The myth-busting Andrew Mount returns with his weekly column, this time focusing on tricky, undulating tracks such as Goodwood and Ripon, and their effects on debutants having their first starts there.
If you want to improve your racing knowledge and punting skills, I highly recommend listening to William Hill Racing Radio when Jon Babb is one of the pundits. I worked with Jon for several years on the radio and he’s one of the shrewdest punters I know. His approach to two-year-old races is especially interesting and there are certain tracks where he would avoid backing newcomers, even if the market was speaking in their favour. He’s also against backing debutants each-way, as they’re unlikely to be given a hard time if their winning chance has gone and may well finish out of the frame as a result. I was reminded of this last week when Jon was covering the Goodwood card on the radio (September 3rd) – he questioned the wisdom of backing 5-2 favourite Seacruiser, a two-year-old newcomer from the Ralph Beckett yard, on a notoriously tricky/undulating track and the son of Sea The Stars proved him right by finishing fifth of ten.
Let’s have a closer look at the record of two-year-old newcomers in Britain since the beginning of 2021…
…there were 872 winning debutants from a sample of 10392 (8.39% strike-rate) and backing them blind at SP would have returned a huge loss of £2169.16 to a £1 level stake at SP (-20.87% on turnover). However, those same horses returned a profit of £348.92 at Betfair SP (after 2% commission) thanks to a number of huge-priced winners like Maybe Even Never (SP 125-1, Betfair SP 350), Arboy Will (SP 150-1, Betfair SP 334.75) and Boafo Boy (SP 100-1, Betfair SP 272.83).
Using the Proform database we can produce a list of tracks where the expected number of winners (EX Wins) based on their odds is below par, giving a WAX score (winners against expected of -2.0 or less)….
…Goodwood is on this list and backing juvenile newcomers at the Sussex venue would have found on just 15 winners from 254 bets (5.91%) for a loss of £157.67 to a £1 level stake at SP. Laying these runners at Betfair SP would have returned a profit of £133.67 (+52.63% on turnover). Ripon is also regarded as a very difficult course for newcomers, and they also produced a big loss. Please note that I have not filtered out contests confined to newcomers only, in which a racecourse debutant is certain to win. The modest record of newcomers on the all-weather tracks at Wolverhampton and Chelmsford is also interesting and may be down to the importance of early speed at those venues. Runners making their debuts often missed the break and it could be a case of ‘game over’ from the stalls at those tracks.
The tracks where two-year-old newcomers have performed better than market expectations are listed below…
Given how difficult it is to score first time out at Goodwood, I looked at what happened to those two-year-olds who were beaten there on debut when they were next asked to race…
…they scored at a much higher rate (just over 18%) and produced a profit at Betfair SP (small loss at SP). Backing only those who were beaten but ran within seven lengths of the winner on their debut improved the strike-rate and profitability considerably…
Seacruiser, beaten by four and a half lengths on his debut, will qualify on his next start, as will the Andrew Balding-trained Regal Ulixes, third at 12-1 in the same race on his debut.
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