From The Guardian...
Among the many features on the BHA's vastly improved website is a blog section, where we heard this week from their latest recruit. Mark Blackman, who used to do the ante-post tipping in the Racing Post, has signed up to assist in the never-ending fight against corruption and explains his role here.
The bit that jumped out at me comes towards the end, where he says he's "put the wheels in motion to secure some racing analysis software". This will allow him to answer questions like these: "Which trainer-jockey combinations are most susceptible to being slowly away? Which ones are most frequently turned over at odds-on, or miss out on a place when starting at cramped odds? Which riders are unseated more often than others?"
I'm delighted that Blackman is doing this kind of thing, though it's a bit surprising that the BHA hasn't been using software to tell them things like this before now. Raceform Interactive is just one of the products they could have been using for years.
Some of these stats may help in the fight against corruption but one that will make no contribution whatever is the one about which riders are unseated more often than others. It is just possible that there might be the odd bent jockey out there who thinks the best way to throw a race is to topple out of the saddle in mid-jump, but mostly you'd imagine that someone that self-serving would find a way to lose without risking a trip to the hospital.
But 'unseated' stats are of great interest to those of us who follow the sport, because they give us an insight into the relative abilities of jockeys. We think we know which are most easily unseated but there is nowhere you can go to look at the actual numbers. I get very jealous of sports such as American football, whose ruling body has constantly updated stats on all players on its website, so you can find out very quickly what a guy is good at and what he does less well.
You can get a lot of stats about the circumstances in which a particular jockey has won races, but anything to do with misfortune (fell, unseated, refused, pulled up) is just not available and it should be. If a jockey is more likely to put his horse on the floor at Cheltenham than drive it to victory, we should know that.
As one small step in that direction, I've answered Blackman's question about which jockeys get unseated most. Even so, I just haven't the time to hand-crank the numbers for all jump jockeys. I've looked at the 20 who have ridden most winners this season and added in three others whose profile demands it – Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty and Sam Thomas.
I've counted hurdle and chase races in Britain over the three years to the end of last month and put the jockeys in order by percentage of rides that end with 'unseated rider'. It would hardly be fair to rank them simply by number of unseateds because some of these have had a lot more rides than the others. Sure, Tony McCoy has been unseated 27 times to Denis O'Regan's 13, but then he's had more than twice as many rides.
As you'd expect from the best jockeys, none of them get unseated very often – the worst was still below 3% – and the differences between their numbers seem small. Then again, the jockey at the top of the table has come adrift of his mount more than seven times as often as the one at the bottom.
By printing these stats, I'm not trying to embarrass anyone and none of these riders have anything to be embarrassed about. But, as we saw with Sam Thomas last season, jockeys can sometimes be judged harshly if they endure a run of misfortune in televised races. Instead of guessing, we may as well find out the facts. So here, in order, are the jockeys who have been unseated most over the past three years.
1 Nick Scholfield 2.9%
A young, inexperienced and improving rider, Scholfield became first jockey to Andy Turnell in the spring after Mark Grant was forced out by dissatisfied owners. He is currently eighth in the jockeys' table on a very healthy strike-rate of 19% and most of his winners have come for other yards, including Paul Nicholls, for whom he rode as a conditional. When Turnell starts fielding his good horses, Scholfield could be a prolific winner. Still, 13 unseateds from 453 rides isn't very clever – he would still be top of this list if he had fallen off only 10 of those. But it seems he's getting better at staying in the plate, having been unseated just three times this year. Last year, he came off six times, including a tumble from Armaturk at Bangor's second-last fence, when he was 30 lengths clear on a 1-3 shot.
2 Christian Williams 2.1%
Three years after he suffered a fall that put him in intensive care for 10 days and could easily have ended his career, it seems petty to be totting up Williams' unseateds. Still, for those who want to know, he's come off 20 times from 950 rides. In his 11th year with a licence, Williams is unlikely to be getting any better and, if you back his mounts, you may just have to accept a slightly higher risk of unseating than you'd get from another top rider. And you might like to keep your fingers crossed until after the first fence, where he has fallen off three times this year.
3 Rhys Flint 2.1%
Still a teenager, Flint shows immense promise and a position this high in the table is likely to prove unfair in the long term. He's had many fewer rides than other names in this list and if he'd had four unseateds, instead of six, he'd be in mid-table. Unforgiving backers of Lake Wakatipu may remember Flint going out the side-door at the second-last at Aintree this summer, when the pair were four lengths clear and seemingly destined for victory. In fairness, the horse had jinked right and then left, which would have had most riders in trouble.
4 Daryl Jacob 2.1%
The winner of three Grade Ones in Ireland on The Listener, before losing the ride to Andrew McNamara, Jacob has racked up 22 unseateds from 1,052 rides. Aside from Sam Thomas (below), the only others to rack up that many tumbles have been Graham Lee and Tony McCoy, who each had a lot more rides – 700 more in Lee's case, 1,200 more for McCoy. There have been some excuses, with some horses getting hampered or jumping poorly, but those things happen to everyone and it could be argued that a jockey may be to blame in some cases if a horse does not jump well. Those who were on Coolers Quest at Wincanton in October 2007 will be interested to see Jacob near the top of this list – the pair were 20 lengths clear before parting company at the third-last.
5 Sam Thomas 1.9%
As second jockey to Paul Nicholls, Thomas has been lucky enough to win some very high-profile races, including the Gold Cup on Denman, but it all came apart last autumn when he was deputising for the injured Ruby Walsh. On consecutive weekends, he came off Kauto Star in the Betfair Chase and Big Buck's in the Hennessy, both times at the final fence.
When he hit the deck twice more on the following Monday at Folkestone, there was widespread speculation about his level of confidence and he was denied the ride on Master Minded in the Tingle Creek. At the time, I wrote that people were over-reacting to a high-profile run of misfortune and used faller stats to show that Thomas's record was one of the best among leading riders. But it would seem that such is not the case when it comes to being unseated, a fate Thomas has suffered 27 times from 1,422 mounts, nine of which came during a two-month span at the end of last year.
Interestingly, he has only come off twice more since New Year's Day, so maybe he did have a bad run that is now behind him. But something isn't right in Thomas's world – his strike-rate of 8% this season is half what he's been achieving over the previous three years.
Here's the rest of the list. Geraghty's record is deeply impressive, even allowing for the fact that he's had fewer rides than most of the others. In the entire three-year period, he was never unseated at an obstacle, but still has a score of one, thanks to Finger Onthe Pulse stumbling on the bend and ditching him in the 2007 Coral Cup.
Oliver Greenall 1.7%
Aidan Coleman 1.7%
Ruby Walsh 1.7%
Brian Hughes 1.6%
Denis O'Regan 1.3%
Timmy Murphy 1.3%
Graham Lee 1.3%
Noel Fehily 1.2%
Tony McCoy 1.2%
Paul Moloney 1.2%
Jason Maguire 1.2%
Paddy Brennan 1.1%
Tom Scudamore 1.1%
Dean Coleman 1%
Robert Thornton 1%
Richard Johnson 0.9%
Seamus Durack 0.9%
Barry Geraghty 0.4%
Among the many features on the BHA's vastly improved website is a blog section, where we heard this week from their latest recruit. Mark Blackman, who used to do the ante-post tipping in the Racing Post, has signed up to assist in the never-ending fight against corruption and explains his role here.
The bit that jumped out at me comes towards the end, where he says he's "put the wheels in motion to secure some racing analysis software". This will allow him to answer questions like these: "Which trainer-jockey combinations are most susceptible to being slowly away? Which ones are most frequently turned over at odds-on, or miss out on a place when starting at cramped odds? Which riders are unseated more often than others?"
I'm delighted that Blackman is doing this kind of thing, though it's a bit surprising that the BHA hasn't been using software to tell them things like this before now. Raceform Interactive is just one of the products they could have been using for years.
Some of these stats may help in the fight against corruption but one that will make no contribution whatever is the one about which riders are unseated more often than others. It is just possible that there might be the odd bent jockey out there who thinks the best way to throw a race is to topple out of the saddle in mid-jump, but mostly you'd imagine that someone that self-serving would find a way to lose without risking a trip to the hospital.
But 'unseated' stats are of great interest to those of us who follow the sport, because they give us an insight into the relative abilities of jockeys. We think we know which are most easily unseated but there is nowhere you can go to look at the actual numbers. I get very jealous of sports such as American football, whose ruling body has constantly updated stats on all players on its website, so you can find out very quickly what a guy is good at and what he does less well.
You can get a lot of stats about the circumstances in which a particular jockey has won races, but anything to do with misfortune (fell, unseated, refused, pulled up) is just not available and it should be. If a jockey is more likely to put his horse on the floor at Cheltenham than drive it to victory, we should know that.
As one small step in that direction, I've answered Blackman's question about which jockeys get unseated most. Even so, I just haven't the time to hand-crank the numbers for all jump jockeys. I've looked at the 20 who have ridden most winners this season and added in three others whose profile demands it – Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty and Sam Thomas.
I've counted hurdle and chase races in Britain over the three years to the end of last month and put the jockeys in order by percentage of rides that end with 'unseated rider'. It would hardly be fair to rank them simply by number of unseateds because some of these have had a lot more rides than the others. Sure, Tony McCoy has been unseated 27 times to Denis O'Regan's 13, but then he's had more than twice as many rides.
As you'd expect from the best jockeys, none of them get unseated very often – the worst was still below 3% – and the differences between their numbers seem small. Then again, the jockey at the top of the table has come adrift of his mount more than seven times as often as the one at the bottom.
By printing these stats, I'm not trying to embarrass anyone and none of these riders have anything to be embarrassed about. But, as we saw with Sam Thomas last season, jockeys can sometimes be judged harshly if they endure a run of misfortune in televised races. Instead of guessing, we may as well find out the facts. So here, in order, are the jockeys who have been unseated most over the past three years.
1 Nick Scholfield 2.9%
A young, inexperienced and improving rider, Scholfield became first jockey to Andy Turnell in the spring after Mark Grant was forced out by dissatisfied owners. He is currently eighth in the jockeys' table on a very healthy strike-rate of 19% and most of his winners have come for other yards, including Paul Nicholls, for whom he rode as a conditional. When Turnell starts fielding his good horses, Scholfield could be a prolific winner. Still, 13 unseateds from 453 rides isn't very clever – he would still be top of this list if he had fallen off only 10 of those. But it seems he's getting better at staying in the plate, having been unseated just three times this year. Last year, he came off six times, including a tumble from Armaturk at Bangor's second-last fence, when he was 30 lengths clear on a 1-3 shot.
2 Christian Williams 2.1%
Three years after he suffered a fall that put him in intensive care for 10 days and could easily have ended his career, it seems petty to be totting up Williams' unseateds. Still, for those who want to know, he's come off 20 times from 950 rides. In his 11th year with a licence, Williams is unlikely to be getting any better and, if you back his mounts, you may just have to accept a slightly higher risk of unseating than you'd get from another top rider. And you might like to keep your fingers crossed until after the first fence, where he has fallen off three times this year.
3 Rhys Flint 2.1%
Still a teenager, Flint shows immense promise and a position this high in the table is likely to prove unfair in the long term. He's had many fewer rides than other names in this list and if he'd had four unseateds, instead of six, he'd be in mid-table. Unforgiving backers of Lake Wakatipu may remember Flint going out the side-door at the second-last at Aintree this summer, when the pair were four lengths clear and seemingly destined for victory. In fairness, the horse had jinked right and then left, which would have had most riders in trouble.
4 Daryl Jacob 2.1%
The winner of three Grade Ones in Ireland on The Listener, before losing the ride to Andrew McNamara, Jacob has racked up 22 unseateds from 1,052 rides. Aside from Sam Thomas (below), the only others to rack up that many tumbles have been Graham Lee and Tony McCoy, who each had a lot more rides – 700 more in Lee's case, 1,200 more for McCoy. There have been some excuses, with some horses getting hampered or jumping poorly, but those things happen to everyone and it could be argued that a jockey may be to blame in some cases if a horse does not jump well. Those who were on Coolers Quest at Wincanton in October 2007 will be interested to see Jacob near the top of this list – the pair were 20 lengths clear before parting company at the third-last.
5 Sam Thomas 1.9%
As second jockey to Paul Nicholls, Thomas has been lucky enough to win some very high-profile races, including the Gold Cup on Denman, but it all came apart last autumn when he was deputising for the injured Ruby Walsh. On consecutive weekends, he came off Kauto Star in the Betfair Chase and Big Buck's in the Hennessy, both times at the final fence.
When he hit the deck twice more on the following Monday at Folkestone, there was widespread speculation about his level of confidence and he was denied the ride on Master Minded in the Tingle Creek. At the time, I wrote that people were over-reacting to a high-profile run of misfortune and used faller stats to show that Thomas's record was one of the best among leading riders. But it would seem that such is not the case when it comes to being unseated, a fate Thomas has suffered 27 times from 1,422 mounts, nine of which came during a two-month span at the end of last year.
Interestingly, he has only come off twice more since New Year's Day, so maybe he did have a bad run that is now behind him. But something isn't right in Thomas's world – his strike-rate of 8% this season is half what he's been achieving over the previous three years.
Here's the rest of the list. Geraghty's record is deeply impressive, even allowing for the fact that he's had fewer rides than most of the others. In the entire three-year period, he was never unseated at an obstacle, but still has a score of one, thanks to Finger Onthe Pulse stumbling on the bend and ditching him in the 2007 Coral Cup.
Oliver Greenall 1.7%
Aidan Coleman 1.7%
Ruby Walsh 1.7%
Brian Hughes 1.6%
Denis O'Regan 1.3%
Timmy Murphy 1.3%
Graham Lee 1.3%
Noel Fehily 1.2%
Tony McCoy 1.2%
Paul Moloney 1.2%
Jason Maguire 1.2%
Paddy Brennan 1.1%
Tom Scudamore 1.1%
Dean Coleman 1%
Robert Thornton 1%
Richard Johnson 0.9%
Seamus Durack 0.9%
Barry Geraghty 0.4%
,he had to give up the rest of his rides.
