Horses Finishing 2nd or 3rd LTO in a Flat Race
Back in December 2019 I wrote an article on LTO all weather winners. For this article I am revisiting a similar idea but looking at those horses which finished 2nd or 3rd last time out (LTO) when racing in a flat race (turf or all weather).
I have looked back at the last 7 full seasons (2014 – 2020). The focus as ever is UK racing during that period.
Let me first share the results for ALL runners that finished 2nd or 3rd LTO when racing on the flat:
An overall loss of around 6p in the £ and a strike rate of roughly 1 win in 6 is not a bad starting point.
In addition, this is a huge data set to work with which is always good, as when we break it down into smaller subsets, we will still have plenty of runners to analyse.
Firstly, I want to look at the race type on their subsequent start to finishing 2nd or 3rd LTO on the flat:
The figures for horses that run on the flat next time are virtually identical when comparing the turf versus all weather.
A much smaller group of runners went on to run in a National Hunt race after coming 2nd or 3rd on the flat and made a decent looking profit.
Now we know positive Betfair profit figures can be skewed by some big, priced winners, but when looking in more detail, these National Hunt results look quite consistent.
Breaking these National Hunt figures down by year we can see that 4 of the 7 years would have been profitable while 1 season effectively broke even:
These runners offer punters some semblance of value, so I will be looking out for horses that came 2nd or 3rd on the flat LTO that switch to a National Hunt race next time.
Moving on let me look at the age of the horses. The table below gives the splits:
Firstly, there is a correlation which shows that the older the horse gets the less successful it is in terms of strike rate. It also is clear that from aged 8 upwards their returns become quite poor (losses of around 18p in the £).
Hence it looks best to avoid horses aged 8 or older if they have finished 2nd or 3rd LTO in a flat race.
For Gold members David takes an interesting look at the approach of trainers to horses which have finished placed LTO and whether Class of race has any significant bearing on the future success of the runners.
He includes a list of trainers who profit from LTO placers and it includes some huge ROI’s.
If you would like to upgrade your account, go to https://www.oncourseprofits.com/upgrade
David Renham
