Maurice Barnes

Maurice Barnes, 70, found fame as a National Hunt jockey when winning the Grand National on Rubstic in 1979. At the end of his riding career, he took out a combined training licence at his original base in Little Salkeld, near Penrith, Cumbria in 1989, before moving to his current home, Tarnside Stables in Farlam, near Brampton, to the east of Carlisle in 2000.

Barnes did not saddle a winner for his first three seasons as a trainer and did not reach double figures until 1993/94 so anyone tipping him may not have been his biggest fan over that time. However, that season he saddled 19 winners, his highest seasonal total so far, at a strike rate of 20% and won over £61,000 in prize money. He has not matched that strike rate since, but did reach double figures again in 1994/95 and every season between 2010/11 and 2019/20. Financially, Barnes enjoyed his most successful season in 2018/19, when he saddled 13 winners, at a strike rate of just 6%, but nonetheless amassed over £152,000 in prize money and was a firm fixture on racecards at that time.

Barnes still harbours ambitions to saddle a Listed or Graded winner, but so far has failed to do so. Nevertheless, he remains philosophical and, when interviewed in 2019, turned to the wisdom of the late Arthur Stephenson, a fellow Cumbrian trainer, insofar that 'little fish are sweet, so why bother about the big ones?' In October, 2020, Barnes and his wife, Anne, were forced to move into a touring caravan after a fire, caused by an electric fault, devastated their home.

Jedd O’Keeffe: Staying Power

John Eamon Declan Dunderdale O’Keefe, known universally as Jedd, is in the enviable position of training Sam Spinner, who is currently 5/1 favourite for the Stayers’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 2018. Bought for 12,000 guineas as a 3-year-old, the son of Black Sam Bellamy has won five of his seven races over hurdles including, most recently, the Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot, and amassed over £142,000 in total prize money. O’Keefe said recently, “It’s very exciting for all of us in a small stable to have a real star, and I’m really grateful it’s happening as it is.”

Of course, O’Keeffe is no stranger to the winners’ enclosure, having saddled 148 winners on the Flat and 36 winners over Jumps in his career to date but, with a few obvious exceptions, has lacked the firepower to make much of an impact at the major meetings. Sam Spinner aside, the highlights of his career, so far, were the victories of Shared Equity in the Coral Sprint Trophy at York in 2015, More Mischief in the Betfred Mobile/EBF Hoppings Stakes at Newcastle in June, 2017 and Lord Yeats in the Betfred Fred Archer Stakes at Newmarket the following month.

O’Keefe served an eight-year apprentice, as pupil assistant, travelling head lad and assistant trainer to Micky Hammond, before applying for a training licence in his own right. He moved into Highbeck Lodge and Stables, which is part of the Brecongill Estate, in Coverdale, in the extreme east of the Yorkshire Dales, North Yorkshire in 2000. At that time he had just three horses – the minimum number allowed by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) – but saddled his first winner, Route Sixty Six, in a novices’ hurdle at Musselburgh the following January. From small beginnings, by honest, old-fashioned hard work, O’Keefe gradually increased his number of horses in training, to an average of 20 or so over the last decade.

In 2011, O’Keefe underwent an intensive course of treatment for throat cancer and although he recovered, his business very nearly did not. He later recalled, “Though I’d finished the treatment, I was still very ill, and needed staff to cover. With the cost of all that, and the financial crisis, we felt we couldn’t go any further, and rang the owners to say we were giving up.” Thankfully, he did not and now, with Sam Spinner just one of 45 horses in his yard, can hopefully look forward to a happy, healthy and profitable future.

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!