I’ve never been one for demoting racing purely to a story of horse racing odds. It’s primarily a people business, populated by a variety of rogues, well-bred gentry and ne’er do wells from every social level, all bound together by an interest in the horse. Small wonder Dick Francis and others found so much to colour their thrillers of scurrilous behaviour on the turf.
That said, given pretty much everyone attending the races likes to have a vested interest, it’s as well to know who’s hot and who’s not. Some statistical knowledge can go a long way.
Follow the money
Even winning in excess of £5m in prize money in a season hasn’t prevented Dan Skelton from running a negative balance to a £1 stake on his runners at a majority of tracks around the UK.
The country’s most successful trainer of Jump horses amassed 194 winners from 1,026 runners in the most recent season, a strike rate of 19%. Yet the winning machine of Alcester ran up a negative balance on all bar 15 of the country’s 41 Jumps courses.
The emphasis on the big events is illustrated by positive results at the country’s three leading racecourses – Ascot, Aintree and Cheltenham. 11 winners from 55 runners at Aintree make the Liverpool course a favourite among Skelton backers. £1 staked on each would have won you £43.75.
The 14 from 83 at Cheltenham tell a slightly different story. Whilst Skelton is leading the fightback against strong Irish competition at the Festival, good results early in the season but at shorter prices made this a trickier act to follow blindly, returning just £4.15 in comparison.
Team Skelton sent 43 runners to Fakenham last season, and landed joint top spot with Stuart Edmunds for Top Trainer trumps. His 14 runners may have only contributed £50,700 to his £5m haul, but they returned £14.19 to punters.
Seek out the clinical approach
Others to excel in this particular corner of Norfolk are Lucy Wadham and James Owen. And whilst Owen has been successful under both codes and across numerous national borders, the Wadham inheritance is a little more parochial.
Fakenham has always been a happy hunting ground for Wadham, whose stable of unremarkable jumpers rarely hits the headlines. But five winners from 12 runners points to a highly selective approach that is far from unique to Norfolk. 53% of runners from Moulton Paddocks reach the first four, which ranks right up with the best of them.
Nowhere else comes close to Fakenham, Kempton attracting 7 of her runners and fielding 3 winners. And take note if she ventures further north than Nottingham.
Owen on the other hand is a master of both codes of racing, fielding runners and winners on the flat, over jumps and on every surface imaginable. He’s not a man afraid to run his horses, as four seconds on the final day of May testify, three at Fakenham.
Last season, at only two other courses did he run more horses than at Fakenham – Worcester and Huntingdon. Conceivably, he likes being home for tea and evening stables. More likely, his crop of middle distance juveniles coming off the flat to go hurdling is a source of plenty of winners nearer to home before they graduate to smarter races elsewhere.
Take note of those infrequently sending runners
At the bottom end of the spectrum, Fakenham is largely ignored by the master of Seven Barrows. Only four other courses received less runners from Nicky Henderson, whose cadre of owners mercilessly focus on the Grade I courses, and on Cheltenham success. They’re unlikely to be seen in Norfolk unless invited to Sandringham.
A long way from the West Country, Fakenham is not on the shopping list of Philip Hobbs and Johnson White, who sent not a single runner, nor emerging powerhouses like Anthony Honeyball or the likeable Jeremy Scott, whose forays beyond the northern end of the M5 can be counted on one hand.
Fakenham doesn’t pretend to be a destination for every racing enthusiast. It has a course configuration like no other, and an ambiance that is equally quirky. It takes a bit of knowing, like all the best things in life.
Chacun à son gout.
Content provided by Peter McNeile
