Today’s best bets, by Chris Cook
I often yack about trainer form on here and I do believe it makes a difference to some outcomes but it’s rather a wispy, wobbly concept. It struck me that there’s no handy ‘table’ that might be any sort of guide as to whether a stable’s in form or not, so I made one (below).
It has its faults and limitations but anyway it’s there, for what use you might want to make of it. I’ll try to update it on Talking Horses each Monday through the jumps season, so we can see how these figures fluctuate.
The table shows the 35 British-based jumps trainers who finished last season with most prize money. I don’t feel like going beyond 35 because then you’re including stables with a very limited number of runners, whose recent strike-rate is unlikely to tell us anything meaningful. That could also be said about a few of those I’ve included.
They’re sorted by win strike-rate in the past fortnight, as recorded on the Racing Post website. The figure in brackets is the number of runners they’ve had in that time.
This first version of the table shows that Ben Pauling, Harry Fry and Fergal O’Brien are flying along just now. The Henderson and Nicholls juggernauts are plowing along at something close to top speed. It’s interesting to see the Tizzard and Twiston-Davies camps are almost matching the top two for numbers just now.
Of the big-time operations, Philip Hobbs and Neil Mulholland are the ones that are underperforming, for whatever reason. I hope and trust that both will be able to turn it around at some point during the winter. In Hobbs’s case, his position in this table might count as some kind of mitigation for Defi Du Seuil’s disappointment on Saturday.
Of those at the foot of the table, Ian Williams is probably ‘out of form’ for the first time in about two years, so I’m sorry to him for choosing this moment to start doing this exercise. By the way, these numbers include Flat runners as well as jumpers, in the case of dual-purpose handlers like him and Brian Ellison. I just don’t have time to filter out the Flat runners.
Ben Pauling 37% (19)
Harry Fry 36% (25)
Fergal O’Brien 26% (23)
Nicky Henderson 24% (45)
Paul Nicholls 24% (42)
Colin Tizzard 22% (41)
Nigel Twiston-Davies 22% (37)
Warren Greatrex 22% (23)
Venetia Williams 20% (20)
Nick Williams 20% (10)
Oliver Sherwood 20% (10)
Kerry Lee 19% (16)
Lucinda Russell 18% (11)
Donald McCain 17% (30)
Emma Lavelle 17% (18)
Dan Skelton 16% (51)
Tom George 16% (25)
David Pipe 15% (27)
Sue Smith 15% (26)
Philip Hobbs 12% (41)
Kim Bailey 11% (28)
Malcolm Jefferson 11% (9)
Alan King 9% (33)
Dr Richard Newland 9% (11)
Neil Mulholland 8% (53)
Evan Williams 8% (40)
Gary Moore 6% (36)
Jonjo O’Neill 6% (34)
Tim Vaughan 4% (23)
Ian Williams 3% (31)
Charlie Longsdon 0% (19)
Nicky Richards 0% (11)
Brian Ellison 0% (10)
Peter Bowen 0% (6)
Rebecca Curtis 0% (5)
This is one of jump racing’s low-octane days, with a third of the programme abandoned and the remaining races likely to be dominated by short-priced beasts. I’m a bit disappointed by 11-10 for the nap and will leave him unbacked at those odds.
The 3-1 about Cool Macavity (3.35) in Kempton’s closer is fine. A Nicky Henderson hurdler who likes a decent surface (tautology?), this nine-year-old is on the same mark as at Cheltenham last month, when he travelled smoothly into contention before turning over at the third-last. He looks the standout talent in this small-field affair for conditional jockeys.
Robinshill (2.15) would have been a dual course and distance winner if he hadn’t unseated at Ludlow’s last in October and I’ll take the 9-4 that he can score again there today. A prominent racer from the Nigel Twiston-Davies yard, he’s only having his fourth start over fences, looks useful in that sphere and yet still hasn’t reached his peak hurdling rating from last season.
Bright Tomorrow (2.45) is the closest I can get to an outsider, at 13-2. He showed flashes of ability in Ireland for Jessie Harrington and is now with Warren Greatrex.
He was well beaten in his first two runs for the yard but has dropped 8lb in consequence and it’s worth considering that those two starts were over two miles, which looks sharp for this one. He now steps up in trip by five furlongs, retaining the tongue tie that appeared to help him last time.
Tips for all Monday races
Ludlow
12.35 New To This Town 1.05 Rocklander (nap) 1.40 Robin The Raven 2.15 Robinshill 2.45 Bright Tomorrow 3.20 Leg Lock Luke 3.50 Saucysioux
Kempton
12.50 Burrows Edge 1.25 Brain Power 2.00 Jer’s Girl 2.30 Favorito Buck’s 3.05 Right Of Reply 3.35 Cool Macavity (nb)
Ayr
Abandoned due to waterlogging
