Trainers who send only one runner to a course on a given day.
As the title suggests, in this piece I am going to be looking at trainers who send just one runner to a specific course on a specific day. My plan is obviously look at individual trainer records, but I will also crunch the data for all trainers within certain parameters.
The data for this article has been taken from 2018 to 2024 for UK flat racing – this covers seven full seasons including both turf flat and all weather racing. Profits and losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission on any winning bets. The A/E index (Actual / Expected) has also been calculated to BSP.
This article was requested, so if there are any areas you would like me to look into please contact the On Course Profits team and they will pass the request on. If I am able to research it, and it has enough mileage for an article, I will.
OK, it is time to crack on with this piece. Let me start by looking at all qualifiers from all trainers:
| Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 172141 | 19324 | 11.23 | – £3370.14 | – 1.96 | 1.01 |
This is not the worst starting point with losses less than 2p in the £ when looking at over 172,000 qualifiers. The figures are better than I had anticipated.
Time to split the results by Race Class to see if we can find any pointers:
| Class | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Class 1 | 6115 | 643 | 10.52 | – £78.33 | – 1.28 | 1.00 |
| Class 2 | 11621 | 1168 | 10.05 | + £21.01 | + 0.18 | 1.02 |
| Class 3 | 11181 | 1420 | 12.7 | + £206.13 | + 1.84 | 1.01 |
| Class 4 | 31421 | 3840 | 12.22 | – £705.25 | – 2.24 | 1.01 |
| Class 5 | 56420 | 6691 | 11.86 | – £2863.89 | – 5.08 | 1.00 |
| Class 6 | 54738 | 5496 | 10.04 | + £83.49 | + 0.15 | 1.00 |
| Class 7 | 645 | 66 | 10.23 | – £33.31 | – 5.17 | 1.23 |
Horses racing in Class 3 events have produced the highest win strike rate and the best returns. Interestingly, these figures have not been massively skewed by big priced winners.
If we focus on Class 3 runners that were priced at 20.0 or shorter we see the following:
| Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 8060 | 1344 | 16.67 | + £380.12 | + 4.72 | 1.02 |
These returns are even better than the overall ones. However, these positive findings are probably down to variance or luck as it is really difficult to give a logical reason, why these results have proved profitable.
A look at the Betting Market next and the performance of the top three in the betting, based on their BSP position:
| Market Rank | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Favourite | 19752 | 6745 | 34.15 | – £224.42 | – 1.14 | 1.00 |
| 2nd Favourite | 18953 | 3897 | 20.56 | – £401.58 | – 2.12 | 1.00 |
| 3rd Favourite | 18427 | 2608 | 14.15 | – £462.27 | – 2.51 | 0.99 |
Nothing hugely significant here other than favourites would have lost you the least amount of money. Backing them blind would have only lost around 1 penny in the £.
Sticking with favourites, the most successful group have been those runners that were backed from Early Morning Odds (available around 9am) to Opening Show Odds (roughly 10 mins before the off).
This group of runners would have returned punters a small profit at BSP to the tune of £78.65 (ROI +0.6%).
The only issue of course is that at the Opening Show there would be some runners that we could not be 100% sure would eventually start favourite. This though is always a problem when quoting favourites stats or price-based stats – we only know the price / market position after the race has started.
In good news, all runners (any price) that had a shorter Opening Show price compared to the Early Morning Price performed better than those that remained the same price or drifted.
What about previous course winners?
We might suspect that the results for past course winners may be good, considering they are the only horses from the stable running at the course on the day in the question. The results shown below though are a little underwhelming:
| Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 30147 | 3942 | 13.08 | – £1,909.46 | – 6.34 | 1.00 |
Losses of over 6 pence in the £ is quite poor when we consider the starting point for all qualifiers (losses of less than 2p in the £).
However, digging a bit deeper we can find a subset of course winners that have proved profitable to follow. If we concentrate on horses that have run at the course at least three times previously and have a 60%+ win rate at said course, we get the following results:
| Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 1230 | 231 | 18.78 | + £190.51 | + 15.49 | 1.10 |
These are an impressive set of figures showing a strike rate edging towards one win in every five runs, while the returns have produced a healthy 15.5% on investment (15.5 pence in the £). What makes these figures more impressive is when we split the results by year. Here are the yearly splits:
| Year | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 2018 | 178 | 30 | 16.85 | + £2.17 | + 1.22 | 1.02 |
| 2019 | 167 | 32 | 19.16 | + £58.78 | + 35.19 | 1.12 |
| 2020 | 133 | 29 | 21.8 | + £17.99 | + 13.53 | 1.16 |
| 2021 | 181 | 37 | 20.44 | + £0.47 | + 0.26 | 1.11 |
| 2022 | 194 | 40 | 20.62 | + £59.42 | + 30.63 | 1.21 |
| 2023 | 192 | 31 | 16.15 | + £10.87 | + 5.66 | 0.96 |
| 2024 | 185 | 32 | 17.3 | + £40.81 | + 22.06 | 1.15 |
Seven winning years out of seven, and six of the seven have had A/E indices above 1.00. It seems that trainers sending a sole runner to a course should be noted if that horse has run at least three times at the track producing a win strike rate of 60% or more.
So, what about horses that are sent on their own to a course by their trainer but are sent on a long journey?
One might assume that sending a horse on the road for several hours suggests the trainer is hopeful of a good run. It’s a long way to go to run poorly and all that ………. Hence, I have looked at all qualifiers that travelled 250 miles or more.
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