Research Corner – One Trick Pony?
At the time of writing, we are less than 2 months away from the greatest spectacle of British and possibly the World’s National Hunt racing, the Cheltenham Festival, which will take place at the Prestbury Park racetrack over 4 days (March 15th – 18th).
We will of course have plenty of coverage from our team of knowledgeable contributors in the editions of the magazine, but for this month’s Research Corner piece our focus will be of a more general nature which I guess the title gives a big hint to.
With the transport costs increasing and the staff needed to support sending the racehorses to the track on race day, why would a well-established yard send one solo horse to a race meeting?
To try and answer that particular question we fired up the excellent horseracebase to see how often that had happened during the most recent period of 2017 to the end of 2021.
Given we are currently at the mid-point of the main NH campaign we will start our research with the jump’s scene.
The following table details the top 20 stables that have sent one horse to a track at least 50 times over the review period and is sorted by the most winners in that category: –
As might be expected there are some familiar names in the table and the profit figure for Nicky Henderson certainly catches the eye, however on closer inspection the majority of the P&L was gained during the latest completed year.
If we home in on 2021 we do find winners at 11/1 (16.50 BFSP), 14/1 (16.30 BFSP), 18/1 (29.93 BFSP) and 11/1 (12.14 BFSP) but what was unexpected is these winners ran at tracks such as Doncaster, Warwick, Worcester and Plumpton.
Donny does offer some decent prize money, but the Worcester winner ran in a Novices Hurdle and carried a prize to the winner of just over 4k!
Is it possible that the on-going Covid-19 situation has factored into Nicky Henderson’s plans or was it an anomaly that may return to normal levels as and when the UK comes out of the pandemic? If we take a closer look at the tracks that have recorded 5 or more winners when only one horse was sent there (20175-2021) we find the following: –
Top of the pile is Warwick with a remarkable 40.74 Strike Rate coupled with an A/E of 1.36 which clearly shows that the winners are outperforming their market expectation.
Other tracks that recorded decent levels of profit were Southwell (+23% ROI at BFSP), Stratford (+56% ROI at BFSP), Worcester (+88% ROI at BFSP), Fontwell (+59% ROI at BFSP), Plumpton (+133% ROI at BFSP) and Taunton (+33% ROI at BFSP).
With one or two exceptions such as Chepstow (1 from 13) and Bangor (3 from 19) it would appear, if the current trend continues, that we should take note of when Nicky Henderson sends one horse to a National Hunt meeting.
System 96: Back the horses trained by Nicky Henderson when the yard only has a runner at the track.
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Featured Image: King George VI Chase
