Future Race Pointers
In this article I am revisiting an idea I have looked at in two or three previous articles spanning the last 12 years or so. However, I am going into more depth than before and going back much further in time as well.
Racing Pointers
I am going to look at how horses performed next time out after running in certain big races.
There are numerous reasons why this data is useful to look into. Firstly, some horses can only peak for short periods and hence those that do indeed peak for a particular race may not be able to reproduce that level of form next time out.
Another reason, and an important one at that, is that some horses that compete in such big races are just out of their depth, and hence if they have a less competitive race to contest next time, they may run well at a potentially good price. They may be under-estimated by the betting public simply because they were well beaten on their latest start. Anyway, these are just two ideas I have had, so let’s start crunching some numbers.
For this piece we are looking at data from January 1st, 1997, to June 18th, 2022, so we have plenty of past race stats to crunch. Profit and loss figures are to Industry Starting Price as we are going back before Betfair actually existed. Hence you would expect to improve on the bottom line figures if you had used Betfair SP in the last 15 years or so.
I will be reporting to £1 level stakes.
With the Glorious Goodwood meeting having just finished, it makes sense to look at some races from there to begin with and see how horses have fared in the past on their very next start. The three I am going to look at are the Sussex Stakes, the Stewards Cup, and the Molecombe Stakes. Of course, the past results I am sharing with you are just that; one would hope any trends or patterns will continue in future years but there is no guarantee.
Sussex Stakes
This is one of the real highlights of the Goodwood meeting held on the second day of the meeting (Wednesday). It is a race that the great Frankel won twice in 2011 and 2012.
This is a Group 1 race, and it is raced over a distance of 1 mile.
Horses that ran in the Sussex Stakes have the following overall record in their next race:
Horses that won the Sussex Stakes went onto make a profit on their start to the tune of 6 pence in the £. If we expand that to those that finished in the first three, then they actually combined to make a loss of around 10 pence in the £. Horses that finished 4th or worse produced 21 winners from exactly 100 runners (SR 21%) for a small profit of £7.86 (ROI +7.9%).
Runners from this race are definitely worth close scrutiny next time out as they have produced a decent number of winners.
Stewards Cup
This is the big 6f handicap of the meeting which always has huge fields averaging out at around 27 runners. Hence we have plenty of horses to check out on their next start. Here are their follow up run stats combined:
No surprises to see an overall loss on all the runners on their next run, or such a low strike rate.
An amazing stat is that all the winners of the race going back to 1997 have lost on their very next run.
Horses that finished 2nd or 3rd have fared better winning 7 races from 50 runners for a small profit of £5.00 (ROI +10%).
A nugget worth sharing is that horses that contested a Listed race next time produced 10 winners and 14 other placed from 62 runners (SR 16.1%) for a healthy profit of £58.38 (ROI + 94.2%). Indeed, 9 of these 10 winners finished 6th or worse in the Stewards Cup itself and backing those runners only would have secured a profit of £73.38 (ROI + 203.8%).
In general, it seems that you have more chance of turning a profit if you focus on horses that finished 6th or worse in the Goodwood sprint.
Molecombe Stakes
This race is over 5 furlongs and is contested by 2 year olds. Both male and female horses are able to contest this race, and it is a Group 3 contest. Horses that ran in the Molecombe have the following overall record in the next run:
This does not look like a race where we should follow those horses who ran in it. I had expected better figures, but the stats don’t lie.
You definitely want to avoid horses that were upped in Class next time (e.g., Group 1 or 2 level), as these runners managed just 2 wins from 65 attempts. This is a powerful and very poor stat. The only runners that fared OK next time were those that started favourite on this follow up run. 15 of the 42 won, but they still made a small loss.
In the Gold edition Dave looks at the success of subsequent runs from some of those runners from previous York Ebor meetings. To read the rest of this article upgrade to a Gold account now by clicking HERE