Tag Archive for: jumps season stats

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 5: National Hunt Flat

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Prepping for the Jumps - Part 5, Bumpers

 This the fifth and final article in a series which has been looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the previous piece I discussed handicap hurdles, while for this one, National Hunt Flat races, often called Bumpers, take centre stage.

For convenience, the previous articles are here:

Part 1: Novice Hurdles        Part 2: Novice Chases       Part 3: Handicap Chases       Part 4: Handicap Hurdles

Introduction

As throughout the series, data have been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profit and loss calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched, so this does not include Irish racing. Most NH bumpers are run on turf, but there have been a few races contested on the all-weather (roughly 20 every year). I will include both in the breakdowns.

Bumpers are not the type of races I bet in regularly, although I have had some bets in the past in the biggest races held at the Cheltenham and Aintree festivals. Hence, this was a piece of research I was looking forward to because of my limited past knowledge of such contests.

We have had a reasonable number of qualifying races per year, the average being around 270 over the past few years. So, over the time frame this equated to just over 2000 races. I will start as I have done for the previous four articles by examining the betting market.

Market factors

I used Betfair in terms of market rank and this was what I found:

 

 

 

Favourites performed solidly, losing only a small amount (1.5 pence in the £). The value has seemingly been with horses that started third in the betting. However, before we get too carried away, 2024 and 2025 combined proved a poor period for third favs as they lost £69.52 to £1 level stakes incurring losses of 18 pence in the £. As with some data I have shared in the past, I believe the overall profit for third favs was down to variance. Essentially the market has not been giving us great clues.

Let's move on then and, as with previous articles in the series, I have imposed a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower for the remainder of the number crunching, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line. It still included nearly 40,000 runners so the sample size remained huge.

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females but in bumpers the disparity is less stark than in other disciplines. The splits were:

 

 

Males edged it in terms of strike rate, but overall, all the key metrics were very similar. It should be noted that losses on the Betfair Place market have been far worse for female runners.

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now. Below are the A/E indices across different ages:

 

 

The sweet spot seemed to be with five-year-olds in terms of these figures. The below table covers a broader set of metrics:

 

 

Five-year-olds

As can be seen, five-year-olds had the best figures across all metrics. Not only that, this age group was profitable on the Betfair place market as well, to the tune of £82.12. Compare this to four-year-olds who would have lost us £176.80 on the place market. Overall, horses aged three or four seemed to be at a slight disadvantage, which may simply be down to lack of experience or physical maturity in general.

Five-year-olds were very consistent, which can be seen when viewing their yearly win strike rates:

 

 

In the last five seasons their strike rate has been virtually the same, with figures between 19.1 and 19.8%. Not only that, when we compare their A/E indices across the eight years, they have all been over the magic 1.00 figure suggesting good value in each year:

 

 

Sticking with five-year-olds, it does seem that experience counted for something because if we focus on runners in this age group who had at least two previous racecourse starts their record was 250 wins from 1123 runners (SR 22.3%) for a profit of £147.37 (ROI +13.1%). Meanwhile, five-year-old male runners outperformed their female counterparts, winning 633 times from 3160 runners (SR 20%) for a healthy profit of £221.47 (ROI +7%).

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at some data focusing on the country of breeding. The main country's break down as follows:

 

 

We see similar strike rates for the three main countries of Britain, Ireland and France which often is the case. German-bred runners were far less common but had the highest strike rate. French-bred runners proved relatively poor value overall, while the Irish-bred results were a notch above the rest from a betting perspective. This Irish-bred edge was replicated in the Betfair Place market as the table below shows:

 

 

It should also be noted that Irish bumper runners aged five and up produced a return in the win market of just over 7p in the £.

Older French-bred runners have been quite rare, but when aged six or older their record has been poor thanks to 19 wins from 123 (SR 15.4%) for a loss of £36.64 (ROI -29.8%).

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look next at some LTO data focusing on the most recent run of the horses in question looking a position the horse finished last time out.

 

 

LTO winners made a small loss, while all other groups somewhat surprisingly all proved profitable.

At this point I would like to share the results for horses who had not previously run and hence were making their racehorse debut. This cohort was obviously a big one with 5620 runners in total. Of these, 881 were successful for a strike rate of 15.7%. Losses to £1 level stakes stood at £231.80 (ROI -4.1%); A/E 0.96.

Trainers

Trainer data is always a favourite of racing fans so let’s see what we can find. In the table below all trainers who had at least 60 runners in the study period are shown. The trainers have been ordered alphabetically:

 

 

18 of the 43 trainers made a blind profit during the timeframe, while nine managed A/E indices of 1.10 or higher.

From this initial starting point, let me breakdown some of the data, starting with a look at trainer performance when the horses have started favourite. Below is a graph sharing the ROI%s where to qualify a trainer must have saddled 40 or more market leaders.

 

 

There are some real fluctuations regarding these figures. Harry Fry has had an excellent record with favourites. His ROI of +32.3% came from 21 wins from 46 (SR 45.7%) for a profit to £1 level stakes of £14.87, A/E 1.29. Jamie Snowden was another to have excelled when it comes to market leaders - 25 wins from 50 (SR 50%) for a profit of £11.19 (ROI +22.4%); A/E 1.29. In contrast, Fergal O’Brien has had a poor record with his bumper favourites losing over 19p in the £. His strike rate of 29.1% (35 wins from 119) was lowest of all the trainers shown in the graph. Nicky Henderson’s stats for bumper favourites have also been relatively poor. His record reads 57 wins from 161 (SR 35.4%) for a loss of £15.87 (ROI -9.9%); A/E 0.93.

Debut vs 2nd start

I would like to look now at individual trainer performance comparing horses making their racecourse debuts with horses that had run once previously. To help give us a benchmark, the overall figures for all trainers were as follows:

 

 

As we can see from these figures there was a clear improvement for second starters compared to debut runs so we would expect most trainers to conform to that type of pattern.

I have put the individual trainer data in a table comparing win strike rates, ROI percentages and A/E indices. Anything highlighted in ‘blue’ is a positive, anything in ‘red’ a negative. My criteria for each, was as follows:

 

 

By colour coding it helps us to compare the data sets a little more easily.

 

 

There are few trainers I would like to comment upon.

- Harry Fry had an excellent overall record in bumpers over this period and performed extremely well with debutants so keep an eye out for those.

- Alan King’s profile is similar to Fry with his debutants clearly outperforming those having their second start.

- The trainer combo of Lucinda Russell and Peter Scudamore (and now with Michael Scudamore) had an excellent record with debutants, producing returns of close to 32p in the £; A/E 1.14. Second starters, though, struggled losing 36p in the £; A/E 0.70.

- Chris Gordon’s second starters improved markedly in terms of win rate. Their strike rate went up from 15.7% to 28.6%. Second starters proved extremely profitable, too, with returns of 84p in the £.

- Nicky Henderson’s debutants had a decent win rate, but they were overbet based on losses equating to nearly 20p in the £. His runners definitely improved for the experience, and his second starters broke even.

- Messrs. McCain, Murphy, Pauling and Snowden are four trainers to note with second time starters; their runners seemed to come on a lot for the debut run.

Trainer Track Stats

To finish off, there are a handful of trainers who have produced impressive bumper stats at specific courses. They are listed below (ordered by number of runs):

 

 

There are some very impressive numbers in this table, although we need to be aware that some of the sample sizes were quite small. Having said that, I will be keeping an eye out for these trainer/course combos this winter.

**

And that concludes the fifth and final article in this series. It's another one chock full of stats that should point us in the right direction in terms of potential bumper bets over the coming months.

Good luck!

- DR

Prepping for NH 2025/26, Part 4: Handicap Hurdles

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Prepping for the Jumps - Part 4, Handicap Hurdles

This the fourth article in a series looking forward to the National Hunt season, writes Dave Renham. In the opening part, linked to below, I discussed novice hurdle races, and today I am going revisit the hurdle theme but this time we'll be looking at all other handicap hurdle races. Essentially this will include all handicap hurdle races without the term ‘novice’ in the title.

As throughout this series, data has been taken from 1st January 2018 to 31st August 2025 with profit and loss calculated to the Betfair Starting Price (BSP) with a 2% commission applied on any winning bets. Only UK NH races have been researched so this does not include Irish racing.

The previous articles are here:

Part 1: Novice Hurdles        Part 2: Novice Chases       Part 3: Handicap Chases

On average there have been just over 1000 qualifying races per year, so we have a good sample size to review. I will start by examining the betting market.

Market factors

Betfair's market rank data shows the following:

 

 

Favourites made a small profit across the time frame, and it is interesting to see the A/E index broken down by time of year/months. Grouping months in pairs (e.g. January & February, March & April, etc) revealed this:

 

 

From September to April, the A/E indices were strong across the board. In the summer months, when there is less NH racing, the figures were low in comparison. [Readers may note that Peter May's SR figures are not produced on site between June and August because the data is considered less reliable at this time]

The betting returns (ROI%) correlate with the A/E indices as the following graph shows:

 

 

 

Anyone backing favourites from September to April over the period of study would have ended up doing quite well. If we had backed handicap hurdle favourites blind in the eight months 'non-summer months' from 2018 onwards profits accrued to £286.92 from £1 level stakes.

Having looked at the market, it is time to move on to other areas. As with the first three articles, I am going to impose a BSP price limit of 20.0 or lower from now on, to avoid any winners at excessively big odds potentially skewing the bottom line.

Sex of horse

There will always be more male runners than females and the ratio in handicap hurdle races was around 3:1 over the period of study. The findings are shown in the table:

 

 

Both sexes achieved similar win rates but, overall, female runners offered better value. However, fillies - female runners aged three or four - struggled, albeit from a modest sample. 597 fillies raced in these contests with 58 winning (SR 9.7%) for hefty losses of £202.20 (ROI -33.9%); A/E 0.68.

 

Age of horse

Let me move onto the age stats now. We saw that younger female runners struggled and, overall, that has been the case for both sexes as the table below shows:

 

 

Male runners aged three or four lost over 16p in the £, not as much as the fillies but still a steep loss. Horses aged five made a small blind profit and, looking across all metrics, five and six-year-olds showed a solid record.

The older brigade, those aged ten and up, made a fair profit with a decent A/E index of 1.09. Backing all these older runners to place on Befair was profitable also. Perhaps some punters ignored their chances based on age and hence they started slightly higher prices than their true price point. Sticking with the 10-year-olds, they performed even better over shorter distances of 2m4f or less. Their record with this distance requirement was 176 wins from 1328 runners (SR 13.3%) for a healthy profit of £204.62 (ROI +15.4%); A/E 1.13. On the place market the profit was also solid at £85.07. Based on this recent evidence, 10-year-olds may offer some value in the months to come.

Country of Breeding

I want to look now at some breeding data next with focus on the country of breeding. The splits were as follows:

 

 

American bred runners were rare and their record was poor. There was not too much in it in terms of the three main countries of Britain, Ireland and France, although the Irish figures read slightly better. German breds made a very small blind profit, as they did on the Betfair Place market, too (£18.78).

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

A look next at some LTO data focusing on the position a horse finished last time out. Here is the breakdown:

 

 

I feel Position LTO is a factor that I should always share but, on many occasions, there has been limited value to be found. Based on these stats horses running third LTO offered punters a minute profit but, in my view, this was likely coincidence and ultimately the finishing position last time offers no real clues to handicap hurdle races during the timeframe.

Days since last run (DSLR)

A look next at how long handicap hurdlers have been away from the track between runs. The ranges are necessarily a little arbitrary, and below is how I've broken them down:

 

 

It is rare for me to share these DSLR stats because usually there is nothing clear-cut to note. However, on this occasion there were some strong pointers which the table above shows clearly. Horses returning to the track within three days did really well, albeit from a smallish sample; and those who returned within four to seven days essentially broke even, so quick returners could be an area to keep a close eye on this season.

At the other end of the 'time off' spectrum, horses that were absent from the track for four months or more also turned a fair profit, so I am assuming a similar thing happened here as it did with the 10-year-old and older stats we saw earlier. My guess is that these runners started at prices that were marginally higher than their true price due to a possible ‘fitness bias’.

Trainers

Trainer data is always a favourite of racing fans so let’s see what we can find. In the table below I've listed all trainers who saddled at least 250 handicap hurdle runners during the study period. The trainers are ordered alphabetically:

 

 

23 of the 55 trainers made a blind profit during the timeframe, while 12 managed A/E indices of 1.10 or higher. Any of these 12 can be deemed to be trainers that performed well above the average.

On the flip side, a handful of trainers struggled, including Alan King, Martin Keighley, Seamus Mullins and Ian Williams. These handlers look over-bet in such races as a general rule.

From this initial starting point, I wanted to examine trainer performance across different BSPs. To do this I split their results into six price bands:

 

 

I wanted to compare A/E indices across said price brackets over the review period. Each trainer needed to have at least 60 runners within each individual price band to qualify and, to appear in the table, the trainer must have achieved that in four or more of the six price bands. Any price band where they sent out fewer than 60 runners was left blank.

Any entry highlighted in ‘blue’ was a positive, anything in ‘red’ a negative. My criteria for this was:

 

 

By colour coding it helps us to compare the data sets more easily. Here were the splits:

 

 

If we look back at Chris Gordon’s overall record, we can see that it was extremely positive with an overall A/E index of 1.08 and returns equating to just over 20 pence in the £. Hence, it is no surprise perhaps to see him with three ‘blues’ out of five, and indices of 1.00 and 0.93 in the other price segments. Likewise, Tom Lacey, whose overall strike rate was above 23% with returns of 28.9% and a 1.26 A/E index, had four ‘blues’ out of five with the other A/E index above 1.00 at 1.03.

Seeing that type of positive consistency across different price bands makes Lacey’s overall stats even more impressive. Rebecca Menzies, another trainer who had excellent overall stats, achieved four ‘blues’ out of five. She, along with Gordon and Lacey were trainers to excel during this timeframe and it will be interesting to see if they can replicate this over the coming months. If we combine the results of these three trainers and look at the yearly ROI% returns we see the following:

 

 

Seven winning years out of eight – I wonder if system punters might consider combining the three this year and backing all such runners?

Neil Mulholland attacks handicap hurdles on a regular basis so his overall figures are impressive. In terms of the price bands, he had three ‘blues’ out of six, with the other three indices being 1.00, 1.09 and 0.94. Again, over the past few years he has been a trainer to keep on the right side of, so I am expecting his runners to go well once more this year.

Other positives worth noting are that both the O’Neill stable and the Hobbs/White yard did exceptionally well with shorter prices runners (BSP 3.5 or less). The O’Neill stable had 49 winners from 109 (SR 45%) for a profit of £19.11 (ROI +17.5%); the Hobbs/White had a 50% strike rate thanks to 43 winners from 86 for a BSP profit of £24.86 (ROI +28.9%).

In terms of negatives, Alan King’s overall figures were quite poor, showing losses of over 27p in the £. That manifested as four ‘reds’ out of five. He is not typically a trainer to offer value in handicap hurdles based on these findings.

Summary

Let me finish by placing my interpretation of the main positives and negatives highlighed above in a table, as a sort of handicap hurdle ‘ready reckoner’:

 

 

That’s it for this 'NH Prep' deep dive. Next week I'll be taking a look at bumpers, or National Hunt Flat races to give them their full title. Until then...

- DR