Newmarket July Meeting: A Ten Year View
Newmarket July Meeting – a look at the past 10 years
Later this week racing fans will enjoy the three-day Newmarket July Meeting, writes Dave Renham. Expect top quality action headlined by two Group 1s, the July Cup and the Falmouth Stakes, as well as four Group 2s. There will also be several decent handicaps to get stuck into. In this article I am going to look at stats for the most recent ten meetings going back to 2015. Profit / loss has been calculated to £1 level stakes using Betfair Starting Price (BSP), with 2% commission taken out of any winning selections.
Newmarket July Meeting: Market Rank (Exchange)
I would like to start by examining the betting market, more specifically the market rank of Betfair. Here are the splits:
It seems the sweet spot over the past decade was horses ranked third to fifth in betting preference. Favourites by contrast suffered fairly significant losses equating to more than 17 pence in the £. Splitting the favourite data into handicaps versus non-handicaps, it was handicaps that offered better results, albeit losses were still over 11p in the £. Losses in non-handicaps were over 23p in the £ for the jollies. Eye-watering stuff!
If we look at the Betfair A/E indices for Market Rank, we can see excellent correlation with the earlier table:
Horses ranked third to fifth in the betting have offered excellent value over the past ten years. It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues this year.
Newmarket July Meeting: Price movement
Now I want to look at price movement data comparing Early Morning Odds to final Starting Prices. I am going to share the win strike rates for horses that lengthened in price over the day, stayed the same price, and shortened in price.
Horses that shortened in price were the most successful, as is the norm, but the differential between ‘shorteners’ and those that drifted in price is huge. Horses that were backed over the day won more than 2.5 times more often than those that drifted. If we now look at the profit / loss for the three groups, based on their final BSP we see the following:
It seems that following the money would have been a good strategy over the past ten meetings. Despite the prices shortening, 'line trackers' still would have seen a 10p in the £ return to BSP on horses that were shorter prices at the off than they were in the morning.
There are two trainers in particular that were worth noting when the money was down: Andrew Balding and Ralph Beckett. Balding was 7 from 31 (SR 22.6%) with shorteners, just 2 from 28 (SR 7.1%) with drifters. Beckett meanwhile was 7 from 29 (SR 24.1%) with shorteners and just 1 from 21 (SR 4.8%) with drifters.
Newmarket July Meeting: Age in 3yo+ & 4yo+ races
Let me next look at the performance of different aged runners in races open to 3yos and over / 4yos and over. It should be noted that the vast majority (87% of them) were 3yo+ races. Here are the age splits:
This is illuminating. Three- and four-year olds have clearly outperformed their elders both from a win rate perspective as well as a profit / loss one. It looks like we can pretty much write off any horse aged seven or older based on these figures.
The contrast between younger and older has been strongest in non-handicaps where horses aged five or older have won just three times from 97 attempts (SR 3.1%) for losses of over 80 pence in the £. In handicaps three-year-olds fared extremely well as the graph for win strike rate below shows:
I would think the starting point for any all-age handicap would be the 3yos based on this data. It should be noted, too, that 3yos that shortened in price from Early Odds to SP in these races won over 24% for a healthy 18% ROI%.
Newmarket July Meeting : Recent form
Moving on to ‘last time out’ factors, let's start with recent form and the position the horse finished on their most recent start. Here is the breakdown:
It is unusual to see similar win rates for horses finishing first, second, third or fourth last time out (LTO). The LTO winners’ group made a BSP profit, but those figures are skewed somewhat by three decent priced winners – BSP 66.34, 50.0 and 40.0. All in all, I would not be paying too much heed to LTO performance as in the past, for this meeting at least, it has not been much of a guide.
Newmarket July Meeting: Course LTO
Another LTO factor is the course at which the horse ran last time. Below are the LTO courses that have provided at least 50 of the Newmarket July meeting runners:
A good chunk of the runners raced at Ascot last time, many of which were racing at the Royal meeting a few weeks previously. There were also a significant number of horses that raced at Newmarket LTO and these had the best record in terms of strike rate as well as delivering a fair profit. Sandown and York were the other two LTO courses to turn a profit here, and York’s figures look particularly solid. LTO York runners that started in the top three in the betting at the Newmarket July festival secured a 31% strike rate and returns of over 100p in the £. In contrast, the Newcastle and Windsor figures have been poor, and both have commensurately disappointing place percentages, too.
Newmarket July Meeting: Course form
Onto course form now and looking at the performance of past course winners compared to those that had not won at the track. To make this a fair comparison I will compare only horses that had already run at the track: clearly horses that were yet to run there could not have previously won! I am going to compare the win strike rates and the win & placed (Each Way) strike rates first:
It seems therefore that a previous course win is preferable both from a win and a place perspective. This is also reflected in the profit/loss and return columns in terms of win bets:
In terms of betting on the Place market on Betfair, there has been a big discrepancy there as well. Previous course winners produced a £38.41 profit to £1 level stakes; non-course winners lost £52.24.
With regards horses that raced at the course previously and had been placed before (includes winners of course), they too have a strong edge as these stats show:
Taking all these stats into account a previous win or placed effort at the track has been a definite positive at this meeting.
Newmarket July Meeting: Trainers
The final area I want to look at is trainers: which handlers have excelled at this meeting and which ones have found it a struggle? Only trainers with 30 runners or more are shown. As far as Charlie Johnston is concerned, I have combined his record with his father’s, Mark. The table is ordered by return on investment at Betfair Starting Price (BSP ROI).
Several trainers were in profit through the decade although Ralph Beckett, Michael Bell, Karl Burke and the Johnston stable's performance figures were boosted by a few bigger priced winners dropping in. Charlie Appleby, Andrew Balding, Richard Hannon, Aidan O’Brien and Saeed bin Suroor have more solid looking overall profiles and all five showed good profits with horses in the short to mid-price range.
There are a couple of extra stats worthy of note. Firstly, when William Buick rides for Appleby the strike rate has been a smidge under 30% for a 49p in the £ return. Secondly, Aidan O’Brien should be noted when any of his runners pivot from Royal Ascot. This cohort won 27% of the time for a 63p in the £ return.
The records of William Haggas, Charlie Hills, Hugo Palmer and Kevin Ryan have been poor, although Haggas has had plenty of near misses. Palmer and Hills have a poor record in terms of placed runners as well, and they may be two trainers worth avoiding at the fixture.
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Newmarket July Meeting: Key Positives
The key positives are as follows:
- Horses third to fifth in the betting market
- Horses that shorten in price from Early Morning Odds to SP
- 3yos in 3yo+ handicaps
- Ran at Newmarket or York LTO
- Previous course form (both win and placed)
- Trainers - Appleby, Balding, Hannon, O’Brien and bin Suroor
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I hope this piece has provided a few pointers that will prove useful over the three days of Newmarket's always excellent July meeting. Good luck to those punting, and don’t forget to use the Tix software if playing the Jackpot, Placepot, Scoop 6 or Quadpot.
- DR