Once again punters flocking to Cheltenham races this Saturday have a pre festive feast of National Hunt racing to savour.

The race sponsorship of the December handicap may have changed hands down the years but one consistent trend in the race is the under performance of the market leader.

The event was first run in 1963 and analysing the horse race statistics since 1997 revealed that the favourite has only won once in 15 attempts, 78% below what you would expected given a normal sequence of events.  

What else did we uncover using our horse racing software?

 

French Bred Horses

As a population (62) French bred horses have won on 8 occasions, a performance 66% above expectation and a relatively low chance (approx. 13%) this result is due to pure luck.

On the other side of the ledger, horses reared in Ireland and the dominant bred in horse racing, have won on 5 occasions which is 26% below normal.

 

Qualifiers: Edgardo Sol, Caid Du Berlais, Tatenen(?), Workbench

 

Age

In this category, the sweet spot for previous winners are horses aged 6 (5) and aged 7 (6).

Combined, their 11 wins from 15 renewals is 47% above normal and profitable at a £1 stake at Betfair and Industry Starting Prices.

There is still not enough data to write this age group off completely but at the time of writing, the market leader Caid Du Berlais is the only 5yo in the field. As a population (9) their best result in the December handicap is third.

 

Qualifiers: Edgardo Sol, Splash of Ginge, No Buts, Barrakilla, Workbench

 

Recent Form

Of all the historical horse racing stats researched, horses which race off the back of a good run should be given serious consideration.

Those that placed in their preceding race have won 12 of the 15 renewals since 1997.

This characteristic is 31% above normal expectation and has identified some decent priced winners in recent years (7/1, 15/2, 6/1, 7/2 and 22/1).

 

Qualifiers:  Caid Du Berlais, Darna, Niceonefrankie, No Buts, Barrakilla

 

Courses for December Gold Cup Horses

Horses that raced at Cheltenham (8) and Ascot (3) in their race prior to the December Gold Cup perform 28% higher than normal.

 

Qualifiers: Edgardo Sol, Caid Du Berlais, Easter Meteor, Splash of Ginge, Niceonefrankie, Ericht

 

The Market

As we mentioned earlier, the favourite has only won once in 15 attempts and underperforms normal expectation by 78%!

The table below created by the Proform System Builder, summarises previous results ordered by starting price rank.

The column titled “Chi Scr” helps to identify if a sequence of events was due to chance or due to a deterministic set of circumstances i.e. there are rules that govern the outcome.

Horses that are 3^rd in the market have won on 6 occasions resulting in a Chi score of 6.80.

This figure suggests that based on probability, the chance that this set of results is due to luck is approx. 1.43%. i.e. highly unlikely

Ideally we would like to see a bigger sample size to improve our confidence in this observation.

Although the market does not get it right when picking the first or second favourite, in the last 15 renewals the crowd is doing a good job so far of selecting their third choice.

 

Pace in the Race

Our research did not uncover any significant angles or stats related to pace.

However, the general pace trends for the race distance of 2m5f at Cheltenham suggest that horses that like to run “held up” underperform significantly.

Below is our pace map for this year’s December Handicap which can be found in our Proform racecards in addition to our horse ratings.

Proform verdict:

1. Caid Du Berlais
2. No Buts
3. Ericht