We’ve added a new database table to Smartform. Over 2.29 million new rows of data and 48 columns, representing all daily runners since the daily* tables started in March 2008 (for both Flat and Jumps racing), with every runner mapped to the historic performance of the trainer responsible, with statistics aggregated for all the trainer’s runners over the previous 5 years to that run, the previous 42 days and the previous 21 days to the run, covering statistics for race type performance, race code performance, performance at distance, course, in handicaps, by age of horse and much more. Thus you can track short and long term performance for each trainer by a number of different metrics.

With Smartform, you can of course create your own statistics for historical trainer performance, and there are a practically infinite number of possibilities in addition to those included in the default table.  You can see some old blog posts showing how to do this on a daily basis, here and here. However we appreciate that many users do not want to program their own statistics, maintain the data, or would like a convenient baseline of performance statistics in addition to their own work that can be queried as a table at will. For all these use cases, daily_trainers_insights is now available and can be downloaded here. See the link at the last section of the page once you are logged in to the site as a subscriber, or sign up for access if you want to become a subscriber or rejoin.

All the statistics in these tables have been engineered from the data in the Smartform database to provide insight on top of the raw data, from standard win and place strike rates to more granular variables like average number of horses beaten according to distance, course, course and distance, age, handicap, race_type and race_code. You can see the full table definition and an explanation of all the variables here.

There’s more that you can do with the new table than we have space to cover here, but we’ll be writing more about different use cases for the new table over the coming weeks. To whet the appetite, here’s a graph we threw together for today’s racing that shows off 3 of the new statistics for short, medium and long term performance statistics by percentage of rivals beaten. So each horse in each race has 3 bars for the 21 day, 42 day and 5 year strike rate by race code.

Standout short term PRB statistics for the trainer of Panama City – which of course went on to win!

Unlike most of the other tables in Smartform, there is no “historic” version of this table, since all the historic statistics for each trainer are available for every day since March 2008, as it corresponds exactly to the daily_runners_beta and daily_runners table, which also run from March 2008.  However, this table contains fields that are calculated based on all previous races of the same type to give you an indication of the trainer’s historic performance and updates for every day.  For example, in a flat all weather handicap race today, you will be able to find statistics relating to the trainer’s previous 5 year strike rate for all runners in flat all weather handicaps.

Since it is updated for each day you have all the statistics you need to make an informed judgement about a trainer’s historic performance for runners under today’s conditions.  Similarly, you can go back in time to any previous day’s racing to find the statistics that were pertinent to the trainer’s historic performance at that time.

Each variable has been painstakingly tested to ensure that the correct previous information is provided on a “to date” basis for each runner at the time of entry in the historic database without taking into account the result of the upcoming run.  This means systems backtesting and modelling use cases are all valid with this dataset.

We hope you enjoy using daily_trainers_insights as much as we have enjoyed crafting it and writing about it. If you have questions about the new table, please do not hesitate to get in touch.