| By :
David Duffield
Barriers were the focus of last week’s installment of our ‘Fact or Fiction’ series and many readers were surprised at the evenness of winning percentages across all barrier positions and the profitability of outside draws:
Barriers 1-4 = 16% loss on turnover
Barriers 5-8 = 14% LOT
Barriers 9-12 = 6% LOT
Barriers 13-16 = 1% LOT The extreme outside barrier outperformed barrier one by a substantial amount across all field sizes. This fact did come as a surprise to many as it turns the old ‘bad barrier’ saying on it’s head because the well drawn horses are, as a rule, overbet by the punting public and the value lies in backing horses from outside barriers. I received a number of emails following last week’s article and today will cover a follow-up topic raised by a few readers – the distance of the race and whether this affects the importance of barriers. Conventional punting wisdom would say that barriers are more important in sprints than in staying events, but does that hold true when we look at the statistics from the last three years? Let’s take a look at the inside three draws compared to the outside three in medium sized fields (10-12 runners) from 2006 to 2008. Again we’ll focus on the first five horses in the market to prevent any longshots skewing the results. Barriers 1-3 lost 16% on turnover across all distances and the worst performing distance range was under 1200m at -19%. Those are numbers that will send you to the poor house in no time. In contrast the best performing distance range for the inside three barriers was 2400m+ which showed a loss of just 5%. Once again these results fly in the face of what most punters would expect as the stats show that you’re better off backing inside barriers in staying races rather than sprints. Now let’s consider the results of the outside barriers in these same races. Barriers 10-12 lost 6% on turnover across all distances and the worst performing distance range was 2000m+ at -14%. Surprisingly to many, the best performing distance range for outside barriers is actually the sprint distances with races under 1200m losing just 4% on turnover. Another intriguing set of figures I think, as it’s quite clear that because so many punters avoid horses drawn out wide over sprint distances, these horses actually represent good value as a group. Although once again I would add the disclaimer that this is a general rule and you should still analyse each race on an individual basis because the track, jockey, weight, race pace, horse’s racing pattern and recent form are just a few of the other factors that also need to be considered before you place your bet.
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