Irish trainers in July and August
I must admit I spend most of my attention on UK racing rather than across the Irish Sea but for this article I thought it was time to delve into some Irish stats, in particular Irish trainer stats.
My research is based on data from 2014 to 2021 focusing on Irish racing in the months July and August.
Do any Irish trainers excel in these two months? It is time to find out.
All profits and losses will be quoted to Betfair Starting Price less 5% commission.
All Races – to begin with let me look at ALL Irish races in July and August and from the initial dataset, I’ll drill down into individual trainers.
To qualify a trainer must have had at least 200 runs during the 8 seasons of study.
I have ordered the table below by Strike Rate with a minimum strike rate of 10%:
The first thing that I notice is the relatively low strike rates with just two trainers hitting over 17%. If you compare this to UK trainer data over the same summer months / time frame, 16 trainers have hot a strike rate of 17% or more. Having said that 8 of the 15 in the Irish list have made a blind profit and backing all these trainers in every race would have secured a profit of £480.48 which equates to a modest return of 5 pence in the £.
Time to look at some these trainers in greater depth:
Aidan O’Brien
A familiar name to the readership I’m sure as he has been one of the most successful trainers in the world over the past 20 years or so. Overall, he has made a small loss with all his runners (6 pence in the £), but there are some profitable angles I have uncovered:
1. Take a note of when he sends a runner to a course that he rarely visits. There are 5 courses where he has sent less than 15 runners to in July and August (2014–2021); these being Ballinrobe, Down Royal, Limerick, Sligo, and Wexford.
Four of the five courses have yielded a profit and the 5 courses combined would have produced 14 winners from 32 (SR 43.8%) securing a profit of £16.78 (ROI +52.4%).
2. He seems to target the more important race days in the week as he has made a profit on only 2 days; Fridays and Saturdays.
All other days in the week he has made a loss.
3. O’Brien has made a small profit on his horses that started favourite (this includes those that were joint favourites).
182 winning favourites from 410 (SR 44.4%) for a modest, but acceptable return of 5 pence in the £.
4. It looks prudent to ignore his bigger priced runners. Horses of his with an industry SP 16/1 or bigger produced just 3 winners from 171 runners.
With a strike rate of less than 2% it will come as no surprise that they would lose you £100.85 to £1 level stakes (ROI –59%).
5. Horses that ran in the UK last time out look worth following.
These horses have produced a strike rate of just over 28% (49 wins from 174) and a profit of £33.47 (ROI +19.2%). Pay particular attention if the horse ran at Ascot LTO. Returns increase to over 40p in the £ from 99 runners.
O’Brien therefore looks worth following under certain circumstances. Horses running in the UK last time out interests me the most, especially if they ran at Ascot.
Before moving on to the next trainer, I delved quickly into his UK results in July and August, but these were very poor by his standards.
A strike rate of barely 12% and significant losses of 38 pence in the £. He has performed very poorly at arguably the two biggest UK meetings during this time – Glorious Goodwood and the York Ebor.
In the Gold edition Dave looks at a further trio of Irish trainers and their positive performances during July and August. To read the rest of this article upgrade to a Gold account now by clicking HERE
David Renham
Featured Image: (CC BY 4.0) – Railway Stakes