Wednesday, 29th January 2020
Back at the end of the summer I read somewhere that Franke Dettori had been crowned the Longines World’s Best Jockey for an unprecedented third time at the Hong Kong International Races gala dinner....
Such occasions are of no interest to me. If it involves the great and the good strapping on dinner suits and dickie bows, I’m not interested....
As such, I’d never paid much attention to the award before. Or what it meant. Or how it was that Frankie Dettori (or whoever) got to win it....
But this time, for whatever reason, my interest was sufficiently piqued to dig a bit deeper. Just out of curiosity....
It turns out that the Longines World’s Best Jockey award works like this....
You take the world’s 100 best and biggest G1 races – established for the year by the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings Committee....
And then you award jockeys points for top 3 finishes in those nominated races....
If a jockey wins one of the races, he gets awarded 12-points. If he finishes 2nd in one, he gets awarded 6-points. If he finishes 3rd, he is awarded 4-points....
At the end of the cycle, the jockey with the most points is crowned champ. Last year Dettori won the award at a canter. His total points amounted to 102 – thanks in part to wins in seven of the nominated G1 races....
He won the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the Ascot Gold Cup, the Grand Prix de Saintâ€Cloud, the Eclipse, the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Sussex Stakes, the St Leger Stakes, and the British Champions Fillies & Mares Stakes....
Next best in the rankings for the 2019 season were Zac Purton and Hugh Bowman with 88-points and 86-points respectively....
All this is by-the-by – and not much use to a punter like me whose primary attention is always focused on the British handicaps....
But then I got to wondering....
I could adopt the Longines methodology and apply it to the group of races that interest me (the big handicaps worth more than £25k to the winner)....
That way I would get a set of jockey rankings that stripped out all the ‘noise’ of races that don’t fall into that category....
And I would have at my disposal some unique data that might tell me something about the jockeys making most impact and having most effect in that specific sphere....
Which is useful because – as I pointed out yesterday – these races are competitive and contested by closely-matched horses....
Any jockey capable of being effective, making an impact and proving a competitive advantage in that sphere is well-worth identifying and quantifying....
I’ve been messing around with the idea ever since – looking at various things from various angles....
And it is the Longines methodology that enabled me to produce the table I showed you yesterday – focused specifically on jockey records in the chase and handicap hurdles worth £25k to winning connections that have been run in Britain since 1st September 2019....
I include that table again below – this time with the points applied as per the Longines methodology (12-points for a win, 6-points for a 2nd and 4-points for a 3rd-place finish)....
Right now, if we take the simple weight of points as our guiding light, Harry Skelton is the King of the Castle. He’s going better in these races than all his contemporaries in the weighing room. He’s getting more wins and more places in these races than all the rest – thus earning more points and a high-ranking on the table....
But, as with most things in racing, nothing is entirely straightforward. Nothing can be (or should be) taken completely at face value....
Numbers are numbers. Nothing more. They are a starting point rather than an end in and of themselves – and we need to think around these numbers and dig a little deeper to extrapolate the real gold nuggets of insight that might help us most in the marketplace....
With Harry Skelton, the volume of points cannot be argued with. The performances are in the book. But there are issues arising....
Every single point Harry Skelton has earned in the nominated races has been earned when riding a horse trained by his brother Dan Skelton....
Is this a case of Harry Skelton making an impact? Or is Dan Skelton really the hero of this story – providing a stream of quality rides that regularly give brother Harry great chances of coming out on top? Perhaps, as it often turns out to be, it is a little of both....
All we can say for sure, is that the pair are going great guns this season in the division of races that this column focuses on. The horses they combine on are ones we ignore and/or oppose at our peril....
Another issue to think about here is that Harry Skelton has had more opportunities to score points than the guys behind him in the table....
This simply must be taken into consideration. Skelton’s had 21 qualifying rides this term. That’s more than any other rider in our table (we are only looking at the top end of the table) excepting Harry Cobden....
If you get more rides, you get more chances to earn points. And if you get more chances to earn points, you’re at an advantage in the competition over guys whose opportunities are fewer....
In other words, the playing field isn’t level. The table is skewed....
A better way to look at things might be to apply another measure – points earned per ride (PpR) – and rank the riders on that basis....
When we do this, the numbers tell us something completely different. You can see it expressed in the table below....
Now it is 5lb claimer Ben Jones who steps forward into the bright lights – and rightly so....
He’s only had 5 qualifying rides all season. But he’s won on two of those, and he’s finished 2nd and 3rd on two of the other rides....
And if you dig a bit deeper into the record you will find that he has been doing it for more than just one yard. His winners were ridden for Emma Lavelle and Philip Hobbs. He placed on another for Hobbs and one more for Warren Greatrex....
To date this term, it’s been a case of wherever Ben Jones goes to ride in one of our races, he gets the job done. He’s proving more effective than any other rider in our sphere of races. His claim is being put to good use....
And perhaps that is the primary conclusion we can take away from our numbers at this point. Ben Jones is dangerous and his rides (in our nominated races) are well worth noting and looking at closely....
So far, we’ve only scratched the surface of this methodology, where we might go with it and what we might learn....
And there is so much scope for creativity, development and fine-tuning....
Going forward I intend to do much more work in this area – and related areas. I think it will benefit us greatly and it will lead to edges on the competition in the marketplace – which is what it is all about....
Early next week, we’ll get back to this subject and have a look at something even more specific that I think you’ll find both informative and useful....
Tomorrow, we’ll change the pace and get onto something else I want to get covered – something unrelated but nonetheless potentially beneficial. So be sure to check in....
That’s all from me for now....
Until next time. Stay tuned.
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