UK Trainer Performance in January in National Hunt Racing

As we start a new year, I am sure all of us are hoping for a profitable year on the punting front.

In this piece I am going to do a deep dive into trainer performance in January.

The data for this article has been taken from the month of January only covering the years 2018 to 2025.

The focus is UK National Hunt racing, and as with all my articles, profits and losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission on any winning bets.

To obtain the data I have used the excellent www.horseracebase.com.

Let me start by taking a look at the overall figures for the trainers who have saddled the most runners.

To qualify a trainer must have had at least 150 runners in total.

The trainers are ordered alphabetically in the table below:

Trainer	Bets	Wins	Win SR %	Profit / Loss (BSP)	ROI % (BSP)
Alexander, N W	221	23	10.41	– £69.74	– 31.56
Bailey, K C	212	22	10.38	– £104.30	– 49.2
Fry, Harry	174	32	18.39	– £28.54	– 16.4
George, T R	211	23	10.90	– £9.85	– 4.67
Gordon, C	171	31	18.13	+ £113.65	+ 66.46
Greatrex, W J	246	33	13.41	– £52.10	– 21.18
Hammond, Micky	277	25	9.03	+ £97.40	+ 35.16
Henderson, N J	472	110	23.31	– £69.02	– 14.62
Hobbs, P J / White, J	338	56	16.57	– £54.17	– 16.03
King, A	275	32	11.64	– £104.56	– 38.02
Kirby, P A	197	24	12.18	– £8.38	– 4.25
Lavelle, Miss E C	204	33	16.18	+ £116.02	+ 56.87
Longsdon, C E	211	23	10.90	+ £37.13	+ 17.6
McCain Jnr, D	434	68	15.67	+ £95.03	+ 21.9
Menzies, Rebecca	176	25	14.20	+ £9.67	+ 5.49
Moore, G and J	435	77	17.70	+ £106.59	+ 24.5
Mulholland, N P	271	34	12.55	– £12.79	– 4.72
Mullins, J W	192	17	8.85	+ £14.08	+ 7.33
Murphy, Olly	381	83	21.78	+ £93.03	+ 24.42
Newland, Dr R D P	176	24	13.64	– £14.10	– 8.01
Nicholls, P F	376	75	19.95	– £99.15	– 26.37
O’Brien, Fergal	298	43	14.43	+ £4.44	+ 1.49
O’Neill, Jonjo and AJ	352	47	13.35	– £77.32	– 21.96
Pauling, Ben	293	41	13.99	+ £21.51	+ 7.34
Pipe, D E	296	33	11.15	– £92.10	– 31.11
Richards, N G	185	28	15.14	+ £45.59	+ 24.64
Russell, Miss L V	358	46	12.85	– £58.70	– 16.4
Skelton, Daniel	545	94	17.25	+ £1.36	+ 0.25
Smith, Mrs S J + Parkinson, J	188	42	22.34	+ £124.50	+ 66.22
Snowden, Jamie	172	32	18.60	– £32.26	– 18.76
Twiston–Davies, N A	415	59	14.22	– £38.67	– 9.32
Williams, Evan	408	44	10.78	– £57.21	– 14.02
Williams, Miss V	393	58	14.76	– £119.69	– 30.46

Now, the problem we sometimes get with every runner being considered is that some of the bigger profits have basically been down to a big priced winner or two.

Take Micky Hammond for example, his overall profit stands at £97.40, but he had two winners priced over 90.0 BSP (90.76 & 95.0), so take those out and suddenly the profit flips to a significant loss of over £80.00.

Hence, I feel it always makes sense to also look at the trainer performance with a price cap to help avoid skewed results. Therefore, I will use a maximum price of BSP 12.0 for this next table.

To qualify a trainer must have had at least 75 qualifiers. Again, the trainers are listed in alphabetical order.

Trainer	Bets	Wins	Win SR %	Profit / Loss (BSP)	ROI % (BSP)
Alexander, N W	112	20	17.86	– £6.76	– 6.04
Bailey, K C	137	20	14.60	– £59.03	– 43.09
Daly, H D	86	18	20.93	– £0.33	– 0.38
Fry, Harry	116	30	25.86	– £5.86	– 5.05
George, T R	113	16	14.16	– £14.12	– 12.5
Gordon, C	85	23	27.06	+ £19.40	+ 22.82
Greatrex, W J	128	28	21.88	– £13.78	– 10.77
Hammond, Micky	117	20	17.09	+ £6.41	+ 5.48
Henderson, N J	355	105	29.58	– £31.20	– 8.79
Hobbs, P J / White, J	229	54	23.58	– £4.31	– 1.88
Honeyball, A J	106	30	28.30	+ £6.16	+ 5.81
King, A	167	29	17.37	– £45.59	– 27.3
Kirby, P A	86	19	22.09	+ £10.64	+ 12.37
Lacey, T	98	22	22.45	+ £10.74	+ 10.96
Lavelle, Miss E C	127	27	21.26	+ £22.19	+ 17.47
Longsdon, C E	92	18	19.57	+ £2.05	+ 2.23
McCain Jnr, D	261	54	20.69	– £11.05	– 4.23
Menzies, Rebecca	91	23	25.27	+ £46.77	+ 51.39
Moore, G and J	254	67	26.38	+ £16.60	+ 6.54
Mulholland, N P	118	31	26.27	+ £46.72	+ 39.59
Murphy, Olly	254	76	29.92	+ £54.31	+ 21.38
Newland, Dr R D P	112	23	20.54	– £0.98	– 0.87
Nicholls, P F	284	73	25.70	– £33.34	– 11.74
O’Brien, Fergal	184	33	17.93	– £39.44	– 21.43
O’Neill, Jonjo and AJ	198	43	21.72	+ £8.64	+ 4.36
Pauling, Ben	165	35	21.21	– £18.74	– 11.36
Pipe, D E	146	31	21.23	+ £18.20	+ 12.47
Richards, N G	118	22	18.64	– £27.47	– 23.28
Russell, Miss L V	193	40	20.73	+ £3.38	+ 1.75
Skelton, Daniel	330	85	25.76	– £1.04	– 0.31
Smith, Mrs S J + Parkinson, J	122	36	29.51	+ £70.39	+ 57.7
Snowden, Jamie	117	30	25.64	– £10.19	– 8.71
Thomson, A M	96	27	28.13	+ £34.34	+ 35.77
Twiston–Davies, N A	244	51	20.90	– £3.06	– 1.25
Wadham, Mrs L	93	24	25.81	+ £39.00	+ 41.93
Williams, Evan	190	35	18.42	+ £5.07	+ 2.67
Williams, Miss V	268	56	20.90	– £23.77	– 8.87

Just under half of the trainers have made a profit with this cohort of runners (18 of the 37), and at least we know these figures are not massively skewed in terms of winning prices.

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