When Horses Change Stable: Part 2

May 6, 2025
Dave Renham

This is the second of two articles looking at horses that have switched stables on the flat, writes Dave Renham. The first article looked at horses’ first run for a new yard, while this one examines the second run from that new stable. We’ll call them TC2 (Trainer Change 2^nd Start).

As I mentioned last time, the one stipulation is that the switch is from a horse that has been running on the flat and not National Hunt. This is mainly because there are some dual-purpose horses that switch yards each year from a dedicated National Hunt stable to a flat stable.

The data has been taken from the last ten full years (2015-2024) of flat racing in the UK (turf/AW) and all profit and loss has been calculated to Betfair SP with 2% commission applied on any winners. This is also the first article where the A/E indices (Actual versus Expected) will be based on BSP not Industry SP.

Contents

To recap, the last article noted that all horses that have had their first run for a new trainer having switched stables scored 8.2% of the time and actually made a blind BSP profit of £732.49. This equated to a 4.65% return on investment. Unsurprisingly, these overall figures included some horses winning at huge prices: there were 12 winners that paid 100.0 or bigger ‘on the machine’ with the majority lying between 100.0 and 200.0. The two biggest winners, however, were enormous at 429.02 and 503.82. Having said all that backing all 100.0+ qualifiers actually showed a loss of £279.72 (ROI -11.2%).

All TC2 Runners

So how about all horses having their second start for a new stable. Are the overall figures similar? Let’s see:

Despite a slightly better win strike rate, we see fairly steep losses. Most of these losses have been incurred by the genuine outsiders and, if we ignore the 2153 horses that started 100.0 or bigger at BSP we get much closer to parity:

The returns now show a small loss of just over 1½ pence in the £, and if we further restrict all qualifiers to those priced BSP 20.0 or shorter we hit profit:

These runners on roughly once in every six starts and returned a profit of just under 5p for every £1 staked.

TC2 Runners Sent Off Exchange Favourite

Sticking with the betting market let’s now focus on Exchange favourites.

These figures are very similar to the ones we saw for first-time switchers – but while those runners made a small profit of just under 2p in the £, the second start cohort produced a small reverse of a penny in the £.

Let’s next compare the annual performance of these BSP favourites by examining their ROI%.

As we can see there is a bit of a mixed bag, but this is to be expected based on an average of 130 qualifiers per year. There were three poor years (2018, 2019 and 2021), two profitable years (2015 and 2020), and five years that have been close to breaking even, albeit all showed a small loss.

There are a few angles where horses having their second run for a new trainer have made a profit when starting as favourite. These are:

Favourites in non-handicaps won 90 races from 190 (SR 47.4%) for a profit of £27.55 (ROI +14.5%).
2yos when starting as market leader won 24 races from 54 (SR 44.4%) for a profit of £17.60 (ROI +32.6%).
Favourites racing in Class 1 or 2 company won 25 of 79 starts (SR 31.7%) for a profit of £12.50 (ROI +15.8%).

TC2 Runners Sent Off Exchange 2^nd or 3^rd Fav

Next, let’s now combine second and third favourites to see how they fared.

As we can see a nominal profit has been achieved. It is interesting to note that 2yos sent off second or third favourite made a profit (as we saw earlier when 2yos started favourite). This cohort of runners won 23 races from 88 (SR 26.1%) for a healthy profit of £36.37 (ROI +41.3%); A/E 1.57. The profit was solid in both nursery handicaps and non-handicaps.

Before moving on, it should be noted that 2yos having their second start for a new trainer having switched yards perform really poorly when not in the top three in the betting. This group of runners won less than 3% of the time (12 wins from 421) for a hefty loss of £196.62 (ROI -46.8%); A/E 0.70.

TC2 by Last Time Out Finishing Position

Next, I would like to look at last time out (LTO) performance in terms of finishing position on most recent start. Here are the results for horses that finished in the first three LTO:

Horses that finished second on their most recent start (their first run for their new trainer) did particularly well, but LTO winners also nudged into profit. Horses that finished fourth or worse LTO scored just under 6% of the time and lost over 12p in the £.

TC2 by Gender

It’s time to review any impact the sex of the horse has on performance. In the last piece I showed how male horses tend to slightly outperform females when analysing all races, winning roughly 1.12 times as often. To create this figure, I divided the male win strike rate by the female win strike rate in all flat races over the past ten years. That was, and still is, our benchmark. When we looked at the figures for horses switching stables and racing for the first time this figure increased to 1.27. Do we see a similar widening of the gender gap with the second time start figures?

The male strike rate is nearly 2% higher than the female one and this equates to winning 1.22 times more often. This is still comfortably above the average figure of 1.12, but a little down on the 1.27 mark for first time switchers. It seems logical to assume that a fair percentage of female horses may still not have totally settled into their new surroundings.

Before looking at trainer angles, I would like to share some LTO Industry SP price data. Horses that started 6/1 or less LTO have produced solid looking figures:

A modest 2p in the £ loss for all such qualifiers. If we focus on those that had also raced within 30 days we get to a near break-even stuation.

TC2: Trainer Angles

Onto trainers now which may provide the most worthwhile findings for many readers. Below is a list of all trainers that have run at least 80 qualifiers:

Two trainers noted in the first article for having a decent record with horses having their first run for the stable have fared well again, namely Kevin de Foy and David Loughnane, although Loughnane has performed less well in the last few seasons. His record has tailed off since 2020. Of the other trainers, Iain Jardine, who made a profit from a low strike rate last time, has improved that strike rate to over 12% and hit a profit once again.

Two trainers that stood out positively last time, Mick Appleby and Archie Watson, performed less strikingly on second start for the yards, although both have still produced good strike rates.

Mick Appleby has done brilliantly with horses that finished second LTO – these runners won 18 races from only 46 runners (SR 39.1%) for a profit of £22.62 (ROI +49.2%).

Going back to Kevin de Foy he has hit an excellent strike rate of over 21% and his returns are not skewed by any horses winning at huge odds (his biggest priced winner was BSP 19.13). If you ignore his LTO winners (who did connections a favour obviously on their first start for the yard) his record improves slightly to 14 wins from 68 (SR 20.6%) for a profit of £40.22 (ROI +59.1%).

In the first piece it was noted that Richard Fahey had underperformed significantly with his new recruits on their first start. However, his record on their second start is much better. In that context, he improved the strike rate from just above 7% to nearly 13% and such runners edged into profit. However, as with David Loughnane, his record was better in the earlier part of the ten-year time span.

Jane Chapple-Hyam just failed to make the list in my first article as she did not have quite the required number of runners. Here she does make the cut and has a very solid overall record. However, she did have one huge-priced win which accounts for all of her profit figure. Having said that, horses that started in the top four of the betting performed well for her with 11 of the 33 winning (SR 33.3%) and a tidy profit of £24.89 (ROI +75.4%).

David O’Meara has a very similar record with horses having their first or second runs for him having switched stables. One positive stat to share with those having their second start is that horses which finished 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th LTO are worth noting. They won 19% of the time (23 wins from 121) for a profit of £41.28 (ROI +34.11).

Trainers to generally avoid with horses having their second run for the yard are Charlie Wallis and Philip Kirby: both have very poor records.

Trainers: TC1 vs TC2

I thought it would be useful to make a trainer comparison between horses having their first starts for a yard with their second, beginning with win strike rate. I have highlighted in green the better figure of the two unless they are within 1% of each other:

Taking this group of trainers as a whole, most of them have similar strike rates for both groups. Attwater, Fahey, G+J Moore, Watson, and Stuart Williams have the biggest differentials.

Now I am going to compare the A/E indices which helps to determine ‘value’. This time I will highlight in green any A/E index which is 0.30 bigger than the other figure which is a significant difference for this particular metric:

For six trainers, horses having their first run for the stable proved considerably better value than when making their second start. The six were Mick Appleby, Julie Camacho, David Evans, Ivan Furtado, David Loughnane and Archie Watson.

Five trainers enjoyed the reverse scenario with second runs for the stable producing much better value than first runs. This quintet comprised Michael Attwater, Mick and David Easterby, Gary and Josh Moore, Rebecca Menzies and Stuart Williams.

The final comparison I will make is with the PRB figures (Percentage of Rivals Beaten). I would expect these figures to positively align to some extent with the win strike rates. I have highlighted in green any PRB that is 5% (0.05) higher than the other. Here are the splits:

For most trainers the win strike rates and the PRB figures align quite well. For example, Watson’s figures of 0.57 and 0.51 highlight the much better performance with first time starters for the stable. Likewise, we have seen that the Moore stable has performed far better with horses having their second start for the stable having switched yards, and the 0.33 vs 0.44 PRBs back this up. There are several more good examples of this including for Caroll, Chapple-Hyam, M+D Easterby and Menzies to name but four. The one real outlier is David Evans whose PRBs are completely the reverse of his strike rates.

Using different metrics for comparisons for individual trainers does help us understand the numbers better and gives us a better overall feel for the data.

So that wraps this piece, and the two-part trainer change series, up. I hope they have been both useful and interesting. These two articles should give us plenty of pointers to help in our quest to make long-term profits from racing. Until next time…

- DR