Looking Forward to the National Hunt Season
Time flies, and it seems to go even quicker the older you get. By the time you read this it will be the end of the summer, with Autumn literally a few days around the corner. With that in mind I am going to look forward to the start of the National Hunt season focusing on the early season meetings in September and October.
I will look into four main areas – market factors, horse fitness, horse form and trainers.
I am delving into UK National Hunt race data going back to 2015 with profits and losses quoted to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 5% commission.
The Market
I have to be honest, from a personal point of view early season races over the jumps make me nervous, as do early season flat races for that matter. As a rule, I am someone who likes a bit of current form to work with, but there are plenty of punters around the country who are keen to get stuck into National Hunt racing ‘early doors’.
So let me first look at the betting market stats from September and October to see what can be gleaned.
| Market Position | Bets | Wins | Win SR% | Profit/Loss (BSP | ROI% (BSP) | A/E |
| Favourite | 4400 | 1571 | 35.7 | – £62.60 | – 1.4 | 0.95 |
| 2nd favourite | 4112 | 853 | 20.7 | – £252.79 | – 6.2 | 0.87 |
| 3rd favourite | 3948 | 562 | 14.2 | – £97.85 | – 2.5 | 0.86 |
| 4th favourite | 3593 | 349 | 9.7 | – £289.86 | – 8.1 | 0.82 |
| 5th or bigger in betting | 17274 | 741 | 4.3 | – £2606.02 | – 15.1 | 0.78 |
Favourites have done well in reality losing less than 1.5p in the £ to BSP. This is surprising to me as I would have expected poorer returns considering that it is so early in the season.
Perhaps early season races are not as hard to fathom as I thought!
Looking at favourites in more detail here are some favourite stats worth sharing, firstly in terms of race type:
| Race Type | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit/Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E |
| Non Handicap race | 1642 | 730 | 44.5 | – £80.90 | -4.9 | 0.93 |
| Handicap race | 2758 | 841 | 30.5 | + £18.30 | + 0.7 | 0.97 |
| Chase race | 1614 | 520 | 32.2 | – £87.61 | – 5.4 | 0.91 |
| Hurdle race | 2465 | 933 | 37.9 | + £22.96 | + 0.9 | 0.97 |
| NH Flat race | 321 | 118 | 36.8 | + £2.05 | + 0.6 | 0.97 |
As we can see handicap favourites have snuck into profit, as have hurdle and bumper favs. All three mentioned have very solid A/E indices at 0.97.
Onto course now.
There are a few courses where favourites have a good record in these two months, and these are listed in the table below:
| Courses | Bets | Wins | Win SR% | Profit/Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E |
| Sedgefield | 200 | 85 | 42.5 | + £12.80 | + 6.4 | 1.04 |
| Kelso | 201 | 79 | 39.3 | + £32.38 | + 16.1 | 1.10 |
| Worcester | 298 | 117 | 39.3 | + £13.28 | + 4.5 | 1.03 |
| Ludlow | 107 | 42 | 39.3 | + £3.89 | + 3.6 | 0.97 |
| Southwell | 123 | 48 | 39.0 | + £1.09 | + 0.9 | 1.05 |
| Warwick | 141 | 54 | 38.3 | + £10.65 | + 7.6 | 1.05 |
| Stratford | 212 | 80 | 37.7 | + £2.82 | + 1.3 | 0.99 |
These seven courses have traditionally proved fruitful for favourites and it will be interesting to see how they fare this time around.
There are a couple of other September / October favourite stats I would like to share before moving on:
1. Favourites that finished 3rd or worse LTO have done well winning 661 races from 1881 (SR 35.1%) for a BSP profit of £103.70 (ROI +5.5%);
2. Favourites returning to the track within 5 days have secured 36 wins from 81 (SR 44.4%) for a profit of £11.96 (ROI +14.8%).
Horse Fitness
A look now at the performance of all runners broken down by the number of the days since their last run:
| Days off track | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit/Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A./E |
| 1 to 5 | 236 | 55 | 23.3 | – £14.36 | -6.1 | 1.07 |
| 6 to 14 | 3634 | 465 | 12.8 | – £626.59 | – 17.2 | 0.86 |
| 15 to 28 | 8112 | 1059 | 13.1 | – £830.30 | – 10.2 | 0.90 |
| 29 to 50 | 4855 | 598 | 12.3 | – £85.10 | – 1.8 | 0.88 |
| 51 to 99 | 2335 | 239 | 10.2 | – £659.45 | – 28.2 | 0.85 |
| 100 + | 11669 | 1408 | 12.1 | – £962.68 | – 8.3 | 0.86 |
A bit of a mixed picture here, but the one thing I take out of it is that horses off the track for a long time (100 days or more) have actually done reasonably well.
Hence, I would not necessarily be put off by a horse who has not recently proved its fitness.
LTO Position
Now a look at the stats for the finishing position of horses last time out:
| LTO Position | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit/Loss BSP | ROI % (BSP) | A/E |
| 1st | 4079 | 892 | 21.9 | – £169.53 | – 4.2 | 0.91 |
| 2nd | 3884 | 676 | 17.4 | – £536.23 | – 13.8 | 0.84 |
| 3rd | 3863 | 593 | 15.4 | – £99.78 | – 2.6 | 0.96 |
| 4th | 3575 | 391 | 10.9 | – £375.77 | – 10.5 | 0.82 |
| 5th or worse (completed race) | 12064 | 1011 | 8.4 | – £1386.45 | – 11.5 | 0.87 |
| Fell | 616 | 75 | 12.2 | + £141.39 | + 23.0 | 0.94 |
| Pulled Up | 2272 | 146 | 6.4 | – £768.75 | – 33.9 | 0.73 |
| Unseated Rider | 389 | 31 | 8.0 | – £115.73 | – 29.8 | 0.76 |
Last time out winners have performed quite well scoring nearly 22% of the time and losing around 4p in the £.
Horses that fell last time out have performed well above expectations and they have produced a profit over the last 8 years. Amazingly fallers have produced a profit in 6 of these 8 years – only in 2016 and 2018 saw them accrue losses.
Horses to avoid look to be those that were pulled up last time – roughly just 1 win every 16 races for these runners with losses close to 34p in the £. Horses that unseated also have a poor record.
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