Trainers Fancied Horses

We look at which trainers of fancied horses are actually able to win with them and are worth following.

Analysing Trainers Fancied Horses Past Performaces

The RacingFormBook database of racing results makes a great foundation for checking ideas, trends and facts. One area, which I wanted to look at, is Trainers performance with fancied runners. Rather than going the route of using the favourite (Fav) we go to an alternate approach which is quite illuminating. These will be the Trainers of Fancied Horses to Win in the future.

In our database we have, a ‘Favs’ field, which shows not only the Fav but also second favourites (2Fav), are noted.

Therefore, we looked into the Fav & 2Fav combined performance data. I decided to use the results back to the start of 2018, though our results data are available from 2016.

We started looking at how the trainers faired at each racecourse for each mode of racing, Flat, All Weather, National Hunt then diversified into different categories. This became unwieldly as we were looking into handicap, Maidens, Class of race etc.

While the above is definitely a topic to be reviewed in the future. I wanted this to be a much simpler exercise. I ran through the database queries, which separated the three codes (Flat/AW/Jumps) of racing by performance during the month of September. Using the same period of 2018 onwards, this covered the last 4 years of results.

Once all the information had been output to a spreadsheet, it was clear that we had to narrow the information down. The number of runners each trainer had sent out was set at a minimum of eight for each of the three results.

Next, I set the percentage of winners to a minimum of 30%. One thing that did show was trainers of eight or nine horses to run, won at least 37.5% or 33.33% of the time. To reiterate this is when the horse in question was Fav or 2Fav.

Red Alert

While in the vast majority of all cases, each trainer showed a profit to 1-point win stake bet. There was one red flag, which was Willie Mullins National Hunt runners. No way could you follow his horse based on the data we had now. Therefore we would not bet with him or against, so those races where has a qualifier shall be ignored in September.

Amber Warning

There were also some Amber warnings, which were Stoute & Beckett on the Flat, Simcock & Prescott AW, plus Hobbs over Jumps.

Therefore, on the 1^st September 2022, I checked which trainers had runners; again, we used the Flat data against the turf Flat races that day and so on for the other codes. This was easily done using the Horses file, which comes part of our Racecards in Data Format that our Full Subscribing Members have access to 48 & 24 hours ahead of racing. Using the spreadsheet file, we simply filter out the column Course, those non Flat Turf Meetings. Next, we filtered the Trainers column. Deselect all the Trainers, please see the screenshots at the end of the article.

Next, we used our chart for September and selected each trainer from the list. Finally, we had our horses to concentrate on for the day. What I wanted to do is see which horse were either the Favourite of Second Favourite in the Starting Price betting. Should there be more than one match, taking the trainer with the best percentage seems the logical way to go.

It turned out there were 9 qualifiers the first day of September. 3 Won at odds of 9/2 100/30 and 7/4, which was 3.5 points profit.

On the 2^nd September I was actually impressed by the results. 10 winners from 18 runners, 3/1 5/2 5/2 5/2 13/8 6/4 1/1 8/11 1/3 1/3. That was a further 8+ points profit on the day.

The downside is that there was a lot of qualifying runners. One way to reduce this would be to concentrate on the trainers with a better percentage strike rate. Then you could apply those with a better Return Of Investment. It is also worth baring in mind that those trainers who have a large number of qualifiers and most importantly a small ROI could quite easily be removed from those to follow. Should such a training establishment have a ‘bad run’, (issue with their horses health for instance). That would distort any returns. While we will note the winners without this consideration, you may want to swerve the following on a personal level:- AP O’Brien & Gosdens (Flat), Gosdens/Bin Suroor/Stoute (AW) & Elliot (Jumps)

I have made the September spreadsheet available just Follow This Link

If you wish to obtain the Daily Racecards as ‘A Data File’ please join as Full Member.

Please contact Racing Form Book if you have a question regarding this or any subject.

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