Advent of Alpha Day 14: Games Horses Like to Play at Home

Day 13 was about the games horses like to play on race courses: racing prominently and staying ahead, or slowly pipping off other horses, with the jockey helping time the run so as to be ahead as they cross the line.

But what about at home in the stables? Or, more specifically, their home training regimen?

Do you know what training facilities the top 5 jump and flat trainers have at home? If you don’t, are you sure you understand what they’re sending to those events you are betting on?

There’s a lot of people who assume at the major festivals the top trainers will pick up the major races, because they have the best horses, because they attract the richest owners. Sure, that’s a factor.

But have you ever looked at what trainers in Newmarket have available to them? Or Epsom? Lambourn? Ever pulled up satellite imagery of a trainer’s yard, or the elevation data to see how steep those gallops are, and over what distance? If not, why not?

In 1975, a young trainer who had no reason to be considered a horse trainer started winning races, slowly. Nobody could really understand why. He figured out his training routines from scratch, and deviated from what other trainers were doing, but after 14 seasons, he became champion trainer - a title that he made another 15 times. This rise to greatness was so extraordinary that The Cook Report tried to do an undercover expose of him and his methods that was so savage, he later reported that he had considered suicide.

Martin Pipe (for it was he), did not have any sorcery or use any underhand tactics in his favour. He just tried something nobody else had before:

Interval training.

That was it. Interval training. And through his yard passed Gordon Elliot (as a jockey, but today, he’s a prominent trainer), Tom Dascombe and Venetia Williams. Guess what they do when training horses? Yeah, interval training.

Some trainers have a nice 5-6f uphill gallops which lends itself to sharp high-intensity interval trainin. Others would have to travel miles to get any elevation at all, so their training methods adjust accordingly.

Pipe’s insight was that horses that are fitter than their competitors are more likely to win.

When you read that sentence, just think about how a) it is total common sense, and b) despite that, nobody thought this was true before Martin Pipe.

Gathering data in this space is laborious - it’s only for those who really want to put “a tissue” together with more precision - but given how little anybody ever seems to think about this angle, it feels almost certain to yield results.

As an example, sometimes when I’m just looking at a race card, if I see a horse entered from a stables in Newmarket running against a horse trained out in the West Country, I will have an idea of some stuff to check if I want to price them a little more accurately. I have yet to automate it, but feel I should because it seems to yield.

And in other sports, preparation is key, just the same. I’ve been fortunate enough to get a private tour of some very nice football training facilities. I’ve also seen some awful ones. Do they all have the same kit? Yes. Are they equal? No. There’s a reason, for example, why some teams have set pieces that get to be practiced indoors, away from long lens cameras, and others don’t - and knowing that can give you a good idea of how corners and total goals markets could be related more than you think.