One thing we can say with certainty is that uncovering meaningful data to help you pick winners in horse racing takes a lot of effort. If you wish to improve your ROI, careful research is necessary. This means covering all angles and trainer statistics could prove to be one of the best weapons in your arsenal.
You can benefit from the Racing Postâs Statistics section which provides a pretty detailed overview of trainer statistics. It enables you to filter your results which can often reveal that surface information is misleading.
With this data itâs possible to find the right trainer, the best horse, specialist courses, preferred events and the most suitable jockey.
How To Find & Filter Your Trainer Statistics
Which Trainer?
Take a trip to the Sporting Life website to find out the top performing trainers over Jumps so far this season (stats correct as at 4 February 2016). Philip Hobbs is the #1 trainer in terms of wins with 86 out from 340 entries; this equates to a nice 25.29% win percentage. Yet when it comes to win %, J. P Ferguson leads the way with 31.53%.
You can do the same with Flat races too but for the purposes of this article, we will focus on Phillip Hobbs and use his statistics as an example of how to filter your data to reveal crucial betting trends.
The above are what you call âsurfaceâ statistics; they give you a picture but not a particularly clear one. If you wish to truly benefit from trainer statistics, itâs time to dig deeper.
The Racing Post website shows us Hobbsâs statistics in greater detail; his 86 wins are divided as follows:
- 11 National Hunt Flat wins
- 50 Hurdle wins
- 25 Chase wins
While he has a 34% win rate over NHF races, his 29% win rate over hurdles is also pretty impressive. Even more importantly, a ÂŁ1 level stake on Hobbs horses over hurdles this season would return +29.07 compared to +9.91 for NHF races and -18.59 for all his entries in Chases.
But is Hobbs merely having a good season or does he normally perform well from a punterâs perspective? His stats from the last 5 seasons suggest itâs the latter unfortunately:
As you can see, the punter would have lost money if he backed all of Hobbsâ horses over the last 5 seasons in all of the categories.
Which Course?
Does this mean punters should simply ignore Hobbsâ entries? Of course not! We just need to dig a little deeper and find out his record at the various courses in the UK. Once again, the Racing Post comes to the rescue as you can filter the results to find the win % of Hobbsâ horses at every UK course.
Best of all, you can distinguish between Hurdle, NHF and Chase events! This research shows us that over the last 5 seasons:
- Newbury is his best course in terms of ROI with a whopping +80.43 profit over a ÂŁ1 level stake. This equates to 22 wins from 147 entries for a win rate of 18%.
- Uttoxeter is his best course for NHF wins with a +18.63 profit; however, he has only had 13 entries in NHF events at the course in the last 5 seasons.
- Newbury is his best location for Chase events with a +44.83 profit but with +38.27, Stratford is also a good course for his horses.
- Newbury is yet again his best course when it comes to Hurdles with a +42.60 profit. Yet with just 9 wins from 65 entries, itâs clear he has quite a few long shot winners.
Therefore, we now know you should look out for Phillip Hobbsâ horses when they run at Newbury in Chase or Hurdle events in particular.
Which Month?
You should know by now that trainers have good and bad spells; there are usually perfectly good reasons for this. For instance, some trainers focus on certain events during the year. Other trainers may specialise in certain courses which means they get their best successes at a particular point in the season.
Even a cursory glance at Hobbsâ last 5 seasons show that most of his entries come between October and January and these months are when he tends to shine (no surprise since National Hunt races take place from October to April). If youâre really dedicated you can find the best trainers for each individual month along with the best courses and events!
What Events?
Most of Hobbsâ entries come in Handicap and Novice events with relatively few Maidens and hardly any Selling races. His ROI is not good from a punterâs perspective but when you use this knowledge in conjunction with the rest of the data above, you should be able to paint a clearer picture of the right time to back a Phillip Hobbs horse.
Which Horse?
The moment most of you have been waiting for! You can narrow down your search once more by finding out which horses in the Hobbs stable are worth backing. This is the area where you can really bash the bookies and the Racing Post provides win %, profit from a ÂŁ1 stake and the horseâs RPR. Simply click on the Horses tab and get to work.
We can see that Village Vic has been in sensational form in the 2015/16 season with 4 wins out of 4 while Sternburnin and Garde La Victoire are also in fine fettle. You can click on each individual horse to determine its lifetime record.
In the case of Village Vic, we can see the horse performs well in Chase events with 5 wins out of 9 and a 7 top 3 finishes. Notice the difference in prize money between Chase events and the rest; thatâs because Village Vic runs in, and wins, Class 1 events. This is clearly a high quality horse!
With this information you can find out if a horse is improving or if it has reached its peak and is beginning to slide backwards. Village Vic appears to be going from strength to strength although we donât know just how much better the horse can get.
Incidentally, for Flat races it is possible to filter each trainerâs record according to:
- 2YO
- 3YO
- 4YO+
- All Weather
- Turf
- Distance
Which Jockey?
When youâve clicked on the individual horseâs name, you can also take a look at all its results. Details about the jockey will be included. In the case of Village Vic, Richard Johnson is the rider of choice as he has ridden Village Vic in 15 of its 22 races; including the last 7 and 14 of the last 16 races.
With this data you can find out if your chosen horse has its preferred jockey on board. This can make a huge difference.
Conclusion
You can use the Racing Post website to find the best performing trainers in Flat and National Hunt events. Then you can filter the data and locate the trainerâs best courses, times of the year, events, horses and jockeys. It is an enormous amount of work but the results could ensure your hard graft is handsomely rewarded. Good luck!
