Turf Flat performance for LTO Handicap Winners

With the turf flat season starting to get going, I have decided to look at last time out winners to see what I can glean – good or bad.

It is not an area I have looked at for a while; the last time was an all weather piece I penned around Xmas 2019. This one has a slightly different focus – I am looking solely at horses running in turf flat races after winning a handicap last time out.

For the LTO win to qualify it needs to have been either a turf or all weather handicap win, not a National Hunt one. Also, the follow up race performance we are analysing must be in a handicap also.

I am looking at 10 years of data from 1^st January 2013 to 31^st December 2022.

So, to clarify for those who are happier with system type bullet points – the baseline results / starting point have been produced from these rules:

1.         Years 2013 to 2022

2.         Turf flat handicaps races only (UK races only)

3.         LTO win in turf or all weather flat handicap

For the record, for the remainder of the article whenever I use the term ‘LTO win’, I do mean ‘LTO win in a handicap’.

It would become a bit of a ‘mouthful’ if I keep using the latter!

Let us look then at the overall figures:

A decent enough strike rate hitting one win in every six runs, but losses to BSP are slightly above the average figure for all runners at nearly 7 and a half pence in the pound.

If backing every single horse in every flat handicap in those ten years (about 234,000 horses!!) you would have lost 4.9% to BSP – in other words just under 5p lost for every £1 bet.

From this initial starting point, let me breakdown the data by year:

Yearly strike rates are very consistent, as you would hope, with nine of the ten figures ranging between 16% and 17.9%. Returns are slightly more up and down, but no winning years as you can see.

Time to examine LTO course; does that make a difference?

Does a last time out win at a fashionable track such as Newmarket or Ascot produce better returns than at a less fashionable track such as Hamilton or Catterick?

Let’s see.

I have ordered the results by highest strike rate (in descending order from the top):

The most interesting finding is the profitability of horses that had their LTO win came at all weather track.

Five of the six all weather courses where a win occurred LTO have produced a profit if backing the horse on turf next time out – only LTO Southwell winners produced a loss. Now the LTO Southwell win stats are very poor, but I think these are skewed by the results from the old surface. Early indications are that the results from LTO wins on the newer surface are much better.

So why have LTO winners at these five AW tracks all produced a BSP profit if backed next time on turf?

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David Renham  

Featured Image: (CC BY 4.0) – Best Alibi before the Dante | Will Palmer | Flickr