Horse Stride & Course Confirmation 4

Are female horses really smaller than male horses and do larger horses (fewer strides per second) really carry weight better than smaller horses. If they do then identifying them early will pinpoint horse with the ability handle weight rises more efficiently. It would also seem that a modification on average stride lengths per distance will be needed. At the moment there is only AW racing and although Southwell and its more demanding surface presents a spanner in the works, grass racing and its different goings will prove problematic unless I allow for them. You cannot compare a horses strides per second on heavy ground with a stride per second average for all horses across all grounds.

Continuation of this thread on horse size and stride data will continue on the SmarterSig email forum at

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SmarterSig/info

Horse Stride & Course Confirmation 3

A good big un will always beat a good little un. A commonly used phrase but is there any truth in it when it comes to horse racing ?. Of course as punters we are not interested in whether a big un will beat a little un, we are interested in whether the public’s perception of horse size presents any betting possibilities. If big horse do beat small horses more than they should but the public overbet them to such an extent that smaller horses go off at too large a price then I am with the small horses even if they win less frequently. The one major overall edge we have is that the crowd is looking for winners whilst we are looking for profit.

The ATR stride data offers an opportunity to explore this question in a way that was not possible previously. Stride patterns will probably be fairly indicative of horse size and we can use this to check the performance of big v small.

The data has only been made public since the last month or so of 2017 so checking going forward has a long way to go before meaningful samples can be compiled, but we can look back at overall ROI% of horses according to size which may offer some clues. First of all I have only so far been logging horses who have been placed in a race in order to get an accurate handle on stride length and frequency. By definition these horses are successful animals and will unsurprisingly come out retrospectively to be profitable animals overall.

First of all checking the PL of ‘large’ horses or at least below one standard deviation on stride length per second revealed that historically they have had collectively 1848 runs and to BFSP logged a profit of +359 points. In other words if we could go back in a time machine and bet them we would have made a ROI% of 19.4% before comm’.

By contrast small animals (quicker stride patterns) have run 2792 times and logged a pre comm profit of +615 returning +22%

It would seem therefore that small horses from a betting perspective have done slightly better historically than larger horses when examining from the poll of proven horses. The real acid test will be going forward but this will take some time and how and where these two horse types are best bet will be the intruiging question.

FOOTNOTE- The lack of feedback, I have to admit is making me wonder whether I am wasting my time blogging. If you have any comments pro or con then please feel free.

Horse Stride & Course Confirmation 2

Some further thoughts on this subject after a few hours this morning examining the data. Looking at 850 horses that have run in 2018 and registered a stride length/stride per second reading and finished placed, I first decided to examine stride length. Looking at the peak stride length per distance revealed the following averages

5f = 24.559375feet
6f = 24.54989691
7f = 24.28295238
8f = 24.31840336
9f = 24.04942857
10f = 24.52785714
11f = 23.91888889
12f = 24.42592593

Not a huge difference across distances so I decided to use the standard deviation of all the data rather than by distance so as to isolate longer striding horses. Those with a stride greater than one STD could be catagorised as long striders. I immediately ran into a problem here. The first on my list of long striders was a horse called Kelly’s Dino.

http://www.attheraces.com/form/horse/Kelly’s-Dino/FR/2881764

He had a peak stride length of 27.4 but his other two registered runs were much lower. Given that I had only gathered data on the latest run, assuming that with placed horses the peak stride length would not vary too much, it was clear that if you changed the order of these runs gathering the latest run would not have logged Kelly’s Dino as long striding. He clearly is as closer examination of each race shows that his PSL is greater than the other placed horses in the races. Other factors are clearly at play here, perhaps going, wind, pace etc. This immediately prompts a further thought, can this data be used to more accurately state the going, but lets park that for now.

The above problem might be solved by taking averages or examining the full placed horses in a race but what if they are all long striding ?, it is likely then that taking relative readings would mean none of the long striding placed horses would be picked up.

I decided to turn to stride per second. This seemed to not suffer from the same problem, Kellys Dino’s strides per second seemed fairly consistent even if his peak stride lengths varied. The first trap you can easily fall into as you get buried into a train line of thinking is that now we are looking at SPS we need to remember that we are looking for horses with less than not greater than one STDEV below the average. Long striding horses make fewer strides per second. I forgot this initially and was a little disappointed when the first couple of ‘big’ horses I looked at had won at Epsom and Newmarket, both undulating tracks.

The other factor with SPS is that it is probably wise to calculate STDEV’s per distance as the averages vary much more than stride length. With these figures now done for 5f horses I check a few to see if there was any obvious patterns before doing more automated and fuller analysis. Manual checks can often highlight logical errors as seen above.

The first highlighted horse was Born for Prosecco

http://www.attheraces.com/form/horse/Born-For-Prosecco/IRE/3000895

Having not won yet it may be difficult to draw conclusions but if this kind of analysis was to prove fruitful he could be the ideal type to keep an eye on as he is fairly unexposed.

The second horse is Razin Hill

http://www.attheraces.com/form/horse/Razin’-Hell/GB/2791432

All his 8 wins bar 1 have come at Southwell, it may be that long striding horses do well at Southwell but this is a very tentative suggestion at the moment.

You may want to take a look at a few yourself so I will list a couple below. I also welcome all constructive comments and if you would like to see more on this topic then leave a comment or a like.

Atletico (IRE)
Tommy G
Jack The Truth (IRE)
Temple Road (IRE)

Horse Stride Length & Course Confirmation 1

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Horse Stride Length

ATR have recently started publishing stride length data in their results for certain courses. This is in addition to the pace data they are publishing and the potential for analysing the various factors could prove very illuminating and perhaps profitable. The demo result cited by ATR shown by clicking below and then clicking the stride data tab shows the various stride data for each runner.

My immediate thought was whether stride data and its ability to show long or shorter striding animals might be a clue to suitabilty to various courses and there is a hint in this one race that it might be the case.

http://www.attheraces.com/racecard/Lingfield/13-January-2018/1400/

The runner up Surry Hope has a peak stride length of 28.3 which is higher than the 1st placed or the 3rd placed horse suggesting that he may be a long striding animal. If this is the case he may be better suited by a flat or uphill track rather than Lingfield’s downhill undulating track. When I check his back form this seemed to hold out.

http://www.attheraces.com/form-popup/horse/Surrey-Hope/2944257?raceid=1024940

He has been beaten twice at Lingfield and also at undulating Newmarket when fancied in all races but has won at uphills Sandown and flat Kempton.

A sample of one for sure but certainly worthy of further investigation and data gathering.