I’m sure I’ve gone over this ground a time or two before but last week’s irritating cold weather snap has inevitably slowed down the workings of this ancient brain, writes Tony Stafford. I intend to show, in the manner of a Paddy Power early payout when a team goes two goals up, that Dan Skelton has already won the 2025/26 British Jump Trainers’ Championship.
Many thought he would win it last time round, but Willie Mullins sent a flotilla of his best horses to Sandown on the final day of last season and ended up foiling him by almost £200k – Mullins’ £3,570k to Skelton’s £3,377k. It seems emphatic, but until Mullins had that near clean sweep of the lavish £1 million Grand National prize – his 1-2-3 collecting £800k and 5th and 7th another £60k – he wasn’t seemingly even contemplating a challenge.
Of course, Mullins is good at making up lost ground in the second half of the season, which is pretty much where we are now, as his rival Gordon Ellliott would frustratingly testify.
Before yesterday at home Mullins was reasonably in touch with Elliott, whose 275 individual horses had clocked up €3,150k from 134 wins and numerous places. Mullins’ individual 228 had notched 106 wins and €2,289k. Elliott’s best of €4,744k in 2023/24 compares unfavourably with Mullins’ peak of €7,299 in 2022/23. Willie’s haul last season was €6,028k, almost exactly €2 million more than his rival.
In the UK though, it will take not just a herculean effort to target the big prizes, in some part to the detriment of looking after business at home, for him even to begin to look a danger to Skelton.
The nearest four players behind Dan are multiple champions Paul Nicholls in second and Nicky Henderson in fifth, with in between the fast-progressing Olly Murphy and Ben Pauling. Nicholls at £1,116k, Murphy and Pauling are both above the £1 million mark, but even then, hopelessly out of touch with Skelton. I don’t remember anything so one-sided ever before.
With the most lucrative part of the season still to come, Skelton, on £2,470k, is already around 65% of the way to last year’s personal best return. Mullins is trailing more than £2 million behind him after the Irish champion’s so-far meagre return of £278k from four winning horses.
Unless he matches or exceeds last year’s Grand National Trifecta, it’s hard to see where he can begin to stem the tide of the Warwickshire onslaught, which has already produced 111 wins for the season. Only once before has he exceeded 200, in the days a few years back when he targeted summer jumping. That’s no longer on the agenda – it’s class and quality over quantity these days.
Saturday’s impressive performance at Kempton under a 10lb penalty from Precious Man could well be significant as the big 4yo prizes come along.
This second win for the team after he was snapped up from under the noses of the Mullins/Kirk buying partnership from France last summer puts him firmly in as a challenger to the no-doubt formidable array of Mullins juveniles from the same source that will be in the Triumph Hurdle line-up in eight weeks’ time.
The Skeltons have targeted the three days of the Winter Racing Festival at Windsor and Ascot over the coming weekend for a concerted aim at solidifying their already commanding lead.
Windsor on Friday offers seven races worth a total of £415k and Skelton has a dozen entered in five of those contests. Ascot on Saturday and then back to Windsor for Sunday, there are similar cards with almost precisely the same amount of cash to be won – in all £1.25 million for the 21 races.
I always loved going jumping at Windsor in the old days, particularly enjoying the New Year’s Day Hurdle which was a serious trial for the Champion Hurdle. I was unsure whether last season’s initial go at jumping after so many years away from the Calendar was a success, but any gremlins with the track seemed to have been ironed out when they staged the first fixture of the 2025/26 season in late November. I’m looking forward to a midwinter feast this weekend.
The promised ease in the weather over the coming days will ensure a strong entry for all those races and the Skelton runners will face determined opposition throughout the weekend. It’s hard to escape the feeling though that Dan and jockey brother Harry have elevated themselves onto a higher plane, their defeats at the hands of Mullins merely doubling their resolve.
**
I was very sad to hear the news of problems at Chelmsford City racecourse, struggling with a serious loss on the past financial year leading to a reported delay in full payment of staff on the days leading up to Christmas.
Chelmsford isn’t everyone’s favourite track, but it’s handy to get to for racegoers in East London in particular and all over Essex. The grandstand might be facing the “wrong way” and unless you go along to the winning line and combine that with watching on the big screen, much of what happens around the circuit can be hard, actually impossible, to follow.
Trainers from Newmarket love its proximity, just down the M11, but those around Lambourn can be subjected to harrowing journeys when the M4, M25 and the M11 North are playing up, sometimes all at once!
With only a single way in, it was always tricky for the track when it hosted well-attended (sometimes up to even 30,000) music events, but when Justin Timberlake appeared last summer the whole thing ground to a halt after his performance with cars stuck in the car park for hours and the adjacent road connecting the City of Chelmsford to the A120 similarly blocked for ages.
That brought a severe sanction on the number of people that would be allowed at any fixture, 10,000 I believe, effectively stifling the wonderful work done by Neil Graham and his staff. I’ve known Neil since he trained out of the yard in Newmarket adjacent to the Tattersalls sales paddocks, when he had horses in the yard for the Thoroughbred Corporation.
He knows his stuff and is a very nice man to boot. I hope Chelmsford’s troubles will soon be sorted. They’ve fought back before and hopefully will do so again. I always enjoy going there and wish I’d been free to go yesterday, but late additions to the schedule aren’t always easy.
It’s a place where horses can build up impressive winning sequences and my pal Mick Godderidge, a shareholder in the now six-year-old Carlton, saw the horse win six times from seven runs at the track between December 2024 and last September for James Owen. No doubt he’ll add to that tally over this winter.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Dan_Harry_Skelton_Kadastral_Newbury_2025.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2026-01-11 22:57:372026-01-11 22:57:37Monday Musings: Early Payout for Skelton
Named after the leading hurdler of the 70’s, Lanzarote, who won the 1974 Champion Hurdle - the Coral Lanzarote Handicap Hurdle is staged at Kempton Park racecourse each January.
Run over 2m5f, with 10 hurdles to tackle, the race is always a hotly-contested affair and in the past has been won three times by trainer Gary Moore, while the Nick Williams, Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson yards are others to have won the race in recent years.
Including in 2020 when we saw the Nicky Henderson-trained Burrows Edge land the prize – the yard’s third win in the race since 2013, while the Dan Skelton team have won the last two runnings - in 2023 with West Balboa won the race at 12/1 and in 2024 with Jay Jay Reilly at 33/1.
Here at GeeGeez we look back at past winners and gives you the key stats to look out for ahead of the 2026 renewal. This year run on Saturday 10th January.
Recent Lanzarote Hurdle Winners
2025 - NO RACE
2024 - JAY JAY REILLY (33/1)
2023 – WEST BALBOA (12/1)
2022 – COBBLERS DREAM (10/1)
2021 - BOREHAM BILL (66/1) 2020 – BURROWS EDGE (5/1)
2019 – BIG TIME DANCER (16/1)
2018 – WILLIAM HENRY (7/1)
2017 – MODUS (7/1)
2016 – YALA ENKI (11/4 fav)
2015 – TEA FOR TWO (9/2 jfav)
2014 – SAPHIR DU RHEU(6/1)
2013 – OSCARA DARA (5/1)
2012 – SWINCOMBE FLAME (9/2 fav) 2011 – JAMES DE VASSEY (8/1) 2010 – MICHAEL FLIPS (9/1) 2009 –No Race 2008 – NYCTEOS (7/4 fav) 2007 – VERASI (20/1) 2006 – BUCK WHALEY (5/2 fav) / RAYSHAN (22/1) 2005 – CROSSBOW CREEK (16/1) 2004 – LIMERICK BOY (10/1) 2003 – NON SO (9/1) 2002 – MAJLIS (7/1)
Key Lanzarote Hurdle Betting Trends
23/23 – Had won between 1-3 times over hurdles before
20/23 – Had raced within the last 7 weeks
20/23 – Aged 7 or younger
18/23 – Had won exactly 2 times over hurdles before
17/23 – Winning distance 3 lengths or less
17/23 – Irish (11) or French (6) bred
16/23 – Returned 10/1 or shorter in the betting
16/22 – Winners that went onto run at that season’s Cheltenham Festival (no winners)
16/23 – Had never won a hurdles race over 2m4f or longer before
14/23 – Carried 10-11 or less
13/23 – Came from the top 3 in the betting
12/23 – Aged 6 years-old
11/23 – Placed favourites
9/23 – Won last time out
9/23 – Had run at Kempton before (6 won)
5/23 - Winning favourites
4/23 – Trained by Nicky Henderson (3 of the last 12)
3/23 – Trained by Paul Nicholls
2/23 – Trained by Dan Skelton (last 2)
Trainer Gary Moore won the race in 1996, 1998 & 2007
Since 1980 (42 runnings) 36 winners have been aged 7 or younger
A claiming jockey has won 7 of the last 11 runnings
The winning SP in the last 10 runnings is 16/1
Note: the 2006 running was a dead heat between Rayshan & Buck Whaley and run at Carlisle
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When you happen to be 78 years of age and own a racehorse that not only is the best you’ve ever had but also could be a future steeplechase champion, it’s hard not to be impatient, writes Tony Stafford. It must have been excruciating for Harry Redknapp to have to wait 331 days for his hitherto unbeaten young chaser The Jukebox Man to make his reappearance over the weekend after injury kept him away from last March’s big spring festivals.
The year before, The Jukebox Man and his trainer Ben Pauling had tried valiantly to keep the Irish at bay with second places at both Cheltenham and Aintree. He got to within a head of the Gordon Elliott-trained Stellar Story – no relation Wilf! – at Cheltenham, then was five and a half lengths behind Mullins’ Dancing City at Aintree, but more than seven lengths ahead of third-placed Cherie D’Am for Dan Skelton.
The two novice chases he contested last winter were comfortably annexed. First, he dropped to 2m4f for a Grade 2 at Newbury and beat Alan King’s Masaccio a couple of lengths before winning Kempton’s big Christmas novice chase, the three-mile Kauto Star with another similarly controlled performance.
So now it was Haydock and an Intermediate Chase over an intermediate distance of 2m5.5f, but that track takes plenty of stamina and jumping prowess. Again, the margin was modest, once more a couple of lengths, but Ben Jones always had everything under control and the Greenall/Guerrerio-trained and J P McManus-owned Iroko is no ordinary horse to brush aside.
His last run before Saturday was a few miles west along the East Lancs Road at Aintree where he started as the 13/2 favourite for the Grand National and finished a creditable fourth. Iroko predictably kept galloping all the way to the line under Jonjo junior’s urgings on Saturday but never looked like getting to the winner.
The King George, which would be a Boxing Day return to Kempton for Harry’s horse, is the hope but as a former much-respected manager of Tottenham Hotspur and other football clubs, he knows well that injuries to man or horse can happen at any time.
He was talking with friends about his increased involvement in racing on Champions Day at Ascot last month. And it was clear that it was fingers crossed that nothing would go wrong before Haydock. It didn’t, and now there’s no doubt this Poplar-born phenomenon has no wish to slow down, kept solid by his 58-year marriage to Sandra.
There must be something about a working-class upbringing in that part of East London that instils permanency. <I started life a few miles north of there at Hackney Wick in the early days after World War 2>. My mate Harry Taylor beat me by a few months, half a mile away and he celebrated an 80th birthday bash with friends and his lovely family on Saturday afternoon.
Organised as ever, I’d lost the original invitation but checked with him on Saturday morning. “Yes, it’s Northwick Park Golf Course.” Rain made the journey tortuous but once I got to the place, near Harrow in West London, my phone’s Maps feature sent me to a golf venue of sorts. I went inside, asked at reception where was the party and I was directed to a room hosting an Indian wedding! The food smelled great, but I thought I’d better persevere.
Harry had me going around in circles up and down the roads around the massive Northwick Park Hospital, once saying “I know where you are!” and I was just about to give best when his grandson Connor called on Harry’s phone. “It’s at a different golf club, near where we live in Harpenden <that’s Hertfordshire!>. You should make it in an hour!” I did and loved the Englebert Humperdinck tribute guy. If only school mate Tony Peters (my exact birth twin, formerly known as Zahl) had been there; he’s been doing unwitting tributes to the singer for years!
A much more venerable son of that part of East London is 92-year-old Bill Gredley, who while still very active with flat-racing home-bred horses from his well-established operation at Stetchworth Park Stud in Newmarket, has also developed a formidable jumps team. Almost everything nowadays is in training with James Owen. Tim Gredley, Bill’s son, after a spell riding as he modestly says, “Rolls Royces in point-to-points, I didn’t need to be much good!” is back with his first love and is hoping to get into the Great Britain show-jumping team for the next Olympics.
A much better-known veteran of show jumping obviously has a major connection with the foremost UK jumps training operation. Nick Skelton, for decades one of the best show jumping riders in the world and winner of a gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, was at the time finalising plans for his sons’ burgeoning enterprise in Warwickshire.
That has become extremely powerful and their Grey Dawning, the impressive winner of Haydock’s Betfair Gold Cup an hour or so after The Jukebox Man’s romp, looks very over-priced to me at 16/1 for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Day after day, illustrations of the skills of three recent champion jockeys, in order Harry Skelton, Harry Cobden and the latest Sean Bowen are offered to an admiring public. All three can be devastating, especially when riding waiting races, to the extent they often don’t get involved in their winning races until many in the stands have probably already given up. Grey Dawning on Saturday just breezed up (to coin a cliché) to last year’s winner Royale Pagaille, drew alongside and then won with a fair amount in hand. How much, you’d have to ask Harry?
This performance will have added to the Redknapp/Pauling team’s confidence in The Jukebox Man as runner-up Iroko had been second to the Skelton horse in his pre-National warm-up at Kelso last March.
Royale Pagaille also took plenty of beating as a horse with four Haydock wins. Before you say that surely as an 11-year-old his powers might be fading, that’s not to understand Venetia Williams’ training, especially of her experienced chasers.
In Horses In Training 2025, her 79-strong stable had 18 horses aged ten or older and another 22 age eight or nine. Don’t be shocked if the softer ground we’re getting heralds a characteristic midwinter bonanza for the Hereford handler.
Talking of venerable phenomena, Willie Mullins, having been putting his feet up over in Ireland after his killer pounce on the Breeders’ Cup, eased back into action with a nice little Euro 88k for the Morgiana Hurdle at Punchestown.
It wasn’t that surprising an outcome. Lossiemouth, in making it eight Grade 1 wins in her career, started 5/1 on for the four-horse affair. The one surprise was that the nine-length runner-up, collecting €28k was not the second favourite and Mullins second string Irancy in the McManus colours, but Glen Kiln, a 28/1 shot trained by David Harry Kelly. Some turn for him!
Lossiemouth is around 3/1 for the Champion Hurdle but we’re waiting to see what Nicky Henderson and Constitution Hill will have to say about that in Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle on Saturday.
Mullins also won the beginners’ chase on the Punchestown card with odds-on Kitzbuhel, running for the first time since he put eight grand into the Mullins coffers for his third place on the final day of the season at Sandown last April. The way Dan Skelton’s going, though, I doubt there will be as much in it at the finish this time around between the respective powerhouses of the UK and Ireland – or even that the result will be the same way around.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/TheJukeboxMan_Haydock_2025.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-11-24 06:07:372025-11-24 06:07:37Monday Musings: It’s Hard to Wait
Amid all the excitements supplied by the multi-century teams of Willie Mullins, Gary and Josh Moore and Olly Murphy, not to mention Dan Skelton, on Sandown’s National Hunt season finale, one name stood out as swimming against the tide, writes Tony Stafford.
Imagine you’ve been in the UK for just short of three years and built up a team from nothing into the 60’s at a new base in Newmarket, understandingly vacated at the end of 2024 by Newmarket doyen William Jarvis.
A score of one in his feet-finding debut campaign in late 2022, was followed by 16 and then 37 last year. Dylan Cunha, the South African Group 1 trainer in his home country and a pilot in his spare time almost, is already on 12 in the fledgling 2025 season.
But he was merely an intruder between the big boys’ free-for-all on Saturday with the only jumper he has in his yard. It’s a shame in fact that he did try the capable but inconsistent flat handicapper Ace Rothstein in one race over hurdles at Kempton in the 2023/24 season as his story in terms of jumping success would be even more remarkable.
The Ace proved more like a Joker on his hurdling appearance and is no longer part of the Phantom House Stables team, but one horse who is, Mahons Glory, has been showing that affable Dylan could train the stable cat if there were a suitable race in the Calendar.
A few weeks ago, as I mentioned here before, my friend Malcolm Caine organised a ticket for me at an upmarket Central London venue a few days before the Cheltenham Festival. It was enjoyable and quite amusing when shortly after those mostly perplexing races in Gloucestershire were concluded, Malcolm called. He said: “I took a note of every horse the panel mentioned on the day and none of them won!” I’ll take his word for it and in case you didn’t catch the roll-call last time, I’ll leave it out for now.
When you attend such an event, it’s Hobson’s Choice whom your immediate fellow-guests are. In my case it was a very nice chap called Seamus, not Irish except by pedigree. He said he and two other pals who were further around to his right were owners with Dylan Cunha.
He, and obviously they, were still buzzing from the victory at Leicester the previous day of Mahons Glory, a nine-year-old horse they had previously in training with Patrick Neville.
He had lost his form and become erratic, especially at the start, so they entered him for the January Online sale at Tattersalls – and he was unsold at 900gns. <I wonder if I’d have persuaded one of my pals to bid a grand whether they would have let him go?>.
Anyway, nobody did, and as owners with interests in a few horses with Dylan they suggested sending the 130-rated chaser to him. Quite a left-field idea, but an inspired one as it turns out.
At Leicester, as Seamus told me at the Preview, they were anxious at the start but Mahons Glory jumped off alertly under Lee Edwards, went to the front, and despite the tendency to jump to his left, he did so with rare exuberance and was never in danger of defeat, beating the Dan Skelton-trained Major Fortune by three-quarters of a length at a rewarding 16/1.
Dylan found a less taxing race for his following run, a three-horse affair at Stratford, this time going left-handed and again he made all, this time with The Wolf, in the stable of another of Saturday’s stars, Olly Murphy, and ridden by Sean Bowen a well-beaten second.
On Saturday, just another 3lb higher, Mahons Glory was again among the outsiders, but you wouldn’t have known it. In the morning, I had my regular pre-race chat with Dylan and he suggested Sandown’s track and fences would be to his liking. He loved the seven in a line down the back straight and it was only when he came to the Pond, three from home, that the tendency to jump left took its toll.
Shrewdly, Caoilin Quinn, already in the winner’s circle in the opener with 20/1 top-weight Give It To Me Oj in the novice handicap hurdle final, kept Mark Of Gold tight to the inside, and those wayward left-hand leaps, where Sandown’s finish edges to the right, were doubly costly to the front-runner.
Mark Of Gold got to the front before the last and looked sure to draw away but Edwards got Mahons Glory running again and was reducing the arrears all the way to the line, going under by less than a length.
On a day where some of the participants would have cost around £500k and even more, a 900gns chuck-out trained by a man with his sole proper jumper nearly stole the limelight.
Just for the record, when discussing his four other runners on the day, he singled out the previously unsuccessful Waistcoat in a handicap at Leicester as his pick. Reasoning that if Joe Leavy could hold on to him behind what he thought would be a headlong gallop, he could come through to win. He proved exactly right – at 8/1!
I was speaking to some people earlier in the week and one or two suggested that if Willie Mullins duly caught and passed Dan Skelton as the numbers in the right races suggested he must, he might be the object of booing from the Sandown crowd.
Anything but. His genial nature and refusal to claim victory even after South African-owned Il Etait Temps came from a long way back to swamp Jonbon for speed in the bet365 Celebration Chase with its £99k to the winner – he also picked up 18 grand for 3rd with Energumene – sealed the deal. Not a bad effort first time back in a Grade 1 with a top rival to catch, Jonbon losing for the first time away from Cheltenham.
But no, life today is all about winning and if you have overwhelming tools with which to achieve it, good for you. Mullins has worked for many years to build up such a superiority in Ireland, even over Gordon Elliott, and the fact he can come here as a late-season afterthought to beat the best of whatever we have to offer, has its obvious merits too. Especially to the sports fans of the 2020s!
Not even a Foinavon moment, say at the Pond fence, which Dan Skelton might have dreamt about, or indeed a void race as we’ve been encountering rather more often of late, would have mattered. Second to fifth behind the Olly Murphy/ Sean Bowen representative Resplendent Grey in the bet365 Gold Cup built up the lead almost to 200k, and the last race win where his Jump Allen saw off Dan’s Mostly Sunny lent an inevitable footnote to the season.
There was a television interview with Jump Allen’s rider, Harry Cobden, who reckoned that Bowen would be champion jockey for the next ten years, reasoning that he and Harry Skelton, the only other obvious contenders, according to him, were otherwise engaged – mopping up the massive prize money Skelton collected in this first season of the David Power Cup for points gained in big races.
Maybe it would have been wise for Cobden to keep his mouth shut. After his tour de force bringing home Resplendent Grey from a seemingly losing position behind Mullins’ Rachael Blackmore-ridden Lombron from the final fence, more big race rides will be coming his way from major stables.
*
With the two Guineas races coming up next weekend, it was salutary that Aidan O’Brien, seemingly out of form, nipped in with a Navan favourites hat-trick on Saturday, via Charles Darwin, impressively in the six-furlong maiden, Whistlejacket in the Listed three-year-old sprint, and Kyprios in his regular season-opener in the 1m6f Vintage Crop Stakes.
Watch out John and Thady. If you thought the 2,000 was at the mercy of Field Of Gold, Aidan’s Twain will have been tuned to the minute. Big John’s first 2,000 win is no gimme!
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/MarkofGold_MahonsGlory_Sandown_2025.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2025-04-28 07:43:092025-04-28 07:43:09Monday Musings: The Glory Trail
Last week I wrote the first of two articles looking at price movements from Opening Show odds to SP in National Hunt racing, writes Dave Renham. This is the follow-up piece expanding on that initial research. As before, the data has been taken from the last five full years, covering 2020 to 2024. I have used William Hill bookmaker prices, and I will use ‘OS’ to denote the Opening Show odds.
To begin, I would like to look at differing race types. Specifically, I want to compare chases with hurdles to see what percentage of these runners shortened in price, lengthened in price (drifted), or stayed the same price, when comparing their OS to their SP.
As the graph indicates, there was a bigger percentage of drifters in hurdle races compared to chases, and hence fewer hurdlers shortened in price compared to chasers. If we look at non-handicap hurdle races versus handicap hurdle races it can be seen that in non-handicaps 49.4% of all runners drifted, whereas in handicaps the figure stands at 46.2%. Interestingly, this percentage ‘swing’ is reversed when we look at non-handicap chases versus handicap chases. The splits this time see more drifters in handicap chases (44.7%) compared to 41.1% for non-handicap chases. This is a good example of where we can see the importance of digging down into the long grass. We saw this in the first article when noting the differences between certain courses, in the splits for class of Race, and in how the OS odds affect the likely direction of any potential price movement.
I also looked at bumper (NH Flat) races where 47.9% of runners drifted from OS to SP compared with 38% that shortened (just 14.1% remained the same price).
Next, I would like to see there is anything material in terms of day of the week. I am going to concentrate solely on the percentage of drifters on each of the seven days my suspicion being that Saturday will have the lowest percentage, due to having stronger markets. Let’s see:
Saturday does indeed have the lowest figure which correlates with the race class and course data shared in part one last week. Saturdays tend to have better races when the day is viewed as a whole, and more of the top tier courses are in action on this day of the week, too.
In that prior piece it was noted that Cheltenham was the racecourse that had the smallest percentage of drifters out of all the courses. With the Cheltenham Festival roughly three weeks away, I thought it might be helpful to see what the splits are in terms of runners that shortened in price, lengthened in price or stayed the same price, when comparing their OS to their final Starting Price Odds at the Festival. Here they are:
This is quite a change from what we have seen so far. Horses remaining the same price from OS to SP have occurred more than either of the other groups. Horses that lengthened in price have a figure 16% lower than when looking at NH races as a whole. I had expected the percentage figure for drifters to be somewhat lower than the norm due to the strength of the Festival markets, but I had not anticipated as much as 16%. I also did not expect the 'stayed same price' group to come out clearly ahead of the others. It has made me think that maybe I write an article where I do a deeper dive into the Cheltenham Festival in terms of price movements, incorporating early morning odds moves too. More of that to come perhaps.
Time to switch attention now to some trainer data. To begin with here are the trainers with the highest percentage of runners that have shortened in price between OS and the ‘off’. To qualify a trainer must have had at least 200 runners during the period of study:
13 of the 20 trainers have higher percentages for shorteners than for drifters. When I looked at flat trainer data back in the Autumn only two trainers managed that feat. Four of the ‘big guns’ - Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls, Willie Mullins and Dan Skelton - are absent from the list, so what about them? Here are their splits coupled with a selection of some other familiar names not seen as yet (again the table is ordered by % of shorteners):
It is quite interesting to see Skelton, Nicholls and Henderson with the smallest percentages for horses that have shortened in price from OS to SP. It is also interesting when we compare their shorteners with their drifters in terms of value by using the A/E index. The graph below shows the splits:
For all three there has been far better value in their runners that were backed in between OS and SP compared to those that drifted. Indeed, you would have made a tiny profit to BSP on all Paul Nicholls runners that shortened in price from OS to SP.
In terms of negatives beware Henderson drifters in chases: of the 283 chasers that drifted 43 won (SR 15.2%) but they accrued losses of £58.26 (ROI -20.6%) to BSP. In addition, Henderson non-handicappers (any NH race type) that drifted have also proved to be poor value losing over 18p in the £.
As far as Paul Nicholls is concerned a drifter is a bad sign if ridden by stable jockey Harry Cobden. Although just over 20% of them have still won, backing all 834 qualifiers would have seen a loss to BSP of £184.51 (ROI -22.1%). Conversely, drifters from the Nicholls yard not ridden by Cobden have won more often (21.5%) and proved profitable to BSP to the tune of £108.80 (ROI +19.3%). These runners would secured a blind profit to Industry SP of around 6p in the £ as well. Meanwhile, if a Dan Skelton runner drifts at Cheltenham, beware, as only four of the 87 have won for losses of over 66p in the £.
My final piece of ‘drifting’ data for these three trainers comes in the form of their record in Class 1 races when this occurs. Their results are shown below:
Henderson’s record is modest but not terrible, but for the other two the figures are very poor. I would not be keen in the near future to back a Skelton or Nicholls drifter in a Class 1 event.
Sticking with these trainers and Class 1 events, let us see their performance when their runners shorten in price before the ‘off’. Unsurprisingly, we see a contrasting picture to the earlier one:
All three have edged into profit with solid figures across the board. Clearly, for these three trainers in top level races the strength of their runners in the market just prior to the off is very important.
Olly Murphy is another trainer who has a couple of stats worth mentioning. Interestingly, his drifters have won almost as often as those that have shortened in price – 18.2% versus 20.6%. Given those numbers, it won't shock to learn that his drifters made a positive return of 5p in the £ whereas his shorteners lost 20p in the £ (to BSP). Sticking with those runners that have shortened in price, when they started favourite they broke even. When they were not favourite losses have been 27p in the £.
Lastly in this piece, I want to focus on Irish maestro Willie Mullins as there are a few useful titbits when it comes to his stats. There are three powerful stats of which we ought to be aware:
1. Any Mullins drifter at the Cheltenham Festival is not a good sign. 100 horses have drifted from OS to SP at the March showpiece of which only 11 won (SR 11%) for a BSP loss of £43.36 (ROI -43.4%).
2. Don’t be lured in by bigger-priced runners from Mullins ‘being backed’. Horses that shortened in price from an OS of 18/1 or bigger are 0 from 54.
3. When one of Mullins' horses shortens in price from OS to SP take note of the jockey. The table below shows why we want Paul Townend on board:
**
This article has highlighted some interesting patterns in terms of how the market moves during that brief period between the opening show and the start of the race. I think some of the trainer data for Messrs Henderson, Nicholls, Skelton, Murphy and Mullins could prove really useful and help to point us in the right direction when contemplating the timing / placing of our bets.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SureTouch_SummerPlate2024.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-02-18 10:38:392025-02-16 17:17:34More on Price Movement in NH Markets, Part 2
Back in July 2021 I shared some research connected with UK flat trainers when they saddled two runners in the same race (which you can read here), writes Dave Renham. In this article I will do likewise with UK National Hunt trainers. Clearly, there are occasions when trainers saddle three or more runners in a race but, to make the research and writing process easier, for this offering I will once more focus on exactly two runners saddled.
It is likely that in the past some punters have been lured by the prices on two runners from the same stable: if one is 3/1 and the other 14/1 the chances are the focus will be on the more fancied runner of the pair. I, for one, have been guilty of this before.
The data in this analysis has been taken from UK National Hunt races between January 1st 2016 and December 31st 2024. All profit and loss figures have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price less commission. For the shorter priced horse of the pair, I will call this the “first string”, the bigger priced runner will be known as the “second string”.
Overall trainer performance when running two in the same race
Let me first look at trainers who have had two or more runners in the same race on at least 100 occasions (hence at least 200 runners overall). There have been 28 trainers that qualify in the study period using that stipulation:
Below are the combined results of all runners for each trainer (i.e. both first and second string horses). The trainers are listed in alphabetical order:
Not surprisingly, just four of the 28 trainers show a profit when looking at both runners combined. It is unlikely that backing both runners for every trainer in every race is going to make a profit long term as the overall stats clearly show. Indeed, the four in profit owe that accolade to some huge prices going in.
Let us see what happens when we break the data down and compare trainer win strike rates between first and second string runners. The plan is not to compare the raw win percentages with each other, but to add up the winners for each of the two market ranks and work out what percentage of all the winners came from the trainer’s first string (shorter priced runners) and what percentage came from the second string (longer priced runners).
In other words, if we use Donald McCain as an example, he has had 60 winners when running two horses in the same race, of which 45 were his first string runners (75%); 15 winners came from his second string runners (25%).
To show this comparison for each trainer I have split their data into four separate graphs, so as not to overcrowd the pictorial evidence. The orange bar represents first string runners, the blue bar is for second string.
As the graphs show, the stats vary greatly from trainer to trainer. For example, Nigel Twiston-Davies has two percentages that are close together (57.1% and 42.9%) having done particularly well with second strings, whereas Phil Kirby’s figures are poles apart (95.8% and 4.2%). Overall, when combining all 28 trainers, 75.7% of the winners have come from their first string entries, 24.3% from their second string. These figures are almost a carbon copy of those calculated in the flat trainer article back in 2021.
Trainer performance with first string runners
Eight trainers have made a profit with their first string runners and their figures, ordered by BSP profit, are shown in the table below:
Caution is advised regarding the profit figure for Christian Williams as he had BSP winners equating to 165/1 and 179/1, and yes, they were his first string runners despite the high prices! Chris Gordon in contrast has not had any big-priced winners and overall, his record with first string runners is excellent. If you restrict Gordon’s first string runners to those priced in single figures (at BSP) his record reads a highly impressive 29 wins from 82 (SR 35.4%) for a profit of £33.90 (ROI +41.3%).
Paul Nicholls has had over 400 first choice runners in this double-handed context, and his biggest priced first string winner was BSP 13.0 (12/1). Hence his bottom line has not been skewed by numerous scorers at very big odds. If we look at all his first string runners priced BSP 13.0 or less he has secured a healthy profit of £90.23 (ROI +27.2%) from 332 qualifiers. If we look at the Nicholls profit year on year with this subset of runners we see the following:
2021 was the year that produced over half of the profit but even taking that out of the equation the performance and consistency has been excellent. Over the nine years of study, seven have shown a profit.
Phil Kirby’s figures are also not badly skewed by horses winning at big prices. Sticking to a price cap of BSP 13.0 or shorter, Kirby has secured 20 winners from 68 qualifiers (SR 29.4%) for a profit of £24.02 (ROI +35.3%).
Nicky Henderson did not secure an overall profit with his first-string runners but the jockey booking seems to have made a difference. When Nico de Boinville has been riding the Henderson first string, the results read 49 wins from 224 (SR 21.9%) for a profit of £21.67 (ROI +9.7%). When any other jockey has been on board the Henderson figures read 46 from 241 (SR 19.1%) for a loss of £74.80 (ROI -31%).
Dan Skelton is a trainer who has performed extremely well over the past few seasons across the entire National Hunt sphere, but when we focus on his first string runners (of two) in chases his stats make very poor reading. From 95 qualifiers only 11 won (SR 11.6%) for hefty losses of £46.44 (ROI -48.9%).
Trainer performance with second string runners
Five trainers have produced a BSP profit with their second-string runners. Clearly big prices have made the difference here with all strike rates under 8%:
As profits go these should largely be taken with a pinch of salt, but I wanted to share them all the same.
It may be more useful to share a list of trainers with a very poor record with their second string runners, so below are those trainers with the worst returns across the nine year review period:
Based on these figures it seems sensible to all but rule out second string runners from trainers in the above table.
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One trainer whose data has not been shared as yet is Irish maestro Willie Mullins, simply due to him not quite saddling enough UK NH runners to make the cut. For the record his figures for both first and second strings are good with blind profits to BSP for both. His first string runners have secured returns of 26p in the £, his second string runners 28p in the £.
Harry Fry is another trainer who had less than 200 runners of this type overall, but his first string made a blind profit. Indeed, when focusing on these first string runners using the earlier price stipulation of BSP 13.0 or less, Fry has secured 14 wins from 48 (SR 29.2%) for a profit of £26.31 (ROI +54.8%).
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Trainer statistics are used by many punters when contemplating a bet. These stats come in different forms such as course stats, recent form stats (e.g. last 14 days), favourite stats, horses on debut, etc. The ones I have shared in this article generally fly under the radar but, hopefully, you have found them useful for either pinpointing possible value bets or, just as importantly, helping to avoid poor value ones. Unsurprisingly, given the overall stats uncovered in this article, the evidence points firmly towards focusing most attention on the shorter priced first string runners.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/paul-nicholls.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-01-28 14:08:252025-01-29 11:38:05When NH Trainers run two in the same race
What a lovely Saturday afternoon, writes Tony Stafford. Sky Sports Racing – now on my Now TV sports package, if you please – had all three UK cards. Thus, there was a constant flow of high-class jumping from Newcastle, Doncaster and, above all, Newbury suggesting that all may not be quite so gloomy where our sport is concerned.
Alex Hammond, Mick Fitzgerald and Jamie Lynch provide a refreshing balance of experience, insight and regional accent and they were in their element, especially Mick, as his old boss Nicky Henderson was on one of his very good days. The former stable number one showed he keeps a keen, close acquaintanceship.
Basically, he knows where the Seven Barrows horses go to work at home or, at important times, away and even, no doubt, what they had for breakfast.
The Henderson highlight, of course, was super-sub Sir Gino, nimbly stepping in after his work with Constitution Hill at Newbury suggested he might have made up a chunk of the 23lb that officially separated them in the BHA handicap.
Lameness was the reason for the former (2023) Champion Hurdle winner’s absence from Saturday’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle. It could turn out in time that Henderson might not have needed to search so intently for a reason <lame excuse?> to explain the gallop’s outcome.
Saturday’s field seemed to contain only one horse capable of challenging the previously unbeaten Henderson four-year-old. That was Mullins’ superbly bred Mystical Power, result of a union between perennial (but deceased) champion flat-race stallion Galileo and close-to unbeatable hurdling mare Annie Power, one of the stars of Willie Mullins’ long career.
Mystical Power was never going in a race where a couple of outsiders made the pace. Nico de Boinville moved Sir Gino out to challenge entering the straight and when he asked him to extend, the gelding did so thrillingly, winning by an ever-widening eight lengths from five-time winner (from eight runs) Lump Sum. It was Nicky’s eighth victory in the race.
Sir Gino started out with an unexpected debut win in France and, once “lifted” from under Harold Kirk’s and Mullins’ noses, went unbeaten last season, missing the Triumph Hurdle, but sorting out the Triumph runner-up, Mullins’ Kargese, by almost four lengths at Aintree. Constitution Hill’s performances still stretch far into the distance where even the best of the rest is concerned, but Sir Gino could just be getting a good deal closer, and his stablemate clearly hasn’t been as easy to train of late.
Until I checked on Sunday morning, I had no idea of Willie Mullins’ age or when he started his training career. It was a shock to see he’s 68 years old and took out his first licence 36 years ago!
That still makes him a novice compared with the six-years-older Henderson, who began training ten years earlier. The pair have been at the top in their respective countries for decades and the most pugnacious of opponents at every Cheltenham Festival meeting since Mullins got into his stride.
Paul Nicholls began as a trainer three years after Mullins, but with the credibility from his time as a jockey when he won two consecutive runnings of the then Hennessy Gold Cup on Broadheath and Playschool in 1986/87 for David Barons. How he ever managed 10st 5lb to ride Broadheath I can’t fathom, but then, when Ned Sangster can ride in amateur riders’ races on the flat at under 10 stone, I suppose anything is possible! Don’t turn sideways Ned, I won’t be able to see you!
Nicholls didn’t take long showing he had gone through a thorough apprenticeship. Towards the end of the Martin Pipe superiority after the turn of the century, when Pipe won 15 titles, Nicholls got ever closer, finally ending that one-sided era with a first triumph on a memorable final day at Sandown in April 2006.
Over the next 17 years, he and Henderson dominated, albeit heavily in Nicholls’s favour, 14 to four, with legends like Kauto Star and Denman to fuel the lavish prizemoney that decides the title. Henderson had collected twice in the 1980’s, so he has six.
Then, last April, it became evident that Willie Mullins, not content with 17 consecutive championships at home, was intent on dislodging either Nicholls or Paul’s former assistant Dan Skelton, and he duly achieved it with something to spare.
The statistics around this top three – Henderson, Nicholls and Mullins – are collectively most impressive with only Skelton in the UK likely to beat the trio to the top spot. Skelton’s wonderful training complex near Alcester, was built and designed on father Nick’s business acumen and Olympic Gold medal riding skills over many years.
Both Dan and younger brother Harry, already a champion jump jockey and potentially going close to another title this season, had their initial racing experience in Nicholls yard, as did emerging trainer Harry Derham.
In Ireland, Gordon Elliott has withstood what many thought would be a career-ending faux-pas a few years ago to come back even bigger and stronger.
Elliott’s stats are remarkable. After Saturday’s racing, in the season from May, Gordon had run 232 individual horses in 633 races, winning 86 and accruing €1,822k. Mullins, with 78 fewer horses (154) and from under half the runs, has 65 wins for €1,326k.
Skelton meanwhile in the UK has gone off at a fast pace, returning to getting as many wins as possible at the “phoney” first half of the season (May to October) before the real stuff begins. His stats are not far short of Elliott’s. He has run 196 horses for 484 runs, 96 wins and £1,247k. Nicholls has 47 wins and £845k from 114 horses and 194 runs. Slow-starting Henderson has 29 wins and £496k from 84 horses and 128 runs.
Henderson was at Newbury on Saturday, saddling two winners, both making their seasonal comeback. Nicholls, too, was content to let his Coral (ex-Hennessy) Gold Cup contender Kandoo Kid go to Newbury without a previous run this autumn and his judgment and that of rider Harry Cobden proved correct as he won comfortably from the favourite, Nigel Twiston-Davies’ Broadway Boy. Here the inherent dangers of punditry came to the fore, one of the trio (Mr Lynch I believe) suggesting the Coral Gold Cup rarely goes to a horse first time out. It did this time.
This was a fourth training win in the race to go with those almost four decades ago riding successes. We all remember Denman’s duo – the only thing we might have forgotten was that they were respectively 17 and 15 years ago!
It’s not only Nicholls whose former assistants rise to a high level after taking their leave. Henderson saw Tom Symonds, a former joint assistant with Ben Pauling, enjoying a prestige win with Navajo Indy in the Gerry Feilden Hurdle. The runner-up there, the former Oliver Sherwood-trained mare Queens Gamble, now with Harry Derham along with her former handler, was a good second first time out for a year, and she is the one I would take from the entire Newbury card.
Talking of Pauling, while his Henrys Friend was only fifth in the big race, he would have been much closer I’m sure had he not punctuated his otherwise great jumping round with a shattering mistake halfway down the back straight second time around. He was also making his return to action and should not be missed next time.
The previous afternoon at Newbury, Pauling showed his hand with another young chaser who could be winning the Coral Gold Cup next year. Carrying Harry Redknapp’s colours, The Jukebox Man made an exhilarating first run over fences in the John Francome Novices Chase, sponsored by Corals. Ben brought him along carefully through his bumper and hurdles seasons and he is now ready to reveal his true potential as a chaser.
I mentioned above the numerical strength of Elliott and Mullins in Ireland. Gordon had 17 runners on the Saturday Fairyhouse card but it wasn’t until the day’s final race, the bumper, that he had a winner. Most punters would have been expecting Ma Jacks Hill, a €310k acquisition for Giggingstown House Stud to land 4/5 favouritism, but he was only third to Elliott’s other runner, William Butler, a 25/1 shot. I hope Sir Mark Prescott’s assistant noticed it running and had a fiver on it!
Talking of expensive buys, the Sir Alex Ferguson colours had their first airing on the Nicholls-trained €740k acquisition Coldwell Potter at Carlisle yesterday. He and Harry Cobden treated the crowd to an exhibition from the front and won easily. That Nicholls fellow keeps persuading the boys to fork out the money. He won’t get back on top otherwise.
It’s tough to sneak into the leading trainers’ groupings pretty much anywhere in the world, writes Tony Stafford. In the UK and Ireland, the same few names finish atop both the flat and jumps tables year on year, and on the flat, certainly, it takes an upstart, such as George Boughey, and a massive intake of horses and major owners to break into the top ten.
He had 163 horses listed for last year’s campaign which brought tenth place in the table, but ironically fell 33 wins short of the 136 of the previous year. That earlier explosion was the catalyst for the massive increase in George’s string.
In jumping, the top ten have a familiar look about them both in Ireland and the UK. We know it’s Mullins, Elliott and De Bromhead with few recent encroachers making the list in Ireland, although Emmet Mullins has the look of somebody who can be making his way higher up the standings. Helps when, like Gordon Elliott, you train a Grand National winner early on and Mullins (E) did just that with Noble Yeats two years ago.
In the UK, apart from Olly Murphy and Joe Tizzard, neither of whom started from scratch, there’s nobody else. Ollie had considerable family buying power from the start, and Joe took over lock stock of father Colin’s team. Gold Cup wins and the memory of them have kept Joe in the limelight and dad is still around when needed. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose, as the French say.
Higher up, indeed sandwiching now the hitherto private battle at the top between Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson, is Dan Skelton, who also needed the start provided financially by show jumping father Nick, and the schooling for several years as assistant to Nicholls.
When brother Harry gets off a winner, and no doubt probably also one that didn’t run up to expectations, he has no hesitation in declaring potential upcoming races for the horse, whether Dan is there or not. This is a family operation par excellence and nicely bedded in now.
The other perennial challengers for the title cannot be there for ever you would think. Nicholls at 61 has so much drive and ambition that one would hardly think he would be reducing his energies towards training jumpers; indeed he has been recruiting at the top end of the market for the partnership headed by the considerably older (even than me!) Sir Alex Ferguson.
Henderson, despite being 73 is similarly unlikely to be withdrawing from the daily grind as long as he has horses of the calibre of Constitution Hill, Shishkin and Jonbon in his care. However well or otherwise that high-profile trio fares at Cheltenham next month, he has the four-year-old Sir Gino as the horse likely to become his eighth winner of the Triumph Hurdle and, if he wins, all the future that status predicts.
Given the depth of competition, especially after a spell where a decent proportion of the better meetings have succumbed to the weather, it must have been rare indeed for a stable outside the top echelon to land a hat-trick of winners on a single Premier Raceday card.
At Ascot on Saturday, Ben Pauling had five horses entered, two in one race. Neither of those got the call, although first string Bad would have done if not on the wrong end of a heads-up, heads-down winning-line dance.
The other three individual representatives all scored, for a combined treble return of 730/1. If Bad, the naughty boy who had his head up at the wrong time, had instead been on better behaviour, the resulting four-timer would have stretched to 4,020/1. All four horses were ridden by Ben Jones, benefiting from the absence through suspension of first jockey Kielan Woods.
Big Ben, he’s well over 6ft, rather than the jockey, and his owners collectively won £78k for linking a novice hurdle, Pic Roc, 11/2, beating a Nicholls hotpot; the Grade 2 Reynoldstown Chase – fast-track often to Cheltenham glory – Henry’s Friend, completing his own hat-trick, 13/2; and a handicap hurdle with Honor Grey, 14/1, a horse coming back from almost two years off. Bad’s race was very tough, too.
In the middle of the time since departing Nicky Henderson’s yard, where he had been joint assistant along with Tom Symonds, Pauling had a couple of campaigns when his horses were afflicted by viral problems. Last season’s tally of 80 wins, almost double his 2021/22 score, suggested that the worrying period was behind him.
Pauling will need another 24 in the remaining nine weeks of the present term to match that, and a couple of hundred grand in prizes to pass the earnings figure. He would have been much nearer it had jump racing not lost so many fixtures to the weather.
Nevertheless, standing in the table on 11th place and with £728k doesn’t have anything near the impact that his all-televised Saturday Ascot trio (and a near-miss) undoubtedly had. Many more people watch ITV racing on a Saturday than the number that assiduously study the Racing Post stats I would imagine, let alone buy the ‘paper every day.
Pauling has invested shrewdly in his future, moving a few years ago to the Naunton Estate, 20 minutes by car from Cheltenham and close to Nigel Twiston-Davies. The Paulings bought a property which adjoined a golf course, and which is now part of the family business.
It necessitated redirecting a couple of the holes to accommodate one of the gallops, but now it’s as though – apart from the stable area looking so spic-and-span – the yard had been there for decades.
You would think, golf-loving owners with runners at the Festival (or not!) might be checking in next month for nine holes and breakfast before making the last leg to Prestbury Park. Saturday was a landmark day in his development The seven entries in the early-closing races might not have the look of potential winners but you can be sure that when the handicap entries come out, he will be one of the UK trainers aiming to make the sort of impact that Dan Skelton has done in recent seasons.
Another former Nicky Henderson assistant was making a mark last week at Sandown, and as he described it, “it was a wonderful day for me in my own little world”.
The self-effacing trainer responsible for those words was Jamie Snowden and, looking again at the list of trainers, he stands 14th coming up towards £600k.
Why his “own little world”? Jamie had just followed winning the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown three weeks earlier with Farceur Du Large, over the same course and with the same ex-Irish horse, in the Royal Artillery Gold Cup.
A former soldier, Jamie had tried in vain to win either race since his retirement as an amateur jockey, having claimed both races from the saddle four times. He might say it was his own little world, but I used to love going to both days’ racing in the old days, always meeting up with my old pal, the late Broderick (The Cad) Munro-Wilson.
He used to ride his own horses in those races and the other two military events that now are offered to professionals, from the 1970’s, and his style of riding always amused the experts in the stands.
Munro-Wilson always loved Sandown and rode loads of winners there. I think he was a territorial rather than a career military member and made his money in the City. He had one unbreakable theory about Sandown: “You jump the Pond (three out) and however well your horse is going, take a pull! Seeing how he got horses to rally up the hill when seemingly having lost their race, with arms, legs, and anything else he could bring to the party moving at full pace, remains in my memory after all these years. As an aside, Sally Randell, who is Fergal O’Brien’s partner and assistant, was one of the very good riders around Sandown and she didn’t start riding in races until she joined the army.
Farceur Du Large was the object – I assume – of some very thoughtful planning. The upper limit for qualification for the two races – both weight-for-age events – is 130, a mark the nine-year-old had dropped to from a peak of 136. He had been owned by Gigginstown House Stud having run unsuccessfully in the Irish and Midlands Grand Nationals along with the Galway Plate. Off since that race, Jamie had him primed for the Grand Military.
Appreciating the drop in class, steady pace and the effective riding of Major Will Kellard, he romped home for RC Syndicate II before reappearing under a partnership of 12 Regiment Royal Artillery and RC Syndicate.
The Rules in my early days, when literally many hundreds of men resplendent in immaculate uniforms would stroll the lawns and enclosures, were strict. Gradually, to qualify as owners, leases became the way to go and it seemed that even anyone who had ever eaten their breakfast egg with soldiers just about qualified.
Whatever the future of Farceur Du Large, he has allowed Jamie Snowden to tick off a large item on his wish list. A winner with You Wear It Well at Cheltenham last year, he hoped for a pre-Festival warm-up win for her at Haydock on Saturday, but she made one bad jump that stopped her in her tracks. That left Coquelicot to pick up 2nd and 6k, making this column’s editor happy that he had made the dash back from a skiing holiday, arriving just in time.
We’re just about into the final third of the 2023-24 jumps season in the UK and Ireland and the concluding bumper at Fairyhouse on Saturday provided an interesting statistic, writes Tony Stafford. Its winner, the debutant Romeo Coolio, ridden by Mr Harry Swan for the Gordon Elliott team, was the trainer’s 155th victory of the domestic campaign.
This, from the once reviled but now it seems fully rehabilitated and still ebullient handler, was Elliott’s 300th individual runner of the season. It brings his prizemoney tally to €3,274k.
Until the last few days, he had been ahead of his great (and hitherto too-great!) rival Willie Mullins in all categories apart from strike-rate. Willie has had to make do so far with 254 individual horses, but his 168 victories (two at Punchestown yesterday) have careered him past Elliott a shade sooner than usual. By the time we get to May, no doubt, Mullins will I’m sure be back in his usual place at the top of the pile with all those big prizes still to be won. He stands on an interim €3,387K.
Two more were added to the first-time Elliott count at Punchestown yesterday and with lots more buys from the pointing and French fields to come, it might even be feasible to expect an end-of-season accumulation of 400, but let’s play safe and suggests it will be 350, as if that wouldn’t be totally unbelievable.
If Gordon were, say, to be content with just a 20-hour waking day – he should manage four hours’ kip surely! - then he could afford to give each of the three hundred a respectable four minutes of his attention – in between driving to the tracks and speaking to the media, not to mention living of course.
No doubt though, as the season has gone on, there has been a regular in-and-out process so that the horses that favoured summer ground and opposition are sent elsewhere until their optimum part of this year comes around. Or even sold.
Even so, you must reckon on a minimum of 200 boxes either at the main yard, or sprinkled around nearby to accommodate the hordes as they prepare for their races.
Planning programmes, making entries, and generally finding alternative objectives when the weather intervenes as has been the case lately, taxes the ingenuity. In some ways it’s easy. “There are five nice races at Punchestown next week,” he might say, adding “Put those ten in that one, that lot in the next” and so on.
Meanwhile Mr Mullins is doing the same thing at his only marginally less horse-swollen base, and hence the pair go head-to-head in almost every novice, conditions race and Graded event in the calendar. I’ve never forgotten Luca Cumani’s words, however. It might have been at the time he lost the Aga Khan’s horses when, in a pique, HH decided to have nothing trained in the UK. Luca always reckoned it was easier to train a lot of horses than a lesser number. You could find the time of day about them, he argued, as Luca certainly could.
Such is the Mullins/Elliott joint domination that only two other trainers have run more than 100 horses. Third in every category is Henry de Bromhead, who despite his Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle successes has been limited to exactly half as many horses as Elliott – 151. His 62 wins have come from 51 horses, and he’s almost on €1.1million. Almost without exception, UK trainers will be saying, “I should be so limited!”
Gavin Cromwell comes next in the list with 124 horses, €700k coming from 35 individual winners of 47 races. Philip Rothwell (26 from 76) and 34 wins from 353 runners is 5th to show the extent to which the sport across the Irish Sea is dominated by a cartel that has no inclination of going away.
No wonder Elliott bristled at the prospect of any restriction in the number of horses he could run in one race. His 15 of 20 in the Troytown last November might have been only a sample of what is to come given his relentless expansion. The possible limit of four in UK handicaps, especially the Grand National, will be welcome, though not for Elliott – if any of our trainers is equipped to take advantage.
On the flat and over jumps It’s a self-fulfilling numbers game. The two Premier race day cards at Kempton and Warwick on Saturday – to which a decent Wetherby programme was grafted on, drew only the minimal attention of Irish stables.
Mullins with a third and Elliott, a fifth place, had one visitor each, but Joseph O’Brien brought Banbridge to Kempton for the Coral Silviniaco Conti Chase and he beat Pic D’Orhy to remind us that he is indeed still training jumpers. Mullins was 3rd in this with Janidil.
At one time it seemed O’Brien would make a more significant challenge to the big two, but as he has been winning races like the Melbourne Cup (twice) and Group/Grade 1 races in Ireland, the UK, the US and Dubai, the concentration has understandably been more on flat racing.
In the present jumps season, Joseph has run only 36 horses in a total of 80 races and the 14 winners have collected 16 victories. His domestic tally of €311k is respectable in the circumstances. He clearly has quality rather than quantity in mind for the winter game.
One trainer aware of the possibilities offered by the dual Premier fixtures at Kempton and Warwick was Dan Skelton, holidaying in Barbados but still ably backed up by brother Harry, who rode a Warwick double, the former champion jockey and his wife Bridget Andrews among others supervising matters on course.
The numbers game truism holds here, too. Dan Skelton, while not yet in the scale of Ireland’s big two, has still sent 191 different horses to the races this season, easily the most among UK stables. On Saturday 9% of them – viz 16 – were dispatched to the three jumps meetings and they came back to Warwickshire with six winners, one second, four third places, two fourths and a sixth.
Skelton won the Lanzarote at Kempton with 33/1 shot Jay Jay Reilly, making his first run back over hurdles since early 2022. The trainer’s other major victory came with Grey Dawning, the gelding thrillingly going clear of his field in the Grade 2 Hampton Novices Chase at Warwick. Cheltenham beckons for both and many more I would assume from this target stable. His team will be one of the main defences against the onslaught of well-treated Irish “improvers” in many of the handicaps in seven weeks’ time.
It must be a shade frustrating in comparison with what a similar haul would have brought in Ireland or France, that six wins (worth £145k and those other places, yielded 180 grand, given the trumpeting of the new concept). It was still enough to carry him past Nicky Henderson into second slot in the UK trainers’ list.
Skelton’s 70 wins from 457 runners have earned £1,370k so he stands rather more than £200k behind his former mentor and perennial champion, Paul Nicholls. The Ditcheat master, hopefully now back on terra firma after the previous week’s abandon ship call came out in his flooded stable yard, has 72 wins from 306 runs (58 from 151 individual horses) and is just a tick short of £1.6 million.
Henderson has sent out 132 horses – a visitor to Seven Barrows might ask, “Where does he find room for them all?” – and 65 wins from 266 runs and £1,235k in prizes.
An unexpected name in fourth place is Venetia Williams, not that her talent isn’t well chronicled. In a way she defies the numbers element, even if she is comfortably behind the top three at £935k. The million should come. Her achievement is notable as she has sent out only 64 horses, 25 of them winning 38 races. Nicholls, Henderson and Williams are all operating at 24% whereas Skelton is at a relatively modest 15%.
As a one-time associate used to say – and sorry Mr Hatter I’ve used it many times, including here – “Everything is just different numbers.” It is.
The marvel of the Elliott/Mullins and to an extent Skelton achievement is to have control over such an obviously unwieldy model. How does a trainer do morning or evening stables as in the old days? I’ve been at Hughie Morrison’s yard a few years ago and the lad would present his horse as the trainer came along the line, asking how he was and checking limbs to satisfy himself. (Of course, unlike the old days when it was probably a maximum of two horses per lad, the 2020s model required a fair bit of nimbleness on the part of the grooms as they swopped to organise one of their other three or even four further on!)
You could picture Noel Murless or, from an earlier generational, Fred Darling, satisfying himself not only with the horses’ but also the lads’ appearance as he checked them off one by one. Evening stables at Elliott’s must be fun. By the time he gets round the lot, there wouldn’t be much time for a pint.
TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/mullins_elliott_fists.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-01-15 05:12:052024-01-14 18:43:39Monday Musings: The NH Numbers Game
Some horses are bred to chase, others are not, writes Dave Renham. Some horses are better over hurdles, others are better over the bigger obstacles. In this article I will look at horses making their debut in a chase having switched from hurdling last time out. The data have been taken from UK National Hunt races spanning the seven calendar years from 2016 to 2022. All profits and losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price less 5% commission.
All Runners
Firstly let’s review the breakdown for all first-time chasers that qualify having run las time out (LTO) over hurdles:
These chase debutants have won around one race in every seven and there is not a particularly good bottom line with all runners combining to lose over 10 pence for every £1 staked. In addition, the A/E index is quite modest at 0.88.
Handicap vs Non-handicap
Diving deeper into the stats, we’ll start by splitting the results between handicap and non-handicap races. Here is the win strike rate comparison:
As can be seen from the graph, debutants that contest a non-handicap have a much higher strike rate, which is to be expected; but, not shown, handicap runners would have lost a little less money overall. A/E indices are similar with 0.89 for non-handicaps, 0.87 for handicaps. It should be noted that most horses making their chase debut do it in a handicap – 72% in fact. With no clear edge to be had let’s move on to market factors.
Betting Market
How good a guide is the betting market is the next question? Here is the breakdown by Industry SP grouping.
As is shown, very short prices (less than 1/2) have scored enough times to make a profit. Conversely, the very big priced (40/1+) debut chasers have a dreadful record. They have proved extremely unlikely to spring a surprise and losses of nearly 80p in the £ would be painful had you backed them all. Horses priced between 5/2 and 6/1 (combining the price brackets 5/2 to 4/1 and 9/2 to 6/1) edged into profit from a decent sample size. You could argue that, if there is any value, then this is the price bracket which might offer some.
The 25/1 to 33/1 group looks to me to be an anomaly, especially considering the strike rate exceeds the 16/1 to 22/1 group’s strike rate. My guess is that the significant profit seen for the 25/1 to 33/1 bracket is unlikely to be replicated in the years to come. As a writer/researcher it is all well and good quoting profit figures, but if they are unlikely to be sustainable, for whatever reason, it is important to make readers aware of one’s thoughts and the likely bigger picture. Before moving on, I wanted to try and test whether my theory that the recent results for 25/1 to 33/1 runners was likely to be an anomaly. To do that I crossed checked data from 2009 to 2015 and, during that period, 25/1 to 33/1 shots won less than 2% of the time losing 44p in the £.
Gender of horse
This is an area I always look at when researching racing data because there are occasions when the sex of the horse makes a real difference in terms of results and returns. It is also a factor that not many punters worry about, so I feel there is a potential edge to be had in certain circumstances. Let’s see whether that is the case here. Firstly, a look at the win strike rates:
As we can see there is a big variance in terms of win strike rate. Male horses comfortably outperform female runners when making their chase debut. Now it is important to note that male runners do make up 84% of all runners. However, when we look at losses to BSP female runners have actually lost more in absolute terms than males: females produced a loss of £361.51 to £1 level stakes compare with -£344.48 for males.
When we compare the return on investment, there is a chasm between the two groups. Colts and geldings lost just 6% (6p in the £), while fillies and mares lost over 34% (34p in the £). These stats are powerful and can help give is an edge.
Age of horse
A look at what difference the age of the horse makes. Here are the splits:
4yo chasing debutants are relatively rare but from this modest sample they have performed well. The main takeaway from this table, though, is that horses aged 9 or older are to be avoided. They win far less often than younger runners, and the returns have been dreadful: nigh on 50p in the £. Mares aged 9 or older making the switch from hurdles to chases for the first time have been rare; but of the 71 qualifiers just 2 won!
The 8-year-old group also perform well below the norm and proved very poor value.
Last time out finishing position
The next area to come under the microscope is LTO performance in terms of finishing position. Let us look at the win strike rates first:
Last time out winners have the highest strike rates followed by LTO runners up, so a better LTO performance seems to be significant from a win probability perspective. It will come as no surprise that horses that were pulled up last time are a cohort to avoid – they have produced a low strike rate at 9% with losses of over 20 pence in the £ from 749 qualifiers.
The anomaly here is the group of horses that fell or unseated LTO. Their strike rate of 16.1% is higher than I had expected. Not only that, but these runners would have secured a profit of £117.10 to £1 level stakes (ROI +99.2%). At just 118 qualifiers, the sample size is quite small, so I think there is a case for remaining sceptical.
Looking at these results in more detail I realised that they were skewed somewhat by three big priced winners. That helps explain the profit figure. I did back check 2009 to 2015 data for LTO fallers/unseated riders to give more context: the strike rate in that period was 16% as well, but in this time frame they made losses more in line with my pre-research expectations of 16p in the £.
Country of Breeding
A quick look at breeding in terms of the origin of the horse. For this I want to compare the record of British-, Irish- and French-bred chase debutants. Here are the strike rates for each:
There is a big advantage to French-bred chase debutants in terms of their win chance. Remarkably, backing all French-breds blind would have yielded a profit of £70.55 (ROI +6.2%). French-bred chase debutants have shown good consistency, too, having hit a strike rate more than 18% in six of the seven years under review. Four of the seven years turned a blind profit, two years made a loss and one year broke even. Chasing debutants who are French bred demand close scrutiny.
Trainers
The final area for research is usually a popular one, namely trainers. Below is a table of trainers who have had at least 50 runners switching from hurdles to make their chase debut. I have ordered them by strike rate:
There is a huge difference in strike rate between Henderson at the top (31.82%) and Hawke at the bottom (5.66%). 13 of the 30 trainers have made a BSP profit with 17 in the negative.
It will come as no surprise to see Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls occupy the top two spots, but despite excellent strike rates neither have made a profit. This is simply due to the fact punters and bookmakers know these two trainers inside out and finding any value for either is relatively rare regardless of ‘angle’. However, there is one Nicky Henderson positive to share and that is with his odds-on runners. They have won a remarkable 24 times from 30 runners (SR 80%). A profit of £6.19 (ROI +20.6%) would have been achieved if backing all of them.
However, the trainer that catches my eye is Dan Skelton. A strike rate of just over one win in every four and decent profits to boot. Let’s dig deeper into his stats. Firstly, a year-by-year breakdown:
2016 was the one losing year and the only year where his strike rate dipped below 20%. The 2017 to 2022 results were very consistent, and impressive, showing that his bottom line has not been skewed by a few big priced winners.
Harry Skelton has ridden the vast majority of these runners, and this combination has been responsible for profits of £75.76. Backing this duo would have seen you earn over 44p for every £1 bet during the seven-year period (from 169 qualifiers). Here are three more positive Skelton angles:
He has bucked the female horse trend, scoring with 28% of this cohort (10 wins from 35).
His 5yo runners have done particularly well, winning 15 of their 42 starts (SR 35.7%) for a profit of £38.51 (ROI +93.9%).
Skelton has an outstanding record when his chasing debutants tackle shorter distances. In races of 2m 1f or less he has recorded 25 successes from 67 (SR 37.3%) showing a profit of £46.40 (ROI +70.3%).
Dan Skelton looks a trainer to be on the right side of with chasing debutants.
Summary: bullet points
Before I wind this piece up let me share what I think are the strongest stats both positive and negative from my research on chase debutants making the switch from hurdling.
Horses priced 5/2 to 6/1 (Industry SP) seem to be the range to concentrate on.
Avoid horses priced 40/1 or bigger.
Female horses have a very poor record in terms of both strike rate and returns.
Four-year-olds do well albeit from a modest sample. Avoid chase debut runners aged 9 and up, and it is probably also worth swerving 8yo’s.
Avoid horses that were pulled up LTO.
French-bred horses comfortably outperform British- and Irish-bred runners.
Dan Skelton is a trainer to keep a close eye on as his runners have a very good overall record.
With the National Hunt season clicking into gear now, horses making their chase debuts will be appearing more and more regularly. Hopefully, this article will help to point you in the right direction.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ThirdTimeLucki_DanSkelton_NoviceChaser_Cheltenham.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-11-08 17:03:472023-11-08 17:03:47When Hurdlers Go Chasing
Where to start about Cheltenham? Ever since the race following the Gold Cup on Friday afternoon, I resolved to write about a 66/1 winner that if we bothered (or had the time) to look closely at all the form, we could have been laughing all the way, if not to the bank, certainly to make a dent in our gas and electricity balances, writes Tony Stafford.
Earlier in the day a friend asked me to offer a shortie and a an each-way alternative for the last six races – Lossiemouth had already dotted in when he called. I won’t go into my unambitious, yet unsuccessful, calls, but I did have an opinion on the St James Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunter Chase.
I had a memory of the name Vaucelet, stablemate and chosen entry of three fancies for David Christie, whose Winged Leader was runner-up last year to the famed Irish standing dish Billaway, giving his Northern Ireland-based handler a change of luck. The old-timer Billaway was again in the field and was destined to fall before the action heated up.
Vaucelet had come over to the UK twice for races at the big May hunter chase showcase at Stratford. In 2021 he won the novice championship as a 6yo and a 4/1 shot, while a month after a Punchestown near-miss, behind Billaway, Vaucelet collected the Championship Hunter Chase, sponsored by Pertemps in the 63rd running for the Horse and Hound Cup.
He preceded the first UK win with hunter/point form figures that season of 21111 and since it, he’s gone 113112111. No wonder, you (as I did) might say, he was the 9/4 favourite in the 23 runner field.
Yet hiding in that line up, freely available at 66/1, was a horse that had started 11/4 off levels with Vaucelet in that Stratford novice championship.
This horse, namely Premier Magic, made the running that day and had just been headed before stumbling after jumping the last. He rallied on the flat but could do no better than a close third. He was pulled up in last year’s Cheltenham race but had the excuse of being badly crowded coming down the hill.
When he came back for that second shot against Billaway and Vaucelet, he had since been confined to point-to-points by his Welsh-based trainer and rider, Bradley Gibbs.
If Vaucelet had busily been picking up the pots on offer in the pointing field across the water, our unsung hero had been similarly campaigned. From March 2020 to Stratford in May 2021, his form figures were 21111. Since the defeat there, it was 11111 before Friday. His last win came by 14 lengths in the open at Garthorpe in February when an 8/11 favourite.
Yet he started 66/1 at Cheltenham last week! He was lucky to be clear of the late scrimmaging caused by loose horses, but he battled on genuinely, hardly a surprise with all those wins on his record. Meanwhile Vaucelet was struggling home in seventh.
Take a bow, Bradley Gibbs and Premier Magic. Some of those point-to-point experts will have been either rubbing their hands or cursing their lack of faith having backed or missed such a potential goldmine horse. I must give Jonathan Neesom a call to ask him if he had a few quid on.
Bradley Gibbs trains the horse for his partner’s father and was publicly grateful for the support given to him in developing their yard in Wales. None of the big names at the other end of the ownership rainbow would have been more deserving of satisfaction at their work of the past three years with this son of Court Cave.
As well as a Welsh winner, there was also a better-known Scottish-trained winner as Corach Rambler repeated last year’s victory in the Ultima Handicap Chase off a 6lb higher mark. This was only his 3rd run since and when Tom Scudamore came to the preview night in London he predicted this success, also that he would follow up in the Grand National.
Tom’s father, Peter Scudamore, is partner and assistant trainer to Lucinda Russell, so an element of insider information was involved there. On that preview event, at one point I was asked my bet of the week and repeated what I’d mentioned in my column here, Langer Dan on Thursday; but, by race day, I’d forgotten all about it.
So, what else from the week? I could go through the 18-10 Ireland domination over the home team, or talk about Constitution Hill, Honeysuckle and plenty more, but I imagine you’ve seen and read plenty about all of that. I’ll look for something different.
When the rain came, my thoughts were that on soft ground the potential for, if not catastrophe, then certainly mishaps, would be greatly increased. There were upwards of 400 runners over the four days and the quality of the preparation of these horses was such that only 12 were documented as having fallen. To those, you could add five unseated, with the odd horse brought down.
More predictable was the 80 pulled up, around 20 per cent of the total. Most unlikely was the Ultima which, as I’ve mentioned, was won by Corach Rambler. He headed home the Martin Brassil-trained Fastorslow, Jonjo O’Neill’s Monbeg Genius and another Irishman in The Goffer, the front four in the betting.
Notably unflattering outcomes for the home team were the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle on day one when the first eight home were trained in Ireland, unusually with Barry Connell the winning trainer (and owner) rather than Willie Mullins. The half-mile longer Ballymore on the second day provided a 1-2-3 for Mullins and he gained revenge on Connell, who predicted his Good Land would win. Eventually, with his horse fourth some way behind the Mullins trio, the status quo restored.
There was never a doubt that the Mullins fillies would dominate the Triumph Hurdle on Friday. Perhaps the most remarkable fact of this race was that all five of the expensively acquired arrivals from France in the spring last year stood their ground, never mind the soft ground.
Lossiemouth pulled almost from the off, but this time getting a clear wide course under Paul Townend, she had far too much class for stablemate Gala Marceau, who had beaten her when she got a nightmare run at the Dublin Racing Festival, and Zenta, a close third. Susanna Ricci, Honeysuckle’s owner Kenny Alexander, and J P McManus are the proud owners of the flying fillies. It was miles back to the first gelding, also Mullins-trained.
The trio of UK runners were 11th, 13th and pulled up.
But there was isolated and not so isolated fighting back where Paul Nicholls and former pupil dan Skelton were concerned. Nicholls won two of the Grade 1 races (Stage Star in the Turners’ and Stay Away Fay in the Albert Bartlett), backing up Champion Hurdle win number nine for Nicky Henderson with Constitution Hill. He was also an excellent second with Bravemansgame behind flying Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs from the Mullins team.
Once again Skelton pulled a couple of handicap rabbits out of the hat. It took Langer Dan three Festivals to win his race in the Coral Cup, but less expected was Bridget Andrews’ (Mrs Harry Skelton to her tradesmen) win on Faivoir, denying four Irish rivals pursuing her up the hill. She’s done it before – with Mohaayed, also in the County Hurdle, also at 33/1, and also trained by Dan Skelton – and is always a name to look out for in these highly competitive races with hosts of dangerous invaders to worry about.
In fact, the Skeltons do it so often, it’s almost as if it’s planned! Some operation that, and they know what’s needed to beat the Irish in any race at the Festival. We can’t wait for the next one.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/PremierMagic_CheltenhamFestival2023.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2023-03-20 07:15:052023-03-20 07:15:06Monday Musings: Big Priced Winners Hiding in Plain Sight
I suppose I could mention the Bryony Frost issue and her triumphant return to race riding with a big win in the Tingle Creek on Saturday at Sandown Park, writes Tony Stafford. Certain writers thought that victory was vindication of her situation vis a vis Robbie Dunne and his alleged bullying, swearing and whatever else from last week’s enquiry.
The situation, though, was rather like a jury of 12 men and women true having not agreed a trial verdict on a Friday night then going off to watch together private videos of everything the accused had done throughout his life over the weekend before reconvening on Monday morning. Not exactly the best example of natural justice maybe but, like Hollie and Rachael, Bryony is one of the racing public’s favourites and understandably and rightly so.
Equally, I could refer to Protektorat’s arrogant dismissal of former Gold Cup winner Native River in the Many Clouds Chase at Aintree the same day, and again a woman rider, Bridget Andrews, doing the steering and presenting at the fences of brother-in-law Dan Skelton’s much-improved chaser. He now faces the prospect of challenging the Irish heavyweights in the Gold Cup next March.
You have to love the way Dan never, except in the most unavoidable situations, like multiple runners at different tracks, goes outside the family. Brother and Bridget’s husband Harry might not win the title again this year – with Brian Hughes taking it so seriously he is operating twice as fast as last season’s champion. He is however playing the sensible card and helping ensure his own longevity in the saddle by keeping it in the family.
I also loved the effort of the grey mare and proud mum of a two-year-old – “I was courted by a Derby winner don’t you know!”, says Snow Leopardess as she goes on the gallops every day. “I would show you a picture but I don’t have one on me. He’s a handsome chap, by Sir Percy, and it’s his birthday soon”.
I believe the youngster is rising three but could be corrected on that. The bold-jumping grey mare conceived and foaled during the 26 months between her successful trip over to France from Charlie Longsdon’s stable in 2017 and first run back at Newbury in late 2019.
On Saturday at Aintree she treated the Grand National fences with respect but total efficiency. It would have been an awful shame if the front-running performance clear of the field for much of the three miles and two furlongs would have resulted in defeat by a nose rather than victory by that margin over Hill Sixteen.
Lots to talk about, then, but instead I’m going to harp on about the sitting duck syndrome, brought upon domestic owners and trainers by the people whose mandate is to make handicap races a level playing field.
These well-paid officials continually err in several regards. Number one, letting Irish trainers take the mickey. Take the case of a horse who had previously raced in seven maiden and novice races and a single handicap before his owner-trainer, Ronan McNally, a notorious “touch” merchant, lined him up, cherry picking a Huntingdon 0-110 yesterday against ten unsuspecting locals.
The horse, a six-year-old, to tabulate his entire Rules career, had been successively 17th of 20 beaten 53 lengths (25/1); 10th of 20 beaten 64 lengths (50/1); 8th of 15 beaten 74 lengths (150/1); 11th of 20 beaten 63 lengths (200/1); 11th of 13, beaten 19 lengths (200/1); 16th of 18, beaten 33 lengths (50/1); and 10th of 13, beaten 19 lengths (150/1).
Just to make the job look right he was sixth of 20 in his first handicap hurdle at Down Royal, starting at 8/1. You could say that the money was down and he didn’t have a great run but if it was half down then, they went the whole hog on Vee Dancer yesterday.
Choosing a conditional jockeys’ handicap hurdle and therefore able to book leading claiming rider Kevin Brogan, such was the weight of money he started an improbable 2 to 1 on. It would not be accurate to say he was always going to win as he was on and off the bridle all the way, but he won comfortably by three lengths in the end.
My complaint is that horses like that coming from another racing authority should not be allowed to run in any handicap without achieving a minimum placing: getting at least in the first four let’s say. Watch out for another three or four wins in rapid fire fashion.
He had run off 90 in that Down Royal race and our hurdles handicapper probably thought he was safe letting in him on 10lb more, but these horses have stones not pounds in hand once the hand-brake is let off.
One of the cleverest UK trainers is undoubtedly Gary Moore and I think he has even outsmarted anything he’s done previously in handicaps with his training of ex-French six-year-old Naturally High. This gelding is not only the same age as Vee Dancer but was running in a Sandown handicap hurdle on Saturday off the identical mark of 100.
He duly bolted in, dismantling some progressive young hurdlers having shot the pre-race market to pieces too. He still started odds against but when you examine his life story and the part the UK handicappers played in it, I’m sure you will see my amazement is justified.
Runner-up at Sandown was another ex-Frenchman, the Roger Teal-trained Kamaxos who was conceding him 15lb. His French Flat race mark had been 32, which equates to 70, meaning a pretty routine 45lb difference.
I mentioned Naturally High had also been trained in France, and his last four runs there in 2018 had been two victories in April in a Chantilly conditions event and a Longchamp Listed. He went up in class for his next run but finished 15th of 16 as a 16/1 shot in the Prix Du Jockey Club (French Derby), starting at much shorter odds than three of the four Aidan O’Brien candidates.
After his last run, fifth of six in a Group 2, he was allotted a mark of 47, which he still holds and which translates to 103. That makes him 33lb superior to Kamaxos from whom he was receiving 15lb on Saturday. He arrived at 100 having strolled home in his first handicap at Lingfield running off 88.
How that 88 mark was arrived at beggars belief. Normally horses are required to complete the course three times to be allotted a mark, but first time Naturally High unseated Jamie Moore before running twice more a long way out of the money. He was allowed in on that sketchy evidence but then having won the first time off a gift rating, allowing him in again off 100 was naïve in the extreme. Basically he started 15lb lower over jumps than the French figure when it should be nearer 45 or 50lb the other way!
I’ve no gripe at all with Gary Moore who had a big job to bring back to life a horse that had been bought for €120,000 at the end of 2018. Those two big wins might have started to get certain people somewhere near level with that investment because there is no doubt the money has been well and truly down both times.
It’s hard to see what can stop the hat-trick, save some overdue retaliation by the two-mile hurdles handicapper. Does he have the bottle or will he treat Naturally High (France) and (UK) as two entirely different horses?
*
I’m feeling a little bereft with the breeding stock sales’ conclusion last week and over the weekend in France. High-class racehorses and well-bred mares have rarely been in such demand and for a while on Tuesday any female with the requisite number of limbs and the ability to conceive was almost guaranteed to go to at least six figures.
I do not intend identifying the young lady who relates to this little tale save to say her putative trips to the sales have been mentioned here recently. She had her eye on a Shadwell filly – there were 90 in the catalogue last week – in Wednesday’s sale and hoped to get it for a song as it hadn’t run.
I had suggested going on Thursday when all the big buyers had gone home and she could pick up something very cheaply but at the same time be prepared for its being modest enough. She persisted and when I checked that evening whether she had any luck, she said, “No, it went for 70 grand!”
Now I know people in her situation that might have claimed to have been the under-bidder, like the Irish trainer who made very public that distinction in regard to the sale of triple Champion Hurdle winner Istabraq.
I was changing planes one day in the US coming back from Keeneland sales when Timmy Hyde caught up with me and said: “You were the under-bidder for Istabraq weren’t you? I know you were, I was standing right behind you.
“Well that fe..ing D…. M…..is telling everyone he was!” Saudi Arabia’s loss was Ireland’s gain, although when I asked how much short my 36k bid had been, Timmy said: “J P told me to go to 100 grand!”
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/NaturallyHigh_handicapblot_Sandown.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2021-12-06 08:25:292021-12-06 08:25:29Monday Musings: Who’d be a handicapper?
The 2021-22 jumps season – in a sort of foreplay since the end of April – began on Friday with three days’ intense action at Cheltenham, writes Tony Stafford.
The top five protagonists for the jump trainers’ championship, always supposing that Messrs Mullins, Elliott and De Bromhead do not intrude on a private domestic issue, have positioned themselves nicely for imminent take-off.
At this stage Fergal O’Brien leads the way with 72 wins and £622,548. Paul Nicholls is second on £561,628 from 60 winners.
Dan Skelton, boosted by the weekend, is on £531,752 from a modest 39 wins to date; Donald McCain has £466,295 from 65 and Nicky Henderson, well up to scratch with 50 wins, is lagging a little with £397,633 in prizes.
A couple of seasons ago, Dan and Harry Skelton, emboldened by the lavish support of their father Nick, Olympic show jumping gold medallist and icon of his primary sport for the best part of half a century, would have been the numerical summer pacesetters in the title race.
The trio knew that having a base in Warwickshire worthy of housing the best of bloodstock, would need a trigger to attract owners in a sport where they were accustomed to turning to Nicky Henderson or Paul Nicholls if they wanted their horses trained in the UK. The Skeltons needed numbers and the summer, with the best horses out at grass, was the time to put them on the board.
Even some of those two perennial champions’ owners had already gravitated to the better prizemoney and overwhelming superiority, talent- and numerical-wise of Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott over in Ireland. It appears that the latter’s gauche blunder in being seen grinning and brandishing his phone to the camera astride a fallen horse on his gallops has been forgiven if not forgotten. Memories are long – practicalities are instantaneous.
The Skelton team has now clearly made it to the big league as their principal five challengers over the weekend emphasised. Meanwhile the mid-summer void has been comfortably filled by Fergal O’Brien, formerly assistant to Nigel Twiston-Davies and more recently a tenant of his.
The building of a new yard a few miles away enabled the breakaway from Twiston-Davies and was the catalyst for a major step forward last season when he broke 100 winners for the first time.
After two 60’s in a row, the next two campaigns realised 49 and 63 before 104 at 18% and £796k prizemoney in 2020-21.
Such has been the forward momentum that as we enter winter, O’Brien leads both winner and money categories. That reflects a 60k cushion, but Nicholls, Skelton and Henderson all have more obvious candidates for the very big pots which always define the season’s champions.
Fergal’s stable strength has been nicely augmented by the addition of around 60 horses that the BHA’s favoured barrister, Graeme McPherson QC, has bequeathed (not exactly, but you know what I mean!) to them. McPherson was more the money man than the day-to-day trainer, and graceful withdrawal from the licensee position in favour of giving it official satellite yard status is bound to have beneficial results.
Already several former McPherson horses have shown improved form since the merger and if Fergal intends maintaining his fast pace – 11 wins in the last fortnight – he needs the extra ammunition.
He stepped in with the Listed bumper winner Bonttay on the Saturday of the meeting and as she and stable-companion Leading Theatre led a big field up the hill you could imagine both being high-class jumpers further down the line, an opinion the trainer upheld with a snatched comment: “two lovely fillies” as he walked by. The stable seems to have a bigger proportion of fillies than any of their main rivals, but that merely confirms assistant and partner Sally Randell’s assertion that “they are cheaper to buy”.
Success attracts owners, as the Skeltons illustrate, and now new owners are flocking to the softly spoken Fergal. They had a new owner with them at the sale after racing on Friday and he came away with lot 1, Poetic Music, a debut winner of a Market Rasen bumper for John Butler, at £60,000. “She was our number one at the sale too. I’m delighted we got her”, Sally said.
Two-horse races rarely capture the attention of the racegoer, but Friday’s two-and-a-half mile novice chase in which fencing newcomer My Drogo, a brilliant unbeaten hurdler last winter for Dan Skelton, was meeting Henry de Bromhead’s four-time chase winner Gin On Lime.
The younger Gin On Lime, a mare, had penalties which should have ensured My Drogo’s favouritism and so it proved, the home runner 4-9 with 7-4 against Gin On Lime.
Then at the second-last fence, when Skelton was manoeuvring his mount to challenge on the stands side, he hit the fence hard and could not maintain the partnership. Meanwhile on the inside, Gin On Lime also blundered but as she started to sink to the floor Rachael Blackmore did a passable impression of all those rodeo tricks she must have seen in cowboy films and simply stayed glued to the saddle.
The mare recovered her equilibrium with Blackmore soon back in charge and they set off to the final obstacle which Gin On Line crossed with no further problems. Blackmore had been the darling of the last spectator-limited Cheltenham Festival and here, with the aid of her main supporter De Bromhead, was revealing a new sphere of excellence.
If day one was a major setback for the brothers Skelton, on Saturday the wheel of fortune turned with another spectacular run by Third Time Lucki, the first domestic candidate for the Arkle Chase and a welcome one with all that talent waiting to reveal itself on the other side of the Irish Sea.
Maybe it was a job only half done, but two exaggerated celebrations of Harry Skelton as he crossed the line in front twice in succession yesterday showed how much it all means to win at the home of steeplechasing. First he was in splendid isolation on the always-talented Nube Negra in the Schloer Chase and then the long-time absentee West Cork got the better of Adagio and No Ordinary Joe after a battle up the hill in a high-standard Greatwood Hurdle.
Winning big handicap hurdles with horses after a layoff has been part of the Dan Skelton DNA for some time and West Cork was a prime candidate for such a project. Absent since his second in the Dovecote Hurdle in February last year behind Highway One O Two, he had been dropped 5lb for that Grade 2 second place from the 139 he had earned by his easy defeat of a Nicky Henderson 1/3 shot at Huntingdon.
That generosity by the handicapper was the final piece in the puzzle for the stable whereas top-weight Adagio, only a four-year-old, had been assessed to the hilt on his form of last winter. The third horse No Ordinary Joe pulled hard from the outset yet was still there with a big shout starting up the hill. If Nicky can get this unexposed type to settle better there is no limit to the potential of J P McManus’ gelding.
Nube Negra’s victory, emphatically pegging back one previous Queen Mother Chase winner in Politologue and ending the hitherto unbeaten course record of Put The Kettle On, the reigning champion but one who was never going yesterday, was deeply impressive.
It certainly was not lost on the bookmakers, who promoted him to near the top of this season’s market on the two-mile championship, nor on the younger Skelton, who not satisfied merely with standing in the saddle and pointing to the crowd as they crossed the line, then sated his elation with a rapid-fire first pump. He might find it harder to peg back Brian Hughes this winter, but as he says, he has some great horses to ride.
Some jockeys win a championship and simply want more. Harry Skelton will take another one if it comes, but he’s not going to do the running around riding out and touting for rides on other people’s horses. Why would he with animals of the ability of those Cheltenham mounts?
- TS
The frost relented at three of Paul Nicholls’ most productive racecourses on Saturday morning and the 11-times champion National Hunt trainer took heavy toll with a remarkable seven winners, writes Tony Stafford. Kempton, Chepstow and above all Wincanton are the three.
At the same time he was emphatically (albeit inwardly) announcing that his re-building of stable strength back to that of its heyday when Kauto Star and Denman were in their pomp, has been fully achieved.
I was half aware of somebody being quoted on the television last night – definitely not in my favourite French-language and subtitled detective show Spiral on BBC4. It was: “Men can lie, women can lie, but numbers can’t!” The numbers are there for all to see in the 2020-21 jump trainers’ championship.
The Nicholls decline, if you could call it that, was characterised last season by a first failure in 19 to reach 100 wins, when 96 victories from 445 runs brought total UK prizemoney of £2.34million. Nicky Henderson, his sole realistic challenger over the past decade, won his fifth title and third of the last four with 118 winners and £2.54million in prizemoney.
That said, the normal post-Cheltenham section of the campaign with its handsome prizemoney levels especially at Aintree, Sandown’s finals day, and the Ayr Scottish Grand National meeting distorted the figures. Nicholls’ routine century would have been assured and the relatively close money margin for Henderson could easily have been bridged.
Henderson’s first interruption of a near-Martin Pipe-like monopoly for Nicholls since his first title in 2005-6 came in 2012-13, 27 years after his own first Trainers’ Championship in 1985-6. Henderson, now 70, lacks nothing in energy and horse-power but the die is already cast for 2020-21.
While Nicholls has been serenely proceeding towards title number 12 with already 107 victories and £1.46m in money won, Henderson is languishing on less than half the monetary rewards with £673K and just over half the winners, 57 from 268 runs, both well down on his normal schedule.
Considering the jumps season didn’t begin until July 1, Nicholls’s pace has been remarkable but so too has Dan Skelton’s 74 wins and £823k from 408 runs even allowing for the fact that his customary summer starting splurge has been abandoned – for the better – with some potential stars in the pot.
Lower down, some interesting names follow and Evan Williams, after his emotional capturing of the re-scheduled Coral Welsh Grand National with the heavily-backed and well-named in the circumstances favourite, Secret Reprieve, just edged over the half-million mark from only 30 wins.
Williams was talking up the prospects of Secret Reprieve’s tackling a Grand National at Aintree and he will be hoping on Tuesday morning to see the Ruckers’ seven-year-old getting a few pounds more than his present mark of 142 – he was able to run on Saturday off 8lb lower after his previous win. Secret Reprieve would probably make it into the top 40 with 142 but 145 makes it a certainty - if Covid doesn’t intervene again.
The next three trainers in the list, all within a winner or two of getting over the half-million are Messrs O’Neill, Fergal O’Brien and Twiston-Davies. Fergal’s consistent form has brought him to 70 compared to a previous best of 63 and with expansion firmly in place, a first century is the aim and seemingly a realistic one with three months to go, subject to acts of God, God forbid!
Nicholls’ Saturday seven-timer was also a contributor to another multi-winning performance on the day. Daryl Jacob must have gone to Wincanton confident of winning the opener on Ben Pauling’s highly-regarded Malinello but found Nicholls’ Flash Collonges, one of two Harry Skelton winners for his former boss, much too good.
I’ve no doubt that when that one lost he didn’t expect to win on five of his remaining six mounts.
The Nicholls winner for Jacob was Capeland, a 6-1 shot in the second most valuable race of the day there, the two-and-a-half-mile handicap chase and the jockey also won races for Robert Walford, Alan King, Pauling and Milton Harris.
Within that quintet, he collected the big race, the re-staged Dipper Novices Chase, just a three-runner affair, on Messire Des Obeaux, where Alan King’s gelding shocked odds-on Protektorat in a rare reverse for the Skeltons in recent times. Both Flash Collonges and Messire Des Obeaux are sons of the late-lamented Saddler Maker.
Jacob’s five-timer worked out at a massive 3275-1. Nicholls’ septet, while not quite his best - he’s had an eight-in-a-day before now – amounts to more than treble that at 10,418-1. Of course to get the latter up, you’d need to navigate the 11 losers that besmirched his record. Jacob has surged onto 39 wins for the season but the title-holder Brian Hughes, with 90, looks to have a strong grip on his trophy, currently having 15 and 19 in hand of the two Harrys, Cobden and Skelton.
It’s very unusual in the depths of winter that Ireland suffers more than the UK, but there has been a flurry of abandonments across the Irish Sea with frost as the principal factor. Whatever happened to the milder west winds picking up moisture as they sweep across the Atlantic?
The perennial struggle at the top of the table there between Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott is as compelling as ever. Usually at this point in the season Elliott has been ahead but this time it’s the other way round.
Mullins has already gone past the century with 104 wins from only 326 runs to earn €2.18m at a spectacular 32% strike rate. An impressive 76 of the 162 individual horses he’s run since racing resumed have won.
Elliott is only around €70k behind Mullins in winnings but it has taken 125 wins from a bumper exactly 800 runs – almost double both Nicholls’ and Skelton’s number and treble Henderson’s – to get that close. Equally he has needed 292 horses, 90 of which have won, to make it that far.
Mullins is having his normal effect on the jockeys’ title race. Since Ruby Walsh’s retirement Paul Townend has been in pole position, but third-placed Henry de Bromhead’s 69 victories have given a big boost to Rachael Blackmore, his stable jockey.
Townend leads on 69, all but five for the Closutton trainer, but is far from secure for another title as Blackmore’s 46 wins for her boss have been supplemented by another 19 from outside rides making the deficit only four.
Talking of jockeys, the 2021 Flat championship will be very interesting given Oisin Murphy starts the year under a three-month ban imposed by the French authorities. He managed to get it reduced from the original six months on appeal and while it doesn’t interfere with the championship which starts in May, or the first phase of turf racing or indeed anything after March 11, it could still have an effect on his confidence.
No need to go into how he got the trace of drugs in his system. In these perilous times I wonder how many people contracting Covid, like my mate Steve Gilbey who said it was the most frightening experience of his life, know where they caught it. He says maybe it was Christmas shopping in Sainsburys.
Steve, a one-time repo man and night club bouncer before his more acceptable roles as a bodyguard and then Ray Tooth’s much-valued right-hand man, has seen and heard of many friends and some family members who haven’t managed to stave off the effects of the virus. I pray – as does Ray – that he’ll get through, just as I do that my son, his wife and their son, whose symptoms are less severe, will all recover soon.
Back to Flat jockeys, though, and as I said it could be a pivotal year. One Whatsapp I received just the other day made very interesting reading. It claimed that Ben Curtis would be joining Mark Johnston as stable jockey. Now confirmed as true, his odds of 10/1 for the title have plummeted to 3/1.
Mark’s most active jockeys, Joe Fanning and Franny Norton, both celebrated their 50th birthdays last year. Norton is the older by eight weeks, his birthday coming on July 27 to Fanning’s on September 24th (the same as my son incidentally!).
Between them they rode 56% of Johnston’s winners and 55% of the stable’s runners. Fanning was the busier – well, he’s younger, it makes sense! – with 50 wins from exactly 400 rides in 2020. Old-man Franny was only 75% as busy but just as tidy with his 45 from 300 rides. No other jockey achieved more than the 15 wins of P J McDonald. Then came William Buick and Silvestre De Sousa with ten each. Curtis had six wins from 35 rides for the stable.
Their longevity says much for their iron constitutions but even more for the amazing loyalty of the trainer. Had he not kept them on, riding many of the yard’s best horses as well as the majority of the lesser performers, they would probably have retired a while ago.
A second compelling item on the same Whatsapp message concerned Paul Mulrennan who it seems might be getting closer to a connection with Karl Burke. Interesting? Not many!
After a recent focus on some of the UK’s All-Weather courses it’s time to adjust the radar to a little bit of National Hunt racing (I’ll return to the remaining AW tracks of Wolves and Lingfield in due course), writes Jon Shenton. For this edition, I’ve chosen the Staffordshire venue of Uttoxeter to focus upon, the reason being that, based on a quick query (run in Query Tool), this course has hosted the most races in the last few years. More races equals more data, and more data sometimes equals better inferences.
Uttoxeter is probably best known for the second longest race in the UK calendar, the 4m2f Midlands National. The course offers a year-round jumping programme, with 25 scheduled meetings per annum. The summer jewel in the crown is the prestigious and valuable Listed race, the Summer Cup.
Course Map
The course is left-handed and relatively sharp in nature. It is seemingly synonymous with punishing winter ground meaning the track has a reputation for suiting stamina-laden types. Although, given its relative sharpness, speed is possibly an undervalued commodity, especially on the typically firmer ground during the summer. A single circuit is approximately 1 mile 3 furlongs in length, with an unusual kink in the back straight.
Uttoxeter Trainers
We start, as usual, with a perusal of trainer performance as a way into developing betting opportunities at the track. The table below shows the record of each yard that has had 50 or more runners at the track since 2012, at a starting price of 20/1 or shorter, and with a minimum of 10 victories over that period.
There is some promise in these numbers, with the trio at the top of the list possessing phenomenal records at the track. The IV data confirm that runners from these stables are approximately 2.5 to 3 times more likely to prevail than the average at this venue, and all at a healthy margin, based on A/E or plain old profit and loss.
The Sue Smith, Evan Williams and Harry Fry data also would merit further investigation should time and word count permit, which it doesn’t for this edition, sadly!
Warren Greatrex
For Warren Gretrex, things aren’t quite as rosy as they might seem from the headline figures, as will become clear below. Firstly, it is notable that his yard hasn’t had a single winner at the course at odds above 10/1. I haven’t shown workings but if you can take that on trust, of the remaining 78 runners we get the following profile by splitting the info by calendar year.
As can be seen, performance has dipped in 2018, and thus far in 2019. In fact, there was not even a solitary placed animal this year until Elleon won on the 16th November at a welcome SP of 15/2. [As was noted in this article, the Greatrex yard suffered a big dip in fortune last campaign, and will hopefully revert to type this term].
Any projected angle from this high-level data comes with a wealth warning then. Taking the overall data at face value, 24 winners from 78 runs, a strike rate of over 30% and a reasonable return all appears to be a rock-solid no-brainer. But two victories from 22 over the last couple of years removes some of the lustre of the overall picture.
Of course, it’s possibly attributable to the usual variance and randomness (as could the over-performance of earlier years be) given the acutely small sample size. It’s the beauty / challenge / pointlessness of using data such as this to base punting on depending on your viewpoint. I’m firmly in the beauty & challenge camp if that’s not clear enough already.
Presenting the data differently gives an alternative view. The graph below shows the cumulative return if you had put a £1 win single on every Greatrex runner with an SP of 10/1 or shorter at Uttoxeter since 2012.
It’s not a bad picture is it? In the context of the overall numbers the relative downturn in 2018/19 of 2/22 winners doesn’t look too damaging. The key question is, what is going to happen from today onwards? Clearly nobody knows for sure, but I’d be inclined to treat this data positively, at least for the time being, and especially in light of the recent winner.
However, if that’s not convincing enough, by looking a bit deeper under the surface there are opportunities to potentially improve the chances of success and lessen the risk based on historical data.
The table below shows track performance by the race code/type data for the yard at the course.
Did you spot it? One of those lines is very striking indeed! Chase numbers are fine; hurdle data are competitive, but not micro material. However, the National Hunt Flat race data is exceptional and irrefutably worth tracking. Sadly, for us, the aforementioned Elleon delivered the goods recently meaning a good betting opportunity was missed. The SP of 15/2 is the largest priced winner in the dataset just to add a little bit of salt to the wound! It does mean that for angle purposes a cap of 8/1 on SP will be used for Uttoxeter runners.
The Greatrex bumper (NHF) record at Uttoxeter is particularly strong, so it is a sensible step to check if the yard performs well in such races generally, or particularly at the Staffordshire venue. Analysing results by course suggests there is some definite further interest. The below table offers insight:
There is no doubt that performance is strong at the top four listed tracks, arguably five if including Ffos Las. A/E’s of the quartet at the head of the table are all above or equal to 1.22, a nice benchmark.
Is it interesting or coincidence that it could be argued that the top three are all geographically close to the trainer's base (in relative terms)? Or is it interesting that all the high-performing tracks have similarities in being left-handed sharpish constitutions? Indeed, all of the top five are left-handed circuits.
The absolute, sacrosanct rule on angle building is that every filter used to compile the angle is explainable and must make at least some degree of sense. I am aware enough to recognise entirely that the above conjecture may be stretching that point, but I have the gut feel that there is something worth noting here. Probably more based on the track layout similarities than location; after all, Lambourn to Uttoxeter is a bit of a schlep.
However, I’ll be watching Greatrex bumper entries at these tracks with great (and probably financial) interest over the coming months.
Incidentally no winners have been delivered at SP’s of greater than 15/2 in this data. While that’s risky and arguably somewhat convenient, for pure angle building I’m only going to consider those runners at 8/1 or shorter (but will personally monitor all).
The bottom line is, as always, that it is your call how - and indeed if - to play: the numbers presented are factual, but whether they are strong enough or reasoned enough for you to part with your hard earned is your choice. Caveat emptor!
Suggestions
Back Warren Greatrex horses at Uttoxeter in NHF races where the SP is 8/1 or shorter
Take note of all other Warren Greatrex runners at 10/1 or shorter at the course
If you feel so inclined, track or back Warren Greatrex runners in NHF at SP’s of 8/1 or shorter in races at Warwick, Stratford and Bangor in addition to Uttoxeter
Dan Skelton
It’s hardly new news that the Stratford-based operation has a prolific and rewarding record at the not-too-distant Staffordshire track; however, it’s always worth delving to establish if any deeper insights can be attained. The first port of call in this instance is by market price (it’s usually the first item I look at), and in the case of this intel there is some enthusiasm for a deeper dive.
The data tell us that shorter-priced animals outperform the market in terms of A/E, IV and profit (look at that 5.3 IV for animals sent off shorter than 2/1!), whilst the entrants who start at prices of 11/2 or greater just about hold their own. Shorter priced the better, then.
If a lower SP is counter-intuitively a good thing then analysing performance based on market position is a sensible step. There may be an angle containing the favourite, rather than just short priced animals.
An odds rank of 1 relates to the favourite, 2 is the second favourite and so on. It is crystal clear that a Skelton jolly at Uttoxeter is a very serious contender, with over half of them delivering, and recording an A/E of 1.29 to boot. Impressive stuff at such apparently such short prices. It proves that there can be value when fishing at the top of the market on occasion.
Obviously, knowing whether a horse is going to start at the top of the market is a bit of guesswork if you generally back the night before or early on the day of the race, but invariably you win some, you lose some and such things even themselves out over time.
Suggestion: Back Dan Skelton horses at Uttoxeter when they are positioned as SP favourites
Dr Richard Newland
Third on the trainer table is Dr. Richard Newland. The former GP and Grand National-winning trainer (2014, Pineau De Re) has an impressive record at Uttoxeter. However, focusing on the time of year gives a lot of clarity regarding when the real spotlight on his runners should occur.
The graph illustrates the volume of Newland runners at Uttoxeter, as well as the number of winners. There’s a pronounced focus on summer jumping at the track, particularly in the months of June and July.
This table shows the same data in more traditional format, with the usual supplementary info, as provided by geegeez.co.uk's Query Tool:
Admittedly, highlighting summer jumping prowess at this point in the year is terrible timing, but it’s worth keeping in cold storage until the warmer temperatures return to these lands. Again, Query Tool is your friend!
The summary version of all runners from May-Sep (inclusive) results in the below output.
That’s good enough but further optional sharpening could be attained as there is no runner that has won at odds of greater than 15/2 SP, albeit only from nine attempts (three of which placed).
I get a strong impression that there is more to find with this trainer. From a relatively small number of horses in training this is a yard worth tracking closely and getting to know in closer detail.
Suggestion:Back Dr Richard Newland horses at Uttoxeter over the summer months (May-September) at odds of 15/2 or shorter
*
Distance nuggets
As ever, let's have a quick hack around some of the race dynamics at the course.
Hurdle races – 2 miles
I’ve concentrated on hurdles primarily due to the volume of data; the chases are a little sparser in frequency so harder from which to draw even moderate conclusions. Initially, then, let's pick up the two-mile distance for larger field sizes (nine or greater) the following profile is generated:
The table illustrates the Impact Value (IV) performance of horses by the various underfoot conditions and by pace profile. The column “races” simply contains the number of races that relate to those going descriptions. This is included primarily to demonstrate the sample size of each data set so you can draw your own conclusions to the relevance when assessing a race.
The data clearly shows that front end pace is important and it’s better to be at the head than biding time in the relative back positions. This is a general truism for all races on all goings at all courses.
There is a suggestion that racing prominently is of greater importance as the ground becomes more testing, with the strongest two numbers in terms of IV relating to leading in Soft (1.81) and Heavy (2.55) conditions, abeit on smaller sample sizes. Making up ground from the cheap seats is tough in all conditions, especially so in the sticky stamina-sapping Staffordshire mud.
Hurdle races – 2m 4furlongs
The data for the two-and-a-half-mile trip is reasonably similar to it’s shorter two-mile counterpart, namely that leaders and prominent racers are generally favoured. The green-tinged data is on the right-hand side of the table where the speed is, the redder/orange numbers relating to horses who are ridden patiently is towards the left. There isn’t the same profile in terms of front-running mudlarks getting an even better time of it, perhaps stamina becomes of greater importance than track position over the extra half-mile. Irrespective of reasons or rationale, backing a horse that is likely to be in the leading ranks seems a sensible approach when assessing a race at this distance.
Hurdles - 3 miles
Finally, a focus on the longer distance of the 3-mile trip. The first thing to say is that there are fewer races at this distance, but there is no doubt that based on the information available, the box seat seems to have shifted towards the prominent racers, not the horses who cut out the running.
Whilst the front runners perform perfectly well on average, it seems logical that to lead without cover for this longer distance is a more difficult proposition. The low sample sizes do not help, but there is a flavour of it becoming increasingly difficult to make all as the ground gets more testing.
Broadly speaking the optimum position is tucked in nicely behind the leaders; however, based on the overall sample sizes it is not a strong conclusion. Taking the good ground data (where there is the biggest sample, 71 races) the pace profile is relatively flat in comparison to some of the numbers we’ve seen on other tracks. However, caution is advised on likely leaders in deeper underfoot conditions.
*
I hope that is of some use to you over the winter and beyond. Forget the Derby, I’m already looking forward to Dr. Newland at Uttoxeter next summer!
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