) the plan was hatched to go for the Melbourne Cup.

Nine years previously, a much cheaper buy, Munsef, led out unsold at £11k from Dandy Nicholls, was then bought privately as a seven-year-old on May 20th 2009 and, by late summer, within weeks he had won three and finished second twice including in a Swedish Group 3. That resulted in a Melbourne Cup qualifying mark and so, that November as a 50-1 chance, he carried the Koukash silks to a close up 11th of 23.

Contrastingly, for most of the summer of 2018, Magic Circle was the favourite for Australia’s most coveted race, but on the day at Flemington he started a point longer at 6-1 to Aidan O’Brien’s 5-1 market leader Yukatan.

The winner this time was the Appleby-trained Cross Counter, a top-class three-year-old who just held off Hughie ‘s Marmelo, now a stallion, and Charlie Fellowes’ Melbourne Cup regular – until last year – Prince Of Arran.  Magic Circle finished in the back third having faded over the last two furlongs, but the dream, as with East Asia for his owner, had been more than fulfilled.

As he returns to his yard near Birmingham, this trainer for all seasons and all types of horses, faces one of his biggest ever challenges. Tomorrow he sends out Glen Again for his hurdles debut at Market Rasen in Raymond Tooth’s colours. I’ll be there, so let’s give it a good show!

Williams had a good second with his promising novice chaser Tide Times at Wincanton on Saturday but the highlight for me was the great attempt of Kim Bailey’s 25-1 shot Two For Gold in the Betfair Ascot Chase. If Joseph O’Brien had forgotten to enter J P McManus’ Fakir d’Oudairies, Two For Gold would have won. Only one Irish runner all day and inevitably the best prize of the afternoon goes west!

Kim will have been more than delighted with second especially as the novice Does He Know had already spread-eagled the opposition in the Reynoldstown Novices’ Chase. Pre-Irish domination, that was the race I always liked to see my three-mile Cheltenham novice chase fancies win, but nowadays pretty much all the contenders lurk over there.

Before you look round, Cheltenham will have come and gone, but one possible entry that I am looking forward to is Poetic Music who might tackle the big Irish boys in the bumper. We know she can fly up the hill so getting a hefty 17lb from the hot Mullins favourite and the rest, anything may be possible for the apple of Sally Randell’s eye!

- TS

Monday Musings: Newmarket Rejuvenation

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I had intended writing copiously 24 hours after my first wholly enjoyable, nay rejuvenating, visit to Newmarket racecourse for two years about a brief conversation of which I was the sole observer, writes Tony Stafford. The conversants were those two genial giants of our sport, Charlie Appleby and Aidan O’Brien, but I will leave that until later.

It was in the evening during a catch-up scan through the Saturday results that I noted the 7.30 p.m. race at Chelmsford was called the Tote.co.uk Now Never Beaten By SP Handicap (Division 1).

I’ve noticed that race title before, marvelling that the object of so much ridicule and indeed suspicion in its Betfred-owned days between 2011 and 2019 had been apparently transformed upon its acquisition and operation by the group formerly known as Alizeti Capital but now UK Tote Group.

Their intention, I remembered reading, was exactly that - to ensure the Tote returns were never to be bettered by SP and to help grow its new version to be of financial benefit to the sport.

In its rubric, Tote Group UK says it is “now owned by a group of racehorse owners and breeders who are passionate about the sport, backed by people who own and train over 1,000 horses worldwide.

“We’re united by a shared desire to secure British racing’s finances for generations to come through a revitalised Tote”. Glowing contributions in that notice in support of UK Tote Group have come from Sir Anthony McCoy, John Gosden, Richard Thompson of Cheveley Park Stud, and the Racehorse Owners Association.

I scrutinised all 36 races run in the UK on Saturday and in 24 of them, including the 7.30 at Chelmsford, SP was better than the returned Tote price about the winner. Course and betting shop punters would not have benefited, but I am reassured that online Tote odds backers will have been, according to the publicity (admittedly confusing) blurb to the tune of a maximum £500 per bet. [The race title referred to tote.co.uk, the online arm of the tote]

The three regular backers I know whom I thought might have been able to confirm this as correct all were unable to do so as they all three to coin a theme “had my account with the Tote closed years ago.” They all habitually try to get a few hundred quid on a horse. One big firm, asked for £500 each way on a horse the other day, offered to take £2.80 each way. Still theirs is a happy slogan and I wish anything that might correct the joke level of prize money in the lower reaches of the sport, a potential blessing. But as my three friends I’m sure would say: “Don’t hold your breath.”

I mentioned Charlie and Aidan’s very amicable chat earlier at Newmarket soon after the Darley Dewhurst Stakes victory of unbeaten Native Trail and the Irishman was glowing in his congratulations to his younger English counterpart.

Three wins on the day had already pushed Appleby past Andrew Balding at the top of the trainers’ championship standings for the first time and Aidan admired both Native Trail and the less exposed Coroebus, easy winner of the Group 2 Autumn Stakes.

Where Native Trail was a breeze-up buy for 210,000gns in the spring, able to make his debut in early July and now was making it a perfect four-for-four, there is no Godolphin blood in him, being by Oasis Dream out of an Observatory mare – Juddmonte all the way.

Coroebus meanwhile is Godolphin through and through: by Dubawi, their version of Coolmore’s great stallion Galileo, out of a mare by Galileo’s first superstar, the unbeaten Teofilo.

O’Brien remarked on both colts’ physicality, to which Appleby replied: “Coroebus is 540 kilos and Native Trail is 545, and that’s as heavy as Adayar who you know is a monster!”  Formidable for two-year-olds you would agree!

The wins brought Appleby some elbow room at the top of the table and with a dearth of major and valuable races to come save next Saturday’s Qatar Champions Day at Ascot and the Vertem Futurity (just over £100k)  at Doncaster the following weekend, opportunities are somewhat polarised.

Aidan told me he plans to run his top juvenile Luxembourg in the Vertem Futurity and expects that outstanding Camolot colt to go first in 2022 for the 2000 Guineas where he will almost certainly encounter Native Trail and Coroebus.

While Appleby has been inching his way up to and past Balding, who has had a season that must have surprised him with more than £4 million already in the satchel, he will be aware that John and Thady Gosden, who started slowly this year, are still in there pitching.

Balding has ten entries for Ascot, but only a couple, both 8-1 shots – Invite in the Fillies and Mares race, and Alcohol Free in the QE II – have better than outside chances. Appleby’s hopes from six entries centre, should he run, on Derby winner Adayar, about whom 3-1 is probably a little tight after his Arc exertions.

But the Gosden ten, with six in the closing Balmoral Handicap - Gosden senior dearly wants to win that race – include four serious darts at the biggest prizes of the day.

Mishriff, saved from the Arc in favour of the Champion Stakes, is 6-4 favourite for the £680k Champion. Palace Pier vies for favouritism with improving Baeed in the £623,000 to the winner QE II. Additionally, Free Wind is 7-2 for the £283,000 Fillies and Mares, and Stradivarius, should he renew hostilities with Trueshan, is second favourite behind that horse in the similarly-endowed Stayers’ race.

The Gosdens lurk around £500,000 behind Appleby and, unless such as Snowfall and maybe something else can edge out Mishriff, or The Revenant, back with a near miss at Longchamp, could possibly again unseat Palace Pier with Baeed’s help. Otherwise it seems a dominant position for a hat-trick for Clarehaven. It looks theirs to lose.

While that stealthy challenge in the trainers’ race has suddenly crystallised, the jockeys’ battle between incumbent Oisin Murphy and his nearest challenger William Buick has been a constant side-show most of this year.

It’s easy to portray this tussle as between Mr Naughty and Mr Squeaky Clean and certainly Oisin Murphy’s second failed breath test, which for the moment merely cost him one day’s riding at Newmarket on Friday, has done nothing for his reputation.

The jockey stressed that the alcohol reading while exceeding the permitted limit for being allowed to ride a racehorse was below that excluding him from driving a car. Great! Only slightly pissed then!

He dominated talk at Newmarket on Saturday, most people saying that for a repeat offence the case should get a proper investigation and the inside story at Newmarket on Saturday was that an inquiry will be held at the BHA today.

A one-day slap on the wrist, if that is all that happens for the offence, seems inappropriate to me. Suppose he hadn’t been tested, thus was free to ride on Friday and had caused danger to other jockeys and their horses. That puts the six-month ban (now ended) for promising apprentice Benoit de la Sayette when he was found in breach of the drug rules back in the spring in some context.

In the end, of course, Murphy was free to ride Buzz in the Cesarewitch and he gave the one-time Hughie Morrison horse a peach of a ride, one befitting of a champion, to make it a third win in the race for Nicky Henderson.

Buzz came to deny Burning Victory and William Buick in the dying strides, maintaining his margin over his rival to eight, when had the result been turned around it would have been only six. Charlie isn’t giving up on his jockey though and plans to run plenty of talented maidens between now and D Day on Saturday. Burning Victory of course was only Mullins’ second string but it would have been a nice result for readers of this column who may have noticed my frequent mentions of the mare in recent weeks.

So we had a seven-year-old winner who hadn’t raced on the Flat for two years beating a mare who had never previously run in a Flat race either in England or Ireland outclassing 30 other stayers. Burning Victory’s defeat and the no show of favourite M C Muldoon stopped a Willie Mullins four-timer in this contest.

Why are jumps trainers so good at winning on the Flat? We’ve known about these two for decades, but another younger member of their profession, an Irishman based in Gloucestershire, is showing similar tendencies.

Until 16-year-old daughter Fern attained that age in the summer, her father Fergal O’Brien was so disinterested in Flat racing that he had only winner from 50 runners in sporadic seasons from 2013 to 2019.

Fern, mentored by Fergal’s assistant and partner Sally Randell, a former star military race rider, won at the first time of asking a couple of days after her birthday and now stands on four wins from eight rides for her father as a lady amateur. His other 16 runners have yielded another four victories, including smart hurdler Gumball making all in a decent staying handicap at York on Saturday and Polish getting home first in a jump jockeys’ Flat race at Goodwood yesterday.

That makes it eight from 24 and a strike rate of 33%, a figure the Gosdens, Balding, William Haggas and the rest would kill for. And none of them has 55 jump winners since the end of April either!

  • TS   

[Belated] Monday Musings: Of Arc and Opel

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Suddenly the Arc is upon us and Charlie Appleby couldn’t have set a more difficult conundrum, writes Tony Stafford. In the blue corner is the Epsom Derby hero Adayar, ridden by stable jockey and championship contender William Buick.

In the red corner the Irish Derby and St Leger winner Hurricane Lane. Both have added Group 1 races since their Derby triumphs, Adayar collecting the King George at Ascot from Mishriff, later conqueror of Sunday’s rival Alenquer and a possibly regressive Love in the Juddmonte International.

In all the appeal of a tussle between the best of Irish females, Love, her better-fancied stable-companion and successor in a triple of Oaks wins, Snowfall, and the early-in-the-week favourite, Tarnawa, the 2021 Arc is as much a feature of two stars we won’t be seeing.

Mishriff, whose race planning you could hardly gripe at, with more than £10 million safely in owner Sheikh A A Faisal’s pocketbook even before the Flat season started in the UK, waits for the Champion Stakes two weeks later, but you have to think he would have been a prime contender had he turned up.

More obviously, given that Tarnawa is as short as she is, the news that St Mark’s Basilica is drawing stumps on his stellar career so misses all of the Arc, Champion Stakes and even the Breeders’ Cup, makes for another unfortunate absentee.

Aidan O’Brien did his job to perfection, winning the Dewhurst last October to make him the champion 2yo in Europe in 2020; then two French Classics, the Poulains and the Jockey Club, to reinforce his appeal to a French breeding industry that is finding its feet on the back of the exploits of St Mark’s Basilica’s sire, Siyouni.

It needed one more win after a breath-taking dismantling of the older globe-trotting pair of Addeybb and a tiring Mishriff in the Eclipse and, when he was unable to go to the Juddmonte, there were those ready to suggest the Mishriff of that day might have beaten him.

So thence to the Irish Champion Stakes and in another small field it was vital he restored the glamour. He edged into a lead in the straight and dealt decisively with another dangerous duo, Tarnawa and multiple Group 1 winner and new Iron Horse, Poetic Flare.

The Irish race did not result in any rise in his official mark of 127, established after the Eclipse, and in the meantime that figure was afforded Adayar by dint of his comfortable defeat of key horse Mishriff (who was conceding 11lb weight-for-age, let us not forget) and a Love fresh from her fifth Group 1 win in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at the Royal meeting.

Adayar was the nominal third string for the Derby, not that you would have known it as his odds tumbled from 40/1 to 16/1 in the closing moments leading up to the race. His near five-length demolition of Mojo Star, with best-fancied Appleby runner Hurricane Lane only third, had Buick wondering how he could have got it so wrong.

Since then the 30-year-old has ridden both colts to four more Group 1 triumphs. Adayar at Ascot did enough to convince Buick he should renew the partnership next weekend even though Hurricane Lane had won the Irish Derby, Grand Prix de Paris and St Leger, the last two in imperious wide-margin style since Epsom.

Mojo Star also had to be content with another second place for Richard Hannon and free-spending football agent Kia Joorabchian in the St Leger. Their colt is 66-1 and, with the horse’s penchant for running on well and the stamina shown at Doncaster, he might be the one to pick up the pieces and nick a place in the extra place markets.

Mishriff is undoubtedly the horse that ties in with most of the big horses in this fabulous contest and another who can be gauged with him is the better of the two Japanese entries as far as world form is concerned, Oisin Murphy’s mount, Chrono Genesis.

With career earnings well past £7 million she is almost in the Mishriff class for prize money and she ran a brilliant race when only a neck adrift of Mishriff in the Sheema Classic at Meydan in late February. That followed an easy win at home with a £2 million prize having got to within three quarters of a length of her country’s even more illustrious mare and great champion, Almond Eye.

Chrono Genesis’ only run since Meydan was in a Group 1 race at Hanshin in midsummer when an easy victory was her sixth in 13 career starts. Oisin has a great record riding Japanese horses and it is worth reminding punters that betting on horses from that country on the Pari-Mutuel on the day would be rather foolish if value is your credo.

One big factor in her favour is that her sire, Bago, won the race as a three-year-old for French-based English trainer Jonathan Pease. She is joined in a double Japanese challenge by recent course winner Deep Bond who saw off Broome on Trials Day by a couple of lengths. He is another possible place contender.

I’ve thought Snowfall would win the Arc, seeing as she has all the allowances, ever since her Epsom cakewalk and it would be to her advantage if the rains came. Her latest unexpected reverse has been treated as an irrelevance by the market but dangerously so. It is hard to see why Roger Varian’s filly, Teona, should be four times the price of her Longchamp victim and her trainer has always had a high regard of her talent.

It is no foregone conclusion that either will match Tarnawa after her excellent run over a shorter trip than ideal last time, splitting the winners of a hatful of 2021 Group 1's. Dermot Weld would love another step back into the big time, but I stay with Snowfall and Ryan Moore and take Adayar and Chrono Genesis to fill the places.

Until last weekend the name Westerberg alongside Coolmore runners has not made for a particularly happy association but within ten minutes on Saturday they clicked twice and the winning pair are respectively 8/1 for the 1,000 Guineas and favourite for the Derby.

Throughout the tenure of John Magnier at Coolmore/ Ballydoyle, initially as a 23-year-old with father-in-law Vincent O’Brien on the back of Robert Sangster’s Vernons pools fortune, through the Tabor/Smith heyday in the first two decades of this century and onward, the need is always for new blood and above all new funding to cope with opposition that owns countries, have fortunes within the bottomless pit of cash of the Saudi Royal family, or is a religious leader backed by wealthy adherents.

The Westerberg name disguises the identity of Opel Cars heir Georg Von Opel but until Saturday his appellation on several of the more expensive sales acquisitions of the past two years has been almost a jinx. One source close to the Coolmore action told me the other day: “I feel sorry for George, he’s such a lovely man, but he never seems to get any luck.”

Whether it was out of superstition or business commitments, Herr Von Opel was not at Newmarket on Saturday and missed an explosive last-to-first performance in his maroon and light blue livery (imagine West ham or Aston Villa) by Tenebrism, on her first start since March.

Her win that day six months ago at Naas had been similarly emphatic, prompting favourite quotes for the Queen Mary at Ascot, however she injured her pelvis struggling through the mud. Aidan worried he had not done enough with her to challenge for the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes first time back, but she answered most emphatically drawing away late in a romp.

A daughter of the already repatriated Caravaggio, to Ashford Stud, she carries all the Scat Daddy speed and with Pivotal on the dam’s side, she will be an interesting contender next year.

Just ten minutes later, George’s, or Westerberg’s, colours were to the fore again atop the similarly once-raced Luxembourg, and with even more significance with the 2022 Classics in mind. Started off at Killarney in a midsummer maiden O’Brien often targets with his potential Derby horses, the trainer sent the son of Camelot to the Curragh’s Beresford Stakes and won that Group 2 in a hack canter.

That made it 11 victories in succession in the race and a 21st in all for O’Brien and, given that history, why even 8-13 was available is a mystery. Luxembourg is free of Galileo blood, being by a son of Montjeu out of a mare by Danehill Dancer – entirely Coolmore breeding and ideal as an outcross for all those Galileo mares that will continue to come on stream for a few years yet. How Georg, not to mention John, Michael and Derrick, would love him to put another notch on the Derby Roll of Honour for the team next year.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Apples of Charlie’s Eye

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I finally made it to Ascot on Saturday, my first visit to a racecourse since the last day of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival, writes Tony Stafford. As I drove the last few miles the excitement was almost making me breathless and I was delighted that by waiting until there was an element of normality, my trip was just as I remembered all those wonderful big-race summer afternoons.

The best part, apart from seeing a great winner of a very good King George, was the thing that I, as a now very senior citizen, always regarded as my private, exclusive club. When you’ve been racing in a sort of professional role you get to know hundreds, probably into the thousands, of people in the same narrow environment.

When loads of them stop to ask, “How are you? Long time, no see!” and variations of those sentiments having been stuck mostly at home for 16 months, it is so energising. I always used to say, “Most people my age probably see half a dozen people a day if they are lucky. I go racing three or four days a week and see maybe an average of a hundred or more that I know.”

And Ascot on Saturday was as normal as it ever was. Bars, restaurants and boxes open and fully extended, the always beautifully attired Ascot crowds basking in the better than predicted weather and fast ground befitting the middle of summer.

One person who didn’t make it was the “You’ve been pinged!” trainer of the brilliant Adayar, Charlie Appleby, who had neglected to do what people increasingly have been doing, removing the app from their phones.

Not too many Derby winners have followed their Epsom success with victory in the same year’s King George. It was more commonplace in the first 50 years of the race’s existence after its inauguration in 1951. But in this century, until Saturday only Galileo, Adayar’s grandsire via Frankel, had managed the double.

Appleby therefore made it four mile and a half Group 1 wins since the beginning of June with his two Frankel colts, the home-bred Adayar and his stablemate Hurricane Lane, the Irish Derby and Grand Prix de Paris hero, bred by Philippa Cooper’s Normandie Stud.

Both horses won maidens in the last part of October, Hurricane Lane on debut and Adayar second time out. Both therefore were far less trumpeted at the beginning of this season when again Hurricane Run started with more precocity, indeed until he finished third to Adayar, the apparent third string at Epsom, he was unbeaten.

Adayar’s juvenile victory came in the Golden Horn Maiden at Nottingham, the race name being awarded to the great Derby winner the year after his Classic triumph. Previously it was known as the Oath Maiden Stakes in honour of the 1999 Derby hero owned by the Thoroughbred Corporation, who won the same maiden to get his career on the go the previous autumn.

I thought I would have a look at Charlie Appleby’s 2021 three-year-old complement courtesy of Horses in Training. Charlie had 70 horses of that age listed at the start of the season, 21 fillies and 49 male horses. Of the 21 fillies, eleven are by Dubawi, also the sire of 27 Appleby colts and geldings. Surprisingly, as many as 12 were already gelded at the start of the campaign and at least a couple more have subsequently experienced the unkindest cut.

Appleby had three colts by Dubawi as major candidates for the 2,000 Guineas: Meydan Classic winner Naval Crown, who beat Master Of The Seas that day; Master Of The Seas himself, who went on to win the Craven Stakes; and One Ruler, runner-up to Mac Swiney in the 2020 Vertem Futurity, also went to the Guineas. Master Of The Seas did best, losing out in a desperate thrust to the line with Poetic Flare and, while that Jim Bolger horse has gone on to run in both the Irish (close third to Mac Swiney) and French (easy winner) Guineas, and then dominated the St James’s Palace Stakes, we are yet to see Master Of The Seas again.

Another Dubawi colt to do well has been Yibir, winner of the Bahrain Trophy at Newmarket’s July meeting, while the geldings Kemari (King Edward VII) and Creative Force (Jersey Stakes) both at Royal Ascot have been to the fore.

It is noticeable that several of the gelded group have been either difficult to train or simply very late developers.

Meanwhile, the five-strong team of Frankel sons have been nothing short of spectacular. It will be of great satisfaction for the organisation that Adayar is out of a Dubawi mare and not an especially talented one.

What of the other three? One, Magical Land, has been gelded. He won the latest of his seven races for Appleby and has an 80 rating. The others have not been sighted this year. Fabrizio, placed as a juvenile, is a non-winner but Dhahabi is an interesting horse I’d love to see reappearing.

At 3.1 million guineas this half-brother to Golden Horn carried plenty of expectations. He won on debut and, last time in the autumn, was third to One Ruler in a Group 3 at Newmarket. Just the five Frankels, then, and I bet Charlie wishes he had a few more. The list of juveniles shows 48 sons and daughters of Dubawi and 11 by Frankel.

For many years the ultra-loyal and ever agreeable Saeed Bin Suroor was the only and then the principal Godolphin trainer. His stable is now increasingly the junior partner with half of the 140-odd complement listed as four years of age or older, and many of these are probably more suited to the structure of racing in Dubai over the winter. Saeed has three Dubawi three-year-old colts and one filly this year, but none by Frankel. The juveniles listed reveal one by each stallion.

How ironic that in the year of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s death in January, the all-conquering owner of Juddmonte Farms never saw the crowning of Frankel, already the greatest racehorse certainly of the past half-century, as a Derby-producing sire.

He will surely progress again from this situation and, now with Galileo also recently deceased, is in position as the obvious inheritor of his sire’s pre-eminence.

The other younger contenders will take time to earn their prestige and it can only be good for racing that a horse that went unbeaten through 14 races has made such a statement at the top end of the sport.

To win his King George, Adayar had to see off the challenge from the tough Mishriff, stepping forward from his comeback third to St Mark’s Basilica in the Eclipse Stakes. His owner, Prince Abdulrahman Abdullah Faisal, was one of the people I’ve known for half a lifetime that greeted me on Saturday. Also, Adayar had to consign Love to her first defeat for 21 months. The concession of so much weight to a younger colt by an older mare – 8lb – is never easy, but her race didn’t go as expected either.

Her pacemaker Broome missed the break and then only gradually moved into the lead. In the straight Love looked poised and then Mishriff tightened her up on the outside as Ryan Moore was beginning to move her into a challenging position. Having to change course, as the Coolmore filly did halfway up the short Ascot straight, is never the recipe for success.

It is fair to say, though, that Adayar would have won whatever. It will be interesting to see how Appleby shuffles his pack. Someone suggested the St Leger. If you wanted to make Adayar a jumps stallion, that’s what you would do. He won’t go anywhere near Town Moor in September. With due deference to the fifth Classic, he will have much bigger fish to fry.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Middle Distance Ranks Are Massing

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Until Wednesday evening in Paris it was all plain sailing for Aidan O’Brien, writes Tony Stafford. He could pick his Group 1 spots for the rest of the year with his team of Classic colts and more plentiful top fillies and wait to see what presumably ineffectual opposition Europe’s other major stables would be able to throw at them.

But then along came Hurricane Lane, only third to lesser-fancied stable-companion Adayar in the Derby at Epsom but subsequently a workmanlike winner in the face of a good late challenge by English-trained Lone Eagle (Martin Meade) in the Irish Derby at The Curragh.

Neither run could have prepared us for the Frankel colt’s storming performance on Bastille Day (14 July) as he ripped away the home team’s barricades <couldn’t help myself> beating the Prix du Jockey Club also-rans with possibly more ease than St Mark’s Basilica had managed a month earlier.

Die-hard traditionalists have already been put in their place in France. In the old days the Jockey Club was 2400 metres (12 furlongs) in line with Epsom and The Curragh and was reduced to its present distance of 2100 metres in 2005.

That move coincided with the moving up to a mile and a half of the great Fête Nationale celebration race on a movable feast of an evening card at Longchamp. The Grand Prix de Paris, until the arrival of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1920, had been the most prestigious and valuable race in France and was run over 3000 metres (15 furlongs), and even 3100 metres for a shorter intervening period.

In 1987, though, it was reduced significantly in distance to 2000 metres (1m2f) and it was at that trip that Saumarez won the 1990 race prior to his victory in the Arc that October. Previously trained to place in the Dee Stakes at Chester by Henry Cecil, Saumarez made Nicolas Clement, who had recently taken over the stable when his father Miguel died, the youngest-ever trainer to win France’s greatest race.

It works for France because, as Hurricane Lane showed so eloquently, a horse could run in and even win either or both the Epsom and Irish Derby, or indeed the Jockey Club, and there would still be time to prepare him for the Grand Prix.

That is just what Charlie Appleby did with such skill and the most notable element of it was how much he had in hand of the William Haggas colt Alenquer whose form with Adayer in the Sandown Classic Trial over ten furlongs in the spring appeared to give him a collateral edge on Hurricane Lane.

Alenquer not only beat Adayer on the Esher slopes but afterwards comfortably won the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot. But he was put in his place as Hurricane Lane stormed <that verb again!> six lengths clear of Wordsworth, first home of the O’Brien trio. It looked at first appraisal a major improvement on The Curragh but closer inspection reveals that Wordsworth had been beaten slightly further in his home Classic.

So where does that leave Adayer? Well, according to a conversation Charlie Appleby had with a friend who visited his luxurious stables in Newmarket before racing on Saturday, Adayer is fancied to run a very strong race as he faces up to last year’s O’Brien Classic superstar, Love, in Saturday’s King George.

The filly has the edge in the market after her comeback win over an inadequate ten furlongs in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot but Appleby, mindful that the weight-for-age scale favours three-year-olds, is by all accounts confident he will do so. Love concedes 8lb to the Derby hero while William Muir and Chris Grassick’s Coronation Cup hero Pyledriver gives him 11lb. Ascot is also the probable target for Lone Eagle.

Like O’Brien, Appleby is a modest man who often deflects praise to the people around him. Indeed as my friend left, Charlie said, “If you couldn’t train horses from here, where could you?”

Guesses that maybe St Mark’s Basilica might step up in distance on Saturday have been scuppered by his trainer’s single-mindedly pointing him towards the Juddmonte International. Those three days in York next month will also feature the next step towards the stars of Snowfall, following in the footprints of Love from a year ago by taking in the Yorkshire Oaks.

By the way, Jim, get my room ready! I’ll see how my first day back racing on Saturday at Ascot goes and then I might take the liberty of giving you a call. Where have I been? Too busy with all this Covid lark, mate, but I have been thinking of you!

However short a price Love was on what was to prove her last run of 2020 after the easy wins in the 1,000 Guineas and Oaks, the latter by nine lengths, 4-9 will be looking a gift if that is available about Snowfall. Could be 1-5!

Many felt the exaggerated superiority, indeed a UK Classic record-winning margin of 16 lengths, could in part be ascribed to the very testing ground at Epsom. Just as many were predicting that on faster ground in Saturday’s Irish Oaks she might go for economy.

Leading two furlongs out under Ryan Moore, delighted to be riding her for only the second time – he was on board for the shock Musidora win at York on May 12 three weeks before Epsom and that Frankie Dettori benefit – she drew away by eight-and-a-half lengths in majestic style.

As we know, the Coolmore boys like all the boxes ticked and the opportunities covered, but I can categorically tell you that they did not expect her to win at York. Even when she did, the beaten horses’ connections were dreaming up reasons why you could not trust the result.

After all she was rated only a modest 90 on the back of her juvenile exploits, the most memorable apart from winning a small maiden race was the mix up when she wore the wrong colour hat when well behind in the Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket last autumn.

After the Epsom and Curragh regal processions there is only one place you would consider for a soft-ground loving but equally comfortable on quicker turf three-year-old filly of her status - the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. It took me a while – having discarded my European Pattern Races 2021 book with hundreds of others in advance of a hoped-for downsizing move – to work out why she had not been one of the dozen O’Brien horses entered for the Arc.

Six older male horses – Mogul, Broome, Armory, Serpentine, Japan and Inisfree (where’s he been for 20 months?) – are supplemented by Love. The five three-year-olds are the colts St Mark’s Basilica, along with domestic Classic flops Bolshoi Ballet, High Definition and hard-working Van Gogh whose dance in four Classics (the UK and Irish Guineas, when third behind Mac Swiney, and French and Irish Derby) brought that one positive result.

That left room for one filly and, considering Santa Barbara took until last week to gain Grade 1 winning honours in the New York Oaks while four of her supposedly inferior female counterparts beat her to it, the evidence is there. They did indeed think she was far and away the best.

At least that was the case until 3.15 p.m. on the afternoon of May 12. The Arc closed at France Galop’s HQ around four-and-three-quarter hours earlier.  Now they have to wait until September 27 to get her in and pay a heavy penalty to do so.

In all, 101 horses made it. I am sure that date is writ large on the Racing Office wall and, if she enjoys another exhibition round back at the Yorkshire track she first consented to tell her trainer and owners how good she is, the supplementary entry will be made. Chances to win the race do not come along very often.

For all his and his owners’ successes in big races around Europe and in the US, the Arc has proved elusive. Two victories, with four-year-olds Dylan Thomas in 2007 and the brilliant filly Found five years ago, leave him still with a blank to fill. No Ballydoyle three-year-old has won the race since the days of Vincent O’Brien, who took the first of his two Arcs with Alleged in 1977. His second win, doubling up for Lester Piggott the year after followed Ballymoss in 1958, showed once again just how tough a race it is to win.

As mentioned, two O’Brien fillies are entered, Love and Santa Barbara. The latter might continue to make up for her earlier limitations in the Nassau Stakes next week but, as we know, a trio of Classic-winning alternatives, Joan Of Arc, Mother Earth and Empress Josephine, are equally qualified to step in and possibly pick up the Goodwood fillies’ Group 1.

Meanwhile Kevin Ryan has been exploiting the early juvenile Group contests in France with Atomic Force. Beaten first time out and gelded before a win in a small race at Hamilton, Ryan took him to Longchamp last month and he won Group 3 Prix du Bois nicely.

Returning yesterday for the Group 2 Prix Robert Papin, he started 2-1 on and bolted up. He will probably return for the Prix Morny at Deauville next month. Having watched that win the Sky Sports Racing team suggested the Nunthorpe might be an option given how much weight juveniles get from their elders. This year though that could be a hot race if newcomers on the Group 1 sprinting scene like Ed Walker’s Starman and Tim Easterby’s flying filly Winter Power turn up.

- TS

Monday Musings: Charlie Gives Maurice the Blues

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Until York next week, there isn’t very much of great moment happening on the racecourses of the United Kingdom, but Sunday in France and Ireland was highly interesting and informative, writes Tony Stafford.

Every year the Prix Maurice De Gheest offers a fascinating mid-season barometer of the relative merits of the classic and older generations. At the same time its 1300-metre (6.5 furlong) straight trip brings together pure sprinters and horses that stay further. Often it’s the latter grouping that comes out on top and so it proved yesterday when the four-year-old Space Blues got the better of a field chock-full of Group 1 performers.

Space Blues is trained by Charlie Appleby who sent the four-year-old over 12 months earlier to finish a staying-on third behind the Martyn Meade-trained Advertise.

Appleby showed great enterprise in bringing him back for this repeat attempt, barely a week after a smart win at Goodwood. The field was headed, form- and betting-wise, by the Andre Fabre-trained but also Godolphin-owned Earthlight, unbeaten in six starts and twice a Group 1 winner in a five-race unblemished 2019 juvenile campaign.

Earthlight had every chance throughout and was moved into contention by Mickael Barzalona in the middle of the track, while Space Blues seemed to be struggling after making a sluggish start close to the stands rails.

But then William Buick could be seen to be manoeuvring him into a challenging position and once he secured a gap inside the last furlong, he breezed through and comfortably held Hello Youmzain and Lope Y Fernandez with the favourite only fourth.

Space Blues began life by winning a late-season Nottingham juvenile maiden over a mile and started out last year over 10 furlongs at Newbury, finishing fourth. Dropped in trip he won two seven-furlong races, a York handicap and Epsom Listed before that initial trip to Deauville.

This year – following a single run in Dubai in the winter - he has moved quickly though the grades, collecting a Haydock Listed; a Longchamp Group 3, and then up one more level for the Lennox Stakes (Group 2) at Goodwood where his turn of foot quickly settled that argument.

His ability to quicken characterised yesterday’s display and I have no doubt that for the rest of the season he will be hard to beat at the highest level at anywhere between six and eight furlongs. Considering his pedigree, it was understandable that initially middle-distance racing was at the forefront of Charlie Appleby’s plans.

The son of Dubawi was bred to Miss Lucifer, a triple winner for Barry Hills, and a daughter of Noverre. Noverre was trained for his first seven races by David Loder, all as a two-year-old when Loder had just re-located to train at the recently de-commissioned Evry racecourse near Paris. Noverre had already won twice before retaining his unbeaten record when coming over to Newmarket for the July Stakes.

In all, his form figures with Loder in Europe were 111212, but the decision to send him to Churchill Downs for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at the end of that year proved unsuccessful, Noverre finishing nowhere: 11th of 14. Sent to be trained at three by Saeed Bin Suroor, he was to win only once more from 14 starts, but that one was pretty good, the Group 1 Sussex Stakes at Goodwood!

Space Blues enlivened events at Deauville barely half an hour before another exceptional performance, this time by the Jessica Harrington-trained filly Lucky Vega in the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes at The Curragh.

This six-furlong race attracted most of the best of the Irish juveniles to have raced so far as well as The Lir Jet, Michael Bell’s Royal Ascot winner. Steel Bull, so impressive when winning the Molecomb Stakes at Goodwood was also in the very strong line-up.

Lucky Vega had been caught late on in a recent run at The Curragh by the big outsider Laws Of Indices, but here she had that rival well in arrears as she strode to a near four-length margin in a style that suggests the Matron Stakes must be on her agenda, as well as all the top fillies’ races elsewhere in Europe.

- TS