In some recent articles I have extolled the virtues of the Geegeez Racecard for Gold members, for example, when looking at Dr Peter May’s ratings (the SR column), writes Dave Renham.

Introduction

Another huge bonus of these racecards is the pace tab. The pace tab shows the running styles of the horses for a maximum of their last four races. Each past running style is given a score of between four and one, as follows:

4 – Front runner / early leader

3 – Prominent racer

2 – Raced in midfield / mid division

1 – held up near or at the back early

Long standing Geegeez members will have read previous articles of mine emphasising the importance of running style / early pace in a race under specific conditions. Usually though I am looking at the performance of different run styles in certain races which is based on knowledge gleaned after the race has been run. For example, how well have front runners performed over a particular course or distance.

In this article I will examine the Geegeez pace figures to see if they can help in terms of giving us an edge pre-race. I have looked at a year’s worth of pace ratings data that was published in the Geegeez Racecards before each race. The focus is on 5f handicaps (excluding 2yo nurseries) as these races tend to accentuate any run style bias. To be clear, the words 'ratings' and 'rankings' are used somewhat interchangeably in what follows. Higher ratings generally equate to higher rankings.

Past number crunching has noted the edge early leaders / front runners have at this minimum 5f distance. [Type ‘sprint’ into the search box here for a five-part deep dive into 5f handicaps]

However, the problem of taking advantage of any front running bias is that we do not know which horse is going to take the early lead in any given race. If we did then most of us would have made enough money to retire by now! The one tool that should be able to help us is the Geegeez Gold pace tab. Logic dictates that the higher a horses’ pace rating total, the more likely it is to lead. Let me share an example of a 5f handicap race run last month focusing on the pre-race pace ratings:

 

 

The first point to note, before we look at the pace totals for each runner, is the performance of early leaders at Wolverhampton. We can see from the green box that they have won nearly 25% of the time and, if able to back them all, we would have made huge profit.

This goes back to what I said previously about how useful it would be if we knew the early leader pre-race. Looking at the pace totals we can see they range from 13 to 7 with Wedgewood the highest on 13.

Hence, we would expect Wedgewood to be the most likely early leader. This is the result, with some additional sectional data.

 

 

As we can see Wedgewood, under geegeez-sponsored jockey Marco Ghiani, did indeed take the early lead and was never headed. Of course, the top-rated runner is not going to lead all the time, and the top-rated runner is not going to win all the time. However, from some past 5/6f research I shared with readers back in January 2021 those with higher pace totals led more often than those with lower ones and therefore we would expect them to win more often.

The sample size in that article was far smaller than I am sharing now but it was big enough to suggest that horses with the highest pace totals of 15 or 16 would take the early lead around 45% of the time, whereas those with the lowest pace totals of 4 or 5 would take the early lead less than 3% of the time.

In this piece I am more interested in the performance of each horse based on their pace totals / positions in the racecard, rather than how many of the top-rated runners led. Essentially, as punters we want to make money and so I wanted to find out answers to questions such as, “has the top-rated runner made a profit?”, “is the top-rated runner better value than those rated say 8 or lower?”, “do horses with pace totals of 15 or 16 perform better than those with totals of 8 or less?”, and so on.

The 2024 5f handicap data I have crunched covers just under 600 races and that means 5200 horses with their individual pace totals. This, then, is a very decent sample, and one that took quite a while to collate! After all the leg work to input the data, I hoped that I would find something worth sharing! Let’s see…

 

Pace Rating Rank

To begin with let’s look at performance based on the ranking positions of runners from their four-race pace totals. In the earlier Wolverhampton example this would mean the following:

 

 

Horses with the same totals such as Four Adaay and Angle Land have been given the same ranking position. I have applied this idea across all the races in the study. On that basis, here are the win strike rates, with those rated 8th or bigger in one group:

 

 

This is the type of sloping graph I had hoped for with the top-ranked pace horse winning more often than the second ranked, who in turn has scored more than the third ranked and so on. However, I had not expected it to correlate so neatly.

Below are the Betfair SP profit and loss figures for the same pace rating ranks.

 

 

The top two ranked (inc. joints) have both nudged into profit which is obviously a clear positive. The 4th ranked runners have effectively broken even, but the 3rd ranked runners have let the side down for ‘the top four’ with quite steep losses. Once we get 6th and bigger in the rankings, we can see losses have started to mount up with those 8th or bigger losing nearly 20p in the £.

Looking in a bit more detail at the top two ranked (inc. joints) if we restrict races to those with 12 runners or less, we see the following results:

 

 

If, therefore, we had stuck to mid-range to smaller field sizes, then the figures improve further for the top two ranked pace runners. These are tidy ‘blind’ profits using nothing other than the Geegeez pace ratings.

 

Pace Rating Total

Let’s pivot now to the four-race pace totals covering each horse’s most recent four runs. The maximum total a horse can attain is 16 (four 4s), and the lowest is 4 (four 1s). I have looked at win strike rates first below to see if there is a similar pattern to the Pace Rating Rank graph shared earlier. I have grouped the individual totals up so have joined 15 with 16, 13 with 14 and so on. Here are the findings:

 

 

We see the same type of pattern as before, although the 4 to 6 group have just ‘spoiled’ my ideal pace score graph by winning slightly more often in percentage terms than the 7 to 8 group. Again, though, this highlights that horses which have shown more early speed in their most recent four races have a better chance of winning 5f handicaps than those which have not shown gate speed. As we know, higher strike rates do not necessarily mean bigger profits, so let’s see how the returns figures have panned out:

 

 

Those horses recording a four-race pace total of 15 or 16 have combined to make a sound profit equating to returns of over 16p in the £. The general pattern is that as the rating totals drop the losses start to increase, although the 4 to 6 group buck that trend.

Pace Ratings at Different Courses

I want to look at some course data now although with only races from one calendar year, several tracks have limited samples to potentially analyse. Hence, as Baldrick would say, “I have a cunning plan”. The first phase of this plan was to back check past pace/run style course data in 5f handicaps from a longer prior time frame. I chose 2017 to 2023, and I examined the course performance of early leaders / front runners. By using win percentages, placed percentages and A/E indices, I was able to order the courses from the most front-runner biased to the least.

From there I decided to group the 12 most biased courses together in one group (group A) and the 12 courses with the weakest front running biases in a second group (group B). The idea was simple: I wanted to compare the 2024 performance of top-rated runners across both groups, with the hope being that the Group A stats for front runners would be far superior to those for Group B. Here are my findings:

Group A

The 12 courses in this group are Ayr, Chelmsford, Chester, Hamilton, Kempton, Leicester, Lingfield, Redcar, Ripon, Thirsk, Windsor and York. Funnily enough, due to plenty of past course / run style number crunching, if I had been given the task to decide what I thought the strongest 5f course biases were without any past stats at my fingertips, I would have chosen 11 of the 12. Knowing that gave me good confidence in this past course data.

So, looking at the top-rated runners in the Geegeez Pace Ratings at Group A courses we see the following results:

 

 

These results are rather impressive both from a strike rate perspective (4% higher than the figure for all courses) and a bottom line one. Returns of over 41p in the £ are not to be sniffed at.

Group B

The ‘dirty dozen’ courses in this group are Ascot, Carlisle, Chepstow, Doncaster, Goodwood, Haydock, Newbury, Newcastle, Newmarket, Nottingham, Sandown and Yarmouth. When looking at the top-rated runner across all courses combined, we get the following:

 

 

Wow! This is an even bigger differential than I had expected. Returns at these 12 courses have created losses of over 26p in the £. It does seem that the 2017 to 2023 data was a very accurate reflection of the relative front-running biases at these courses.

One would hope that we witness a similar difference between the course groups when looking at horses that achieved a pace rating of 15 or 16 although the sample sizes are a little on the small side now:

 

 

Again, we have a significant difference between groups in both strike rate and returns. As previously mentioned, the sample sizes are smaller than ideal but with the correlation between the two data groups being so strong we can have more confidence as a result in these second set of figures.

 

 

Top Rated by Age Group

The final area I want to delve into today is top-rated pace runners, and the 15-16 pace score runners, across the three main age groupings. These are 3yo only races, 3yo+ races and 4yo+ races. Let’s first compare the strike rates for the top-rated:

 

 

I have to confess these figures surprised me. I expected the top-ranked to score more often in 4yo+ handicaps where the runners are more exposed. However, it is the complete opposite with the top-ranked winning more often in 3yo only races. It should be noted that the average field size for 3yo only races was slightly smaller than for both 3yo+ and 4yo+, but not enough to make any significant difference to these percentages. Of course, strike rate is only one piece of the puzzle and when we look at the overall figures for each in terms of top-ranked in the four-race pace totals we see things change around a little:

 

 

The 3yo only top-ranked pace runners did make a profit, but the 4yo+ top-ranked pace runners performed especially well on the profit front. It wasn’t such a good read for the 3yo+ top-ranked runners with losses edging towards 16p in the £.

Now it’s time to see if the horses with a pace rating of 15 or 16 have performed in a similar fashion across the different age ranges. Here are my findings:

 

 

The sample size for 3yo only races is small, but they once again have secured the highest strike rate, albeit only just greater than 4yo+ qualifiers. Once again though the best value by far has been in the 4yo+ races with some impressive profits and returns achieved.

*

Whilst this article has looked only at a single year's worth of 5f handicap pace rating data, the findings across the board have correlated positively. Moreover, with nearly 600 races in the sample we should be fairly confident in the data.

I for one will be keeping an even closer eye on 5f handicaps in the future as there seems to be value in the top two rated runners, and those that have totals of 15 or 16 points. Of course, all the horses with totals of 16 will be top-rated (or joint top-rated), while those scoring 15 will often be either top-rated or second top.

For those who have enjoyed this week’s offering the good news is I have a follow-up piece to share next week – and it’s got some excellent payoffs!

- DR