Tag Archive for: No Nay Never

Two-Year-Old Sires in 2025

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It is several years since I analysed two-year-old (2yo) sire data and so, early in the flat season, I felt now was a good time to revisit, writes Dave Renham. This article examines eight years of UK flat racing data (turf and AW) spanning from 2017 to 2024. I will be comparing win strike rates, as I usually do for this type of article, but for the first time in my sire research I will also share Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB for short) data. There is a strong argument to suggest that PRB figures are the most accurate metric, so I am excited to be able to include them. Further, I will include some A/E index calculations and these will be based on Betfair Starting Prices. (For more on A/E and other metrics used on geegeez, and why we use them - and why we think you should, too - check out this post)

If you have not read a sire article before, let me briefly set the scene. Sires are the fathers of the respective racehorses, and they typically have an influence on their progeny (offspring).  For example, if the sire was originally a sprinter there is a good chance that his progeny will perform better at sprint distances than over say marathon trips. Sires also vary in quality, which will generally influence the next generation in terms of inherent ability. Some sires, for example, achieve around one win in every five starts with their progeny, others are nearer one win in 20. Using sire data is particularly useful for 2yo races because the actual horse form can be sparse or indeed non-existent if the two-year-old is making its debut.

Sires: All Two-Year-Old Races

Let's begin by looking at some sire data for all 2yo races. To qualify a sire must have had at least ten progeny runs in 2024, and 275 or more in total over the eight years. In addition, to make the following list they needed to be in the top 50 in terms of win strike rate. I have ordered them alphabetically:

 

 

In terms of win strike rate, then, Dubawi heads the list at 23.26%, followed by New Bay (21.23%), Frankel (19.83%), Kingman (19.2%) and Night Of Thunder (18.15%). From a PRB perspective, Dubawi (0.65), Frankel (0.63) and Kingman (0.63) are the top three. They are followed by French sire Siyouni (0.62), Sea The Stars (0.61) and Lope De Vega (0.61).

From a betting viewpoint, however, Dubawi and Frankel have not offered particularly good value with Betfair A/E indices of 0.93 and 0.89 respectively. Backing Dubawi progeny blind would have yielded losses of over 9p in the £, and Frankel over 16p in the £, at Betfair SP.

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races by Distance

I want to look at some distance data now. I have split the full set into three cohorts: races over 5 and 6 furlongs, races over 7 furlongs or a mile, and races over 1m1f or more. For the record there are on average only 30 races per year for 2yos over 1m1f or more, so for some sires there is limited data there. If a sire has had 20 or fewer qualifying runs over the distance range, I have left that entry blank.

The table shows the win strike rates and PRBs for each distance range. Sires are listed alphabetically once more and any individual sire’s PRB distance range value which is 0.05 higher than one of their others has been highlighted in green:

 

 

Let me drill down into some of these sires in terms of distance performance/preference starting with New Bay.

New Bay stands at Ballylinch Stud for €75,000 which looks a bit of a steal based on his 2yo results to date. In terms of distance his offspring have run only 22 times at 1m1f or more so it is at shorter ranges I would like to concentrate. His progeny's strike rate over 7f to 1 mile is more than double that of his 5f-6f figure, and the difference in the PRBs is a very significant 0.10. The Betfair A/E indices show a chasm between the two also with an index of 1.01 for the shorter sprint distance and 1.53 over the longer 7f to 1m range.

New Bay had his first crop of 2yos in 2020 and the graph below shows the win and each way (win & placed) strike rates by year for the 7f to 1m distance:

 

 

The each way figures are all over 40% with 2024 nudging over 50. 2023 saw a slight dip in the win rate but, overall, this performance has been extremely impressive. Backing all qualifiers blind would have yielded a profit in every year to BSP with three of the five seeing ROI%s of over 80%. In terms of yearly PRBs and A/E indices we see the following:

 

 

These figures correlate well with each other and with the pure win strike rates. Over 7f to 1m, New Bay looks a sire to keep on side.

 

Havana Grey is a relatively new sire on the scene (first crop 2022), but his progeny have already shown a strong preference for sprint trips. Considering his runners over 7f-plus first, this group would have lost us nearly 60p in the £ if betting all 153 of them (14 won).

By contrast, switching to shorter trips (up to six furlongs) his issue have fared particularly well when strong in the market. Those starting in the top two of the betting have secured 74 winners from 204 (SR 36.3%) for a profit of £26.13 (ROI +12.8%). Additionally, Havana Grey progeny that have taken the early lead over these sprint trips have performed well above the norm, winning 38 from 108 (SR 35.2%) for a profit of £108.67 (ROI +100.6%).

 

For No Nay Never, the 6f trip specifically looks optimal. Below are the yearly win and each way strike rates for No Nay Never two-year-old progeny at six furlongs:

 

 

These are consistent figures and, in terms of yearly PRBs and A/E indices, we see the following:

 

 

Five of the seven annual PRB figures are above 0.60, while all bar one of the A/E indices are over 1.00 - excellent numbers.

No Nay Never is a fine 2yo sire worth keeping in our corner; and his record at distances other than six furlongs is solid, too. At 7f-plus his runners have secured a BSP profit in five of the seven years (five of the last five).

 

Soldier’s Call has only thrown two crops of racing age thus far - 2025 will be his third - but already there is a strong suggestion that the shorter the trip the better for his juveniles. That should come as little surprise given that Soldier’s Call was a top-notch sprinter himself (2nd in the Nunthorpe, 3rd in the King Charles III (formerly King's Stand), 3rd in the Abbaye). At a flat 5f only (thus, excluding 5½f) his strike rate was a tad above 16%, while at 6f it was 9.2%, and over 7f+ just 1.4% ( 1 win from 74).

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races by Going

The next area I want to look at is the going. I will share PRB figures for turf versus all-weather, as well as splitting the turf going into four subsets – good to firm/firm, good, good to soft, and soft/heavy. Any value within each sire’s groupings that I perceive to be strong or weak I have coloured green (positive) and red (negative). These are only my interpretations of the PRBs and that may differ slightly from how others may perceive them. Anyway, here are the splits:

 

 

This table offers a few useful sire pointers, four of which I'd like to highlight.

Firstly, returning to New Bay we see that his progeny PRB figure on good to firm or firmer has been poor in comparison with his figures for other ground conditions.

Mayson has performed far better on easier ground (good to soft, soft and heavy), while Acclamation has been better with firmer conditions (good to firm+).

Too Darn Hot has had excellent results on easier ground (good to soft or softer) hitting a strike rate of 23.5% (24 wins from 102 runners) for a profit of £38.50 (ROI +37.8%).

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races by Gender

The penultimate sets of 2yo sire PRBs I want to share are connected with the sex of the horse – in other words, whether the progeny was male or female. I have included the win strike rates as well as PRB and, again, I have colour coded some PRBs either positive or negative based on my perception of the specifics of the individual sire’s data:

 

 

Possibly the most powerful stats from this table come from Kodi Bear. Looking at the bare numbers it seems as though males have had a significant edge; this is further underlined when comparing the profit/losses, returns and A/E indices:

 

 

As the table above shows, there is a differential of around 37p in the £ in terms of returns; males have much better figures across the board.

 

Sires: Two-Year-Old Races when Betfair Market Leader

Finally in this piece I am going to look at the results when the 2yo has started favourite on the Exchange. In the table I have included the sires that had 50 or more runners start favourite during the eight year study period:

 

 

Just over half (19 of 37) returned a profit to BSP which is more than I was expecting. It is interesting to see Dubawi and Frankel again both making losses, with their high profile progeny typically wildly over-bet. The PRBs for the sires listed range between 0.83 (Harry Angel and New Bay) down to a very skinny 0.71 (Muhaarar).

There are seven sires that, based on these past stats, are worth noting when starting favourite in the future. They are Bated Breath, Harry Angel, Kodiac, Lope De Vega, New Bay, No Nay Never and Oasis Dream. All have been profitable, all have A/E indices of 1.10 or above, and all have PRBs of 0.80 or more in this context.

 

*

There were a few more tables than usual in this piece, but I felt that was necessary to convey the differences between sires under certain conditions. I hope this will help us when betting on 2yo races this season and beyond.

The fifty sires discussed have combined to father around 40% of all raced 2yos in UK between 2017 and 2024. That is not, of course, to say that we should ignore other sires but these are the most prominent.

It is important also to note that many sires imbue their progeny with no obvious preference for distance or going or whatever else. We must recognise the limitations of datasets, and that even neutral statistics have some utility in our betting, albeit probably less so than positive and negative ones.

- DR

Punting Angles using Sires & Damsires: Part 1

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After spending the past three years on geegeez almost exclusively looking at pace angles, I am branching out into a different ‘sphere’ today, namely sires / damsires, writes Dave Renham. The plan is to write a series of articles on this topic in an attempt to give geegeez punters an edge over the general betting fraternity.

First off, a quick 101: sires are the fathers of the respective horses, and they can have a significant influence on their offspring. Damsires are the fathers of the respective mothers of the horse – maternal grandfather, if you will – and these, too, can have a bearing, though it is generally considered that this further generation influence is less strong. In this series of articles we will examine whether this is true or not and, if it is, where we ought to focus our attention.

The cost of buying a racehorse can vary greatly, from thousands of pounds to millions. Age, equine conformation (physicality) and, most importantly, pedigree (horses’ lineage / ancestry) influence the price. Normally the better the pedigree the more expensive the horse.

Let me share a human example where lineage / ancestry seems to be having a strong influence. The young American golf sisters, Nelly and Jessica Korda, are taking the LPGA tour by storm. Their father is Petr Korda, a Grand Slam tennis champion in the 90s, while their mother is Regina Rajchrtova, a top 30 tennis player back in the same era. Good ‘stock’ certainly counts there.

Returning to racing, and for this first article I will be concentrating solely on sires. The data is taken from the period 1st January 2016 through to 31st December 2020 (five full years) and all profit/loss has been calculated to Industry Starting Price. For the vast majority of the article I have used the Geegeez Query Tool.

Firstly, let us look at the sires with the highest strike rates in all races during the period of study (minimum 400 runs). I am only including sires that are likely to have a significant number of runners this season:

 

As the table clearly shows, backing sires ‘blind’ is not a great option (duh). Just one sire, Farrh, has made a profit to SP with all his runners in the past five full seasons. Obviously we should be able to beat Starting Price returns in the real world, but it does show that we have to dig a lot deeper when analysing sires. And all those of us who like to get our hands dirty in the data say amen to that!

In order to try and profit from sire data, one sound strategy is to look at individual sires in more detail to try and spot patterns, strengths and weaknesses. I am going to look at a few in that context where I have unearthed some hopefully useful angles.

Teofilo

Teofilo, a son of Galileo, won at Group 1 level twice as a 2yo and was unbeaten in that first season racing (5 from 5). Unfortunately, he got injured and never raced again. However, he has been successful as a sire and has passed on some strong traits of which we should be aware.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he has a good record with 2yo runners, boasting a strike rate of 16.84% during the study period. However, we can break the data down further to give us interesting comparisons, as the graph below shows:

As can be seen, male juveniles comfortably outperform females, runners win more often at 7f or more than over shorter distances, and Teofilo-sired runners much prefer the turf to the sand. Combining those factors - male 2yos over 7f or more on the turf (2016-2020) - saw 65 runners qualify with 17 winning (SR 26.15%) for a very healthy profit of £66.53 (ROI +102.35).

No Nay Never

No Nay Never is a relatively new kid on the block with 2021 being only his fourth season as a sire. As a racehorse, No Nay Never was a Group 1 winning sprinter and hence it may come as no surprise that his progeny are showing a liking for shorter distances.

Horses sired by No Nay Never win about 3 times more often over 5-6f than they do when racing over a mile or further.

Casamento

Casamento proved as a two-year-old in 2010 he was one of the best colts of his generation when finishing second in the Group 1 National Stakes before going onto win the Group 2Beresford Stakes and finally in that year the Group 1 Racing Post Trophy over a mile. As a sire his runners are typically far better suited to longer distances: his runners are twice as likely to win at 1 mile 3 furlongs or more, as compared to sprint trips of 5f to 6f. The graph below shows this neatly:

Sadly, we'll not be seeing many more of Casamento's progeny as he passed away in February 2020.

Big Bad Bob

The sire Big Bad Bob caught my eye due to some relatively unusual findings. I noticed that his record as a sire was superior when racing left-handed compared to when racing right-handed. Famously Desert Orchid was far better going right-handed than left, and we often hear trainers allude to a directional preference, so I know certain horses do have this type of trait; maybe some sires do, too. Essentially, Big Bad Bob’s strike rate when racing left-handed (around at least one bend in a race) is 1.5 times greater than when racing right-handed.

In addition to this I analysed all of his runners in more detail and found that of those that raced left-handed, 41% of them managed to win at least one race going in that direction. For all his runners that raced right handed only 19% of these managed to win a race going that way round. Now these stats may have happened by chance, but 41% versus 19% is too big a gap for me to believe that it was entirely down to luck.

Big Bad Bob also displays a distance bias similar to Casamento. The bias is not quite as strong towards longer distances but it is still significant. Horses over racing at 1m 1f or more have by far the best record.

Swiss Spirit

Swiss Spirit is a relatively new sire with 2017 seeing his first runners on the racecourse. He was a decent sprinter when he raced winning at Group 3 level and twice finishing runner up in Group 2 events. It is interesting to note, though, that as a sire his sprinters have performed no better than his 7f to 1 mile runners. In fact, in strike rate terms they have been slightly inferior. However, there is one huge deviation that is extremely interesting. That is his record with male runners compared to female runners. I think this is best illustrated in a table rather than a graph:

As you can see there is a significant disparity in strike rates and naturally this impacts the profit/loss returns. Backing all male runners blind would have lost you just under 16p in the £ to SP compared with 59p in the £ if you backed all of his female runners. The A/E values show a strong correlation, too.

 

Dawn Approach

Dawn Approach was a top notch miler during his career and as a 3yo won the 2000 Guineas and the St James’s Palace Stakes. Unbeaten as a 2yo he ended up winning 8 of his 12 career starts.

Like Swiss Spirit, Dawn Approach sired his first crop of runners to race in 2017. Also like Swiss Spirit his male runners have to date outperformed his female runners by nearly double in terms of strike rate (male win SR% 11.76%; female win SR% 6.56%). However, it is the pace angle I find most interesting.

Below is a graph comparing the win strike rate of Dawn Approach against the strike rate of all sires when looking at different run styles: front runners (leaders); horses that track the pace (prominent); and horses that race mid-division or towards the back (Mid Div / Held Up).

The progeny of Dawn Approach have been very successful when taking an early lead, but really struggle when racing from off the pace (Mid Div / Held Up). To illustrate this further I have looked at all the horses that have taken an early lead and examined their record in more detail. 65 horses have led early in at least one race and 25 of them have gone on to win at least once (38.46%). Compare this to all horses that have showed the running style of racing off the pace. Of these horses, 112 displayed this running style at least once and only 13 managed to win when racing in this way (11.60%).

Horses do have preferred running styles due to a variety of factors (some don’t like crowding for example, while others seem to thrive when racing in a pack), and hence it could make sense that certain pace traits may be passed on by individual sires.

I hope this piece has whetted your appetite for this new phase of my geegeez research sharing. In my second article I will reveal another collection of interesting data and stats. In the meantime, if you're interested in doing your own digging, both the geegeez Query Tool and the Profiler tab within the racecards offer a treasure trove of insights and are very easy to use.

- DR