How to pick a winner? It’s all in the numbers
Think choosing today’s champion is pure luck? Think again, says Racing Editor Kevin Perry
Methodology
Finding the Grand National winner is always a hazardous business but, as with any quest, it helps if you know where to look.
The race, despite many changes in structure and to the course, remains unpredictable. After all, there have been winners at 100/1, 66/1, 33/1 (three times) and two 25-1 shots in the past 10 years alone.
However, history often delivers lessons that can be learnt. So, in an attempt to profile a ‘typical’ National champion, the past 10 winners were studied to see what insight they could provide. A larger sample size would be preferable, but the Grand National is an everevolving contest, and has changed significantly even in this relatively short period. To delve further back – when the race bore even less resemblance to the one which will be run at Aintree today – would almost surely skew results.
Six categories were identified as pertinent: win potential (determined by the ratio of chase wins to chase runs); class (determined by the amount of prize money won); jumping ability (the number of falls suffered in chase races); the ideal age; the freshness of a horse (determined by the number of runs in the current season), and race fitness (determined by the number of days since the horse last ran).
While this is a far from comprehensive list of form factors that can affect the outcome of a race, they seemed, despite the limited sample size, to have an effect that was greater than what could reasonably be expected.
Tests Win potential
The graph below displays the win ratio of the past 10 National winners. Rule The World last year broke the mould, having never won a chase before his Aintree success. He may well be unique as a Grand National winner in that respect. On the whole, having a ‘winning attitude’ matters, and given that six of the 10 horses enjoyed win ratios of 31 per cent or higher, that felt an appropriate level to judge the 2017 field.
Class
This table represents the total prize money that each of the 10 winners had gained prior to their National victory – the optimum figure used was £150,000, with six of the 10 winners having won that amount or more. Those winners had clearly already displayed significant ability and, crucially, had done so in high-calibre races.
Jumping ability
It stands to reason that the fewer the falls, the more likely a horse is to thrive over Aintree’s demanding jumps. This table shows the number of falls that each of the winners had recorded prior to their victory. Of the past 10 National winners, only Rule The World had never fallen, and the median was one.
Ideal age
This table shows the age of the past 10 winners, and the results clearly show that horses aged 9, 10 or 11 are favoured in a race that demands experience, but young enough legs to make it round unscathed. There has not been a winner aged seven or younger since 1940, and only three aged over 13 in the history of the race.
Freshness
In this category the illustration below displays the number of runs each winner had enjoyed prior to the National in their victorious season. With seven of the past 10 winners having run just three or four times, it appears freshness is
Race fitness
This shows the days each winner had been absent since its previous outing. Fitness is vital over such a demanding course, and only one winner in the last decade, Neptune Collonges, had been away from the track for more than six weeks. The average length of time since their last race was 33 days, so we have filtered the 2017 field by those who have raced in the past month.
Conclusion
Running each of this year’s entries through this profile yields the following horses that score a point in four or more categories, as shown in the table below.
The Last Samuri and Wonderful Charm both score a highly creditable five points. If we were to stretch the race fitness category to 35 days – reasonable, given that eight of the past 10 winners had run within that time frame – then The Last Samuri would get a perfect six.