With the National Hunt season gaining pace into the autumn, Andrew Mount gives us his first Myth busters focusing on the jumps. He looks into Nigel Twiston-Davies’ early season record, and whether you should be following his runners.
Certain jumps trainers are associated with success at certain times of the year and regular GG readers will be familiar with my ‘back Venetia Williams handicap chasers in November’ system which I first wheeled out in the now defunct weekly publication Raceform Update more years ago than I care to remember. Charlie Longsdon in September is another betting system that I’ve been following for many years – this angle has produced 67 winners from 274 bets (24.5% strike-rate) for a profit of £62.13 to a £1 level stake at SP (+22.7% on turnover) – and, next month, we’re in Nigel Twiston-Davies territory. His yard has a reputation for coming to hand in October before the bigger trainers like Paul Nicholls and Nicky Hendeson have got into full swing. I’m going to use this article to closely examine the yard’s October runners over the past 20 years and to check whether this is a profitable betting system.
Since 2004, backing Nigel Twiston-Davies’ runners blind in October would have found 259 winners from 1271 bets (20.4% strike-rate) for a profit of £110.21 to a £1 level stake at SP (+8.7% on turnover). Supporting the same horses at Betfair SP would have returned a profit of £348.70 after 2% commission (+27.4%).
This looks great on paper and suggests that we should start backing the yard’s runners blind from next week but let’s break down the above 1271 bets by year…
…the P/L (profit and loss) in recent years has not been so impressive, with five losing years out of the last seven. I’m inclined to draw a line through 2020 because of COVID interrupting training regimes but even by taking years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023 as a group there was still an overall loss at SP…
That said, the WAX score (winners against expected winners) was positive (+7.64) and we would have made profit at Betfair SP.
Returning to the 20-year figures and splitting them by race type gives the following results…
…the chasers and hurdlers showed a good profit but the runners in National Hunt Flat races (NHF) returned a big loss. His Flat runners – turf and all-weather – were also in negative equity.
The chasers/hurdlers who had been off the track for 150 days or longer since their latest start produced healthy returns…
Those hurdlers making their debut under rules (some may have run in point-to-point company previously) also outperformed market expectations…
One other interesting angle with Twiston-Davies’ October runners is jockeys claiming an allowance. Had we only backed those chase/hurdle runners whose jockey was claiming at least 3lb we’d have made a huge profit of £121.99 (+40.4%) at SP in the study period…
There’s also an argument for siding with the yard from now on – last year they had four consecutive winners from 27th-29th September (9-4, 5-1, 5-4 and 10-1), while they’ve already saddled four winners from 12 runners (+£4.32).
To summarise
Back Nigel Twiston-Davies chasers/hurdlers from now until the end of October.
Give preference to those ridden by jockeys claiming at least 3lb.
Give preference to those who were returning from a break of at least 150 days and hurdlers who were making their rules debuts.
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