The flat season is full of races at this time of year in which no horse has ever run before. For many, there can be minor clues found in the date a juvenile runner was born, but Andrew Mount looks to test that theory in his latest Myth Busters column below.
Racehorses are allocated the same official Birthday of New Year’s Day, but they were obviously not all foaled on this date. Horses born on May 1st 2022, would be classed as two-year-olds on January 1st 2024 but, in reality, they are only 20 months old. The more mature juveniles, especially those foaled in January, are said to have a maturity advantage over their younger counterparts and we often hear racing pundits/journalists refer to ‘early foals’ in this regard. But do early foals have an edge?
Using the Proform software I looked at all juvenile races in Britain and Ireland since the beginning of 2021, split by foaling date.
A clear pattern is evident – those two-year-olds foaled in January have a superior strike-rate (13.15%) to the February foals (11.74%) who in turn outperform March foals (10.98%), who do better than April foals (9.85%) etc. The sample for June foals (just 12 runners) is too small to consider. We’d have made a loss by backing all the January and February foals at SP but it’s interesting to note that both returned a good profit (£452.73 and £1033.55 respectively) at Betfair SP after 2% commission. The January foals have a very significant WAX (winners against expected) score, recording 34.10 more wins than the market predicted and it’s this group that I want to concentrate on.
Firstly, let’s see how two-year-olds foaled in January perform throughout the season:
They show a positive return at SP in March, April, May and June but big losses over the next five months, suggesting that we should concentrate on their early-season runs when it comes to formulating a profitable betting system.
Backing all January foals in Britan/Ireland in the months of March, April, May and June, since 2021, gives the following results:
A profit of £194.412 to a £1 level stake at SP (+31% on turnover) is not to be sniffed at. Much of this came thanks to the 150-1 win of Zoulu Chief at Newbury in May of last year but it was still a healthy return without it.
Breaking the results down by number of previous runs makes interesting reading – the newcomers (0 previous runs) and the once-raced juveniles performed especially well:
In summary
January foals enjoy an edge over their younger counterparts in juvenile races from March to June. It is worth giving preference to newcomers or the once-raced January foals.
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