York Ebor Meeting 2014 Trainer Stats

York Ebor Meeting Stats

York Ebor Meeting 2014 Stats

York’s Ebor meeting starts tomorrow on the Knavesmire, and it promises racing fans four days of spirited and classy equine action.

It is a fiercely competitive meeting, and winners are hard to find as a rule. But, when you catch one, expect it to pay well. Two overarching rules for battle, as handed down by the Grand Old Duke of York himself…

1. Choose your battles – don’t expect to win if you’re betting every race

2. Use Best Odds Guaranteed bookies, if you can, as the on-course trimming of the top horses in the betting during the final minutes before a race is an act of daylight robbery

Right, after two rules of engagement, two trainers with whom to engage:

David O’Meara

The ginger magician is making a real name for himself as a Saturday trainer: most recently, he bagged the Great St Wilfrid Handicap last Saturday with Out Do. He only started training in 2010, and in the past three years, his Ebor meeting record has been extremely good, particularly with horses priced 12/1 or less:

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The total form string of those sixteen runners is 2070810404511494. As you can see, the squad has grown, and the win rate improved, from year to year. And, in case you think 12/1 is a convenient cut off, note that O’Meara also struck with 25/1 Mont Ras last year.

Although it is somewhere on the careless-to-totally-reckless continuum to try to find patterns within a dataset of sixteen, it may be worth noting that all five win and placed horses were in handicaps, and all three winners were aged three to five.

What is not careless to note is the form of the O’Meara stable coming into the Ebor Festival. In the last two weeks, the North Yorkshire handler has saddled ten winners from thirty runners. So he brings his squad in top form.

Willie Haggas

Although ‘exiled’ in Newmarket these days, there can be no doubt about Willie Haggas’ affection for the white rose county, and for York especially. Since 2010, ‘Wily’ William has saddled thirty runners at the Ebor meeting, and eight have won (27%) with another three placing (37% place rate).

The winners were worth a profit of 20.75 units at SP.

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Again, atom splitting in tiny datasets is normally a dangerous pastime, but Haggas’s juveniles and sophomores (or two- and three-year-olds if you prefer) have had the best of it during that four year spell. They claimed seven of the eight victories, from 22 runners (32%); and nine of the eleven win/placed efforts (41%).

Interestingly, perhaps, is that all eleven placed Haggas horses were ridden by different jockeys. So it doesn’t really matter who legs up, they’re likely on a live one.

And he too is in excellent form, with nine winners from his thirty runners in the last fortnight.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a preview of the opening day of York’s Ebor meeting, and