1 to avoid at Wolverhampton (Dunstall Park)

We are now 97 races in to the new Tapeta surfaced at Wolverhampton and although a snap-shot at such an early point may appear premature, being somewhat disappointed with the results to-date, I thought a cursory trend analysis might throw up some interesting angles.

My first port of call was to look at where the winners were coming from:

There is little to gleam from the results beyond the growing increase in those horses that are re-appearing on Tapeta (WOLVt) and the obvious decrease in those that appear last on the old surface (WOLV). The transition from Lingfield Park to Tapeta looks at this stage more favourable than Kempton Park. The blank at the bottom of the list signifies those horse that have not previously raced on an artificial surface.

The statistics regarding the draw are as follow with the distances displayed as decimal parts of a mile .64 = 5f 20yds, 0.75 = 5f 216yds etc:

Draw 1 appears to be the coffin box with only 3 wins from 97 races with middle boxes (particularly 4, 6 and 7) looking particularly favourable. What appears to be more noticeable are the successes of the higher draws in larger fields. More surprising is that 50% of the successes came over the minimum trip (0.64) of 5f.

Broken down by trip and draw:

At this stage it is hard to make a case for any distinct draw bias other than to state that the longer the trip, the more any potential bias is being negated. I would suggest that the two wins from stall 2 over 2 miles is coincidence rather than framing a bias. If Fridays meeting is a sign of things to come, we can look forward to a bias free Wolverhampton with stalls 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 all having a success and further damning of stall 1 which I will be keen to avoid at present. Saturday’s meeting looked decidedly different with 2, 7, 8, 7, 2, 7, 7, 4 providing the winners.

From a time perspective, it won’t be until we have some 4yo+ times that we can tightened up the standards and get a better comparison, but we are currently recording time faster than the old standard. This is partly due to the better quality of races during this time of year and no doubt the larger and more competitive fields are playing a part.