Novice Chase trainers to Follow during the Winter and Early Spring

Six trainers who excel with their Novice Chasers in the January, February and March period

As we turn into the New Year, we should be looking at pretty much all National Hunt yards, barring any major setbacks or significant hold-ups, having most of their string fit and well and most likely with at least one start under their belts in the current season. Pecking orders will also start to appear amongst the Novice Hurdlers and Chasers, as trainers and owners start to look ahead to the major spring Festivals.

In this article I want to concentrate on the Novice Chase division and take a deep dig into the trainer side of things, looking for some profitable angles for us to follow during the first three months of the calendar year.

As already alluded to, most yards will be in full swing as we start the New Year and most of the Novice Chasers housed in their stable will have had a spin or two somewhere on the track in the preceding two or three months. With that knowledge tucked away in the bank, trainers will know if their charge needs more experience at a lower level to sharpen up their jumping technique, if they can step them up in class and target some pre-festival pots, if they need to just keep them ticking along and keep their handicap mark intact for a big spring handicap or, indeed, they need to get a win/big run into them to get them up the weights a bit to guarantee a run in a big spring handicap.

As such plenty of profitable stats and angles can be found during this period of the year in the Novice Chase division and as always that’s something we punters can take full advantage of.

With that in mind I’m going to be highlighting a collection of trainers that excel with their Novice Chasers during the first three months of the calendar year, providing a robust and profitable angle for each of the trainers covered.

The main filters used in this report will be the monthly filter (concentrating exclusively on the months of January, February and March) and I’ll also be looking at both Handicap Novice Chases and Non-Handicap Novice Chases run in both the UK and Ireland.

What follows in this report are six trainers that the stats are telling us are experts at getting wins into their Novice Chasers in the first three months of the year... indeed some of them may have specifically targeted certain horses for this particular period of the year, choosing to go easy, or in some cases even avoid altogether, the first part of the National Hunt season, with a view to picking off a specific target in this period of the year...

For this specific report I’ve set the time filter back to 2015, so taking in the last ten full years, giving us a chunky enough set of numbers to work with and find those all-important profitable angles...

I’ll start with the trainer who regularly makes an appearance when I compile reports such as this...

Willie Mullins

Overall record since 2015 in Novice Chases (January, February and march)

70/257 | 27% S/R | -£64.31 BFLSP – W&P 117/257 | 46% S/R

4% below market expectation

Only 4% below market expectation for Willie Mullins at this time of the year with his Novice Chasers, but a pretty hefty loss of -£64.31 to level stakes would have been accumulated had we backed all of his runners...

There is one very easy filter we can apply, however, which would make things look a lot better and that would be to split his runners by Starting Price (SP)...

Willie Mullins Novice Chasers | SP 6/1 or less

69/165 | 42% S/R | +£9.05 BFLSP – W&P 98/165 | 59% S/R

4% above market expectation

Willie Mullins Novice Chasers | SP 13/2 or bigger

1/92 | 1% S/R | -£73.36 BFLSP – W&P 19/92 | 21% S/R

85% below market expectation

...which makes it quite clear that we should only be concentrating on the Willie Mullins Novice Chasers that start at an SP of 6/1 or less, with those starting at a higher SP only managing to provide ONE of the 70 Willie Mullins Novice Chase winners in the first three months of the year (since the start of 2015) ...

Using that metric as the starting point (SP 6/1 or less) we can tighten things up further by adding in the following two filters...

Horses with 10 or less career starts

Horses that have previously won over fences

Adding in those two filters tighten the figures up to the following...

53/110 | 48% S/R | +£18.29 BFLSP – W&P 70/110 | 64% S/R

11% above market expectation

That would mean we are only looking a Willie Mullins horse that we know has the ability to win over fences and one that didn’t spend too much time in bumpers or over hurdles (so chasing was always likely to be the end game) ...The final angle I want to add for the Willie Mullins Novice Chasers looks at Days Since Last Run (DSLR) and it’s this...

DSLR 31+

Adding that final filter tightens things up further, to a very healthy...

41/75 | 55% S/R | +£30.60 BFLSP – W&P 52/75 | 69% S/R

30% above market expectation

System: JO-122-80-01-2025

Next on the list is another of the powerhouse National Hunt yards and another who gets a plentiful supply of Novice Chase winners during the first three months of the calendar year...

Paul Nicholls

Overall record since 2015 in Novice Chases (January, February and march)

57/225 | 25% S/R | -£47.81 BFLSP – W&P 85/225 | 38% S/R

16% below market expectation

Plenty of Novice Chase winners from Paul Nicholls at this time of the year, but like Mullins we need to do plenty of digging to knock the numbers into an angle that makes it worth our time following...

Like Willie Mullins, we also need to split the Paul Nicholls Novice Chasers by Starting Price, as again there is a noticeable difference between those ‘fancied’ in the market and those that are not quite so ‘fancied’...

Paul Nicholls Novice Chasers | SP less than 5/1

55/156 | 35% S/R | +£1.39 BFLSP – W&P 73/156 | 47% S/R

9% below market expectation

Paul Nicholls Novice Chasers | SP 5/1 or bigger

2/69 | 3% S/R | -£46.42 BFLSP – W&P 12/69 | 17% S/R

73% below market expectation

...so, an even tighter SP cut-off than Mullins and it doesn’t quite turn the stats into a profitable area just yet, but it drops a significantly large chunk of the Paul Nicholls Novice Chase losers and it’s an excellent place to start things off from...

The next two filters I want to add concentrate on class move from last run and number of starts in the current season...

Adding the following two angles starts to pull together a much stronger set of figures...

Horses running in the SAME Class level or dropping DOWN in Class level from last run

Horses with TWO or more starts in the current season

Which tightens the figures up to the following...

45/107 | 42% S/R | +£15.62 BFLSP – W&P 55/107 | 51% S/R

3% above expectation

Those stats are already in a solid looking place, but I do want to tighten things up just a little further, by adding two final filters...

Horses with no more than 13 career starts

Horses that ran in a Chase last time out

Which would give us final Paul Nicholls Novice Chase stats of...

40/78 | 51% S/R | +£30.58 BFLSP – W&P 45/78 | 58% S/R

23% above market expectation

System: JO-122-81-01-2025

It’s an angle that plays near the head of the market, but the facts are that there is a plentiful supply of the Nicholls Novice Chase squad that win in that SP zone, and with a bit of digging we can find the ‘right ones’ to be on...

The third trainer on the list is one who wouldn’t be fishing as regularly in the same top level waters as Mullins and Nicholls, but, nevertheless, he does pull in more than his fair share of Novice Chase wins in the first three months of the calendar year...

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