As we enter the New Year, the Tolworth Hurdle at Sandown is one of the first big races of 2015, unfortunately the race has only attracted four contestants.

Not discouraged by the small field, we have profiled every Tolworth winner since 1997 and in this post we describe how we arrived at conclusions for each category below using images of the raw data from our horse racing software.

(click on each image to open in a new window)

The Wisdom of Punters

The table below is ordered by starting price rank and within the table the favourite’s record is shown in the top line, SP rank ‘1’.

With 5 wins to their name, if normal expectation is represented by a figure of ‘1’ in the column titled A/E, our data indicates that the favourite under performs normal expectation by 25%.

The 2^nd favourite (SP Rank 2), has also won 5 Tolworth hurdles down the years and their collective A/E value is 1.68, i.e. 68% above expectation based on the probability inferred in the prices of each 2^nd favourite.

In summary, the top two horses have won the majority of races, but if you punted the 2^nd favourite in every race since 1997, thus far you are getting value using this systematic method of selection.

 

Finishing Position in Recent Race

This time the table above is ordered by the finishing position of the horses’ last race.

From a population of horses that finished 1^st last time out (55), 11 went on to win yielding a profit at Industry and Betfair starting prices to a £1 stake.

Again if we look at the A/E column for these horses we find they collectively performed 20% above what you would expect given a normal sequence of events.

In other words, form leading into this race is a significant factor and should be a key consideration during pre-race analysis

 

Number of Runs

This report is unique to Proform and the table below orders results by the number of runs prior to the Tolworth.

As indicated in the table, horses that ran once in the month prior to the race won on 11 occasions, 15% above expectation.

There were 41 horses that had no prep run in the month prior to the race and from this population 4 won however this is 22% below statistical norms.

 

Pace in the Race

Within the Profrom database, based on the post-race in-running comments, we store pace abbreviations after every race for each horse which can be either:

L for Led,

P for Prominent or

H for Held Up.

Using this information we can evaluate the record of each running style in this race.

Horses that raced prominently “P”, won on 12 occasions from 15 renewals and perform 55% above normal.

You can identify horses with different running styles easily using our pace maps which can be found in our Proform racecards in addition to our horse ratings.

 

Courses for Tolworth Horses

The table above summarises the last time out course prior to the Tolworth and from the data we can conclude that the majority of winners in the Tolworth raced at a grade 1 National Hunt track prior to the race.

 

Summary

It would be folly to suggest that “numbers” should be your primary source in any betting decision.

However, stats can provide invaluable information by using historical data to profile previous winners which can be used to determine a list of possible contenders in the race which match this profile.

So for example in the Tolworth we are looking for horses that:

• Finished 1st last time out
• Like to run prominently
• Ran at a Grade 1 track last time out.
• Raced once on the last month.

This exercise my seem unnecessary in a four runner race, however in bigger fields, race profiling can come into its own.

And when you throw in some good old honest form analysis, you will be well on your way to a short list of horses to bet.