Hurdle Debutants – November and December
The National Hunt season really begins to click into gear once we reach November, and with more National Hunt meetings comes an increase in horses making their debuts under the various National Hunt disciplines… Bumpers, Hurdles and Chases. This, naturally, brings a bit of an uncertainty for us punters as we have no visual or formbook evidence of how the horse in question will fair in his or her new discipline.
There are a number of ways we can approach such horses, with my preferred method of attack being the trainer trends/stats approach.
As I’ve mentioned a few times in my On Course Profits articles, I have a wide variety of trainer trends/stats/angles/systems plugged into the various databases I make use of for my day-to-day punting and full NTF Members Service.
For this month’s report I’m going to share some of the angles I rely upon to help me analyse and pinpoint potential profitable plays for those horses that are making their HURDLE DEBUTS in the months of November and December.
Most of the angles that follow are based around trainer stats but as an additional bonus I’ve also thrown in an angle that concentrates on a certain SIRE and how his progeny performs when they are making their Hurdle Debut…
So, let’s get started…
Hurdle Debuts: Trainers
*All stats taken from 2013 – 2022 unless otherwise stated
Nicky Henderson
Nicky Henderson may be a master at wrapping his horses in cottonwool and being extra cautious when it comes to picking the paths his stable stars will take in the season, but ultimately he gets a huge amount of winners each and every National Hunt season and, when it comes to getting his Hurdlers winning on Hurdle debut, there is no trainer (on this side of the Irish Sea) with a better record than the Upper Lambourn based trainer…
Nicky Henderson | Hurdle Debutants in November & December
89/262 | 34% S/R | +£56.05 BFLSP – W&P 157/262 | 60% S/R
10% above market expectation
The overall stats stand up strong on their own, but with a couple of minor filters we can turn them into an even more robust set for us to work with…
Nicky Henderson | Hurdle Debutants in November & December | Male Horses | Making Rules Debut
37/73 | 51% S/R | +£68.90 BFLSP – Win & Place 53/73 | 73% S/R
63% above market expectation
The ‘making rules debut’ filter – ‘H-Run (Career) Exactly 0’ in the Horse Race Base image above – means we are looking for those horses that are (generally) coming from the Point-To-Point field or, occasionally, making their first start here after starting life in France or another country out with the UK and Ireland (foreign form won’t appear in the databases).
A recent example would be the current Champion Hurdler CONSTITUTION HILL, who went straight from his Point-To-Point run into Novice Hurdles, Nicky Henderson deciding to miss out the bumper route and send him straight over obstacles…
Nicky Henderson has a particularly strong record at Newbury with these types…
System JO-108-10-11-23-BA: November and December – Nicky Henderson | Hurdle Debutants in November & December | Male Horses | Making Rules Debut | NEWBURY. Editor’s Note: We do not expect many runners from this system.
14/19 | 74% S/R | +£38.47 BFLSP – Win & Place 17/19 | 89% S/R
163% above market expectation
…for a seriously strong form line of… 1111261311111211114
Nicky Henderson also has a strong record with his Hurdle debutants that ran in at Class 1, Class 2, or Class 3 level last time out, especially when they are ‘fancied’ in the market…
Nicky Henderson | Hurdle Debutants in November & December | SP 3/1 or less | 2+ career starts | Ran at Class 1, Class 2, or Class 3 level last time out.
17/26 | 65% S/R | +£14.99 BFLSP – W&P 20/26 | 77% S/R
41% above market expectation.
A bit tight on the profits this one and it’s more an indication of the strength Nicky Henderson has with his Hurdle debutants that ran at a decent level last time out and are then ‘fancied’ to get the job done on their Hurdle debut…
Best of racing luck
Ben Aitken (Narrowing The Field)
Join me at the NTF Website – www.narrowingthefield.co.uk
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Featured Image: (CC BY 4.0) – Hurdle Race In Wales | National hunt hurdles race in Wales | Paul | Flickr