The York Ebor Meeting
For flat racing fans there are some iconic yearly racing festivals to enjoy – Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood are my favoured two, but these are closely followed by the York Ebor Meeting. This year the festival runs over four days from Wednesday 20th August to Saturday 23rd August. In this article I am going to be looking at stats for the last eight meetings going back to 2017. Profits / losses have been calculated to £1 level stakes using Betfair Starting Price (BSP), with 2% commission taken out of any winning selections. The A/E value (Actual / Expected) has also been calculated to BSP.
The Betting Market – let us look at some market data to start with. Here is the record of different starting prices over the past eight years. It should be noted the price groupings shared here are Industry SPs.
| Industry SP | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Less than 1/2 | 6 | 6 | 100 | + £2.47 | + 41.16 | 1.42 |
| 1/2 to 10/11 | 14 | 7 | 50 | – £1.88 | – 13.46 | 0.88 |
| Evens to 6/4 | 28 | 11 | 39.29 | – £1.78 | – 6.36 | 0.93 |
| 13/8 to 9/4 | 42 | 12 | 28.57 | – £3.47 | – 8.27 | 0.93 |
| 5/2 to 4/1 | 205 | 43 | 20.98 | – £1.81 | – 0.88 | 1.00 |
| 9/2 to 6/1 | 242 | 36 | 14.88 | + £9.87 | + 4.08 | 1.07 |
| 13/2 to 8/1 | 301 | 33 | 10.96 | + £27.79 | + 9.23 | 1.09 |
| 17/2 to 12/1 | 485 | 34 | 7.01 | – £11.95 | – 2.46 | 1.00 |
| 14/1 to 20/1 | 495 | 20 | 4.04 | – £50.17 | – 10.14 | 0.95 |
| 22/1 to 40/1 | 665 | 14 | 2.11 | – £76.15 | – 11.45 | 0.94 |
| 50/1 or bigger | 299 | 1 | 0.33 | + £229.05 | + 76.61 | 0.44 |
One could argue there has been a bit of value with those horses priced in the price bracket of 9/2 to 8/1. In contrast, there has been relatively poor value with horses priced 14/1 or bigger. Yes, the 50/1+ group made a huge profit but that was one horse winning at the ridiculously odds of BSP 538.81. Take that winner out of the equation and punters backing bigger priced runners would have been considerably out of pocket at this meeting over the past few years.
Let me now take a look at market rank now – this is based on the position in relation to the Exchange market. Doing it this way helps to avoid too many ‘joints’:
| Exchange Market Rank | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Exch fav | 216 | 62 | 28.7 | – £4.89 | – 2.27 | 1.02 |
| Exch 2nd fav | 216 | 37 | 17.13 | + £5.41 | + 2.50 | 1.03 |
| Exch 3rd fav | 215 | 28 | 13.02 | + £17.39 | + 8.09 | 1.06 |
The two sets of market data shared does suggest that punters should be focusing on the more fancied runners rather than those 14/1 or bigger shots. That is not to say one should ignore bigger priced runners completely because I am sure there will be bigger priced runners that do offer value. However, such horses are likely to be few and far between.
For the remainder of the article, I am going to avoid the 50/1 or bigger ISP runners and stick to all horses priced BSP at 40.0 or lower. It avoids the 538.81 BSP winner completely skewing some of the remaining stats I wish to share.
Position last time out – let me look at some recent form data focusing on last time out performance / actual finishing position. Here are the different splits:
| Position LTO | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 1st | 628 | 90 | 14.33 | + £92.06 | + 14.66 | 1.11 |
| 2nd | 362 | 35 | 9.67 | – £68.35 | – 18.88 | 0.84 |
| 3rd | 264 | 21 | 7.95 | – £74.82 | – 28.34 | 0.84 |
| 4th | 176 | 18 | 10.23 | + £38.44 | + 21.84 | 1.15 |
| 5th or worse | 602 | 44 | 7.31 | – £17.98 | – 2.99 | 1.07 |
Horses that finished fourth last time have performed above expectations, but this is likely to be down more to chance than anything else. However, winners last time out do look a group to perhaps focus on. A solid win rate considering the strength of the competition at this meeting and decent profits to boot.
Last time out course – a look now at whether the LTO course has made a difference. With Glorious Goodwood less than a month before I would imagine we will get a decent number of horses that came from the Sussex track. Let us see what the stats show (to qualify minimum 30 runners).
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