Big Priced Winners - Luck Or A Worrying Trend?
- theturtle
- 23 Sep 2023
In the past few seasons the number of big priced winners appears to be making the news headlines more frequently.
Is this simply luck or is there more to it?
Seasonal Analysis
An analysis of big priced winners over the last few seasons can provide some clues.
As you can see from the graph, between 2020 and 2022, the number and strike rate of horses priced 50/1 winning is considerably higher than previous seasons. However, partial data from 2023 shows that this trend is lowering and could possibly have simply been down to luck.
Trainer Analysis
With the exception of 5 trainers, who appear to have a significantly higher strike rate than their fellow trainers for big priced winners, there appears nothing out of the ordinary. Considering the relatively small number of winners in the past 7 years for each yard, luck appears to be the largest factor in these results.
Owner Analysis
There are 4 stand-out owners based on their 28% plus strike rates with big priced winners to runners. However, with only 2 winners each, this can be put down to them being luckier than their peers.
Conclusion
It is clear that there has been a larger number of big-priced winners for the media to report in the last 4 years. However, there is nothing to suggest that the majority of these results can be explained by anything else than luck.
That being said, there have been several examples of betting coups on big priced runners over the same time period and a number of corruption cases reported in the press. Due to the shortening of prices below the 50/1 threshold, this analysis does not take these into consideration. This will be the subject of a future article.
