Tag Archive for: Gordon Elliott

Trainer Profiles: Gordon Elliott

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We head back to Ireland for my next trainer profile; this time I will be examining the record of Gordon Elliott. In this article I will be drilling down into just under ten years of National Hunt racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st October 2022, the majority of which can be sourced by members using the Geegeez Query Tool. All profits / losses have been calculated to Industry Starting Price but where appropriate I will share Betfair SP data as that is a better guide these days of the likely profits/losses punters will make.

The main body of this piece will look at Elliott's record when running horses in Ireland. However, I will also examine his UK record as he sends plenty of runners across on the ferry.

Gordon Elliott Brief Bio

Elliott was not born into a racing family, but he started working for Tony Martin in his teens before riding in point to points and under rules. Towards the end of his riding career, before injury curtailed that part of his CV, he rode for Martin Pipe for a year as a conditional.

In 2006 Elliott took out his training license, operating out of Cullentra House Stables, and just a year later became the youngest trainer ever to win the Grand National, courtesy of the former Paul Nicholls inmate, Silver Birch. He has also won the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, one of his 33 winners at the Festival. He mainly focuses on National Hunt racing but he does have a few runners on the flat, and has enjoyed success at Royal Ascot (Pallasator) as well as winning the Ebor Handicap at York (Dirar). He was banned for six months in 2021 after being photographed astride a dead horse, a reckless act. We will probably have to wait another year or two to see what, if any, long term effect that has on his success.

 

Gordon Elliott: Irish racing Record

As stated, the main part of this analysis will focus on Elliott's domestic record.

Gordon Elliott Record by Year

We'll begin with a yearly performance breakdown:

 

It is worth pointing out that 2022 (to date) has produced the lowest win strike rate and the lowest A/E index of the near decade in focus. Has this something to do with the repercussions of his ban? Possibly, but as I mentioned above we will probably need a bit longer to formulate a clearer opinion on that. Even though he lost some high profile horses at that time, it wouldn’t take a lot to pull the strike rate back up over the last two months of 2022.

[Update, Elliott finished 2022 with a domestic strike rate of 14.84%, in line with results since 2018 - Ed.]

It's time to dig a bit deeper.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Race Type

A look at race types first; I have excluded hunter chases as he has had just 16 runners over the ten years.

 

 

In terms of strike rate National Hunt Flat races are comfortably the best performers; it is also the sphere that has seen the smallest losses to SP. Interestingly, though, there is little in it when we examine the A/E indices. Amazingly, one could have made a small profit in chases if backing at BSP, and a slightly bigger one using the machine in NH Flat races. Hurdle races returned a loss to BSP but only just over 7%.

Gordon Elliott Performance in National Hunt Flat Races

It makes sense to dig first into these flat contests. I would like to share market rank data first as it is quite revealing:

 

 

Elliott has an outstanding record with bumper favourites, close to a 50% strike rate. Compare this to the 39.8% success rate of ALL trainers with favourites in Irish NH Flat races, and you can see why this is such a strong stat. Using BSP he would have snuck into profit which, again, for favourite data, is impressive. A/E index at 0.99 is also high.

Less impressive are the performances of second and third favourites, who recorded modest win percentages and significant losses to SP. Painfully, even at BSP, second favourites would have lost you nearly 27p in the £ if backing them all, and over 35p in the £ at industry odds.

Here are a few extra stats for NH Flat races that hopefully readers will find useful:

  1. Male runners outperform female runners, scoring 23.1% of the time to 16.9%. Female losses have been around 6.5p in the £ worse when compared to male returns (Industry SP). However, female favourites actually have done better than their male counterparts, albeit from only 53 runners. Female favourites have returned an impressive 26.5% profit;
  1. Jockey Mr J Codd (Jamie) has secured an overall SR% of just over 30% (116 wins from 381) with losses of only 7p in the £ to SP; to BSP this flips to an 11p in the £ profit;
  1. Horses on debut have a very good record in these races. There have been 435 runners of which 96 have won (SR 22.1%). Profits to SP stand at £27.62 (ROI +6.3%); to BSP this becomes £144.17 (ROI +33.1%). Note, there have been a few big-priced winners in this cohort but nothing outlandish. For the record he has had ten winners priced between 14/1 and 25/1.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance in Chases

A quick review of chases now. Looking at Elliott's yearly stats in terms of win strike rate and win & placed (Each way) strike rate we see the following:

 

Gordon Elliott, win and each way performance in Irish chases

 

Both lines show a gradual drop off in success when compared with the early to mid-2010's. From 2018 to 2022 the average win strike rate was 12.2%; the previous five year period was up at 16.8%. Likewise, the each-way five year splits see the latest period on 31.6% while the earlier five year block was nearly seven percentage points higher at 38.5%, a relative differential of around 20%. Not surprisingly, returns to £1 win level stakes have been much poorer between 2018 and 2022 compared with 2013 to 2017 – 15p in the £ poorer to be precise.

The same pattern can be seen when looking at the performance of his runners in chases when they start favourite:

 

Gordon Elliott, record with chase favourites 2013 to October 2022

 

Elliott made a profit to SP in five of the six seasons between 2013 and 2018 but, since then, he has made a loss each year, with 2020 and 2021 being particularly poor. This is essentially down to the clear drop in strike rate. [Update, by the end of 2022, Elliott had crept into profit for the year with his chase favourites, returning +4.78% ROI at a 43.48% win rate]

However, before moving on there is one further stat I would like to share with you: horses priced 14/1 or bigger have provided a profit to BSP despite a strike rate of just 3.5% (26 wins from 735 runners). To £1 level stakes (BSP) profits stand at £314.17 (ROI +42.7%). I guess many punters on Betfair ignore his bigger priced runners and hence their prices are inflated somewhat, though at that strike rate you can expect to go a very long time between drinks (losing sequences of 45, 48 twice, 49, 51, 52, 67, 75 and 88) !!!

 

Gordon Elliott Performance in Hurdle Races

Our final race code stop is the smaller obstacles, and one interesting comparison is when we look at age stats:

 

 

We see a very clear preference to the younger group with correlation across strike rates, returns, A/E indices and Impact Values.

Before moving on I want to look quickly at hurdles distance data now. There is a slight dip in performance in races of 3 miles or more as the graph below highlights:

 

 

There are notably lower win and win/placed (each way) strike rates over the longer distance hurdle contests. These are races where I suggest one thinks twice about backing Elliott runners.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Course

Onto racecourse data now. I am going to look at all courses where Elliott has had at least 100 runners and break the data down into different subsets. I am going to look at win strike rate and A/E indices across National Hunt Flat races, hurdle races and chases. With a ‘par’ A/E index for all trainers at around 0.87, I have highlighted A/E indices of 0.95 or higher in green – these are positive. A/E indices of 0.79 or lower (in red) are negative. Missing values means that within that race code subset Elliott had fewer than 40 runners:

 

 

There is a huge variety of figures here as one might expect, more A/E indices coloured red than green showing there are several course/race type combinations where he has struggled a little or, more fairly perhaps, where he is overbet. Courses where the stats across the board are generally positive include Down Royal, Clonmel (note that NH Flat rate is 25% from 36 races, just below the threshold for display) and Navan. Courses to avoid look to be Killarney, Leopardstown and Wexford. It may also make sense to steer clear of hurdle races at Galway, Gowran Park and Tipperary. In terms of chases it looks best to avoid Gowran Park and Naas.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Starting Price

Industry SP performance data now. I have looked at market position in National Hunt Flat races already, but it’s time to break all Elliott's runners down by starting price:

 

 

The most positive data comes from the odds-on group followed by the Evens to 15/8 bracket. Odds-on runners are actually very close to breaking even.

In general, the betting returns in terms of SP get worse as the starting price increases. By graphing the A/E indices we can perhaps see the downward trend more clearly:

 

 

Sticking with the front end of the market, we saw earlier that NH Flat favourites were close to breaking even to Industry SP so I decided to look at the hurdle and chase favourite data, too. Chase favourites lost around 6p in the £ and hurdlers close to 11p. This improves to marginally more palatable losses of 3p and 6p to BSP.

As a general rule I would say that shorter priced runners from the Elliott yard are worth close scrutiny and in certain circumstances will offer a modicum of value. If, however, you are the other side of the price fence and prefer longshots, it should be said that despite the 32% losses to SP which 14/1+ horses have amassed, to BSP they have actually proved profitable. These runners have won on average just once in every 29 attempts so - as mentioned earlier - if you head down this longshot road, expect it to be a rocky one.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Running Style

To begin with let us see the proportion of his runners that fit a specific running style. Geegeez breaks these running styles into four groups: Led – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

Here are the splits for Elliott:

 

 

In terms of front runners / early leaders, Elliott sends a relatively modest proportion of his horses to the front: the average front-running figure is 10% for all Irish trainers, so he stands a little below that. Prominent runners, however, have accounted for just under 40% of all runners from the stable which compares with around 30% of all Irish runners; so Elliott is comfortably above the average here.

Let us now see the win success rate of each running style:

 

 

Front runners / early leaders score close to 30% of the time, but remember he sends less than 10% of all his runners to the front early. Some, including me, would say why does he not send more horses to lead early? Prominent racers are comfortably next best in terms of win success with poor strike rates (and very poor returns) for horses positioned further back early in their races.

I want to look at favourites now and see their success rate in terms of run style:

 

 

These are very strong win percentages for front running favourites (over 55% win success) and prominent market leaders do well also, standing at just above 42%. There is a clear drop again when we look at midfield and held up horses sent off favourite. Hence a front running favourite for Elliott is a potent weapon. Here is the figures for favourites by run style, at starting price:

 

 

Essentially if you back an Elliott runner and it goes to the front early, you have far more chance of a) the horse winning and b) making a long term profit. This is especially true if the horse is favoured.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by Jockey

Onto some jockey analysis now and a look at any jockey who has ridden at least 75 times for Elliott since 2013, with the proviso that they have had at least one ride for the stable in 2022. I have ordered them by number of rides starting with the most:

 

 

We saw earlier that Jamie Codd has a good record in National Hunt Flat races and these are the races he primarily rides in. Regular riders Jack Kennedy and Davy Russell have very similar strike rates – Russell has provided slightly better overall returns to SP, but these are flipped if we examine BSP returns. Both actually have recorded profits on 'the machine', Russell 3p in the £ and Kennedy up at 11p in the £. Kennedy has a good record on favourites scoring 42.9% of the time; all other jockeys combined have scored just under 40% of the time on stable favourites.

Of course, since this study period, Dave Russell has announced his retirement. The main beneficiary is expected to be Kennedy, though Jordan Gainford is also one to watch.

So that brings the curtain down on the Irish side of his record, let’s take a quick look at the UK data now:

 

Gordon Elliott: UK racing record

Here are Elliott's overall figures in the UK over the past nearly ten years:

 

 

As might be expected given the costs of travel and the logistical effort, he enjoys a much higher strike rate. Minimal losses to SP are a slight surprise; indeed, to BSP Elliott has returned 12p in the £ profit on his UK runners.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance by UK racecourse

Perth and Cheltenham are the courses to which Elliott has sent the vast majority of his UK runners. There are five courses where he saddled 40 or more runners (shown below):

 

 

His record at Perth is pretty much bombproof. He has had only one winner priced bigger than 10/1 in the research period (Dantes King at 20/1 in 2013). With horses priced 10/1 or shorter at the Scottish track he has produced returns of 8p in the £ to SP, double that to 16p for BSP.

At Ayr his performance is more mixed: he has made a small profit with favourites, but any horse that has not started favourite has generally run poorly. As a group those non-favourites have won just five races from 63 (SR 7.9%) losing nearly 60p in the £ to SP; 49p loss to BSP.

At Cheltenham, Elliott has a much lower strike rate compared to other courses, which is fully to be expected given both the quality and quantity of opposition, but he has still edged into profit to SP. 257 of his 347 Cheltenham runners in the study period ran at the Cheltenham Festival so let’s look his festival record.

 

Gordon Elliott Performance at Cheltenham Festival

Of his 33 Cheltenham Festival winners, 32 have been achieved in the last ten years. He has been leading trainer at the meeting in two of the last ten years, 2017 and 2018. Here is a graph of yearly performance in terms of wins:

 

 

He had no runners in 2021, when he was serving his ban (Denise Foster, who took over the licence during that time, had three winners at the 2021 Festival); and last year (2022) Elliott did seem to underperform a little, especially if we compare it with 2017 to 2020. Having said that he had six seconds, so if two or three of those had won then I probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything. The perils of tiny sample sizes!

If you had backed all Gordon Elliott runners at the Cheltenham Festival to BSP over the past ten years a profit to £1 level stakes of £161.06 would have been achieved. This equates to returns just shy of 63 pence for every £1 bet. In six of the nine years you would have made a BSP profit on his runners. For the record, the vast majority of the profits have come from Class 1 races.

What is also impressive is the breadth of races where he has been successful: Elliott has won 17 different races at the meeting ranging from the Gold Cup to the Champion Bumper to the Cross Country Chase to the Pertemps to the Supreme Novices to the Triumph Hurdle, etc.

One final stat to be aware of at the Festival is that he actually has a better record with horses wearing some sort of headgear - especially a tongue tie, both from a strike rate perspective and a returns perspective.

 

 

 

Gordon Elliott UK Performance by Race Type

A look now at race type and I have again ignored hunter chases as he has had only eight runners in such events. As we can see, Elliott has done well with his hurdlers when sending them over to the UK:

 

 

A one in four strike rate in UK hurdle races is hugely impressive as are the positive overall returns. Favourites in hurdle races have also impressed as a group, scoring nearly 50% of the time for returns of almost 9p in the £ to SP; 14p to BSP. Horses in National Hunt Flat races have a similar strike rate to that achieved in Ireland but losses have been steep. This is due to the fact that many of his runners in these events start at prohibitive odds.

 

Gordon Elliott – Extra stats and nuggets for UK Racing

Lastly on the UK data here are three extra stats to be aware of:

  1. If you ignore horses that finished first or second last time out his record reads 143 wins from 735 runners (SR 19.5%) for a SP profit of £53.03 (ROI +7.2%); BSP profit stands at £194.65 (ROI +26.5%);
  1. Horses that raced at Cheltenham last time out have won 14 races from 59 making SP returns of 32p in the £ (49p to BSP);
  1. When jockey Sean Bowen rides, the results have been impressive: 34 wins from 104 (SR 32.7%) for an SP profit of £15.87 (ROI +15.3%); BSP profit £27.54 (ROI +26.5%)

 

Summary - Gordon Elliott Key Takeaways

Irish Racing

 

 

UK Racing

 

 

So there you have it – the next year or two will be interesting due to potential repercussions of the 2021 ban, though the early signs are that most data are largely in line with pre-suspension levels. There are plenty of solid pointers, both positive and negative, with which to inform your betting in 2023.

Good luck!

- DR

Monday Musings: Cheltenham Chat

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Oh dear! The Irish sent out a single scout on Saturday to assess the strength of the UK jumps defence in advance of Cheltenham this week, writes Tony Stafford. What was his report back to HQ? “They are wide open and ripe for picking. Not just in the graded races either – they still haven’t got a clue how to stop our horses improving a stone when they come over for the Festival handicaps!”

Twenty-two horses lined up for the Paddy Power-sponsored Imperial Cup at Sandown Park. All bar one were trained in the UK, the exception was a 12 times-raced with one win gelding called Suprise Package, rated 135, 5lb higher than his Irish mark.

Number four on the list, so conceding weight to all apart from the top three, he is trained by Peter Fahey, in Co Kildare. Fahey has had 18 winners from the 55 individual horses he has run at home this jumps season.

That puts him towards the upper-middle echelon with home earnings of €353,000 in 2021-22, a total boosted by the exploits of his seven-year-old mare, Royal Kahala. A Grade 2 winner last time she is by-passing tomorrow’s Mares’ Hurdle in favour of a shot at the Stayers’ later in the week.

If she is the star, Suprise Package will be pressing up behind her very soon as, under birthday boy James Bowen, he cantered up to the leaders in the straight and sauntered clear to win by nine lengths as his rivals strained in vain up the Sandown hill in rain-softened ground.

If the ability of the appropriately-named winner wasn’t obvious beforehand – there was none of the standard flood of money that we’ve been seeing in recent seasons about Irish-trained Cheltenham handicap winners – his 20/1 starting price was amazing just the same as the only Irish contender.

The win and the 5lb extra it would entail should Fahey be tempted to follow the time-honoured pattern of an Imperial Cup – Cheltenham Festival race double, in his case in Friday’s County Hurdle, he must be a candidate. Nowadays, though, there’s no big insurance-covered bonus to entice Fahey, who anyway has one higher in the weights for that race.

If he wants to run, he’ll be number 22 of the 50-odd entered, one above the one handicap runner of the meeting I wanted to see in this race rather than take up a level-weights engagement. I have been advised by someone in the know with one of his owners that Colonel Mustard goes for the Ballymore on Wednesday but he is unproven at that trip.

I can’t believe the very shrewd and painstaking Lorna Fowler will pass up the chance of running in the handicap. The option is to take a second shot at Sir Gerhard – now sure to be going there on Wednesday after Dysart Dynamo,  Bring On The Night and Kilcruit all represent the Mullins stable in the opening Supreme tomorrow.

Colonel Mustard was a well-beaten third to Sir Gerhard at the Dublin Racing Festival having previously chased home Jonbon at Ascot. His 140 mark looks a gift and I’d love to see my occasional Racing Channel co-partner from a generation ago get a Cheltenham winner on her record. As Lorna Bradburne she was a wonderful amateur rider from a top Scottish racing family and she has melded perfectly into the spectacular private facilities of husband Harry’s family estate.

Tomorrow there are two handicaps on the graded-race-dominated opening-day card. Seven of the 24 acceptors for the Ultima Handicap Chase are Irish while there are double that in the 22-runner Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle.

Gordon Elliott, as well as two of the three favourites for Friday’s Triumph Hurdle, has another five four-year-olds, all bar one in the top half dozen and the fifth equal weights with the 11th and 12th in the list.

The inescapable conclusion is that there are many more juvenile races during the autumn and early winter for the Irish stables to test their horses and run them often enough to get a mark. [Alternatively, there is the recalibration of UK hurdles ratings downwards this season – Ed.] Without straying too far into the results from this season my impression is that Gary Moore is one of the few UK trainers to take preparing juvenile hurdlers seriously. He sources them in the manner of Willie Mullins and Elliott and knows how to win with them.

He has decided against tackling the Irish hordes in the Boodles, several of his potential candidates for that race having been skilfully placed to advantage in much calmer opportunities recently. He does have the talented pair of Porticello and Teddy Blue as two serious mid-range contenders for the Triumph and how he would love to make amends for the dreadful luck of his Goshen in that race two years ago with that one’s stumble when well clear at the final flight.

We will not be seeing Goshen in this year’s Champion Hurdle, connections wisely opting to keep him to nice races on right-handed tracks as with his two latest wins, impressively by a wide margin at Sandown and then in a battling effort in Wincanton’s Kingwell Hurdle last month.

Both Porticello and Teddy Blue came from France and there was plenty of money for the latter son of Sea The Moon when he made his jumps debut at Lingfield after good form on the level in his native land. He was comfortably brushed aside that day but there was quite a transformation when upped in class for the Adonis Hurdle at Kempton. There he might have given unbeaten Knight Salute a closer battle if he had been slightly more accurate over either or preferably both of the last two flights.

Porticello won another of the requisite UK Triumph trials with a spread-eagling display in Haydock’s Victor Ludorum run in very testing ground. Accurate jumping, as with Knight Salute, is his forte too but the home trio will have it all to do against Vauban, Fil Dor and the one graduate from the UK, the ex-Her Majesty-owned and Gosden-trained Pied Piper.

Strangely, all three have a defeat on their cards and I favour Pied Piper, one half of the Elliott squad, against Mullins’ singleton Vauban. It will be a race to savour and one in which the English trio will probably on the day be value each-way bets as the invaders play up their meeting winnings.

That said, it isn’t always easily to identify the right one, for all last year’s succession of heavily-backed winners in the handicaps often from smaller stables. There will be double-figure Irish representation in most of the handicaps and therefore it will be correspondingly difficult to find the right one. Follow the money. That usually works.

The opening day reflects the almost obscene power of the two main stables with Mullins supplying 15 and Elliott 14 of Tuesday’s total of 93 final declarations. Half of Elliott’s team are involved in the two handicaps but 13 of the Mullins contingent go for the Graded races with just two “throw-aways” in the Boodles and none in the Ultima.

That he can go in the opener with two unbeaten runners bolstered by Kilcruit, odds-on when beaten by stablemate Sir Gerhard in last year’s Champion Bumper, indicates the depth of strength. Dysart Dynamo had two easy bumper victories last term and two 19-length hurdle romps this as the faultless marks on his card. Bring On The Night was an eight-length winner of his sole Mullins hurdles run following two nice flat wins in France for Andre Fabre. This Gleneagles gelding has great potential yet is tomorrow’s third string.

Nicky Henderson is sending out two of his absolutely top novices, Constitution Hill and Jonbon, to face the invaders and a sense of where the power is these days can be seen that Nicky has only two more runners on that opening day card. So much depends for him on Shishkin.

He did have some joy at Sandown on Saturday when his previously once-raced four-year-old Luccia rolled over the Mullins-trained Eabha Grace in the Listed fillies’ and mares’ bumper. She didn’t just beat the older Irish mare, she annihilated her, going 17 lengths clear. She looks a dish for the Aintree mares’ bumper but it will be interesting to see first how Poetic Music fares against the older boys in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper on Wednesday.

She and fellow four-year-old filly Rosy Redrum are intriguing elements to a race with 16 Irish entries, seven for the voracious Mullins who has won the race 11 times starting from Wither Or Which in 1996. He has won the last two, while he and Elliott have monopolised the last five renewals.

Milton Harris, who has been a revelation this winter after a chequered career, is adopting a fighting policy with Rosy Redrum, just as he has Knight Salute in a busy juvenile hurdle season. But I think there are far more concrete reasons why the 16.3hh Poetic Music might give Mullins and co a run for their money.

A course winner when she powered up the hill on New Year’s Day to pull back a large deficit on her front-running market rival, she too defends an unbeaten record like many of the challengers. I’ve not really been convinced that Paddy Brennan got it right in either of their runs together, the filly getting him out of trouble both at Newbury and Cheltenham.

If Paddy does put in one of his vintage Cheltenham rides, of which there have been plenty over the years, and the filly wins it will be one of the achievements of the meeting for the Fergal O’Brien team and especially Sally Randell. It was Fergal’s partner and assistant who was so keen to buy her when she came up for sale last November after winning her junior bumper at Market Rasen.

- TS

Monday Musings: Conflation

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The punters were loving it in the packed grandstands at Leopardstown during the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival as favourite after favourite went in, writes Tony Stafford. A host of Grade 1 races meant a conveyer belt of superb winners, confirming the power of the big stables almost in the manner of the Cold-War style May Day Parades in Moscow’s Red Square.

For armoured tanks and missile launchers read Mullins chasers and hurdlers, Elliott juveniles and handicap chasers not to mention the odd De Bromhead stealth bomber still to taste defeat in 14 faultless sorties.

Honeysuckle and Blackmore; Chacun Pour Soi and Townend; and, most demoralising for all the existing Gold Cup stars, a demolition job by Conflated and Russell in the Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup, at 18-1 which brought only a temporary respite for the layers on Saturday.

Conflated can certainly describe Mr Ryanair. He has the twin roles of running Ireland’s most visible and visibly competitive airline along with a still massive undertaking with Gigginstown House Stud. The culls in the latter direction have clearly become evident. Only nine in the maroon colours appeared during the two days and 15 races of the Festival, a long way short of the days when the sort of big-money handicap chases and hurdles on offer here would have usually included half a dozen of his representatives in each. Whatever happened to all those caps? JP’s are all different colours to theirs so no taker there!

Gordon Elliott’s suspension last year coupled with the Covid restrictions were a convenient moment conflatedly to confirm Michael O’Leary’s support for Elliott and at the same time accelerate the cull. The horse Conflated, happily for the magnate and his racing manager brother Eddie, ran in the Gold Cup despite Eddie’s view he had no chance.

The relative outsider, although well backed in the lead-up to the race, had far too much speed for last year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Minella Indo – showing something of his true self – and the rest. The one coming through late into the Gold Cup field often beats the established stars at Cheltenham. He usually has had fewer hard battles and knocks lingering in the recesses of his consciousness to shrink from on the big day.

We – or at least our trainers – moan about the way the Irish come and pinch our biggest prizes every March, with last year’s almost total oblivion, perhaps, being the final straw. Paul Nicholls seems to err on the cautious side at Cheltenham these days in favour of more serious involvement at Aintree at the Grand National meeting but he did make a challenge for two of this weekend’s big prizes.

Frodon, who had beaten Minella Indo at Down Royal on their joint reappearance back in the autumn – with Galvin splitting the pair – does not have a Cheltenham entry this year. This was his Cheltenham, running in a three-mile rather than three-and-a quarter-mile Gold Cup on Saturday.

The near-veteran put up his usual prominent showing under Bryony Frost, but when the taps were turned on over the second-last they were immediately raising a white flag, coming home a remote last of the seven finishers more than 20 lengths behind Conflated.

Then yesterday, Greaneteen, outpointed last time by Shishkin at Kempton having previously won the Tingle Creek, was utterly rolled over finishing last of five, miles behind Chacun Pour Soi in the Dublin Chase, a Grade 1 extended two-miler.

Those two obviously below-par performances will have been a sobering experience for Nicholls, a man who recently clocked up his domestic century of winners this season, just after Donald McCain and before the upwardly and geographically-mobile Irishman Fergal O’Brien.

More to the point though at a time when complaints about UK prizemoney are unrelentingly put forward by trainers and owners alike, surely it was an indictment of the lack of enterprise here that no other UK trainer – and there are more than 500 of them if you include permit holders – was daring enough to have a shot at the €2,881,500 on offer for the 15 races.

In all, 91 prizes were available over the two days and between them Messrs Mullins and Elliott snaffled 42% of the money – Mullins €702,000 from seven wins, five thirds, five fourths, seven fifths and three sixths; and Elliott almost precisely half a million from three wins, seven second places, two thirds, two fourths, six fifths and one sixth place.

In an almost exact proportion of prizes they collected 41 of the 91 on offer. The usual suspects filled in for the rest with Henry de Bromhead just about keeping his head above water with Honeysuckle’s wide-margin victory in the Chanelle Pharma Irish Champion Hurdle.

Understandably Honeysuckle was roared all the way from the winning line to the enclosure by an enraptured crowd finally allowed to give vent on a racecourse to their feelings. For what it’s worth, my view watching from the owners’ room at Kempton – my first time at one of my favourite spots on the circuit for almost two years – was that there were a couple of slightly worrying elements.

She probably got a little lonely out in front and while there was never a proper challenge, it wasn’t as smooth as some of the earlier wins. You have to wonder – well I did anyway – whether she might be getting bored with the whole “I’m miles better than the rest of you” girl-power routine?

Why Kempton, you might ask? Well I was there to watch the comeback of Jonathan Barnett’s Year Of The Dragon – sorry mate, it’s the Year of the Tiger! – after seven months off. A strong-finishing third, while a little short of peak suggests a win next time. February 24 at Newcastle fits William Knight’s penchant for sending his horses to that northern outpost. Fill your boots!

On another fill your boots theme, I had a nice chat with Dermot Weld at the sales at Newmarket on Thursday and he had news of his Chester Cup winner from last year. His Falcon Eight, under Frankie Dettori, took advantage of lenient UK handicapping to win the big staying prize from a mark of 104.

This Thursday he will have his second run over hurdles in a near-three-mile novice event at Thurles and as Dermot said: “When he wins he’ll go to the Albert Bartlett. And by the way, the English trainers were moaning about his handicapping and getting their knickers in a twist but he had been dropped only 4lb!” True enough Dermot, but to be dropped at all after finishing fourth in the Irish St Leger wasn’t exactly harsh treatment by BHA’s finest! We’ll be cheering for you on Thursday though with our vouchers for the potato race at the Festival warming our inside pockets for the next few weeks.

Returning to Leopardstown, surely the most eye-opening performance of the lot was Saturday’s bumper victory of Facile Vega, trained by Willie, ridden by Patrick and the second foal to run of their great champion mare, Quevega. I sort of hinted what I would be doing if I owned a mare of such quality – much as Michael Tabor did in his mating for Refinement that produced Walking On Air - and send her to Derby runner-up Walk in the Park. Suppose it’s easy if you own both the mare and the stallion!

It worked fine for Facile Vega’s workmanlike first run but here he was so dominating in outclassing a field of previous winners that the trainer seems set for a ridiculous 12th success in the Champion Bumper with a horse that is odds-on even before the entries are known.

Last year’s winner of that race, Sir Gerhard, was not the first string when he made it 11 for the maestro that day and, with Rachael Blackmore riding, he overcame hot favourite Kilcruit and Patrick Mullins, who himself had been ultra-impressive in this race twelve months ago.

Yesterday, in the Cheveley Park Stud colours and with only a single defeat – by Kilcruit when they reconvened at Punchestown, the gelding brought his tally to five out of six with an easy win in the Grade 1 novice hurdle. Now we have to wait and see whether another re-match is possible. More pertinently, perhaps, will be which Nicky Henderson star, the afore-mentioned Walking On Air (who would need to be supplemented) or Constitution Hill or Jonbon, he prefers to face before deciding on the Supreme or Ballymore.

The relentless march of the big Irish stables with their ability to identify and then secure with their greater financial power the best prospects is a trend that no end of BHA committees, tough talk from trainers and retaliation from handicappers will arrest any time soon. Major owners increasingly have their horses trained over there as there are meetings like last weekend’s when they can tilt for almost €3 million. Would it were so in England!

- TS

Monday Musings: Gordon’s Cunning Plan?

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Six months is a long time in politics, writes Tony Stafford: ask all the Tory ministers who either got sacked, demoted, moved sideways or occasionally up in the latest reshuffle. It’s a long time in the Covid19 story too, ask John Gosden’s mate, former Health Minister Matt Hancock, but it seems it is but a blink of an eye in Irish horseracing.

Gordon Elliott and Charles Byrnes came back from their independent six-month bans for breaches of Rules and in the former case basic decency. Each within days has shown that nothing has changed in their absence.
Immediately after THAT picture of him sitting on a dead horse on his gallops, Elliott was briefly the most hated man who had anything to do with caring for animals. Never mind that all his friends and co-workers insisted he was a true animal-lover, as well he may be and probably is.

But the six months’ absence, conveniently salved by the fact that another local trainer, the little-known Denise Foster, was allowed to be shoe-horned in and keep the show on the road, has been probably a nice summer break for the man.

Denise did her required task to the tune of 30 jumps wins from 275 runners at around an 11% strike-rate. In the latest two-week analysis whereby Racing Post statistics convey whether trainers are hot, cold or lukewarm, she had five runners, all on the Flat, each starting at least 14/1 and with two places before being shown the door – I trust with a nice bouquet of flowers for her trouble.

Elliott, whose last ban-shortened jumps tally was 155 wins from 1,003 thus 15%, started back in the middle of the week before last and already has six wins on the board from 21 jump representatives, at a rate of 29%.

What occurred to my suspicious mind is that the recruitment of Mrs Foster offered a real opportunity for Gordon. Once it became clear that he would be coming back, if not to all the owners – some like Cheveley Park Stud with Cheltenham on the horizon were swept away in all the emotion and opprobrium that descended on the trainer - he could plan for the future.

His biggest supporter, Gigginstown House Stud of the O’Leary brothers, stayed firm, albeit with the well-chronicled promised reductions in the size of their operation beginning to take effect – more than 40 of their horses were in the recent Doncaster sale.

One oddity has already suggested more than a minor reduction. None of the 21 initial Elliott horses wore the maroon livery of Gigginstown – maybe the easing in the holiday Covid regulations will cheer up the always-combative boss of Ryanair?

Having another name on the licence even if Gordie was allowed to keep his nose on the place, was an invitation to get a few horses down the handicap, not that I’m suggesting Denise was breaking any rules. But it’s simple enough to run horses over the wrong trip, on unsuitable ground or even when they are either unfit or out of sorts. The excuses are well-enough noted in the trainers’ lexicon. Expect a constant flood of winners from this undeniably talented trainer.

While Elliott did have some restrictions, the six-month ban on Charles Byrnes, long known as the shrewdest of Irish shrewd trainers, was a ban pretty much only in name.

Even the initial and name on the licence after his misdemeanour was unchanged with Cathal Byrnes holding the fort. Charles was allowed to go into the yard and even take the horses around the parade ring before their races.

Since regaining his credentials Byrnes has had the grand total of two runners, one unplaced jumper and one on the Flat.

UK trainers quite rightly have been moaning for ages about the favourable treatment of Irish horses in our valuable handicaps and I have been right up there in pleading their case. What happened at Cheltenham was a joke and belatedly Dominic Gardner-Hill, head of handicapping has promised a review.

Saturday’s Cesarewitch Trial at Newmarket – the winners of which never seem to get anywhere near in the main event the following month – still carried a highly-desirable £20k first prize. Byrnes selected the race for his 79-rated seven-year-old Turnpike Trip who on his last run for Cathal Byrnes had been a close second in a race over a similar trip but worth only €6k at Down Royal.

Back in the Charles Byrnes fold, virtually untouched for a good run and with the incentive of a valuable winner’s prize and some ordinary opposition, here was an opportunity for Clever Charlie to fill his boots.

As the Racing Post joyfully crowed, the gamble was landed by two lengths from Live Your Dream, trying in vain to concede an improbable 22lb to the invader over the marathon trip. The other seven were eight lengths and more behind.

The last time Charles bothered to bring Turnpike Trip across to the UK, he ran in a handicap hurdle at Ascot at the Christmas meeting in 2019, three months after winning a Grade 3 novice hurdle at Tipperary and three weeks after he ran the brilliant Envoi Allen to eight lengths off  levels in a Grade 1.

Starting only 6/1 from a mark of 146 he finished fourth to Hughie Morrison’s smart dual-purpose horse Not So Sleepy, who at the time was rated 16lb Turnpike Trip’s inferior. The Irish horse was 14 lengths behind the winner, but that horse, who was fifth to Honeysuckle in this year’s Champion Hurdle, is now rated 153 hurdles and 99 on the Flat. All Byrnes had to do once the mark was fixed – and with no sense that maybe he was a blot of Burning Victory proportions at Deauville the other week – he just had to wait for the right valuable race. Job done!

And here was a horse running off 79. Help yourself - Charlie and his pals did.

The new system once it comes into force needs addressing at many levels, not least the ease with which low-grade or rather lowly-rated Irish horses can come and pick off as they like 0-55 races over here.

Handicapping and its potential for unfairness has long been an issue for Hughie Morrison and as he watched his nice three-year-old King Of Clubs toil home behind the placed horses at Newbury on Saturday he must have been screaming with rage.

King Of Clubs has won twice in handicaps, the second off a mark of 86 at Sandown when he finished well and got up on the line to win by a nose. Now there are trainers who would be shocked if such a win entailed more than a 2lb or 3lb extra impost but King Of Clubs got 5lb!
Then when the latest ratings came out on Tuesday, that most hated of concepts in the Revised Handicap ratings feature – collateral form – was brought to bear.

Here horses standing in the box on Tuesday morning can be given more weight because of something a close rival has done since his own last performance. In this case Sandown runner-up Victory Chime won next time at Chester, albeit only by three-quarters of a length, but the BHA handicapper added another 2lb to King Of Clubs’ mark.

Now raised 7lb for a nose, Hughie must have feared the worst for his 93-rated three-year-old. By that single action King Of Clubs can no longer run in 0-90 handicaps whereas without the extra 2lb he still could have.

Faced with horses of a different calibre and with far more experience he predictably found it all too much. Not only is the horse being forced into too strong company too early in his career, with the potential for halting his progress, his owners are now much more likely to succumb to offers to buy him from abroad. These are the sort of horses that should be encouraged to race in this country.

Elsewhere Charlie Appleby continued his world-wide sweep of the big races with two Saturday major pay-days in North America.

Recruiting an available Frankie Dettori for the Canadian International at Woodbine racecourse, Toronto, he collected £206,000 for Godolphin when hard-knocking Walton Street wiped away the opposition by more than five lengths.

Desert Encounter, trained by David Simcock to win the two previous editions in 2018 and 2019, had to be content with second on Saturday.

Then in New York, Yibir, winner last time of the Great Voltigeur at York but side-stepping the St Leger, was found a choice alternative in the Jockey Club Invitational for three-year-olds. Third favourite behind Bolshoi Ballet, already a winner at Belmont in the summer, Yibir came from last to first under guest rider Jamie Spencer, collecting £390,000 for the Appleby yard. That made it an (in the words of Lou Reed) Oh what a perfect day in North America coming home with almost £600,000! For the record Bolshoi Ballet, the favourite, was fourth.

Finally I have to mention my friend Jamie Reid’s (same sound, different spelling!) authorised biography of Victor Chandler which takes us to Longchamp 2007 and his (and three associates’) arrest for unlawful bookmaking at the Arc meeting. I was around in those days and have read this last chapter. Reid is a wonderful writer and was also very close to the subject for the period the book covers, I can’t wait to read the rest of it.

* Victor Chandler, Put Your Life On it. Reach Sport £20.

Monday Musings: Crime and Punishment

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Sometime between Monday and Friday last week they got together and decided “Gordon’s not really a bad fella, so let’s not be too hard on him”, writes Tony Stafford. You could discern it in the columns of the Racing Post by his day-to-day journalist pals on the racecourse in Ireland as the original abhorrence to first seeing ‘that photo’ was gradually tempered into the “he isn’t really like that” version of the man.

So, by Friday, when the case was finally heard by the IHRB, everyone was patting himself on the back and saying a year ban, suspended for six months was “fair” and had “compassionate undertones”. By the weekend we heard Denise ‘Sneezy’ Foster, 67, who lives down the road and “has known Elliott for many years” was taking over the licence.

Apparently “she’s a legend” and has had ten winners – six Flat and four jumps – over the last five years from her small stable close to Elliott’s Cullentra House yard. If that qualifies her to run a stable which still had the mechanism to continue operations last week, sending out seven winners from 26 runners, including an up-yours four-timer last Monday at Punchestown, is another question.

The enormity of the operation in Co Meath, in the centre of the country, is mind-boggling especially in the context that its boss could often make do with Mrs Thatcher-like amounts of sleep after long sessions of partying and still be ready for the fray at dawn every morning.

It’s time to consider a few numbers. In the latest season, which of course was delayed by the onset of Covid19, Elliott has run 321 individual horses in Ireland. Today at Leopardstown he will send out (remotely I trust) the last six before handing over responsibility to Sneezy, taking his number of runners for the season beyond the 1,000 mark.

They have yielded 155 wins and earned €2.855 million. Over the past five years, 891 Irish wins have brought more than €20 million, only slightly less than the €24 million of his great rival Willie Mullins who this season, from fewer than half the runs, has 139 wins from 183 individual horses. Then there are the training fees on top. Who’ll be getting them?

I was intrigued by the six months suspended part of the IHRB ruling. What would cause its implementation? Would it require a similar offence to be committed in the interim six months? And if there is another similar historical photo in the ether showing him on a different stricken horse would that be the only situation in which the extra six months would take effect?

So let’s be honest. It’s six months from tomorrow taking him to September 8 and, while he does miss Cheltenham, Aintree and the big spring Irish Festival at Punchestown, from that point on, Galway apart, it’s something of a quiet off-season time for the top jumps stables in Ireland.

When Nicky Henderson got his three-month ban in 2011 that ran from July to October and barely ruffled his feathers in practical terms. While unable to go into the stables during that period, he continued to live in the main house and the horses were paraded on the lawn in front of his lounge picture window each morning. Off from July to October when he never has much going on, he was back in time for the first meetings at Kempton. Do the words ‘carve’ and ‘up’ come to mind either side of the Irish Sea?

Elliott will be in situ during his suspension and, while he voluntarily stated he would neither go to any race meeting or point-to-point fixture during the course of the suspension, no doubt he could still offer advice to the new boss.

We like to think that the concept of a punishment suitable to fit the crime is still valid. But when you consider how easy in modern society it is for an unwise word to be regarded as of an offensive nature and enough to earn a prison sentence, the Elliott picture becomes clouded. For a couple of days, outrage was universal around the world and racing’s always delicate position with its vociferous opponents was perilous.

Penalties in horse racing can be draconian. Look, for example, at the case of Charles Byrnes, an acknowledged touch-merchant whose six-month ban for “inexcusable behaviour” and negligence surrounding the running of Viking Hoard at Tramore In October 2018 was confirmed at an appeal last month.

The horse, a drifter from 4-1 to 8-1 before the race, stopped suddenly with seven furlongs to run. He had been laid heavily on Betfair that day and on two further occasions when Byrnes sent him over to race in the UK.

Each time substantial five-figure bets were placed by a third party on Betfair and no connection to Byrnes has been established. The negligence case on the Tramore run was based on the decision of Byrnes and his son to leave the horse unattended for 20 to 25 minutes when they went for their lunch. It was obviously the “suspicious drift” and the big lay bets that alerted Betfair who routinely share such information with the authorities.

Returning to Mr Elliott, such was the disgust at the photo that on the 6pm BBC news last Monday evening, in the headlines, after the news of Covid and the rest, they turned to sport. The first and only headline item was that picture. I think Elliott was very fortunate that he didn’t get the full year the committee suggested it meted out.

Nicky Henderson’s three-month summer sojourn didn’t harm his career – if anything it had more negatives for his then two assistants Tom Symonds and Ben Pauling when they left to start their own training businesses.

So suggestions that Elliott will be in any way harmed by his own gentle sabbatical are probably over-stating the potential impact. Gigginstown, his biggest supporter, quickly stood firmly behind him and they are no longer recruiting from the point-to-point field, so he’s not missing as much there either.

*

Meanwhile, an inexperienced amateur rider felt the wrath of an Irish stewards’ panel at Leopardstown yesterday. Young Aaron Fahey, riding the newcomer Lake Winnipesaukee in the concluding bumper, was carried to the front of the field by his hard-pulling mount after four furlongs when the saddle slipped.

The horse continued going easily miles clear of the field until turning for home when he took the wrong course, going to the outside of a rail. Fahey, who has ridden three winners from 11 rides this season, told the stewards he was very tired and unable fully to control the horse which his father trains. They ruled him “negligent” and banned him for 14 days.

Clearly, it’s not what you do: it’s who you are.

*

Denise Foster won’t be going to Cheltenham with the Cullentra House horses, but never mind Sneezy, nor am I. Neither will French Aseel, who has had a setback – good job I switched Triumph horses to Tritonic (cough) - but then Sneezy still has some left in that race even after the Cheveley Park contingent jumped ship.

At last count her new stable has 111 total entries at the Festival many with multiple targets. I’m sure while she won’t be there she’ll be checking that Weatherbys have the correct bank details to send her the trainer’s percentages, which must come to a nice few quid.

One race she will have to watch closely is the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle on the final day. Of the stable’s 34 last-day entries, a dozen are in the race Elliott loves to win in homage to the time he spent at Pond House in his formative years before becoming a trainer.

Another Cheltenham absentee will be Alan Spence who will have no runners at the meeting with On The Blind Side waiting for Aintree. One race he will have in his sights before then, though, is the Dubai World Cup.

Spence part-owned and bred Salute The Soldier, who won four of 14 races when trained by Clive Cox, only once finishing out of the frame. The partners were elated when he was sold at the end of his four-year-old career for 380,000gns after reaching a BHA handicap mark of 104.

Bahraini owner-trainer Fawzi Nass was the buyer and, transferred to his Dubai Carnival stable, the gelding won twice at up to Grade 3 level in his first season there. This time round it has been two wins from three runs for the six-year-old, first a Group 2 and then on Super Saturday last weekend he made all to win Round 3 of the Al Maktoum Challenge, his first at Group 1 level.

I tried in vain looking on the Emirates Racing Authority site to see whether there’s a breeder’s prize for the winner. With $12 million to go round there ought to be and I’m sure Alan would have been checking even as his great favourite went over the line on Saturday. If not, he and former co-owning partner Mr Hargreaves might ask Fawzi for a hand-out should the Soldier beat off the American dirt stars on March 27 at Meydan.

Monday Musings: Trainer Titles

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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!

Attrition Rate in Irish National Hunt

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Killultagh Vic a High Profile Casualty

Killultagh Vic a High Profile Casualty

Killultagh Vic was the first high-profile Irish horse to miss Cheltenham with injury but you can be sure he won’t be the last, writes Tony Keenan. We are in that horrible space between the conclusion of most of the trials and the start of the Festival where owners, trainers and, yes, punters live in terror of hearing that their horse will miss the meeting with a late setback.

It makes sense that injuries should occur at this time. No more than a human athlete getting ready for a career-defining event, the revs are being cranked up to the max in preparation and it is inevitable that a gasket or two will blow in the process. Some trainers has succeeded more than others in avoiding – or preventing – the last-minute injury; Willie Mullins stands out in terms of getting his Cheltenham horses to end point and punters can rightly have faith in backing one of his runners ante-post at a short price in the relatively safe assumption that they will get to post. But other handlers have not been so fortunate (though perhaps fortunate is the wrong word as it is surely a skill to keep horses sound).

Predicting which trainers’ runners will make or miss Cheltenham by looking at data is difficult if not impossible and it makes more sense to look at a more global sense of how successful they are in keeping their horses sound from season to season. In the table below, I’ve focussed on the top 15 Irish trainers in terms of winners sent out in the six seasons from 2009/10 to 2014/15, leaving out those who are no longer training, i.e. Dessie Hughes and Charlie Swan.

I found every horse they had in that period that acquired an Irish official rating of 130 or more and went through their racing career in totality regardless of whether it began before 2009 or continued beyond 2015. I was looking for how many ‘full seasons’ they had in their careers and I took a very loose definition of what a full season was: a season in which a horse ran twice or more in the Irish National Hunt campaign which takes the Punchestown Festival as its start and end point.

To my mind, this is quite a lenient definition of a full season – many owners would want their horses to run far more regularly – but I was giving trainers the benefit of the doubt and I didn’t penalise for a horse only running once in their first season as trainers often want to start them off slowly. With the number of full seasons and missed seasons I worked out a figure called ‘attrition rate’ which expresses as a percentage how often a trainer’s horses miss a season in relation to their career as a whole.

Take Tony Martin as an example. In the period covered, he has 131 full seasons from his 130-plus rated horses and six missed seasons; I add the two together to get a total season figure which is 137 and then divide the missed season number into it to leave an attrition rate of 4.4%. As a back-up figure, I also added in how many runs a trainer’s horses averaged per season over that period.

This methodology is far from perfect. Firstly, it looks only at horses rated 130 or more, but the data was so overwhelming that were I to look at them all I’d struggle to have it finished for Cheltenham 2017! It also supposes that every National Hunt horse threads the same campaign trail, starting its season in the autumn and running through to the late spring/early summer. This is not the case with summer jumpers and many horses will have a winter break to avoid the worst of ground.

Using my method, horses could miss two calendar years but only one racing season. Monksland, say, missed 730 days between December 2012 and December 2014 but raced three times in the 2012/13 season and the same in 2014/15 campaign so is only penalised for being absent in 2013/14.

Furthermore, trainers are not penalised for horses having a short career of a season or two but they are hit for getting a horse back off an absence of a season or two for just one run, despite the fact that this could be a major achievement if that horse has had serious problems. Despite all this, I think there is enough in the data to make it interesting to look at, if not necessarily of vast predictive value.

Trainer Horses Rated 130 Plus Attrition Rate Average Season Runs
C. Byrnes 19 15.9% 5.4
C. Murphy 13 10.3% 4.5
N. Meade 53 8.8% 5.0
W. Mullins 171 7.0% 4.2
R. Tyner 6 6.7% 4.7
M. Hourigan 16 6.5% 7.3
M. Morris 17 5.6% 6.0
T. Martin 39 4.4% 5.4
G. Elliott 58 4.3% 6.1
H. De Bromhead 36 4.1% 4.7
P. Nolan 22 3.2% 5.2
E. Doyle 7 2.6% 6.3
J. Hanlon 8 2.4% 5.6
E. O’Grady 27 1.6% 5.4
J. Harrington 31 1.6% 6.1

 

We’ll start with Willie Mullins as we generally do. He has a highish attrition rate and the lowest average season runs so comes out quite badly on these numbers though I doubt Rich Ricci, Graham Wylie et al will be moving their horses in light of them! In fairness, he has improved recently with most of his absentees coming in the early part of the period covered though it must be said that he has quite a few horses that are in danger of missing this campaign, the likes of Abyssial, Jarry D’Honneur, Champagne Fever and Analifet all on the easy list at the moment.

Charles Byrnes has a very high attrition rate, 5.6% higher than the next highest, so perhaps landing gambles takes its toll! His achievement in bringing the nine-year-old Solwhit back to win at Cheltenham and Aintree in 2013 was a notable one but it seems significant that so many of his best horses have missed chunks of time, the likes of Mounthenry, Pittoni, Trifolium, Weapons Amnesty and Our Vinnie all having stop-start careers.

Colm Murphy is another that comes out poorly on the numbers, having not only a high attrition rate but also a low average runs per season, though the reason behind this could be one discussed in a previous article of mine on fall/unseat rate where he came out as one of the highest in the country. Falls and unseats will clearly cause plenty of injuries.

One trainer who does quite well is Gordon Elliott, his horses generally sound and running often, and it needs to be pointed out that he gets quite a few stable switchers. That can be viewed positively or negatively; either someone else has done all the hard work or you have to rectify another trainer’s mistakes.

Noel Meade is having a torrid season in terms of injuries, with Road To Riches having a curtailed campaign and Apache Stronghold out for the year. His attrition rate, third overall, would suggest this is not uncommon. One thing to admire with Meade is that no one else comes close in terms of openness around his horses’ health and he must be praised for that.

In terms of positives, Jessica Harrington stands out as having a low attrition rate and a high average number of runs. I would put this down to two things: she tends to mix flat and jumps campaigns, the former clearly less attritional than the latter; and she will often give her horses mid-winter breaks to avoid the worst of ground, something she frequently references in stable tours.

Edward O’Grady has the name of being hard on his horses but the numbers suggest otherwise, coming in the equal of Harrington in attrition rate. Henry De Bromhead has relatively a low attrition rate too, albeit with not many average season runs, and tends to do well in keeping older horses sweet. Sizing Europe is the daddy of them all but the likes of Sizing Australia and Darwins Fox are further feathers in de Bromhead’s cap.

Finally, mention must go to Michael Hourigan. His attrition rate percentage is only average but he is brilliant in terms of getting runs into his horses, his average of 7.3 a full run per season better than anyone else. I won’t say his horses are always in form but at least they’re out there competing and it is notable that eight of his 16 horses rated 130 plus raced at least 30 times. There are some real heroes in there like Dancing Tornado and Church Island and of course A New Story who ran an amazing 110 times, often over staying trips, and was still racing at fifteen.

- Tony Keenan