Hot on the heels of our post about the new daily trainers insights variables available to Smartform users, we’re pleased to announce the addition of a new corresponding table for jockeys: daily_jockeys_insights.

You can view the new schema and Smartform users can download all the data (all 2.3 million new rows) following the instructions under “Downloading the data” here.

The new table follows the format and category types designed for daily_trainers_insights, but instead curating statistics for all daily races and runners since March 2008 according to jockey performance. All the details are in the schemas, and the previous blog article on trainer_insights holds true but this time for the riders. Rather than restate the high level details in this blog post, we will instead show what it is possible to achieve using one of the unique fields in the table.

In this example, presented below, we joined the daily_jockeys_insights table to the daily_runners_insights table for all yesterday’s racing at Wolverhampton, removing non-runners, and focussed on the percentage rivals beaten (PRB) statistics for each jockey riding in each race, but over the past 5 years using the values automatically generated in the new table. The particular PRB statistic we used comes with a twist, however, in that it considers the performance of each jockey according to the handicap status in the race in which the jockey is competing. In other words, each PRB figure is applied to the jockey’s performance in handicaps or non-handicaps – and the 5 year PRB figure for all the jockeys rides up to but not including the race is presented – according to the handicap status of the current race in question. Note that each comparison, as presented below, can be generated prior to racing, and you can also interrogate previous day’s statistics by entering the relevant meeting date. We then wrote a graphics script to plot the runners in each race, showing each jockey below the runner name, and highlighting the runner and jockey in bold which has the highest PRB statistic within the context of the race. The red dashed line shows the level of the PRB for the highest rated jockey within each race. Below are the results.

Finally, let’s look at the results for each race by querying Smartform on the highlighted runners and jockeys above.

Given we are using just one variable from the new table, these are, we hope you will agree, interesting results: 2 well priced winners, with 4 placed horses also at interesting prices, and 3 losers.

What is particularly interesting about using the “by handicap status” condition is that whilst you do get some repeats (as with Richard Kingscote and Kaiya Fraser, each qualifying in 2 races, above), one jockey that has good statistics does not dominate the whole meeting’s statistics. This can happen with (for example) course statistics by jockey. Where you do want to highlight “the best” jockey at a course, this also has its uses, and this too is available in the new table, along with 40+ other variables. Enjoy!

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.