Andrew Mount is determined to disprove any myths surrounding the 2024 Cheltenham Festival. Last week, he took aim at the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, but this week takes a more wide-ranging approach to statistics used to find winners at the meeting.
Google the above statement and you’ll come across a YouTube clip of Homer Simpson uttering the immortal words ‘you can use statistics to prove anything, 40% of all people know that’. When a listener or fellow pundit on William Hill racing radio used to take issue with my stats I’d often reply, ‘you could be right, it’s well known that 73% of all statistics are made up on the spot’.
As we approach the Cheltenham Festival, we’re going to be bombarded with stats but which ones, if any, are relevant? Throughout the jumps season it’s common to hear phrases such as ‘Nicky Henderson has a 23% strike-rate at this track’ but that doesn’t mean anything unless we know the price of those horses. If they were all odds-on shots, a 23% strike-rate is disastrous. Stats are just one part of how I form an opinion on a horse race – I use them in conjunction with other factors such as pace, speed and horse profiling – but they can be unhelpful if used in isolation. As punters, we are easily swayed when a journalist/pundit uses stats to dismiss or make a case for a particular runner and we need to remember to question what we are being told.
The Willie Mullins-trained TULLYHILL ran out an impressive winner in Listed company at Punchestown on February 18th, making all to score by nine lengths from Edward O’Grady’s No Flies On Him, and has been promoted to 7-2 favouritism in some ante-post books for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. The question is already being asked as to whether you can you win the Cheltenham festival opener after a recent outing and it’s easy to be positive or negative about his chances using stats.
Looking at the past 15 running of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, 59 horses have returned to the track between one and 28 days since their prep run and three won – Go Native (12-1) in 2009, Menorah (12-1) in 2010 and Labaik (25-1) in 2017. The expected number of winners from this sample was 2.43 so we could say that a recent run is a very slight advantage. However, how far back do we go when looking at trends? Ten years is most common, but why not 15 or 20, or even five, as very recent trends might be more relevant? The authors of some trends-based articles – and I have been guilty of this myself – will change the length of the study period to suit their narrative. Using the 15-year period we can say that horses with a recent outing have out-performed expectations in the Supreme and keep Tullyhill in mind for the race or we can take the ten-year view and say that the only winner with a very recent outing in that period was Labaik and he doesn’t count because he refused to race at Naas 18 days earlier until eventually setting off well in rear, coming home 100 lengths behind the winner without being put under any sort of pressure.
Another stat that will be doing the rounds next month concerns headgear in the Ultima Handicap Chase. You will be told that nine of the last ten winners of this 3m handicap chase wore some sort of headgear. This is true but will it help us to make a profit on the race? Probably not, as 16 of last year’s 23 runners wore some sort of equipment and the winner was priced at just 6-1. Starting Price might be a more relevant stat, as nine of the last ten winners returned at odds of 11-1 or shorter and backing all 58 qualifiers would have returned a profit of 27.50 to a £1 level stake at SP (expected winners = 5.37, A/E = 1.68). Last year’s seven qualifiers included the first five finishers and with bookies offering enhanced place terms perhaps we should throw the form book aside and back the front of the market each-way just before the off or play the qualifiers in Tote Exactas and Trifectas. In 2020, the five qualifiers included the first four home (15-2, 10-1, 11-2 and 11-2) and we’d have nailed the one-two-three (9-1, 5-1 and 15-2) in 2017, again from five selections, with the Tote Trifecta paying £472.70 to £1 and the Exacta returning £89, almost double the CSF. Simply following the market rather than wading through the form of 20-odd runners takes some of the joy out of winner-finding but it will probably see us through to next leg of the Placepot and will free up our time to study the other races on the card. Those wishing to get involved at an earlier stage could do worse than David Bridgwater’s DOM OF MARY, 16-1 at the time of writing and likely to be much shorter if he gets in the race (his 127 rating could be on the low side). He tends to come good in the second half of the jumps season recording form figures of 124214532113 (4-12) from January until April and his yard won this with The Conditional in 2020.
Andrew Mount’s Myth Busters: The Albert Bartlett is a Graveyard for Punters
Andrew Mount’s weekly myth busters column continues to look in more detail at some of the big races at the Cheltenham Festival 2024. Last week, he discussed the “lottery” of the Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle, and looks this week at the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle to determine whether it is truly impossible to fathom and…
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