All Weather LTO Winners

In Great Britain there are currently four all weather courses – Kempton, Lingfield, Wolverhampton and Southwell. Great Leighs had become the 5^th all weather course in April 2008, but due to financial problems it closed the following year with little or no hope of it being re-opened. This article focuses on all weather racing in this country looking specifically at last time out winners. I investigate the performance of last time out winners on the all weather and seeing whether there are significant differences in performance in terms of where they run next time. For example, do horses that win at Lingfield perform better next time if they run at Lingfield again, or if they switch to one of the other three aw tracks?

The data for this piece has been taken Jan 1^st 2006 to Dec 5^th 2010.

Before I delve into the stats, let us look at the configuration of the all weather courses and the relevant surfaces:

Kempton – is the only right handed all weather track. The surface is Polytrack;

Lingfield – is left handed and the surface is Polytrack;

Wolverhampton - is left handed and the surface is Polytrack;

Southwell – is left handed and the surface is fibresand.

Therefore, three of the courses race on Polytrack and other, Southwell races on fibresand. Polytrack was introduced to American race tracks in the 80s, whereas in Britain we had to wait until the turn of the millennium. Lingfield switched to a Polytrack surface in 2001 (from equitrack), Wolverhampton switched to Polytrack in 2004 (from fibresand), Kempton switched from turf racing to Polytrack in March 2006. Polytrack combines new and recycled products such as silica sand, rubber and synthetic fibres. Although three of the courses have Polytrack, it seems likely that they are not exactly the same composition. Hence, all three Polytrack courses do ‘ride’ slightly differently. That is perhaps why some horses seem to act better at one course rather than the other two.

The Southwell surface is fibresand which is made up of sand and polypropylene fibres, is much slower and rides much deeper than the three Polytrack surfaces. In addition there is usually significant kick-back at Southwell which horses behind often do not appreciate.

Let me now start the number crunching.

The rest of this article is Full Member Only  and goes on to explain in great detail how last time out winners fare on each of the all weather race courses.