A profitable course winner angle to factor in at Cheltenham this year...

A quick(ish) one for you today as I'm in the middle of pulling together some early Race Trends analysis for full NTF Members...

Course form has long been a talked about subject in horse racing... in general terms and at the Cheltenham Festival...

...and whilst I don't get overly hung up on it... it's definitely something I look closely at, as well as having some 'course winner' angles plugged into my database, to help with my final narrowing of the field process...

Looking at the last 12 Cheltenham Festivals we see that there have been 333 races... 121 of them (36%) have been won by a horse that had at least one previous victory at Cheltenham...

Backing all those course winners would have found you plenty winners... but also left a hefty hole in your betting bank, to the tune of -£75.72 (BFLSP)... E/W returns would have been even more damaging... that hole is a whopping -£502.37 in size...

Most of that damage, however, came from a certain group of course winners... that group being...

Horses that had recorded their last course win more than a year ago (DSLR 366+)

If you look at that group in isolation you get stats of...

40/669 | 6% S/R | -£198.25 BFLSP - W&P 134/669 | 20% S/R

31% below exp | E/W = -£485.77

That's not to say they should be flat out ignored of course, but for this specific angle removing that group gives a much stronger platform to work from...

Removing the young (4yo's) and the old (12yo's+) also tightens things up plenty... between them (from our new base point) they only contributed 2/46 and dropped -£38.72 points...

Horses without a win (at any track) in their last 3 starts also drain the profits... they returned 7/103 and dropped -£37.83 points... so it makes sense to drop that group and concentrate on horses with a recent win on their CV...

And finally... horses starting at the Festival at an SP of 28/1+ struggle (on this angle) to make any real impact... with stats of 1/68 and dropping -£22 points...

Leaving us with a neat looking angle (since 2014) of...

Cheltenham Festival | 5yo-11yo's that had previously won at the track within the past 365-days | No more than 3 runs without a win (any track) | SP 25/1 or less

71/372 | 19% S/R | +£221.08 - W&P 157/372 | 42% S/R

10% above expectation

...it's not been profitable every single year... and it's probably not one I'm looking to follow blindly... for all it has been profitable in six of the last eight years and the two years it wasn't, it only dropped -£6.02 & -£0.55... but I would definitely view it as a positive if a horse qualifies on the angle... and it could make all the difference when it comes to decision making time...

I've got the angle locked and loaded and I'll be keeping a close eye on any qualifiers next week...

The angle is yet another string to my festival analysis bow... analysis you can make full and unfiltered use of by hooking up below...  

I'll have more free content available soon... but if you want the proper, deep and in-depth analysis from me, then there's only one place you'll get access to that...

>>>Upgrade your Festival strategy on the NTF Analysis service

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• The Festival Service covers both Cheltenham AND Aintree (with some ad-hoc analysis thrown in also)
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Cheers

Ben (NTF)

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