Clive Cox was thrilled to see his high-class sprinter Diligent Harry bounce back to his best with a front-running victory in the JenningsBet Chipchase Stakes at Newcastle.
Placed at Group One level in the Al Quoz Sprint in Dubai last year, the seven-year-old had failed to recapture that form in four previous outings this season, most recently finishing fifth on All-Weather Championships Finals Day at Newcastle on Good Friday.
The seven-year-old was a 16-1 shot on his return from over two months off and after a fast start, Diligent Harry quickly built up a significant lead over the chasing back and found more once challenged by Annaf to claimed the Group Three prize by a neck under an excellent ride from Saffie Osborne.
Lambourn-based Cox did not make the long trip north to Gosforth Park, but was in jubilant mood when contacted: “That was brilliant, Saffie has been in to ride him in his last couple of bits of work and it’s great when a plan comes together.
“He went to Dubai last year and ran a great race in the Group One there, but it’s tough at the top.
“We always live in hope, he loves the all-weather and he’s still pretty good, so today was a big target and to go all the way up to Newcastle and win a race like that is very satisfying.
“He’s won a Group Three now and we’ll place him accordingly.”
Osborne added: “Clive was really positive about his chances. I started going to Clive’s a couple of months ago, I rode this horse for the last couple of weeks and he’s a seriously classy horse.
“He’s a horse that was third in a Group One, he jumped out of the stalls today and Clive was keen for me not to wrestle him, so I was quite happy to let him slide on.
“I was able to get a breather into him and I always felt I was holding on to enough. He’s seriously tough and as soon as he felt the other horse coming to his girth he was always pulling out a bit more.”
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2.80825919-scaled.jpg12802560https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.png2025-06-28 13:49:302025-06-28 13:49:30Diligent Harry is Chipchase hero for Clive Cox and Saffie Osborne
In this article I will put 35 jockeys under the microscope, writes Dave Renham. These are the riders with the most rides per year, on average, over the past four years. The data has been taken from UK flat racing (turf and all-weather (AW) and the full years 2021 to 2024.
Introduction
I have further limited the findings to mounts sent off at an Industry Starting Price (ISP) of 20/1 or shorter, in order to try to eliminate most of the horses that had little or no chance; and, further, because very big-priced winners tend to skew profit figures.
For this piece I will primarily examine the data using ‘Percentage of Rivals Beaten’, although I also plan to look at strike rates and A/E indices. Percentage of Rivals Beaten (PRB) is a calculation based on a horse's finishing position in relation to field size. It makes key distinctions between a horse finishing, say, fourth in a seven-horse race (PRB 50%, three rivals beaten, beaten by three rivals) and finishing fourth in a sixteen-horse race (PRB 80%, twelve rivals beaten, beaten by three rivals). We express the PRB as a number between 0 and 1. So, in the examples above, 50% is 0.5 and 80% is 0.8.
As racing researchers we can often be blighted by small sample sizes when analysing, for example, win strike rates. Hence, there is a strong argument to suggest that PRB figures are a more accurate metric, simply because they make datasets bigger: they award a sliding performance score to every runner in every race, whereas win strike rate only awards the winner a score with all other finishers getting zero.
Today's offering has a slightly different flow from usual I will be writing it "as I go along". In other words, I’m sharing the research and my thinking process stage by stage, rather than doing all the research and then writing about my findings afterwards. Thus, my main commentary will appear to be in the present tense. If that makes sense, let's crack on (and if it doesn't, it soon will!)
Top Jockeys' PRB: Overall
I will start by sharing the average PRB figures for each of the 35 jockeys over this four-year period. They are ordered alphabetically across two graphs:
To provide a benchmark, the average figure when combining these jockeys was halfway between 0.58 and 0.59, so 0.585 to be precise. Oisin Murphy has the highest PRB figure, 0.64, followed by five jockeys tied on 0.62 – William Buick, James Doyle, Rob Havlin, Jack Mitchell and Danny Tudhope. Tom Eaves, Cam Hardie and Andrew Mullen have the joint lowest PRB figure of 0.54.
It should be noted that all riders in this sample are above the 0.5 PRB benchmark and so even the lowest in the cohort are out-performing the norm.
Top Jockeys' PRB: ISP 6/4 or shorter
Although I have restricted qualifiers to those priced 20/1 or shorter, there are clearly some jockeys who have more rides at shorter prices than others. Hence, I am assuming that jockeys should have higher PRBs because of this. To help analyse and potentially confirm this hypothesis I am going to look at the percentage of rides each jockey had with horses priced 6/4 or shorter. The table shows the splits:
There is a huge variance here, from William Buick with more than 13% of his rides sent off 6/4 or shorter, to Cam Hardie at less than 1%. Of the six jockeys with the highest average PRBs I noted earlier, five of them were in the top six for the highest percentage of rides (highlighted in blue in this table). Therefore, we can see there is a strong looking correlation between price and PRB, as we should expect.
Top Jockeys' PRB: ISP 12/1 to 20/1
It makes sense next to look at the percentage of rides each jockey had when the qualifiers were bigger prices in order to consider both ends of the price spectrum. Therefore, below is a table showing these percentages when considering percentage of rides from runners priced 12/1 to 20/1.
The three jockeys with the highest percentages (shown in blue) are the jockeys who had the lowest overall PRB figures shared earlier, namely Tom Eaves, Cam Hardie and Andrew Mullen: this is further evidence of clear positive correlation. Also, the lowest four percentages in this group are for Messrs Buick, Murphy, Doyle (James) and Mitchell.
At this early point in my research I am starting to appreciate that despite the fact that PRB is a really useful metric, for this type of research the price of runners is also very important and can significantly sway the balance one way or the other. Hence, the market will be factored in for the remainder of what follows.
Top Jockeys' PRB by Price Range
Having established the importance of the starting price, I have decided to calculate PRBs for different price bands for all 35 jockeys. The brackets I am going to use are again based on Industry Starting Price and they are as follows:
In the table below I have collated the PRBs for each jockey for each price band. The average figures for all jockeys in the list are shown in blue at the bottom of each column, and I have highlighted any PRB that is at least 3% above the average or at least 3% below the average. The 3% ‘above group’ (positive) is highlighted in green, the 3% ‘below group’ (negative) is in red.
The colour coding helps to highlight jockeys that seem to perform above the norm and those that may have performed below what might be expected within each price band. There were three jockeys who obtained two ‘greens’: Robert Havlin, Clifford Lee and Kieran O’Neill. And there were four jockeys who obtained two or more ‘reds’: William Buick (3), Holly Doyle (2), Joe Fanning (3) and Rob Hornby (2).
Top Jockeys' PRB: All-Round Performance
I am thinking that another way we could analyse these data is to simply add up each jockey’s six PRB figures in the above table and compare them. Below, then, are the riders with the top ten combined PRB figures when adding the six values together:
It could be argued that these are the top 10 performing jockeys from my original list of 35 as their totals are based on the overall performance across different price ranges. From looking at these findings I would be happy to see one of these ten riding a horse I am keen to back. Rab Havlin, who has consistently shown positive figures in the research to date, tops the list on a combined total of 3.99. (0.88 + 0.76 + 0.68 + 0.65 + 0.55 + 0.47).
Next, here are the lowest ten combined PRB totals from our sample of the top 35 riders:
As can be seen, we are talking small margins here so despite these ten being at the bottom we know that they are all still top-notch riders. However, in terms of PRB figures within certain price bands, they have performed with slightly less success than the rest of the jockeys in this sample.
To complete the set here are the remaining jockeys (positioned 11th to 25th) with their PRB totals. Due to the bigger group, I am using a table rather than a graph:
Top Jockeys: Other Metrics
I stated earlier that PRBs are arguably the most accurate metric but it always prudent to consider other metrics where possible in order to attain a stronger 'feel' for the data.
We know that finishing fifth in an 18-runner race will produce a better PRB figure than finishing eighth in the same the race, but usually finishing fifth does not make punters money (unless those generous bookie types are offering extra places).
At this point, then, I am thinking about the key battles in terms of finishing first rather than second and, therefore, I am going to share the wins, runs, strike rate, profit/loss and A/E indices for all 35 jockeys. As with the PRB data this does not include rides on horses priced over 20/1 ISP. Profits and losses have been calculated to Betfair SP less 2% commission. The A/E indices are based on Betfair prices and any figure above 1.00 has been coloured in green:
Somewhat surprisingly, 18 of the 35 jockeys have secured a profit which is impressive considering there are not any really big BSP winners to skew the returns. In fact, the highest winning BSP was 46.0 and there were only three winners in total above BSP 40.0, and only 23 above BSP 30.0 (out of total of nearly 12,000 winners).
Rossa Ryan, Saffie Osborne and William Buick have the best ROI%s (above 7%), and they each have one of the top five A/E indices. Impressively, Ryan has made a blind profit in each of the four years, Osborne and Buick matching that feat in three of the four years surveyed. There are two jockeys that made a loss in each of the four years, namely David Allan and James Doyle.
Conclusions
All this is helping me, and hopefully you, to start building a more complete picture of jockey performance; or, at least, the performance of these 35 top riders. The PRB data have given us an extra layer on top of the usual metrics we focus on. However, it is becoming clear to me that for this type of jockey-based research we do need other metrics (win percentage, profits, A/E indices, etc) to bring betting utility to the party.
I am just starting to expand the jockey PRB research into other areas and there is plenty more to share; so I have come to the realisation that this article will spawn a second piece. Thus, it is probably too early to draw any key conclusions from the research so far as there are more pieces of the puzzle to add.
However, next week I have a Royal Ascot article ready to go, so it affords me a little extra time to do further digging for part two of this jockey deep dive!
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PrideOfArras_Dante2025.avif319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-06-03 12:27:002025-06-03 15:24:19Evaluating Jockeys by Percentage of Rivals Beaten
The 3.30 race at Goodwood on September 3rd 2024 will be one that Hollie Doyle will cherish for the rest of her life, writes Dave Renham. It was the race where she rode her 1000th career winner on the David Simcock-trained Leyhaimur. In doing so, Hollie became only the second woman to achieve this monumental feat following in the footsteps of Hayley Turner who rode her 1000th winner in November last year (2023).
Horse racing is one of the few sports where men and women compete against each other on a level playing field. One would sincerely hope that by now Doyle and Turner have proven to trainers, punters, bookmakers and fellow jockeys alike that women riders can be as successful as their male counterparts.
Back in January 2021 Matt wrote a piece on the site where he set about trying to answer two questions:
1. Has the sport begun to level the chasmic disparity between male and female rider opportunities? and
2. To what degree is it appropriate to do that based on performance data?
What I plan to do with this article is twofold. In the first part I am aiming to build upon the start of Matt’s research into his question of gender disparity, bringing us up to date over the subsequent four years. In the second part I would like to focus solely on the performance of female jockeys.
Male vs female: Overall Numbers
Firstly, let me share Matt’s findings for all riders in UK flat races between 2016 and 2020, broken down by gender focusing solely on the percentage of rides for each group.
As the pie chart shows, a whopping 91% of all rides were taken by male jockeys during this time frame. That's an enormous disparity. The question is, have matters improved at all in more recent times? Below is the same male/female percentage comparison but looking at data from 1st January 2021 to 5th September 2024:
Things have improved but just barely. I wonder if we have seen a year-on-year increase or not? Let’s see:
From 2021 to 2023 we were heading downwards not upwards. At least 2024 has seen the percentage move in the direction it should be. As can be seen, parity is a long way away and even an 80/20 male to female split seems years, possibly decades, away.
For these figures to change we need to see more Hollie Doyles. What I mean by that is that Hollie has ridden 17% of all the rides given to female jockeys in 2024. That equates to 796 rides out of the 4741 total rides for all female jockeys. Only two other female jockeys have had more than 300 rides this year to date, those being Saffie Osborne on 493 and Joanna Mason on 470. If, say, just another three female jockeys had been given the opportunities this year that Hollie has had (e.g. ridden in nearly 800 races), then the male riders to female riders’ splits would have moved from 88.7% male rides vs 11.3% female rides, to a better, if still badly unbalanced, split of 82.9% vs 17.1%. However, that would still be a solid improvement on the situation in a scenario where just three female jockeys get those better opportunities - and two of them used the lever of family connections to get started. Riders need races to gain experience, and the simple truth is that female jockeys are still not getting enough opportunities.
Male vs female: Favourites
Matt’s article also looked at data for favourites in terms of the male rides / female rides percentage splits. From 2016 to 2020 only 6.7% of all favourites were ridden by female jockeys. In the more recent past (2021 onwards) this has improved a little, but only to 8.3%. However, when we look at the overall results (2021-2024) for both groups of favourites we see some interesting findings:
Strike rates for both are within 0.33% of each other, but female jockeys have offered punters by far the better value. Losses to SP have been 7p in the £ better for female riders compared with the male jocks. Meanwhile the female A/E index is an excellent 0.96 compared with 0.91 for male riders. To Betfair SP backing all favourites ridden by female jockeys would have made a blind profit of £46.97 (ROI +2.6%).
If we examine like for like we get a better idea why the female jockeys have had the best of it on favourites. Most races in this favourite sample have been handicap races (because 71% of flat races in 2024 have been handicaps - and similar percentages apply to the other recent years). 80% of the races where females rode the favourite and 68% of races where males did have been handicap races. And in these handicap races female riders have outperformed their male counterparts. Here are the handicap favourite results for ’21 to ‘24 split by gender of the rider:
In these like for like races female jockeys have a better strike rate by roughly 1.5%, and they have almost broken even to SP, as compared with losses of 10% for males. The A/E index values (0.97 vs 0.91) also show a value edge for female riders. This represents a still present blind spot in the markets.
Before moving to part 2 of my piece, all the other stat comparisons Matt made in his write-up have similar percentage splits now to what they were then. As an example of this, from 2016 to 2020 25.2% of all apprentice jockey rides came from female riders, from 2021 onwards it stands marginally higher at 26.4%.
We can only hope the next four or five years sees a vast improvement and many more opportunities for female jockeys.
*
Top Female Jockeys: An Overview
At this juncture, it's time to move away from the male vs female rider comparison and focus solely on the ladies. Let me look at the records of the female jockeys who have had the most rides between January 2021 and early September 2024 (ordered by number of rides):
Hollie Doyle
Hollie Doyle has the highest win percentage but over the years, as her stock has risen, it has become difficult to find profitable angles when backing her. Hollie still performs exceptionally well and is obviously one of the top jockeys in the country; it is just that she has become very popular with punters which makes her expensive to follow generally speaking.
If we go back to the previous two years (2019 and 2020), her ROI was -8% to SP, and you could have secured a healthy £177.24 (ROI +9.9%) if backing all her mounts to BSP. These 2019-2020 figures were achieved with a virtually identical strike rate to what transpired in 2021-2024. Clearly, then, it is this rising popularity in the last four years especially that have driven down the prices on her runners and thus any value has been stifled.
Saffie Osborne
That has yet to happen - though of course it will do - with Saffie Osborne, as backing all her rides “blind” in the past four seasons would have secured a profit to BSP of £65.98 (ROI +3.6%). In fact, Osborne has produced a blind profit to BSP in each of the last three years.
I am a firm believer that Saffie Osborne, if given the right opportunities, can be as successful as Hollie Doyle in the years to come. She is only 22 and she seems to be going from strength to strength, especially when we consider her yearly performances in terms of the A/E index stat. This stat is one that attempts to establish value where, generally speaking, a figure above 1.00 represents a good value proposition. Here are Osborne’s A/E figures by year:
As the graph shows her figures have been getting better and better year on year. No wonder she has proved profitable to back to BSP more recently.
Saffie has had an excellent record with horses near the front end of the betting since the start of 2021. Those runners with an SP of 6/1 or shorter have provided her with 162 winners from 653 runners (SR 24.8%) for an SP profit of £40.04 (ROI + 6.1%). To BSP this improves to +£97.50 (ROI +15%). If we extend this to horses priced 14/1 or shorter, she is still in profit to SP to the tune of £31.54 (ROI +2.5%) thanks to 220 wins from 1277 rides (SR 17.3%). To BSP her profits stand at a healthy £207.88 (ROI +16.3%).
I am sure the value on Saffie Osborne’s mounts will soon diminish, especially if continuing this upwards spiral. However, for the moment I think she will continue to offer punters good value.
Joanna Mason
Another female jockey to impress me recently has been Joanna Mason. She primarily rides for the Mick & David Easterby - granddad and uncle respectively - yard and, when we compare her record for this yard with all other jockeys combined, we see the following:
Her stats are far better than when combining all the other Easterby jockeys in one group. This has also been the case when we compare the results of the more fancied runners from the stable. With Easterby horses priced 9/1 or shorter we get these splits:
It should be noted that to BSP a blind profit could have been had backing all of Joanna's runners, as well as the subset of those priced 9/1 or shorter.
It is a shame that she has not been given many opportunities from the bigger yards: she has ridden five times for William Haggas including three rides since May this year. She has ridden one winner and had three placed horses so hopefully more rides will come her way from that stable soon.
Hayley Turner
Hayley Turner averages around 400 rides a year these days, down somewhat on the peak of her career when between 2006 and 2012 she averaged 725 rides per year. However, she is still performing well 24 years after her first ride and especially when her horse is prominent in the betting. In the past four seasons on horses with an SP of 4/1 or shorter she has won 81 of her 264 rides (SR 30.7%) for a small £10.76 profit to SP. This equates to a return of just over 4p in the £. To BSP the figures improve to +£28.65 (ROI +10.9%).
David Simcock and Andrew Balding continue to use Hayley on a fairly regular basis and these two trainers have provided her with the most rides in the past four seasons. Both trainers have been rewarded with excellent results:
Turner has been very close to breaking even for both trainers across all their combination runners, and to BSP she has made a profit of £15.77 (ROI +9.3%) for Balding, and £21.83 (ROI +10.8%) for Simcock.
Josephine Gordon
Josephine Gordon has an overall win strike rate of only 7% across the past four seasons but 58% of her rides have been on horses priced 14/1 or bigger. Hence, she tends to ride lesser fancied runners which explains that low strike rate. However, when we focus on her rides on horses whose prices were 12/1 or shorter at SP her record reads 57 wins from 458 rides (SR 14.6%). These runners have edged into profit at SP to the tune of £2.42. To BSP profits stand at +£64.66 (ROI +14.1%).
While writing this article there has been quite a coincidence because Josephine Gordon has just won at Kempton in the Class 2 London Mile Series Final Handicap on Whitcombe Rocker at 11/1, giving him a brilliant ride from a tough outside stall. Funny how things happen like that!
One to note: Olivia Tubb
To finish up I want to talk about an apprentice who, despite having only 122 rides to date, could be the real deal. Her name is Olivia Tubb, and she is currently apprentice jockey to Jonathan Portman. Her overall record is impressive:
Clearly it is early days, but when we examine her record for Portman, she has a 17.7% strike rate producing returns to SP of 26p in the £ (44p to BSP). All other jockeys combined when riding for Portman have won just 7.4% of races losing a whopping 45p in the £.
It is also impressive to note that with horses priced 4/1 or shorter she is 11 from 29 (SR 37.9%) for a profit to SP of £15.24 (ROI +52.6%). Her A/E index stands at a huge 1.55. She should have an exciting future – let’s hope she gets enough chances to prove it.
*
To conclude, there is sadly still a wide opportunity chasm between the chances afforded to male riders as compared to female riders. That needs to change because there is plenty of female talent in the jockey ranks - and the stats I've shared I hope has proved that beyond doubt.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/JoannaMason_MickEasterby_York.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2024-09-11 04:38:412024-09-09 15:42:09Seeking Value with Female Flat Jockeys
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