Horse Trainers: Creatures of Habit

I imagine if some trainers read this article they will be offended by being called a ‘creatures’. It’s not meant in a derogatory term. I like thoroughbred horse trainers from the smallest to the biggest stable. OK, I like the smaller stables a little better because I’m always rooting for the underdog. It’s a British thing, hey.

Anyway, whether creature or not, I respect your effort to train horses to win races. It can’t be an easy task.

In fact, I don’t think any armchair jockey, trainer or coach potato appreciates how difficult it must be to train a winner.

I really need a quote from a trainer here to hammer this point home.

I wonder what John Gosden would say?

‘It’s easy!’

Yes, that was my attempt at humour. I bet every trainer, at some point in their career, has felt the pressure of finding winners.

However, trainers are creatures of habit. It’s hardly surprising because we all have our own way of working. It’s human nature, if not the human condition.

I have researched two-year-old horse racing for decades. To be fair it is more like 30-years, so I consider myself knowledgable. And digging into the data for each and every trainer it’s surprising what you can uncover. If you have enough data you can see the peaks and troughs of a trainer’s season. There is a distinct pattern to how they work. This isn’t something that happens by luck or coincidence.

It is planned.

For example, if you look at a given trainer they may have all their debut winners in three months of the season. Some have 50% of all debut winners in one month. It’s often the same when you consider the starting price (SP) of many winners for an individual horse trainer. Some never, ever, have a horse win at speculative priced odds. In fact, some have never had a winner bigger than 5/1. This isn’t because the sample is small. Far from it. If you assessed this data by a statistical criterion it would be detailed as significant. That is pretty much a fact.

These two points are just the tip of the iceberg.

You will see pattern after pattern which shows why some horses win and others lose.

‘But what does this tell us?’

It very much indicates that winning is intentional. Now, you may be thinking surely every trainer is trying to win all the time. This simply isn’t true. There are times when the trainer doesn’t believe their horse is going to win. They aren’t primed to win. While there are other times when they are confident they have a live chance. This doesn’t mean that every horse that goes to the course with confidence will win. Other trainers may have exactly the same idea.

But there is a habitual way trainers work from the horses they buy, how they are trained, the intricacies of this working and how this may reflect in the betting of a horse whether winner or loser.

Learn the habits of a horse trainer and you will be a lot closer to finding a winner.

Those creatures of habit!

Oliver Greenall

Formerly a successful amateur jockey, in the sphere of point-to-point racing and under rules, Oliver Greenall spent five years as assistant trainer to legendary North Yorkshire handler Mick Easterby before joining the training ranks in his own right. He launched his business, Oliver Greenall Racing, from his base at Stockton Hall Farm, near Malpas, Cheshire in 2015.

Greenall is a licensed trainer for Flat and National Hunt racing although, to date, his main focus has been on the latter. In that sphere, he enjoyed his most successful season so far in 2020/21, when he saddled 37 winners from 329 runners, at a strike rate of 11%, and amassed just over £303,000 in prize money. Indeed, in April, 2021, he collected his biggest single prize when the 4-year-old Herbiers, ridden by Paddy Brennan, won the bet365 Novices' Championship Final Handicap Hurdle at Sandown Park, worth £38,580 to the winner. By contrast, on the Flat, Greenall is yet to break into double figures in a season. His highest seasonal tally is six winners, which he achieved from 85 runners, at a strike rate of 7%, in 2017.

James Tate

 

A qualified veterinary surgeon, James Tate spent eight years in that capacity, two in mixed practice and six working for North Yorkshire trainer Mark Johnston. He subsequently moved to his current base, Jamesfield Place in Newmarket, and took out a training licence in his own right in October, 2011. Shortly afterwards, he became a private trainer for Rabbah Bloodstock, the company founded by Sheikh Mohammed to manage the racing interests of his friends and associates/

Tate saddled his first winner, Dark Falcon, for high-profile Emirati owner Saeed Manana at Southwell in December, 2011. After just one winners from five runners in his inaugural season, he increased his winning tally to 21 in 2012 and 62 in 2013. He would not surpass that seasonal total until 2019, when he enjoyed his most successful season so far, with 72 winners and over £926,000 in prize money. That year, he expanded his training operation with the purchase of Cavendish Stables, formerly occupied by Alan Bailey, in Newmarket.

By that stage Tate had already saddled his first Pattern race winner, Invincible Army, in the Group 3 Sirenia Stakes at Kempton in September, 2017. Invincible Army would also become the first Group 2 winner for the yard, in the Duke of York Stakes at York in May, 2019. All told, Invincible Army won six of his 19 races and over £371,000 in prize money. Tate has yet to saddle a Group 1 winner, but his career tally, so far, is over 400 winners and over £4 million in prize money in ten seasons, the last of which is far from over.