John Ferguson Saddles Runners for Cheltenham Festival

by James Willoughby

When Sheikh Mohammed's bloodstock adviser John Ferguson took out a licence to train over jumps, this code of racing popular in Britain and Ireland suddenly became more interesting. Watching blue-blooded ex-Maktoum family horses in regular conflict with jumping types promised to be a novelty, even to those of us with limited interest in so-called National Hunt racing. 

 Ferguson had his first runner over jumps in 2010, since then he has built up a thriving operation at his Bloomfields property at Cowlinge, near Newmarket. Next week, he has several fancied runners at the Festival at Cheltenham, the annual showpiece of jumps racing at which many of the code's championships are decided. 

Many of the horses Ferguson trains would have had a limited shelf-life at the top level of the sport on the Flat. They may also have been ill-served by the confines of racing at the Classic distances. But the perception among many jumps-racing traditionalists is that they would lack the toughness necessary for jumping obstacles and running long distances, often in the mud.

To a large extent, the prior belief of some about Ferguson's horses requires updating. The evidence summarized in Table 1 from the racing database Proform (www.proformracing.com) proves they have outrun expectation. 

The important column is “A/E” or Actual Winners divided by Expected Winners. This is a key metric which sums the win probabilities of all Ferguson's horses according to the exchange betting platform Betfair (www.betfair.com) (BF xWins) and divides the total into the winners realised on the track (Wins). The resulting ratio in the bottom-right corner of the table indicates that the sample of runners contains 4% more winners than expected by the wisdom of the jumping crowd's betting volume. In other words, it constitutes counterfactual evidence to the notion that the horses selected for jumping by Ferguson, even if not lacking in speed and class, would be held back by lack of toughness. 

Using the same statistical dimensions as in Table 1, we can analyse Ferguson's horses by their sire. You could be forgiven for glancing at Table 2 and thinking it represented Godolphin winners at Royal Ascot, but these numbers are derived from racing over hurdles, fences and in so-called National Hunt Flat races which are confined to horses intended as jumping prospects.

The sample sizes in Table 2 are less than those required for statistical significance, but it is interesting to see how well Ferguson-trained horses by Dubawi and Monsun have done, compared with expectation, as reflected in the A/E statistic explained above. How about we now look at the records of these sires over jumps for all trainers in Britain and Ireland, while considering they may have distaff backgrounds disjoint from the set of Ferguson-trained horses.

Collectively, the set of horses by the sires in Table 3 have a solid, yet unremarkable record over jumps. Of course, this is hardly surprising: the motivation for their use as stallions was to produce horses for races on the Flat, so it is likely there is a proliferation of cast-offs and failures within the sample. Therefore, to make generalizations about their potency as jumps stallions would be to fall for one of the many problems that racing statistics tend to have: selection bias. Ferguson-trained horses, while far from being unblemished, gleaming specimens at the zenith of their athletic potential, are actually more carefully chosen for their new role. 

On this point, Ferguson is applying a specific set of criteria for horses who enter training at Bloomfields. He has an understanding of the elements of a pedigree which imply jumps-racing toughness and feels this is important. Table 1 shows that his strike-rate has increased over the last four years (not seasons) yet his A/E stat is smaller. Maybe this is just noise; maybe the market is gaining more respect for his runners. 

Ferguson has yet to saddle a winner at the Cheltenham Festival, though the likes of Qewy (by Street Cry), Parlour Games (Monsun) and Devilment (Cape Cross) are among those with chances this time, and, if Ferguson is correct, they may be better equipped to deal with strongly run races on the stiff track with its famous hill. 

It's certainly worth noting one factor which has formerly influenced the fate of Ferguson runners: the going. Dividing all races in which he has had a runner according to the speed of the surface, as calculated by Proform, Table 4 shows the trainer's results.

The results follow intuition–every intern in every pedigree department in the racing world should have been able to predict them. The softer it gets, the more Bloomfields horses tend to lose their edge–those who act well on soft ground, arguably, for they are tested too severely for stamina. A total of 37 horses still managed to win on the softest surfaces on which jump racing takes place, softer than anything suitable for Flat racing, but they do so at a lower strike-rate and A/E ratio than under faster conditions. Extrapolated to the punishing environment of Cheltenham, it is clear that horses with pedigrees like Ferguson's don't want the additional demands of the mud. 

Whether you love the Festival or wouldn't draw the curtains if they ran the Cheltenham Gold Cup in your back garden, there are some interesting insights into the Thoroughbred accessible by its study. Some horses don't or couldn't reach their full potential on the Flat and are suited by the more rugged conditions of racing over jumps; some horses are actually good at both disciplines. Few are better placed to understand the elements of a pedigree that might predispose a useful horse on the Flat to become a champion over jumps, after the manner of, say, the legendary Istabraq, who was Maktoum-family bred and won three Champion Hurdles at Cheltenham for trainer Aidan O'Brien. 

Ferguson might not have won big races at the Cheltenham Festival yet, but it won't take him long to figure out how to improve his chances. If a Bloomfields horse comes along which passes the racecourse test of heart, affinity and stamina, it will certainly have the ability.