INDEX Wins Against Replacement: looks at the performance vs an average performance expected by a horse, jockey or trainer based on the field sizes of the races they have been running in. For example, based on field size a horse in a 10 runner field has a 1/10 chance or 10% win probability Wins Against Expectation: calculated the win expectancy of horses based on their Betfair starting price. For example a horse sent off Evens or 2.0 has a 50% win probability based on market price. %Rivals Beaten: looks at the % rivals beaten in a race. It is a better measurement of racing performance as it looks across all positions in a race and as such gives more depth than traditional metrics like Win % or Place %
Finding a path through the Pattern after Royal Ascot Tom Wilson takes a look at the stats to see how horses and trainers fare with older horses and juveniles as the Flat Turf season rolls on after the Royal meeting
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N MANY WAYS, Royal Ascot signifies the start of a new chapter in the UK and Irish Flat season. It’s reveals the emergence of the juvenile crop from infancy into something more. The vitality of youth in equine form. Raw speed, energy and precocity becomes harnessed into the first etchings of greatness via the fields of the Norfolk, the Coventry, the Albany. It also turns the page from three-year-old Classic competition into open battle. Onwards then to the heaths of Newmarket, the July Cup on the Bunbury Mile, a meeting place for the best sprinters, young and old, gelded or entires.
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The colours of Ascot winners Rohaan, Creative Force, Alcohol Free, Oxted will be seen in a frantic gallop down the July Course; each race a chance to write a new story, one for the ages, into the journals of the Pattern. And so post-Ascot, where do the stories begin?
Out of darkness and into light
The Eclipse meeting at Sandown attracts the highest proportion of runners from the Royal Ascot meeting. The Eclipse is framed by the outline of Royal Ascot and it is Berkshire rather than Surrey that provides the lineage towards Sandown’s finest Flat meeting.
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We’ve seen 15 of the last 24 winners of the Eclipse coming directly from Royal Ascot, compared to five from 24 coming from the Epsom Derby. Nine winners have eminated from the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, three from the Queen Anne Stakes, two from the St James’ Palace and one winner from the Hardwicke Stakes. Then onwards to York and the Juddmonte International where 10/22 Eclipse winners have run subsequently, or back to Ascot for the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. The Eclipse meeting at Sandown of all the major Festival meetings attracts the most post-Royal Ascot runners. In total, 6.8 per cent of all Royal Ascot runners since 2010
have gone on to run at the Eclipse meeting on their next start, followed by 6.4 per cent of runners following up at Glorious Goodwood and 5.4 per cent heading to the John Smiths Cup meeting at York.
Performance review
Let’s take a look at how Royal Ascot runners perform at the subsequent large Flat racing Festival meetings over the course of the season. It may be the smallest sample, but runners heading to the Galway Festival have the best performance on the figures – 14.7 per cent winners across all runners, but a nice over-performance of +7.31 wins against replacement (WAR)
