The 20% Club - On Course Profits

The GB National Hunt scene has been dominated for a number of years by a select group of top performing trainers, with the likes of Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson, Dan Skelton and Colin Tizzard mopping up many of the big races throughout the racing calendar year.

The problem, or challenge, is that it can be difficult to profit when following their runners blindly because the cat is well and truly out of the bag, and the bookies will often try to price up their entries at odds below their runners’ respective chances of winning.

Here is a classic example:

Paul Nicholls

The Nicholls yard operates out of Manor Farm in Ditcheat, Somerset and the trainer was crowned Champion Trainer for the 11^th time at the end of the latest National Hunt campaign.

If we take a look at the Nicholls runners over the last 5 years we find the following:-

Paul Nicholls (Last 5 years)

Despite a consistent and remarkable 20%+ strike rate over the last 5 years you would have made a level stake loss to Industry Starting Prices of 381pts, and lost 13p for every pound of your hard earned you had staked on his runners blindly.

The figures can be improved upon if you had placed your bets at Betfair SP, but you would still have experienced a loss none the less.

There is always the possibility of spending time investigating to see if you can find a specialised angle to approach the Nicholls runners from and see if you can decipher his modus operandi and concentrate on the best performing areas…but that may have to be an idea for a future issue!

A further problem we can encounter when looking at the runners of trainers of this calibre is that on many occasions they will have multiple horses from the yard competing against each other in the same races. Now as an owner you would want to ensure that your trainer puts your horse forward, if it is up to the challenge, for a crack at the best races and biggest prizes, but this makes hard work for us punters in sorting out which of those runners is up for it on the day.

A recent example from the Nicholls camp was the run up to the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day. All of the talk was of Cyrname who had lowered the colours of Altior, who had previously been unbeaten over jumps, in the 1965 Chase at Ascot in November.

Cyrname went off as the 5/4 favourite on Boxing Day with the Colin Tizzard Lostintranslation deemed to be the main challenger on the day.

However Paul Nicholls also had another runner in the race, Clan des Obeaux, who had won the prestigious event 12 months prior. Despite having won the race previously Clan des Obeaux went off at 11/2 and had been even larger in the early markets.

And yes you guessed it, it was Clan des Obeaux that romped home to victory with 21 lengths in hand leaving his stablemate toiling in second place!

Most punters didn’t see that coming.

If we take the above into account we certainly feel that there may well be merit in looking for a select group of trainers which, also have shown a winning profile in recent times, may still offer a little more value when sending their runners to a track.

The 20% Club – Having fired up the trusty research facility over at www.horseracebase.com we have honed in on 4 trainers which we feel it may well pay to follow over the coming seasons.

First up is Harry Fry:-

Harry Fry

Many of you will know that Harry Fry is a prodigy from the Nicholls yard. Based at Seaborough in Dorset Fry has held his trainers licence since 2012 and by 2016 had already broken through the £1 million pound prize money barrier. The suggestion is that Harry Fry will undoubtedly be a future top player in the National Hunt racing scene.

Having been based at Seaborough stables where he originally operated as a satellite yard for Paul Nicholls, sending out Rock On Ruby to win the Champion Hurdle, Fry has now given notice of his intent to leave the yard at the end of this season and will be moving to his family’s farm at Halstock, Dorset at the end of this season.

It is fair to say that last season's 47 winners (April 2018-April 2019) fell a little below the usual level, but Grade 1 wins from If The Cap Fits and Unowhatimeanharry in April more than made up for this.

With 21 winners already on the board the yard looks primed for a stellar campaign this time around with a good mix amongst the 75 horses in their care.

Dr Richard Newland

Having quietly been combining a successful career as a GP the “Good Doctor” had been quietly going about his training activities before becoming a household name by training Pineau De Re to win the 2014 Crabbie’s Grand National, his first ever runner in the race.

In September of last year Newland upped the ante by taking on a “top-of-the-range” facility in Worcestershire which allowed for an expansion that could see a doubling of the number of horses under his stewardship.

Tom Lacey

Set in rural Hertfordshire, Tom Laceys' career started schooling young horses under Captain Charles Radclyffe. Working through the ranks he worked as a pupil assistant trainer in two National Hunt stables before becoming Head Lad for one of the leading flat trainers before taking on his own licence to train.

As can be seen from the above 2019 wasn’t the best of years but there has to be a slight correction on occasions, after a number of years which had seen an increasing number of winners on the bounce.

Lacey has also made a steady start to the current campaign, and his patient approach invariably pays dividends as the season progresses, and he has shown that he can place his Ledbury team to good effect.

Anthony Honeyball

Anthony Honeyball comes from a racing background with his father John Honeyball having been a successful trainer, and his Anthony’s mother having been a talented show jumper.

His training career began in 2006 after having been a conditional jockey for Paul Nicholls and ridding 45 winners under rules.

Initially training from his parents Quantock farm in Somerset he proceeded to rent a stable yard from Richard Barber in 2012 which allowed him to train independently and expand his training.

The yard had a really positive start to 2020 with the big race win for Jepeck in the £61,900 Veteran Series Chase Final at Sandown. The horse’s campaign was a bit of a plot with connections having protected his handicap mark by keeping the horse over hurdles.

The outcome was however almost spoilt as in the race he and his jockey Rex Dingle were almost carried out by a loose horse approaching the final fence. Luckily they managed to get back on the track in the nick of time, but the incident cost them vital momentum and Jepeck did well to regain the lead and hold on by a short head from Regal Flow with Theatre Guide a neck away third.

So having introduced the 20% team let’s take a closer look at how we can use these yards runners going forward.

Many trainers, for fear of repeating ourselves do have a habit to their training and placing of horses in races. Some may often favour particular race tracks for a variety of reasons including the tracks location to the stable, the track configuration, or types of fences to name a few.

We have considered each of the trainers’ records and the following would appear to be the tracks which have offered a consistent success for the respective trainers and their runners.

20% Club – Top Tracks

Harry Fry

The following tracks have provided good returns for Harry Fry’s runners during the last 5 years:-

Ascot, Bangor, Carlisle, Doncaster, Exeter, Ffos Las, Fontwell, Haydock, Kelso, Leicester, Market Rasen, Sandown, Southwell and Uttoxeter.

The runners that Harry Fry sends to the above tracks should be noted, but can we add any additional pointers to improve on the bare figures, which to be fair are pretty solid?

There were more runners in Non-Handicaps (250) than there handicapping counterparts (183) but both sets produced 50% of the total profit.

Logically that fact does point to the latter group having a better ROI (50.38% vs 41.73% at BFSP), so possibly if you wanted to reduce the number of bets you could concentrate on the Handicap runners only.

The Strike Rates across the three codes of NH racing, Chase, Hurdle and Bumpers were roughly the same.

Although the trend may alter with time based on the research it would suggest that the yard is very much focused on the main section of the NH calendar which runs from October through to April, although the figures for May are quite positive.

With that in mind ignoring runners during the period of June through to the end of September, wouldn’t see us miss out on any profit but would reduce the number of bets overall.

It may be a testament to his placing skills as not many runners from the stable go off at big prices so by concentrating on those at 14/1 or lower would generally improve the overall P&L. None of those that went off at 16/1 or higher had won over the review period at the key tracks.

System 19: Back Harry Fry National Hunt runners at the above tracks during the months of October through to May ignoring those runners likely to go off at 16/1 or larger.

If you would like to receive an email to let you know each time one of our systems has a runner sign up for our alerts service here – https://www.oncourseprofits.com/systemsreaderoffer

For our Gold Members we have 20% systems for Dr Newland, Tom Lacey and Anthony Honeyballs runners, and we have a bonus system for finding more Harry Fry winners.

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