From Narrowing The Field
For any normal yard the loss of 60 horses from the champion owner would be a hammer blow. Willie Mullins, however, is no normal trainer!
A quick look at his stats from the weekend tells us the Gigginstown split has, so far, had very little effect on him…
4 winners from 5 runners | 80% S/R | +£5.69 BFLSP
Those wins came in two Grade two’s and two Grade three’s. He wasn’t scoofing up some low grade maidens, far from it, he was nailing the hottest races on offer over in Ireland.
You can’t stop the Willie juggernaut!
If we compare the Mullins weekend stats (above) to the Gigginstown weekend stats (below) we again see that it’s not Mullins that is going to suffer the most from the split…
2/12 | 17% S/R | -£3.19 BFLSP – Win & Place 6/12 | 50% S/R
OK it’s only one weekend of racing and the season is only just slipping out of it’s summer gear but I think it’s a fair enough indicator that this mass removal of horse flesh isn’t even a minor bump in the road for team Mullins, simply a small inconvenience that’s he’s already dealt with and moved on from.
To be honest I’m more interested in the impact it will have on us punters.
These are the stats for the Mullins/Gigginstown partnership since the start of 2011…
159/493 | 32% S/R | +£128.54 BFLSP – Win & Place 271/493 | 55% S/R
A hefty strike-rate and a healthy level stakes profit to boot.
Indeed there has only been one year (2013) in the past six where you couldn’t have made a profit backing them blind.
If we drill down into the Mullins/Gigginstown Bumper runners we see an even heftier strike-rate…
45/86 | 52% S/R | +£46.96 BFLSP – Win & Place 68/86 | 79% S/R
I don’t know about you guys but having an angle that was striking at above 50% taken away from you in the toughest races to fathom from a form perspective (bumpers) is pretty damn gutting!
If you look at the Gordon Elliott/Gigginstwon axis (Elliott has by far and away the largest number of the Gigginstown horses and looks likely to be the main beneficiary of the Mullins split) you get a very different picture…
191/956 | 20% S/R | -£61.86 BFLSP – Win & Place 397/956 | 42% S/R
A lower strike-rate and a fairly hefty level stakes loss on all runners.
Obviously this is a bit of a generic overview of things and is no way indicative of Elliott’s talents as a trainer, far from it, but from our point of view (the everyday punter) the Mullins/Gigginstown split does rob us of a profitable betting angle that didn’t look like slowing up any time soon.