We have a plethora of stats these days for horse racing – for example the Racing Post on line allows you to examine trainers, jockeys, sires and owners in some depth. The more professional punter will probably use some kind of racing database – be it Raceform Interactive, Proform, Racing systems builder or so on. These pieces of software allow you to analyse years of data at the touch of a button.

However, despite all the information, I believe too many of us still have “fixed” ideas about our selection process and the aim of this article is to make you think a little bit more before you make your selections. There are 10 useful facts which I hope can help you improve your long term betting.

One stat worth appreciating in terms of a useful comparison is thus – using a random method of selection (eg. a pin!!) your strike rate would be just over 9%, with losses equating to 28%. In other words, for every 100 points invested, your returns would be 72. Ok ……….. onto the facts:

1. The sex of a horse makes a difference when carrying a penalty in races of 1 mile or less. Colts and geldings have a far superior record to fillies and mares.

Colts / geldings when carrying a penalty - 585 wins from 3046 runners. This equates to a strike rate of 19.2% for a small loss of 2.5%.

Fillies / mares when carrying a penalty - 182 wins from 1122 runners. This equates to a strike rate of 16.2% for a much bigger loss of 19.8%.

The strike rate of is only 3% greater for colts and geldings, but the loss is considerably less compared with fillies and mares.

Key point – the betting market still does not take enough notice about the sex of a horse in a race. Males do outperform their female counterparts at all levels.

There are a further nine informative cold hard racing facts in the full article.

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