A
collective groan reverberated around Cheltenham Racecourse when
odds-on favourite Unowhatimeanharry was beaten
by 10/1 shot Nichols Canyon in
the Stayers’ Hurdle last year. The odd whoop perforated the
grumbling, but the vast majority of punters ripped up their tickets,
shook their heads and wore forlorn expressions. Harry Fry’s gelding
was on an eight-race winning streak and looked all but certain to
make it nine in a row, causing fans across the land to back him to
the hilt. But it simply was not to be in the big race and he could
only finish third, behind Nichols Canyon and 33/1 chance Lil
Rockerfeller.
It
was a classic example of a well-backed favourite letting the masses
down on the big stage, but that is by no means an isolated case.
Another example was the surprise defeat suffered by 2/9 favourite
Douvan in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. One unlucky
punter staked £500,000 on
the previously unbeaten superstar chaser to extend his winning
streak, but Douvan flopped. A post-race enquiry showed he was
suffering from a pelvic injury and he was declared lame.
There
are countless examples of this sort of thing happening, from
low-profile races all the way up to the Cheltenham Festival, the most
important event in the National Hunt calendar. It is part and parcel
of betting on horse racing and what makes it so exciting. After all,
it would never work if the favourite won every time. But just how
successful are the favourites and how risky is it to keep backing
them to win?
In
the 2017 Cheltenham Festival, only six out of 28 favourites won their
races. Given the short odds available on favourites, you would have
incurred a hefty loss had you backed the bookmakers’ frontrunner
each time. The previous year, 10 favourites were victorious, but
several were really low-priced – Douvan won at 1/4, Vroum Vroum Mag
at 4/6, Limini at 8/11, Vautour and Thistlecrack at evens – so you
would still have been down overall if you had consistently backed the
favourite to win.
The
Cheltenham Festival is the most prestigious meeting of the year in
the UK and it is packed full of Grade 1 races that carry massive
prize purses. That attracts the all the leading trainers and they all
put forward their very best stars in a bid for the ultimate glory. It
makes for thrilling races, and intrigue abounds for punters poring
over the form in these open contests with broad fields, but that
makes it very difficult to select a winner, so many people default to
the favourite. But because the races are so competitive, the
favourite is often beaten by a classy rival. In the 2015 Cheltenham
Festival, only seven favourites landed, and many were odds-on. In
2014, six favourites out of 28 won. Entire days at the March Festival
have gone by in recent years where not a single favourite won a race.
When
a favourite flops, many punters accuse the bookmakers of getting it
wrong. If the favourite wins, the bookmakers are said to have got it
right. But this is an incorrect way of looking at it. Bookmakers do
not put out odds on a horse race to give punters an idea of what the
result will be. They do it to make a profit. If the favourite won
every race, they would go out of business. They make their money from
an unheralded horse like Nichols Canyon beating a heavily fancied
horse like Unowhatimeanharry and their odds are designed to tempt
customers one way or another.
Bookmakers
are also reactive to the betting patterns of the public. If one horse
is heavily backed, they drop the price on it and offer longer, more
attractive odds on its rivals to redress the balance and cover their
backs. This is not a case of the bookmaker getting it right or wrong,
but simply a reflection of a business trying to make a profit. It is
up to the punter to beat them at their own game, and that typically
involves going against the grain.
Favourites
only win 30% of the time. For almost any horse racing meeting, and
this is especially true at a big one like the Cheltenham Festival, in
either fixed-odds betting and horse
racing spread betting,
the way to make a profit is to go against the public and find the
longer shots that are overlooked. Hunt out the horse that will enjoy
the going, or the one that might relish a step up or down in trip, or
one that lost on their return from a long layoff but showed enough
promise to improve next time out. By all means back some favourites,
but you need to be selective about which ones you opt for because
backing them all is a sure fire way to lose money.