UK Trainer Performance in March on the Sand
As we head into March, the main focus for many, including me, is the forthcoming Cheltenham Festival. However, I will still be keeping a close eye on the all-weather scene as Flat racing is where the majority of my yearly bets come from.
March is an interesting month on the sand, as the end of the month sees the start of the Flat Turf season at Doncaster. Hence, I assume some trainers will prioritise getting their turf runners ready in March, while others will still be trying to pick off as many races on the sand as possible.
There is due to be 41 AW meetings in March, weather permitting, so there will be plenty of races ‘to go at’.
In this piece I am going to do a deep dive into AW trainer performance in March. The data for this article has been taken from the month of March only covering the years 2018 to 2025.
The focus is UK AW 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 two excellent sites namely www.horseracebase.com and www.geegeez.co.uk.
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 100 runners in total.
The trainers are ordered alphabetically:
| Trainer | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Appleby, M | 506 | 65 | 12.9 | + £4.95 | + 1.0 | 1.02 |
| Attwater, M J | 161 | 14 | 8.7 | – £7.13 | – 4.4 | 0.93 |
| Balding, A M | 221 | 54 | 24.4 | + £51.19 | + 23.2 | 1.20 |
| Botti, M | 196 | 24 | 12.2 | – £7.63 | – 3.9 | 0.80 |
| Boughey, George | 146 | 29 | 19.9 | + £52.84 | + 36.2 | 1.13 |
| Brisland, Robyn | 108 | 10 | 9.3 | – £37.93 | – 35.1 | 1.21 |
| Brittain, Antony | 227 | 20 | 8.8 | – £76.34 | – 33.6 | 0.82 |
| Burke, K R | 162 | 23 | 14.2 | + £44.53 | + 27.5 | 0.98 |
| Butler, John | 214 | 23 | 10.8 | – £63.81 | – 29.8 | 1.06 |
| Carr, Mrs R A | 180 | 26 | 14.4 | + £95.43 | + 53.0 | 1.66 |
| Carroll, A W | 499 | 50 | 10.0 | – £119.30 | – 23.9 | 0.89 |
| Dixon, Scott | 244 | 22 | 9.0 | – £8.07 | – 3.3 | 1.06 |
| Dow, S | 131 | 14 | 10.7 | – £25.01 | – 19.1 | 1.17 |
| Dunlop, E A L | 121 | 13 | 10.7 | – £44.70 | – 36.9 | 1.01 |
| Ellison, B | 106 | 11 | 10.4 | + £2.07 | + 2.0 | 1.00 |
| Evans, P D | 264 | 25 | 9.5 | – £80.83 | – 30.6 | 0.84 |
| Fahey, R A | 230 | 28 | 12.2 | – £32.08 | – 14.0 | 1.02 |
| Fell, R / Murray, S | 130 | 6 | 4.6 | – £58.42 | – 44.9 | 0.51 |
| Furtado, Ivan | 185 | 18 | 9.7 | + £26.23 | + 14.2 | 1.01 |
| Goldie, J S | 138 | 16 | 11.6 | – £41.50 | – 30.1 | 1.03 |
| Gosden, J + T | 145 | 36 | 24.8 | – £41.46 | – 28.6 | 0.89 |
| Hannon (Jnr), R | 210 | 36 | 17.1 | + £172.38 | + 82.1 | 1.09 |
| Herrington, M | 134 | 16 | 11.9 | – £52.87 | – 39.5 | 1.00 |
| Hughes, R | 151 | 35 | 23.2 | + £70.26 | + 46.5 | 1.21 |
| Jardine, I | 123 | 13 | 10.6 | + £3.35 | + 2.7 | 0.85 |
| Johnston, Charlie | 118 | 17 | 14.4 | + £33.51 | + 28.4 | 0.99 |
| Kirby, P A | 109 | 19 | 17.4 | + £142.54 | + 130.8 | 1.50 |
| Loughnane, D M | 195 | 15 | 7.7 | – £93.05 | – 47.7 | 0.68 |
| Loughnane, David | 120 | 17 | 14.2 | – £10.84 | – 9.0 | 1.28 |
| McEntee, P S | 175 | 12 | 6.9 | – £82.45 | – 47.1 | 0.79 |
| Menzies, R | 105 | 13 | 12.4 | – £32.65 | – 31.1 | 1.04 |
| Midgley, P T | 148 | 7 | 4.7 | – £75.76 | – 51.2 | 0.67 |
| O’Meara, D | 170 | 20 | 11.8 | – £16.92 | – 10.0 | 1.09 |
| Osborne, J A | 133 | 16 | 12.0 | – £39.83 | – 30.0 | 0.97 |
| Ryan, K A | 113 | 20 | 17.7 | + £23.75 | + 21.0 | 1.33 |
| Shaw, D | 180 | 25 | 13.9 | + £261.15 | + 145.1 | 1.51 |
| Simcock, D M | 183 | 30 | 16.4 | – £29.11 | – 15.9 | 1.08 |
| Tuer, Grant | 109 | 12 | 11.0 | – £27.42 | – 25.2 | 1.02 |
| Usher, M D I | 122 | 13 | 10.7 | + £33.14 | + 27.2 | 1.18 |
| Wallis, Charlie | 109 | 11 | 10.1 | + £48.38 | + 44.4 | 1.14 |
| Watson, Archie | 251 | 43 | 17.1 | – £52.68 | – 21.1 | 1.03 |
| Williams, Ian | 175 | 15 | 8.6 | – £100.36 | – 57.4 | 0.80 |
| Williams, S C | 212 | 28 | 13.2 | – £12.66 | – 6.0 | 0.97 |
Now as with any results where there is no price limit, some bottom lines can be skewed by a big priced winner or two. That has been the case here with Derek Shaw winning with Devilwala at Wolves in 2025 at a BSP of 251.28. Likewise, Richard Hannon’s +£172.38 profit figure was skewed massively by BSP 179.68 winner Hayeem back in 2020. He also had a BSP 60.0 winner which also helped that bottom line. Philip Kirby’s bottom line was significantly boosted by a 164.80 winner as well.
Hence, I have re-evaluated the stats by imposing a maximum price limit of BSP 16.0, and in the table below I will share the trainers who had best returns over this timeframe (minimum runs to qualify 50; they are ordered once again alphabetically)
| Trainer | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Balding, A M | 174 | 52 | 29.9 | + £53.37 | + 30.7 | 1.20 |
| Barron, D+N | 62 | 13 | 21.0 | + £32.82 | + 52.9 | 1.09 |
| Bell, M L W | 53 | 15 | 28.3 | + £14.25 | + 26.9 | 1.24 |
| Brown, A D | 50 | 8 | 16.0 | + £11.47 | + 22.9 | 1.13 |
| Butler, John | 118 | 23 | 19.5 | + £32.19 | + 27.3 | 1.20 |
| Camacho, Miss J A | 64 | 12 | 18.8 | + £14.34 | + 22.4 | 1.15 |
| Carr, Mrs R A | 91 | 23 | 25.3 | + £89.31 | + 98.1 | 1.76 |
| Crisford, Simon | 52 | 14 | 26.9 | + £21.32 | + 41.0 | 1.19 |
| Dow, S | 66 | 13 | 19.7 | + £20.32 | + 30.8 | 1.32 |
| Kirby, P A | 56 | 17 | 30.4 | + £15.87 | + 28.3 | 1.53 |
| Loughnane, David | 83 | 17 | 20.5 | + £26.16 | + 31.5 | 1.41 |
| O’Meara, D | 105 | 19 | 18.1 | + £27.63 | + 26.3 | 1.18 |
| Ryan, K A | 79 | 20 | 25.3 | + £57.75 | + 73.1 | 1.45 |
| Shaw, D | 96 | 23 | 24.0 | + £64.27 | +67.0 | 1.58 |
| Usher, M D I | 69 | 12 | 17.4 | + £12.60 | + 18.3 | 1.28 |
It is interesting to see that Kirby and Shaw have positive figures even without their two huge priced winners mentioned earlier. Any trainer in this table deserves close scrutiny with their 2026 March runners, especially if likely to be priced BSP 16.0 or less.
I would really like to mention Kevin Ryan as he has been extremely consistent over the years in March. Ignoring 2020 as that month was incomplete due to COVID his yearly profit figures have been as follows:
| Year | Profit / Loss (BSP) |
| 2018 | + £9.24 |
| 2019 | + £7.27 |
| 2021 | – £7.34 |
| 2022 | + £26.86 |
| 2023 | + £6.74 |
| 2024 | + £2.33 |
| 2025 | + £15.66 |
As we can see, he has had six winning years and just the one losing one. Meanwhile, David O’Meara and Andrew Balding have also been fairly consistent with both having five winning ‘Marchs’ out of seven (again these stats exclude 2020).
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