The Two Year Olds

Finding some form of “system” or “method” to profitable racing is a long, hard, and often demoralising task. Just as you think you may have found the holy grail and all your prayers have been answered, BANG! Everything you thought may work is blown out of the water.

Our January-March Five pointers produced a system of merit which we have “banked” for the future, but subsequent suggestions are struggling to either yield profits, or selections to back.

So, we are thinking we need to change our tack so to speak.

Trainers are, we still feel, “creatures of habit”, but those habits may be changing, and the old vanguard of trainers are passing on the reins to a new breed of trainer, who may, or very likely may not, follow in their footsteps.

The past couple of years have been unsettled in the racing world for obvious reasons, and many a result has reflected that.

So, if we are going to change how we approach searching for those hard earned winners where do we start? Well, we are thinking, at the beginning.

2 Year Old Runners

Horses in the main, will start their racing career at the age of two on the Flat and the All Weather, and since the start of 2019 there have been almost 40000 running’s, two thirds of which have been on the Turf Flat.

The win percentage of these two years olds on the flat hardly differs between them and their All Weather counterparts as is the case with their place strike rate, but there is a significant percentage differential between their respective ROI to BFSP.

Where are we going with this?

Not sure yet, bear with us…

A young racehorse will go through several significant changes as it grows, but in the main, 80% of a horse’s growth is complete by the age of two, and training will start when the horse is a yearling.

The fundamentals of a horses physiological make up can’t be changed. You cannot improve the lung capacity of a horse over time through training, however it is suggested that you can “educate” a horse to breath more efficiently during a race.

Some horses may not be able to transfer oxygen to their airways as efficiently as others, and you may hear that they have had a “wind op”, a medical procedure done on a horse to “improve” airflow for the horse.

(Interestingly back in 2018 Simon Rowlands and Jason Hawthorn published an article which, after having analysed the data concluded that win operations neither improved a horse’s performance, and in fact deteriorated the performance, and produced little difference in a horse’s performance when comparing pre and post operation). You can read the full article here

The one thing that training does do for the horse is it increases the heart mass. The heart is a muscle, and like all muscles the more it is exercised the more efficient it will work.

On occasions you may hear a young horse being referred to as “fragile” and in addition to the heart muscle a young horses skeletal and muscular development will be changed by the frequency and intensity of training the horse undergoes. The more intense a horse is trained the stronger their muscles can become, and a sign of muscle strength may be an improved length of stride on the track.

But there is an argument that training from a yearling can lead to complications. A horse’s skeleton is not mature at the yearling stage, and this can lead to stress on the bones.

Exercising a young horse with high intensity training can become a risk, while short, repetitive training exercises with rest periods between can help with bone growth and allow tissues to repair between sessions.

Common sense suggests to us that as these yearlings come on and find themselves two year olds and heading to their first race meeting they may easily become unsettled when starting out on their racing careers. To that end we feel it is logical to concentrate our next search for a profit on 2 year old races where there are small fields.

In the main these first few races for a horse are “educational” both for the horse and the trainer and anything which gives a positive experience in the race will be of benefit to both in any future runs. A nervous and unsettling experience with the noise of large crowds, and the jostling for position in a larger race, may not be the best introduction for a young horse.

We also must remember that not all horses are created equal. Of course, there will be those which take to the racetrack like a duck to water, but for many it may require a slower introduction to all that a race meeting will entail, the travelling, crowd noise, starting stalls etc.

Let’s focus on the Turf Flat runners for the time being, and the remainder of the season.

Two Year Olds on the Turf

Had you blindly backed all 2 yr. olds running in small field races of 2-7 runners at BFSP during June to November (2019-2021) in the UK and Ireland, you would have made a sizeable profit at BFSP, compared with a stomach churning loss to ISP.

We will always argue that if we can find a system/method at BFSP that works we will have found that holy grail we were talking about previously. So many backers are now disillusioned with bookmaker’s accounts having been “restricted” or metaphorically closed, that the only way results can show a true picture in our opinion is recording to BFSP.

But…there have been occasions recently where the Industry Starting Prices have returned a greater price than Betfair…another conundrum to consider on another day…

Using our common sense again, logic suggests that those horses heading out for their first run may not be the best to back.

It can often be seen that a short, priced favourite will head up the field, and this goes against our gut. That favouritism is often down to who the horse is trained by, and yes there is an argument that the better trainers get the better horses, agreed, but there are so many other factors that can affect the race it seems naïve in our book to back a short, priced favourite, on its first outing, based on the trainer alone.

At least after that first run you can form an opinion on the horse itself rather than going on stable rumours.

The two year olds with 2 or 3 runs have offered up some tidy profits to BFSP over recent years.

But interestingly, yep you guessed it, the prices of most of the winners are rather miniscule, that said you don’t want to be backing the 100/1 shots, as they have bombed…no surprise there.

Given our earlier remarks about the frequency of the training of yearlings and that rests between their training sessions are of benefit for muscle recovery, could we apply a similar idea in general to the young two year olds?

Would a modest break between their last and next run improve their chances of winning? There’s little evidence to suggest this.

Runners who had their last run in a lower grade race perform well (Classes 4-6), but we need to tread carefully and not get overwhelmed with excitement.

The standout Betfair P and L suggests there may be one or two large, priced runners that have skewed our figures.

Four winners from 136 selections priced 40.00 or greater won their races in Class 4 – 6 races and offered up a combined total of 289.32 points at BFSP.  That seriously affects our perceived profits.

Still a year on year positive at BFSP.

We are still not convinced that we are any closer to finding an angle here without reverting to the time old “trainer” search!

The bulk of the winners have come during the height of the summer months in August and September, and we are quite tempted to leave things there.

The longest losing sequence backing WIN only was 9 consecutive bets which happened over the 3 year period on 4 occasions, and in the main we would have had on average losing runs of 3 and 4 bets before hitting another winner.

The prices are short, yes, but if we can turn an overall profit for August and September while landing some steady winners to keep us motivated this may be a way forward, but another stumbling block…we have no idea what the BFSP will be. If we remove the price criteria what happens? We find that historically we have a longest losing run of 12 bets, still manageable, but greatly reduced profits, making our efforts in backing the runners far less rewarding.

There’s no excuse, we give in! We are going down the trainer route!

That said, rather than keeping all our eggs in one basket we are going to spread the chances of landing a winner over a field of trainers which have, in the past 3 years, produced returns better than would have been expected. And yes, there are some familiar names.

System 4: Back the two year olds of the above trainers having their second or third run when their last run and today’s is in a Class 4 to 6 to Win Only at BFSP.

So, it looks like we may have to turn to the All Weather for our profits from 2 year olds during June and July? We’ll concentrate on the lower class races again (Class 4-6) and small fields with 2 or 3 previous runs under their belt.

There are no enormous, priced winners in there, but there are a couple of 33/1 winners which make the largest part of the profits. These don’t worry us, it’s nice to land one of those from time to time, what worries us is the longest losing run of 20 bets! That is something we cannot stomach. What is clear is that it is the Class 5 and 6 races which have recently yielded the best profits.

Certain tracks, Southwell and Kempton are to be avoided. Kempton has a zero strike rate for 2 year olds that qualify under the above conditions over recent years.

But don’t hold your breath on a profit turning up on the All Weather. 2021 was a poor year for the 2 year olds.

Trainers who turn out a runner on the All Weather in these lower class races which over perform are few and far between in truth, and whether you will see a runner in 2022 from these stables is questionable based on the number of runners they offered up last year. However, if 2021 was an anomaly then we may stand a chance of turning a profit following them in these lower grade races. There is always a chance that they may just get overlooked and land a larger priced winner in the small field races.

And with a longest losing run sequence of 3 we at least should be able to protect the bank.

System 5: Back the above runners on the All Weather (except at Kempton and Southwell) as shown to Win Only at BFSP.

Sorry, did someone say finding a winning system was easy!?

If that was you, what are you reading this for, email in and let us know your successes!

Acorn Systems to Date

January 2022 (Issue 86) – System 46 Approved

February 2022 (Issue 87) – Nil

March 2022 (Issue 88) – Systems 86-88 – Under review until end of May

April 2022 (Issue 89) – Systems 80 and 82-84 – Under review until end of June

System 85 (Issue 89) – Under review until end of September. Showing a loss to date

May 2022 (Issue 90) – Systems 77-79 – Under review until end of July

System 73: (Issue 91) – Under review

System 70: (Issue 91) – Under review

System 69: (Issue 91) – Under review and showing potential

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