Beaten Favourites in Horse Racing
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Beaten Favourites in National Hunt Racing

How do beaten favourites do when they race next time out? This is the subject of this piece.

The data for this article has been taken from 1st January 2019 to 30th November 2025. The focus is UK National Hunt racing with profits and losses having been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission on any winning bets.

To obtain the data I have used www.horseracebase.com.

Let me start by taking a look at the overall figures for beaten favourites over the period of study:

BetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
16052297318.52– £237.38– 1.48

As a starting point, these figures are pretty solid considering we are talking about every single beaten favourite. Losses have been small at roughly 1½ pence in the £.

Having looked at the overall figures, my first question was does where they finished last time out make a difference?

Let’s see if anything clear can be gleaned from the data:

LTO finishing positionBetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
Second5289119222.54– £540.62– 10.23
Third332862318.72+ £78.10+ 2.35
Fourth222038217.21– £41.75– 1.88
Fifth132719915+ £23.41+ 1.76
Sixth or worse388857714.84+ £243.47+ 6.26

I guess we should have expected more beaten favourites to have finished second than any other finishing position and that has indeed been the case. However, this cohort of runners would have lost us the most amount of money. Yes, they have won more often than the others (at 22.54%), but perhaps they have overbet by the betting public as losses stand at more than 10 pence in the £.

Ultimately, based on these findings, I would be wary of backing beaten favourites who finished runner-up LTO. The sixth or worse LTO runners have done best in terms of profits and returns, but these figures have been skewed somewhat by a BSP winner priced at a massive 225.81. A look next at last time out Race code, so either the last race was a National Hunt race, a turf flat race or an All Weather race. Here are the findings:

Race Code LTOBetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
National Hunt15654291918.65– £562.49– 3.6
Turf Flat2493815.26+ £228.57+ 91.79
All Weather1491610.74+ £96.54+ 64.79

The turf flat results include that aforementioned BSP winner priced of 225.81 so ultimately, we can ignore that bottom line. Most runners, not surprisingly, ran in a National Hunt race last time with losses standing at just under 4p for every £1 bet.

For the remainder of this article, I will be using a BSP cap of 16.0 or shorter. This will help to avoid those huge priced winners that tend to totally skew the profit and loss figures.

Back to the last time out finishing positions to see if this price cap has any effect on the results / returns:

LTO finishing position (BSP 16.0 or less)BetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
Second4684117525.09– £293.27– 6.26
Third283460821.45+ £41.48+ 1.46
Fourth181536420.06– £74.73– 4.12
Fifth104218818.04– £54.50– 5.23
Sixth or worse294653818.26– £73.62– 2.5

We can see an improvement for LTO runners-up, but they still would have lost us the most money and produced the worst returns.

Nothing really new to glean from this table I’m afraid.

Back to LTO Race Code and this time I will split the NH results by chase, hurdle and NH flat races:

Race Code LTO (BSP 16.0 or less)BetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
Chase5319107620.23– £278.95– 5.24
Hurdle6947154422.23– £211.29– 3.04
NH Flat82220725.18+ £22.06+ 2.68
Turf Flat1683520.83+ £28.44+ 16.93
All Weather651116.92– £14.89– 22.9

Horses that were beaten favourite in turf flat races last time out have made a profit, albeit from a small sample. The NH Flat races (bumpers) have proved best of the National Hunt bunch in terms of both win rate and returns. There are a couple of additional stats I would like to share.

Firstly, horses that were beaten favourite in a Maiden hurdle LTO have proved to be poor investments next time out. Their record reads 209 winners from 802 runners (SR 26.1%) for a loss of £116.61 (ROI –14.5%). In contrast, beaten favourites in Novice Chases last time have proved profitable thanks to 78 winners from 256 runners (SR 30.5%) for a profit of £56.91 (ROI +22.2%).

How about position in the betting market in this current race? Let me share the stats for the top three positions in the betting:

Market Rank (BSP 16.0 or less)BetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
Favourite3773141237.42+ £20.92+ 0.55
2nd favourite335072421.61– £155.75– 4.65
3rd favourite239134314.35– £211.00– 8.82

So, it seems that beaten favourites that start favourite again are the ones to keep an eye out for. They have snuck into profit over the near seven-year time frame. Less positive results as we can see for second and third favs.

I have two more main areas to check before I look at individual trainer records, starting with whether the race last time was a handicap or a non-handicap.

Handicap v Non Handicap race LTO (BSP 16.0 or less)BetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
LTO Non-Handicap372899426.66– £47.61– 1.28
LTO Handicap9593187919.59– £407.02– 4.24

There has been an edge to beaten favourites from non-handicaps. However, nothing too startling here stats wise. A look next at change in class from their last run.

Here are the splits:

Class Change (BSP 16.0 or less)BetsWinsWin SR %P / L (BSP)ROI % (BSP)
Dropped in class218252323.97– £57.49– 2.63
Same class7750165621.37– £437.96– 5.65
Upped in class309362220.11+ £16.05+ 0.52

Horses that have been upped in class have just edged into profit. They have definitely offered the best value and have probably been slightly under-bet.

My final port of call is going to be looking at the records of different trainers with beaten favourites. Do some have a knack of finding a winning opportunity after seeing their charges beaten as jollies?

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My racing interest started when I was studying for my Maths degree. I went to Goodwood for the first time with a friend from college and I ended up winning on a 33/1 shot. I was hooked from there. In the late 90s I wrote a couple of self-published books on draw bias and a few years later I collaborated with Andrew Mount and Graham Wheldon on the Raceform published book Sprintline 2002. I started an advisory service called drawn2win in 2001 where I gave daily race insights and tips which I did for 6 years.

I worked on the Racing Post for a short time as a Spotlight writer and then spent just over 5 years working on the Racing and Football Outlook as a trend’s writer.

Finally, I have written for numerous articles for different publications and website and at the last count they totalled just over 850.

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