In our regular feature in which we dissect Saturday’s big race using our horse racing statistics, this week we turn our attention to the Grade 1 Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot.

 

French Bred Horses

13 winners have been French bred, a performance 49% above expectation.

Using our racing software to examine the stats further, we need to be mindful that within this total lurk multiple winners, Baracouda (4), Big Buck’s (3) and Reve De Sivola (2).

As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, horses reared in Ireland are the dominant bred in racing closely following by horses bred in Great Britain. As a group these breeds have won on 4 occasions which is 51% below normal.

Let’s see if one of the qualifiers below continue the trend of French bred winners. 

Qualifiers: Aubusson, Medinas, Reve De Sivola

 

The Market

The favourite has won on 9 occasions in 17 renewals.

Collectively the top three in the market have won 14 of the last 17 races and a strategy of backing the front three in the market yields a small profit thus far.

Horses that were ranked in the first three in the betting in their race prior to the Long Walk have won 14 of the last 17 races.

 

Qualifiers (top three in market): Reve de Sivola, Medinas, Zarkandar

Qualifiers (top three in market last time out): Zarkandar, Medinas, Dell' Arca

 

 

Recent Form

No prizes for stating the bleeding obvious, but horses finishing in the frame last time out perform better than horses that don’t.

Those that match this criteria dominate the Long Walk honour roll (16 of the last 17 winners)

 

Qualifiers: Aubusson, Dell' Arca, Medinas

 

Courses for Long Walk Horses

One of the features of our horse racing software is the ability to detect race trends using the System builder.

Using this tool, we can easily identify the race course at which the horse ran prior to the Long Walk Hurdle and tabulate their result in the race.

 

Armed with information we can easily conclude horses who ran at Newbury (10) and Ascot (3) in their race prior to the Long Walk should be the focus of any pre-race analysis.

 

Qualifiers (Newbury LTO): Dell' Arca, Medinas

 

 

Pace in the Race

When researching historical pace results of hurdle races at Ascot, our data suggests a negative bias toward horses that like to run toward the back of the pack.

With 5 wins from a population of 49 runners, horses that like to run “held up” in the Long Walk perform approx. 35% below what we would expect statistically.

You can identify horses with this and the other pace styles easily using our pace map which can be found in our Proform racecards in addition to our horse ratings.

 

Proform verdict:

1. Zarkandar

2. Medinas

3.  Aubusson