Ytd Statistics
I make it that the first 13 meetings of the season have generated 618 runners across 80 scheduled races, producing an average field size of 7.7 runners.
Last year 10 meetings had taken taken place by now and the 501 runners across 65 races produced an identical field size average of 7.7 runners.
So the number of horses running has expanded in proportion to the number of races available to run in.
The percentage of individual horses that have been entered and run each weekend is 77% and 17% of all the entries each weekend have been duplicated entries.
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Cutting down the number of races per meeting from 7 to 6 does appear to have had a positive impact. In most cases it has been a conditions race dropped which seems to have pushed more horses into opens ( whichncan only be a good thing) . Big fields for young horse maidens and bumpers certainly helps the averages for runners. Would be interesting to know what percentage of overall certificates is made up by 4&5 year olds?
If the forecasters are correct and this weekends fixtures are hit by the weather then chances are the averages will hold up in the near future. But of course it is a very fragile model and as we saw recently anything much above 2 meetings per weekend draws heavily on the pool,of available horses.
I'm not convinced that this seasons new races are going to do much to encourage more horses into pointing?
The 110 series which could have been a game changer now seems likely to be dominated by progressive pointers picking up an extra race before getting lumbered with a penalty in opens.
Whilst being a laudable initiative the hands and heels series is being promoted as a vehicle for wanna be conditionals and having horses like Famous Claremont entered is not really reaching out to the grass roots family horse and rider that fancies a go at pointing for the pure fun of it.
Anyway, thanks for the stats it will be something to monitor as the season unfolds.