Tag Archive for: Kim Bailey

Hat Trick (Plus) Seekers in NH Racing

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Some horses are better, or better handicapped, than others and, as a result, have been able to run up winning sequences, writes Dave Renham. In this article I will uncover some profitable angles in relation to horses that have won at least their most recent two races; that is, which are chasing a hat-trick, four-timer, five-timer or more.

The focus will be horses bidding for a hat-trick plus specifically in the National Hunt sphere. I have taken data from 1st Jan 2017 to the present day (end of October 2024) for UK National Hunt racing. Profit/losses in all tables/graphs is calculated to Industry Starting Price, but I will quote Betfair SP where appropriate.

All NH Hat-trick+ Seekers

Let me begin by looking at the starting base figures of ALL horses trying to complete a third win in a row:

 

 

As might be expected, we see a strong win rate of close to one in every four starts, but losses to SP stand at over 13 pence in the £. To BSP this improves considerably but losses still exceed 4p in the £. Here is how that breaks down on an annual basis:

 

 

The results have been a little better in the last three years, but it is unclear whether this a trend or simply an anomaly. My suspicion is that it is the latter.

So, what about the type of NH contest - Chase, hurdle, or bumper (NH Flat)? Let’s see the splits:

 

 

Hat-trick+ seekers in bumpers have seen the best returns (close to parity) but in truth the sample size is modest. The chase and hurdle figures are similar to each other, with perhaps hat-trick+ seeking hurdlers a marginally better proposition than chasers.

NH Hat-Trick+ Seekers by Race Class

I want to examine class of race next. Below is a graph looking at the class of race these hat-trick+ seekers ran in comparing their win strike rates within each class:

 

 

This is interesting – from a win perspective at least it seems much harder to win in the two highest classes of race (Class 1 and 2), which stands to reason given horses have likely progressed from lesser contests. Below is a chart illustrating return on investment (ROI) by race class:

 

 

We see positive correlation between the ROI%s and the win strike rates, with hat-trick+ seekers racing in Class 1 and Class 2 events providing the worst value to punters. It should be noted that there have only been a handful of Class 6 races in comparison to the other five classes so we should not get too carried away with the 18p in the £ returns. Having said that, I did back check hat-trick seekers in Class 6 events between the years 2009 and 2016 and they proved profitable to SP in that time frame with an even better win strike rate of 43%. However, since 2018 NH racing no longer has Class 6 events except for some hunter chases.

If we focus on handicap hurdle races at Class 5 level, the lowest grade, hat-trick+ seekers have won 85 times from 253 qualifiers (SR 33.6%) for an SP profit of £15.33 (ROI +6.1%); to BSP +£37.76 (ROI +14.9%). [And once from one run since the research was completed, a 3/1 scorer at Chepstow on 6th November]

The Betting Market for NH Hat-Trick+ Seekers

The betting market is my next port of call. Below are the SP results for different price groupings:

 

 

The best returns - as is usually the case - have come from shorter priced runners (6/4 or less) and to BSP, losses for these runners stand at 1.7%, not far from break-even. The 17/2 to 12/1 group have offered the poorest value and even losses to BSP have been quite steep at 18p in the £ (-18.2% to be exact).

Horses priced 14/1 or bigger win rarely but they have proved profitable to BSP (+£160.38; ROI +24.8%). This has not been due to any ridiculously priced winners: it is basically down to 14/1, 16/1, 20/1 winners paying much more on the Betfair machine.

NH Hat-Trick+ Seekers by Days Since Last Run (DSLR)

I wanted to next check the data for days since last run (DSLR) which of course was a winning run. Here are the findings:

 

 

Horses returning to the track within two weeks have made a small profit to SP. Indeed, to BSP horses off the track for 14 days or less produced a tidy profit of £108.33 (ROI +14.4%). In addition to this, these horses have been quite consistent over the years, with their yearly strike rate always exceeding 30% and five of the eight years proving profitable to BSP. If we look at their yearly A/E indices we can see that six of the eight years saw a figure above 1.00, indicating value. Only 2021 saw a modest A/E index:

 


 

I have added a trendline (dotted) which helps further to show the consistency. It seems that hat-trick+ seekers returning to the track within a fortnight have offered punters good value in the recent past and perhaps this is an area we can exploit this winter.

NH Hat-Trick+ Seekers by Trainer

It’s time to look at trainers now. Which handlers are most adept at finding that good opportunity for their charge to continue a sequence of two or more wins? Here are the trainers with at least 50 qualifiers (ordered alphabetically):

 

 

Oliver Greenall & Josh Guerriero, Alan King, Neil Mulholland and Nigel Twiston-Davies look to be four stables to avoid in this context; their strike rates as well as returns are lower than their peers in this cohort. Below are some highlights from a few of these trainers, with some positive angles but also some negatives, too.

Kim Bailey – has a virtually identical record with his hat-trick+ seekers in handicap and non-handicap races:

 

 

The profits to BSP for non-handicaps reads +£13.34 (ROI +32.5%) and in handicaps it is +£12.53 (ROI +29.8%). His record in chases is much better than over hurdles with 16 wins from 40 (SR 40%) for a profit to SP of £26.57 (ROI +66.4%); to BSP it stands at £33.54 (ROI +83.9%).

Bailey has also done well when his runners have been fancied – horses starting either favourite or second favourite have combined to win 25 times from 55 runners (SR 45.5% for a profit to SP of £12.94 (ROI +23.5%). To BSP this improves slightly to +£15.53 (ROI +28.2%). Kim Bailey looks a trainer to keep an eye on.

 

Nicky Henderson – Nicky Henderson is one of the greats, a fact rarely lost on the market. Steer clear of any hat-trick+ seeker from Seven Barrows racing in a handicap. They have won just eight times from 64 attempts (SR 12.5%) for a loss to SP of £37.68 (ROI -58.9%). To BSP he was only marginally off, and losses remained at over 55p in the £.

 

Willie Mullins – The majority of Willie’s hat-trick+ seekers looking to complete the trio in the UK raced at the Cheltenham Festival, and they returned the Irish maestro 22p in the £ to SP and 38p in the £ to BSP respectively. He also had a 38% strike rate with horses that had won at Leopardstown last time out, returning 49p in the £ to SP and 58p to BSP.

 

Fergal O’Brien – O’Brien has made a profit in both handicaps and non-handicaps. He has also made a profit with his bumper runners, hurdlers, and any runner that has started favourite. However, his most eye-catching stat might be his record with fillies and mares as the table below shows:

 

 

Returns of over 63p in the £ coupled with a strike rate of over 40% is remarkable. To BSP his profit stands at £42.37 (ROI +81.5%).

 

Nicky Richards –Richards has excelled outside Class 1 and 2 company. In Class 3 or lower his hat-trick+ seekers have won 35.9% of the time (19 wins from 53) for a profit of £22.49 to SP. This equates to returns of 42p in the £. To BSP the profit climbs considerably to £41.19 (ROI +77.7%). His handicappers have provided all of the profits, with his hurdlers outperforming his chasers.

 

Dan Skelton – Skelton has a surprisingly poor record with hat-trick+ seekers. Any Skelton qualifier that starts as favourite should be treated with caution. These runners would have lost you 23p in the £ to SP, 19p to BSP. Hat-trick+ seeking chasers are also ones to about which to be wary having lost 43p in the £ to SP, 41p to BSP.

 

Venetia Williams – Miss Williams has sent out 71 hat-trick+ seekers in chases of which 17 have won (SR 23.9%) for an SP profit of £24.81 (ROI +34.9%); to BSP this improves considerably to +£59.37 (ROI +83.6%). However, before getting too carried away, there was an SP winner of 40/1 that paid over 70 on Betfair in the sample; taking that winner out, Venetia's figures have produced a loss. It always pays to check for skewed data.

Other NH Hat-Trick+ Seeker Pointers

I have looked at most of the key areas but, before closing, there are a couple more findings I would like to share with you. Firstly, I want to look at how far winners won by last time out (LTO) in terms of lengths. When examining these LTO winning margins I found a clear pattern. Let me share the win strike rates first – I’ve split the LTO winning margins into three groups: won by 2 lengths or less; won by over 2 lengths up to and including 5 lengths; won by more than 5 lengths. Here are the splits:

 


As can be seen the horses that won by further performed best on their next run, from a win percentage perspective at least. But how does that translate to profitability measures?

 

 

Horses that won by over 5 lengths LTO not only have more chance of completing the hat-trick, but they provided the best returns by some way: both to SP and BSP.

Secondly, and in my final offering for this article, I want to share the stats for hat-trick+ seekers that are racing at a track where they have a previous course and distance (shown on the racecard as 'CD') win to their name. There were 745 past CD winners of which 234 won (SR 31.4%) for very small losses to SP of £9.18 (ROI -1.2%). To BSP these runners made a profit of £80.75 (ROI +10.8%). Their A/E index stands at very respectable 0.97.

 

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Summary

Positives

In this article we've seen that some hat-trick+ seekers potentially offer value to punters, especially if backing to BSP (and/or, probably, to early prices with best odds guaranteed).

These include:

  • horses returning to the track within 14 days
  • horses that won by more than 5 lengths LTO
  • handicap hurdlers racing at Class 5 level
  • previous course and distance winners

Also, there are a few trainers to note positively including:

  • Kim Bailey
  • Willie Mullins
  • Fergal O’Brien
  • Nicky Richards (Class 3 or lower, handicaps)

Negatives

In terms of negatives, it seems best to ignore hat-trick+ seekers which:

  • are running in Class 1 or Class 2 events
  • are priced between 17/2 and 12/1
  • won by 2 lengths or less LTO

Some trainers look worth swerving in this contextand these include:

  • Oliver Greenall + Josh Guerriero
  • Alan King
  • Neil Mulholland
  • Nigel Twiston-Davies
  • Nicky Henderson handicappers
  • Dan Skelton chasers and/or favourites

So, it is time to wrap this up, and for me I am off to do some digging for my next article. I hope you enjoyed this one.

- DR

A Racing “Guess Who”

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When people have been around the racing game for a while, especially when they haven’t had the good fortune to crack it in the way of a Henderson or an Aidan O’Brien, a good way of teasing out their identity is to offer snippets from their lifetime, writes Tony Stafford.

We all know about Mr Frisk, the Kim Bailey-trained Grand National winner ridden by the amateur Marcus Armytage, son of trainer Roddy and brother to the first female Hennessy Gold Cup winning rider Gee, later Tony McCoy’s secretary.

Marcus was subsequently a colleague of mine at the Daily Telegraph – indeed he is still there. But our mystery man beat the youthful Old Etonian to it, winning five chases in a row, and unbeaten in six on the gelding in an invincible season as a novice, at one point telling an interviewing journalist that he and Mr Frisk would win the Grand National. Events would subsequently conspire for the combination of horse and jockey to be broken through no fault of our rider.

Next clue, born and bred in West Ham, East London, he went to the same school as did - a good few years earlier of course - Michael Tabor and the late and much-loved David Johnson, owner of all those wonderful jumpers with Martin Pipe. Our hero’s father Norman, youngest of a family of 13 after serving with distinction in the army, joined the Daily Telegraph as a printer.

In the days of hot metal linotype he and his many skilled colleagues would stand one side of the “stone”, the flat piece of the print room’s furniture along which the individual pages would be laid out and constructed. He would help the sub-editor – very often me on the racing pages – standing on the other side to fit it all in from my upside-down, back-to-front perspective. My job was assisted by having paper printers’ single long “takes” of the individual stories and racing cards which had to be cut to length – rather different nowadays with instant editing for all, not least without all the sensitivities of not crossing other unions’ demarcation lines.

Knowing what and how much to cut was the key but a good stone man on the other side made it easy and Norman knew his stuff all right. I loved those days and can still read newspapers upside down – maybe not the most helpful attribute these days, rather like knowing Latin declensions and conjugations!

A bit sketchy so far, well how about this? At 6ft 2 1/2inches he was the tallest jump jockey of his time. One season he broke his right collarbone nine times; it was only when ironically riding Bailey’s Just For The Crack at Newbury that both went in the same fall.

After retiring from race riding in the mid-1990’s he would not begin training in his own right for a few years, instead working as Norman Mason’s assistant – the assistant to the amusement machine magnate from the North-East was in effect the trainer.

Mason also had a Grand National winner, but Red Marauder’s success in 2001 when one of only four finishers happened after the mystery man’s departure having overseen his novice win. He was already setting up his own stable by then. What has defined him in the intervening two decades has been his extreme patience waiting, it seems, forever to land a touch for his owner, then carrying it off with certainty.

If you haven’t got it yet you never will so here we go - say hello to Alan Jones. From West Ham to the West Country via Northumberland has been a stretch. He still stands just as tall and with a season-best of ten a while ago and more likely four or five every term from his ten-strong string of individually and minutely prepared jumpers, he keeps the show going for his owners.

One of them enjoyed such a winning punt on his veteran horse Tiquer in the winter of 2017-18 that he decided to invest at a higher level. “He won 140 grand”, recalls Alan, “so decided to go to Goff’s in Ireland that October to look for a smart yearling. He had been using an agent but he thought his fees excessive, so he asked me to go along and find a nice filly for around 100-110k”, recalls Alan.

“We started with a dozen but boiled it down and eventually settled on a Camelot filly. To my surprise we got her for €100,000. The wind came out of my sails a bit when the owner sent her to Richard Hannon, but she was from a major Coolmore source, consigned by Timmy Hyde’s Camas Park stud, so you would have expected her to go to a big Flat yard. In any case, he is my biggest owner so you’d want to keep him happy.

“Of course, I kept my ear to the ground, listening for news on how she was doing at Hannon’s. It seemed she didn’t make the expected progress and it was as much an economy measure as anything else when I was asked to take her for the winter as a two-year-old”, said Jones. The next season as a three-year-old soundness was again an issue with her so it was back again to Mr Jones for some more rest and recuperation.

Ironically, recalls Jones, it was just when he detected the filly was starting to shape up that the owner nearly brought the project to an untimely end. “She was improving every day and then suddenly there was a potential buyer wanting to send her to stud unraced. I told the owner I thought we could still do something with her and luckily he finally agreed.”

Thus on Sunday, prepared on the same type of hill up which Martin Pipe, who in Jones’s estimation, completely changed the science of training racehorses, Lady Excalibur was finally ready to go.

The chosen target, a bumper at Stratford last Sunday, came along 1,021 days after Alan Jones signed the docket to re-invest that big chunk of his owner’s massive touch. After the event he reckoned “she’s not quick” but if you watch the video of where she is turning for home and where she is at the finish with Tom O’Brien sitting pretty you might have another opinion. The world is her oyster and whatever she does on the track she will always have a value as a potential broodmare.

As Tom told him afterwards, “You are just like my Uncle Aidan, you can perform miracles. This one certainly is”. Praise indeed, but when your stable is limited to a handful of animals, candidates for such miracles come along only rarely. In 60-year-old Alan Jones’ case 1,021 days from purchase to payoff is a bit of a sprint!

- TS

Monday Musings: Two Major Contenders from Left Field

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At the age of 25 back in 1978 Kim Bailey took over the training licence from his father Ken at their family farm in Brackley, Northamptonshire, with the experience of having learnt his trade from three training greats, Humphrey Cottrill, Tim Forster and Fred Rimell, writes Tony Stafford. In 1995 he enjoyed the almost unthinkable achievement of winning both the Champion Hurdle, with the novice Alderbrook, and the Gold Cup with Master Oats.

Until Saturday they had been the only Grade 1 wins on his card. Now, 26 years later and in his 43rd year as a trainer, the still-boyish Bailey, greatly to his own surprise, can refer back to a wonderful performance by the nine-year-old, First Flow. After an end-to-end battle he emphatically saw off reigning Champion Two-Mile Chaser Politologue in Ascot’s Clarence House Chase.

Kim Bailey has, over the years, gone through a number of transformations and training locations as well as a major domestic upheaval and a Henry Cecil-like slump. That must have caused this consummate horseman to question whether he should continue to pursue his career.

Throughout, Bailey has always had the respect of his fellow professionals, even in the darkest days. The same was true of course for the future Sir Henry before the arrival of Frankel and the subsequent great loyalty – hardly surprising one might say – of Prince Khalid Abdullah. The recent passing of Prince Khalid could have significant implications for the future of many of the present-day’s leading Flat-race trainers.

Bailey’s own darkest years came in the first decade of the present century when in the four seasons between 2004 and 2008 he won respectively only six, six, nine and finally three races. Those three in 2007-8 came from 131 runs and produced earnings of a little over £29,000. Nowadays he characteristically has one of the higher strike rates, operating at close to 18%. Less than three per cent must have given him kittens!

The Racing Post statistics for each trainer includes a section at the bottom entitled Big Races Won. Between March 2002 and November 2012, a full decade, none of the Bailey winners qualified for entry in that section.

In more recent times, he has built up his business again at a modern farm in Andoversford, 15 minutes or so from Cheltenham. A great adherent to modern technology, he was moving around his snow-covered 70-strong yard on Sunday morning, reflecting by video on the previous afternoon’s exploits by one of three chasers that could be lining up in the top races at Prestbury Park in six weeks’ time.

As he progressed with his commentary, all the time he was sharing the credit, principally to David Bass, whose opportunist ride on First Flow he described as “one of the best rides I’ve ever seen”. Also earning his gratitude were various key members of his staff. If ever there was a benevolent boss, it is Kim Bailey, who stresses that any success achieved by Thornfield Farm is very much a team effort.

That attitude will undoubtedly bring loyalty from the staff and he certainly has managed to keep a number of owners, among them First Flow’s, Tony Solomons, with him over many years. “Tony was one of my first owners all those years ago and I’m so happy for him. First Flow was not an expensive buy and he’s done so well for us,” says Bailey.

He certainly has. Saturday’s win for First Flow was his sixth in succession and his tenth in all from only 16 races over obstacles. The race was worth a few bob short of £60k and represented a nice early birthday present for his owner.

Tony rarely has more than a couple of horses in training but the retired banker also had tremendous success in recent years with the staying Flat handicapper, Nearly Caught. That smart gelding, trained by Hughie Morrison, won nine races and was placed 15 times.

His last win, as an eight-year-old, came on his final appearance when he easily won a Newmarket Listed race from an official rating of 107. That was his fourth Listed win, to which he could add a Group 2 victory at Deauville as a six-year-old. All of his five stakes wins and eight places came in his final three seasons’ racing.

While Bailey had some sparse years where major races were concerned, that could not be said of 2020 when he earned seven entries in that category. First Flow is joined by Imperial Aura and Vinndication as fellow high-class performers and Bailey hopes all three will make it to the Festival.

He regards Vinndication as a potential Gold Cup candidate. The eight-year-old is still lightly-raced and although he has yet to win going left-handed, he ran a blinder when only two lengths behind Cyrname in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby when starting out the present campaign at the end of October.

Bailey aimed him at the Ladbroke (ex-Hennessy) Handicap Chase at Newbury the following month and the gelding was still very much in contention when unseating David Bass five fences out (his only non-completion) under a big weight. The trainer hopes he will be able to prepare him in time to participate.

Until Imperial Aura’s unexpected early exit from his Kempton Grade 2 target a couple of weeks back he had been carrying all before him, adding two nice wins to his Cheltenham Festival novice handicap chase victory in March. Another eight-year-old, like his two stablemates he also has an enviable win ratio, seven from 12.

Nothing succeeds like success. From the dark days Bailey has now put together seven highly rewarding seasons, all bar last term’s 32 (for obvious Covid) reasons bringing between 43 and 61 wins and at least £400k in earnings.

With £450,000 already this term and more than three months to go, he could even get close to the £696,000 of the extraordinary Master Oats/ Alderbrook campaign when he had 72 wins from 312 runs, especially if things work out at the Festival.

It is hard not to be excited by First Flow, but one other horse produced an even more eye-opening performance the same afternoon. The Venetia Williams-trained and Rich Ricci-owned Royale Pagaille turned the Peter Marsh Chase at Haydock Park into a rout and must be followed over a cliff for the rest of the season and beyond.

This race has had a proud heritage since its inception in 1981, with its early winners including the three Cheltenham Gold Cup victors, Little Owl, Bregawn and The Thinker. Jodami made it four a decade later, while its best recent champion has been Bristol De Mai, also a three-time winner of the Grade 1 Betfair Chase over the same course and distance.

Royale Pagaille was bought as an experienced four-year-old by French agent Guy Petit out of the Francois Nicolle yard in November 2018 at Arcana for €70k. He had won one of ten starts, a minor hurdle race at Pau, although he did have plenty of experience over fences after that victory.

Sent To Venetia, it was more than a year before he saw a British racecourse and his two runs last season before racing was summarily curtailed were hardly  earth-shattering. First, in a two-runner Chepstow novice chase he found the 150-rated Vision Des Flos predictably too good, trailing home almost ten lengths behind. Then, in a three-runner chase at Huntingdon he was miles behind the lower-rated pair Equus Secretus (Ben Pauling) and Lies About Milan (Fergal O’Brien) who fought out a close finish over the near three-mile trip. Those performances gave little inkling of what was to come.

Hence when Royale Pagaille reappeared for this season at Haydock on December 2, the son of Blue Bresil was the 11/1 outsider in a four-runner novice chase over two miles and five furlongs. He confounded those odds, very easily coming from the back to draw clear of the Kim Bailey-trained favourite Espoir De Romay, who carried a 5lb winner’s penalty.

After that, on the second day of Kempton’s big Christmas meeting, his winning margin of just over three lengths might not have been extravagant, but the style of the victory off his revised mark of 140 was such that the chase handicapper raised him 16lb to 156.

At no stage on Saturday did it appear likely that Royale Pagaille would have any difficulty in defying his new mark, travelling and jumping with utter authority. Conceding 20lb to the proven staying handicappers Just Your Type and Potters Legend, he was already a long way clear of the pair at the last fence in the heavy ground and it seemed as though Tom Scudamore could have doubled the eventual victory margin of 16 lengths over Potters Legend had he wished.

That suggests to me the chase assessors will struggle to keep his new mark below 170 and at the present rate of progress, further improvement could easily be forthcoming. That already takes him right into the top echelon of chasers. For the record, in its 41-year history the Peter Marsh Chase has never been won by a horse younger than seven, Royale Pagaille’s age.

Bookmakers are quoting Royale Pagaille for four races at the Festival, but if he was mine I would find it difficult to disregard the big one. There are many instances of trainers thinking their emerging horses are not quite ready but with the number of pitfalls that can assail them, those delaying plans often prove fruitless with the horses never actually making it to a later Gold Cup. And this one already has eleven chase starts to his name, so is hardly an inexperienced novice.

I’m suggesting you take the 12-1 (unless you can get better) for the Blue Riband of the meeting.  If you prefer to be safe, he is 8-1 non-runner no bet.