A Deep Dive into 2yos Part 2

This article continues from the first one in this publication so if you are someone who doesn’t necessarily read a magazine in order and hasn’t read that yet, it makes sense to go back and read it first. In that piece, I started to look at the performance of all two-year olds in terms of their debut run, their second run, their third run and their fourth run.

For this follow-up I will be using the same dataset which was taken from the last eight full years of UK Flat and AW racing spanning 2017 to 2024.

Once again profits and losses quoted to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission and the A/E indices are based on the Betfair SPs too.

In this article I will be looking at some trainer data, but to begin with I have some sire data to share.

At the backend of the first article for Platinum readers, I shared some win strike rate data for sires for their debut, second, third and fourth runs. Here I want to break the data down further by distance.

Hence, I am first looking at the same group of sires covering their first four 2yo career runs and looking at their win strike rate in 5-to-6-furlong races versus races of 7 furlongs or more.

This data will be split into two again with the left side of the table comparing overall results (all prices), and the right-hand side of the table covering races with a maximum BSP of 14.0:

Sire	All Prices		BSP 14.0 or lower
	5-6f Win SR%	7f or more Win SR%	5-6f Win SR%	7f or more Win SR%

Acclamation	12.95	11.84	20.60	20.56
Bated Breath	10.95	8.44	20.94	20.00
Blue Point (IRE)	14.06	13.08	17.73	18.18
Bungle Inthejungle	9.42	6.56	18.75	18.75
Camacho	7.45	5.50	13.78	15.00
Cotai Glory	16.48	8.82	28.00	23.81
Dandy Man (IRE)	9.78	6.13	19.85	15.85
Dark Angel (IRE)	13.90	9.72	19.81	17.77
Dubawi (IRE)	16.67	24.94	18.81	28.66
Footstepsinthesand	13.17	6.95	22.43	14.53
Frankel	26.03	19.32	27.87	22.95
Havana Gold (IRE)	12.94	6.48	26.52	13.28
Havana Grey	16.96	10.59	26.44	20.93
Iffraaj	10.53	10.74	17.19	19.91
Invincible Spirit (IRE)	14.63	15.50	20.15	23.26
Kingman	15.34	20.70	19.71	26.23
Kodiac	13.92	11.63	23.57	19.64
Lope De Vega (IRE)	18.88	17.76	24.27	26.11
Mayson	9.41	6.49	18.57	14.29
Mehmas (IRE)	15.33	12.73	23.63	27.27
Muhaarar	11.65	13.03	16.67	27.48
New Bay	12.00	24.24	18.97	32.18
Night Of Thunder (IRE)	18.75	19.87	26.36	28.80
No Nay Never (USA)	17.94	14.80	25.27	23.93
Oasis Dream	10.05	9.87	17.91	19.64
Profitable (IRE)	11.01	4.81	21.76	12.00
Sea The Stars (IRE)	5.88	18.40	11.11	24.12
Showcasing	11.49	8.21	20.39	19.85
Siyouni (FR)	12.30	18.07	17.07	26.03
Starspangledbanner (AUS)	11.69	11.98	19.46	20.59

Splitting the data up like this has highlighted a few sires that seem to have a distance preference. The progeny of Dubawi, Kingman, Muhaarar, New Bay, Sea the Stars and Siyouni seem to have a clear liking for distances of 7 furlongs or more.

Sires that seem to perform better over the sprint distances of 5 and 6 include Cotai Glory, Footstepsinthesand, Havana Gold, Havana Grey and Profitable.

I have also linked the sire distance data to sire career starts. For this I have included all prices rather using races with a price cap, simply to get a bigger dataset. Firstly the 5 & 6 furlongs stats:

Sire (5 & 6f)	Career runs 0 Win SR%	Career runs 1 Win SR%	Career runs 2 Win SR%	Career runs 3 Win SR%
Acclamation	7.07	20.28	11.67	15.38
Bated Breath	6.92	12.61	14.61	13.64
Blue Point (IRE)	11.61	19.15	9.52	15.91
Bungle Inthejungle	7.33	9.63	12.61	8.42
Camacho	6.21	11.18	5.60	6.25
Cotai Glory	13.16	18.37	15.00	21.21
Dandy Man (IRE)	6.93	12.59	9.27	11.54
Dark Angel (IRE)	9.91	15.56	16.40	17.24
Dubawi (IRE)	16.67	12.12	15.00	30.77
Footstepsinthesand	14.89	10.14	11.76	17.24
Frankel	17.14	33.33	36.36	33.33
Havana Gold (IRE)	8.24	18.85	11.88	15.87
Havana Grey	13.02	20.69	16.24	19.51
Iffraaj	9.73	13.16	8.51	10.00
Invincible Spirit (IRE)	13.61	7.83	19.32	23.33
Kingman	14.86	21.15	13.33	5.00
Kodiac	13.35	15.10	11.42	16.48
Lope De Vega (IRE)	15.87	25.64	14.81	21.43
Mayson	7.95	9.40	8.85	13.89
Mehmas (IRE)	12.81	17.45	14.21	17.81
Muhaarar	6.58	19.64	13.33	6.90
New Bay	7.14	18.52	14.29	10.00
Night Of Thunder (IRE)	19.05	21.05	13.95	20.83
No Nay Never (USA)	12.68	18.33	21.21	24.56
Oasis Dream	10.00	10.62	9.89	9.26
Profitable (IRE)	9.15	9.92	12.62	14.29
Sea The Stars (IRE)	0.00	0.00	20.00	0.00
Showcasing	8.46	13.90	13.79	10.87
Siyouni (FR)	11.11	12.90	8.00	25.00
Starspangledbanner (AUS)	12.70	13.27	10.11	8.77

As we can see, for some sires there is a big improvement from the strike rate when making their debut (0 career runs) to second start strike rate (1 career run).

This is particularly noticeable for Acclamation, Blue Point, Frankel, Havana Gold, Havana Grey, Kingman, Lope De Vega, Muharrar and New Bay.

No Nay Never’s sprinters seem to improve with every run and the sample sizes for each group is decent. I should stress though that Sea the Stars has only had 17 runners in total over 5 & 6 furlongs so his figures can be ignored.

Onto 7f or more now:

Sire (7f or more)	Career runs 0 Win SR%	Career runs 1 Win SR%	Career runs 2 Win SR%	Career runs 3 Win SR%
Acclamation	7.81	16.18	9.09	14.89
Bated Breath	0.00	16.42	12.73	5.13
Blue Point (IRE)	22.58	7.14	6.67	16.67
Bungle Inthejungle	7.69	12.50	5.88	0.00
Camacho	3.85	3.92	9.62	4.44
Cotai Glory	5.26	10.00	10.00	11.11
Dandy Man (IRE)	3.17	6.15	7.27	7.69
Dark Angel (IRE)	4.12	11.64	8.18	17.32
Dubawi (IRE)	17.94	28.88	31.11	34.92
Footstepsinthesand	2.50	9.21	7.81	10.26
Frankel	13.60	22.38	28.74	20.51
Havana Gold (IRE)	4.76	5.38	9.64	6.25
Havana Grey	5.56	4.55	25.00	8.00
Iffraaj	7.83	12.93	11.50	12.24
Invincible Spirit (IRE)	10.81	13.75	25.49	20.69
Kingman	20.59	25.00	16.09	15.38
Kodiac	8.86	10.19	14.69	13.56
Lope De Vega (IRE)	17.80	16.97	22.11	10.26
Mayson	4.44	4.55	8.11	10.71
Mehmas (IRE)	10.87	10.42	18.42	12.12
Muhaarar	7.62	13.79	18.18	19.23
New Bay	19.35	27.16	23.21	32.35
Night Of Thunder (IRE)	18.18	21.69	22.03	17.65
No Nay Never (USA)	9.21	23.44	10.42	17.14
Oasis Dream	5.76	11.02	13.41	12.50
Profitable (IRE)	7.14	3.23	3.85	5.26
Sea The Stars (IRE)	13.93	21.23	26.03	23.08
Showcasing	2.20	11.88	12.22	5.08
Siyouni (FR)	12.90	16.67	27.66	23.08
Starspangledbanner (AUS)	8.77	10.91	26.19	2.63

As before we can see some sires having a much better second run strike rate to debut strike rate. Acclamation, Bated Breath, Dark Angel, Dubawi, Footstepsinthesand, Frankel, New Bay, Sea the Stars and Showcasing all follow that pattern.

Having looked now in great depth across both articles into some sire data, I am going to switch now to look at trainer data.

For this section I am going back to use the price cap of BSP 14.0, as the sample sizes for the trainers I am going to analyse are still going to be substantial and we avoid those huge prices winning and skewing the profit figures.

I have chosen 20 trainers to look at – those who have had the most 2yo runners (0-3 career starts) over the past eight years.

Trainer	Bets	Wins	Win SR %	Profit / loss (BSP)	ROI % (BSP)	A/E
C Appleby	1044	342	32.76	+ £15.12	+ 1.45	1.01
A Balding	936	187	19.98	– £16.75	– 1.79	0.97
R Beckett	952	224	23.53	+ £15.76	+  1.66	1.01
M Bell	370	78	21.08	+ £14.56	+ 3.94	1.01
G Boughey	487	113	23.2	+ £19.46	+ 4.00	1.01
K R Burke	1059	230	21.72	– £55.65	– 5.26	0.99
C Cox	609	151	24.79	+ £116.41	+ 19.11	1.17
S+E Crisford	462	115	24.89	+ £31.89	+ 6.9	1.05
T Dascombe	458	86	18.78	– £9.93	– 2.17	0.97
R Fahey	1208	224	18.54	– £135.72	– 11.24	0.97
J+T Gosden	1086	252	23.2	– £58.71	– 5.41	0.92
W Haggas	918	212	23.09	– £34.44	– 3.75	0.97
R Hannon	1566	293	18.71	– £54.46	– 3.48	0.94
C Hills	433	80	18.48	– £36.36	– 8.4	0.91
R Hughes	377	82	21.75	+ £29.71	+ 7.88	1.07
D O'Meara	398	77	19.35	– £24.40	– 6.13	0.96
H Palmer	549	117	21.31	– £17.15	– 3.12	1.01
K Ryan	670	141	21.04	+ £41.32	+ 6.17	1.05
R Varian	865	196	22.66	– £58.11	– 6.72	0.93
A Watson	739	189	25.58	+ £100.95	+ 13.66	1.07

9 of the 20 trainers have managed a blind profit with Clive Cox and Archie Watson producing the highest profits and the best returns.

In contrast Richard Fahey has struggled somewhat showing the biggest losses and the worst returns.

Time now to examine the win strike rates based on the number of runs the 2yo has had, again with the 14.0 BSP price being the biggest allowed.

Trainer	Career runs 0 Win SR%	Career runs 1 Win SR%	Career runs 2 Win SR%	Career runs 3 Win SR%
C Appleby	27.49	37.50	35.00	37.62
A Balding	9.97	21.93	27.98	27.48
R Beckett	21.61	25.91	22.99	23.93
M Bell	17.12	22.69	25.30	19.30
G Boughey	16.25	26.76	30.30	22.09
K R Burke	18.13	24.92	24.14	19.64
C Cox	22.63	24.88	22.31	32.95
S+E Crisford	18.38	29.92	26.09	32.76
T Dascombe	15.57	23.39	17.14	18.69
R Fahey	16.29	21.85	21.46	13.66
J+T Gosden	19.52	25.55	30.23	21.98
W Haggas	14.75	28.92	29.05	26.74
R Hannon	14.97	20.17	21.89	18.30
C Hills	10.00	23.74	19.35	20.99
R Hughes	15.22	25.62	21.11	24.32
D O'Meara	16.39	20.00	22.34	19.44
H Palmer	14.61	25.00	28.23	17.33
K Ryan	18.69	19.91	25.76	22.22
R Varian	19.72	23.53	28.03	22.37
A Watson	24.40	28.71	23.72	25.19

As with the sire data I looked at earlier, several trainers see a big improvement from debut to second ever start. Andrew Balding, George Boughey, Simon and Ed Crisford, Willie Haggas, Charlie Hills, Richard Hughes and Hugo Palmer all see a win percentage gain of over 10%.

Haggas has seen the biggest improvement nearly doubling his debut strike rate of 14.75% up to 28.92% for second starters (1 career run).

I think it is now worth looking at the PRBs (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) for each career start to give us even more clarity. I am assuming (hoping) that there should be a positive correlation between the win strike rates and the PRBs.

Let’s see:

Trainer	Career runs 0 PRB	Career runs 1 PRB	Career runs 2 PRB	Career runs 3 PRB
C Appleby	0.71	0.77	0.77	0.68
A Balding	0.60	0.72	0.74	0.69
R Beckett	0.61	0.72	0.69	0.65
M Bell	0.59	0.72	0.70	0.64
G Boughey	0.61	0.69	0.72	0.62
K R Burke	0.64	0.69	0.67	0.63
C Cox	0.65	0.71	0.71	0.66
S Crisford	0.65	0.76	0.73	0.68
T Dascombe	0.57	0.69	0.69	0.61
R Fahey	0.60	0.67	0.70	0.60
J+T Gosden	0.67	0.73	0.74	0.68
W Haggas	0.62	0.74	0.75	0.60
R Hannon	0.61	0.68	0.69	0.63
C Hills	0.55	0.67	0.67	0.62
R Hughes	0.66	0.73	0.72	0.65
D O'Meara	0.63	0.68	0.64	0.57
H Palmer	0.63	0.72	0.75	0.62
K Ryan	0.62	0.66	0.69	0.66
R Varian	0.68	0.74	0.77	0.73
A Watson	0.68	0.70	0.70	0.67

Taking the two tables as a whole the figures do correlate well.

Using the two tables in tandem would be a good idea this year when trying to establish the chances of their 2yo runners based on career runs.

It is almost time to wind up this piece, but I am going to finish with one more table.

(I appreciate this article is very table orientated but in order to share so much useful data this is the only way to achieve this).

The final table splits the trainer results up into the same distance bands I used earlier for the sires (5-6f and 7f or more), comparing both win strike rates and PRBs:

Trainer	5-6f Win SR%	7f or more Win SR%	5-6f PRB	7f or more PRB
C Appleby	32.91	32.71	0.72	0.74
A Balding	20.85	19.50	0.68	0.68
R Beckett	23.73	23.44	0.67	0.67
M Bell	22.51	19.55	0.66	0.67
G Boughey	21.75	25.70	0.64	0.69
K R Burke	21.45	22.32	0.66	0.67
C Cox	28.07	16.85	0.69	0.67
S Crisford	25.73	24.22	0.70	0.70
T Dascombe	19.03	18.24	0.65	0.62
R Fahey	19.76	14.54	0.65	0.62
J+T Gosden	24.17	23.08	0.67	0.70
W Haggas	25.37	21.29	0.68	0.68
R Hannon	19.87	17.08	0.66	0.64
C Hills	19.52	17.03	0.63	0.62
R Hughes	19.34	26.12	0.68	0.72
D O'Meara	20.14	17.50	0.63	0.65
H Palmer	17.98	23.68	0.67	0.69
K Ryan	22.54	15.89	0.66	0.64
R Varian	21.50	23.30	0.69	0.74
A Watson	27.10	22.81	0.70	0.67

Most of the trainers have similar results for each distance band; they are certainly a closer overall set than the one we saw for the sires.

There are a few trainers to mention though. Clive Cox has a much better strike rate in the sprints, although the PRB figures are surprisingly close.

Archie Watson also seems to have slight preference for sprinters.

Richard Hughes has produced stronger results in the longer 7f+ races, as has George Boughey.

So, there it is – I have shared a significant amount of data in the two articles which I hope readers will be able to use to their advantage in 2yo races over the coming months.

David Renham