Monthly Archives: March 2017

With the likely prospect of a wet track this Saturday in Sydney for the Golden Slipper dash I thought I would use EPI to  give me the answer.

I have now included “Track Condition” as a slicer  in my Jockey-Trainer analysis page. The steps I  used were :

• Select Metrop in the “Grade” slicer
• Select Randwick and Rosehill in the “Venues” slicer
• Select Slow and Heavy  in the “Track Condition” slicer
• Sort the resulting jockey list by the “Runs” column in descending order. This means that the jockeys with most rides are on top of list.

Now look down the list for jockeys that have a green shade in both Strike rate and A2E columns and voila !
The best mixture of Strike rate and A2E is not unsurprisingly TOMMY BERRY  !
And anyone who saw his ride on Frolic last start to beat She Will Reign would agree … it was a genius ride !

I have also matched the top 4 jockeys with their GS rides so you can see where the value bets are. It would make for a nice First4 divy 🙂

Leith Innes is one of New Zealand’s most consistent male jockeys and rides mainly in the North Island Region. Since April 2015 Leith has had 775 rides for a strike rate of 17% and a -1% A2E based on Top3 Tote. This compares favorably with the average -9% A2E.

With the advent of Betfair and off-course Corporate Bookies offering all sorts of betting products  the pricing of horses by the time race starts  is so much more accurate than what it was 20 years ago. So does this mean that the best odds available on a horse is much closer to the real price that the horse should be ? In other words does Favourite-Longshot Bias still exist ?

Well I have just done an analysis of the last half million horse starts run in Australasia since 2014 and have published the results on the E.P.I. website.  To find out the answer to this age old question … plus be able to ask and answer your own FLB queries (e.g. do provincial races show the same level of bias as metropolitan races) then just register (its FREE) and go for it !

I took 120 combos . My outlay was $50. Dutchbook % on combos varied from 2% up to 425%. I had a 23% chance of collect and my expected return was $175.

It is a long way from County Meath in Ireland to Morphettville Racecourse in Adelaide but for apprentice jockey Emily Finnegan the journey has been worth it. The 21-year-old is making a name for herself, riding a series of winners in South Australian metropolitan and country race meets.
Less than two years ago, she arrived in Adelaide to try her luck after her riding career in Ireland stalled.
“In Ireland, racing is very male-dominated,” she said.
“There are not a lot of females riding at all. I can only think of three and they are not really getting many rides.

“It is more of a hobby for them than a career and I wanted a career.”

Well Emily who still claims 1.5 kg as an apprentice has been making great progress in Oz over the last 12 months. Her strike rate over last 514 rides is 16.3% (as good as Hughie Bowman) but has returned a whooping +27.1 % A2E based on TopTote3 which for all runners shows a loss of -9%.

Emily has 2 rides today 4/3/2017 at Morphettville

• 12:53 pm Morphettville R1
  Morphettville R01 Schweppes Hcp 1050m Open 3yo 12:53 PM SOFT (6->5)
  04 Nodoubtaboutit 3yo f (Emily_Finnegan) Odds 5.0
• 5:53 pm Morphettville R9
  Morphettville R09 Mac: Stop Drug Driving (Bm70) 1800m BM70 5:53 PM SOFT (17->13)
  11 Celestial Story 4yo g (Emily_Finnegan) Odds 13.0

A snapshot of Emily’s stats is shown below :

Michelle had an extreme amount of hype associated with her winning the Melbourne Cup on 3 November 2015, riding Prince of Penzance, a six-year-old gelding with which she had a long-term association. Payne said she was “floating on the cloud and it’s a nice feeling”.

But how does Michelle make the punters feel who back her mounts ?

Before I start should mention that punters who use the TopT3 product (the most popular Corporate bookmaker product where punters gets the best of NSW, VIC and QLD totalisator dividends ) will lose on the average 9% on turnover.

So when comparing the relative performance of jockeys I use the -9% benchmark.

During the period August 2014 until spring of 2015 Michelle TopT3 performance was -23% with a 11% strike rate.

But then during the spring of 2015 Michelle had her 15 minutes of fame (actually a bit under 5 minutes) by winning the Melbourne cup on Prince of Penzance. Michelle was excited, the media was excited, everyone was excited that a female jockey had achieved something that no female had done before … riding a Melbourne cup winner !

The name Michelle Payne was etched in the minds of rank-and-file punters forever and whenever she had a subsequent race ride the focus was on Michelle rather than the horse she was riding.  Michelle was invited to the opening of everything (bar an envelope) and attracted incredible media attention. Unfortunately her race riding took a back seat and her strike rate dropped down to 7%.

But even worse for punters the loss on their bets plummeted to -40%

It’s not that Michelle is any better or worse as a jockey for winning the Melbourne Cup … it is just that Joe Public has reacted to Michelle 15 minute of fame and tends to overbet her mounts and as a result the dividends are less.

So whilst Michelle is not necessarily suffering from PMS, the pockets of some punters are !