Melbourne’s best trainers
June 18th, 2010
Who are the premier trainers in Australia and how do you assess the best of the best?
Using unfiltered statistics such as number of wins (in isolation) is not a true indication of a trainer’s ability. To counter that, we have compiled what we believe to be a fair statistical analysis of the premiership leading trainers this racing season and for a better measure of success we have only looked at horses starting at 5/1 or less. The reason we have done this is because it’s unfair to gauge a trainer’s performance on horses that are unsuited due to the track condition, distance, stage of preparation or any other factor. So we have concentrated on horses who were in the market and therefore expected to perform well.
Another key statistic we looked at was the ability of a trainer to maintain a horse’s winning performance. That is being able to back a horse up from a win and being able to win again next start.
Admittedly there are all sorts of ways to use statistics but we believe these measures to be a strong guide to the trainers’ relative success. We do acknowledge that there are other parameters which could be used and that may show differing results. Some trainers who don’t have access to as many owners/horses may have figures superior to the leading premiership trainers we have analysed here and we will certainly look at some of those lower profile trainers in coming weeks.
There were some very interesting points to note from this analysis:
Mark Kavanagh – very dominant figures, even surpassing Sydney’s best trainer Gai Waterhouse.
Peter Moody – outstanding all-round performance.
Mick Price – also produced good figures but interestingly his record in Black Type races was poor. That may be attributed to stock as opposed to training ability.
Danny O’Brien – low strike-rate first up.
Mike Moroney – 7% or less first up strike-rate year after year.
Tony Noonan – Country and Provincial figures were vastly superior to his Metropolitan results. Also the performance of his last start winners was below par.
David Hayes – poor overall record again. Less than 7 % winners at Caulfield and less again last year.
Robbie Grifffiths – poor figures/strikerate backing up last start winners.
We appreciate your feedback so go ahead and post a comment now.You can also take a look at our earlier analysis of Sydney’s best trainers.
Ed Kennett
