It's fairly well known situation that a significant percentage of handicap races are won by horses dropped from another handicap race worth more money to the winner.
But how does that work out on an individual trainer basis. After all, there's quite a range of trainers in both their skill and resources.
I ran the numbers on Andrew Balding. A very good trainer especially with handicappers and one I've personally found a decent amount of winners from his runners in the last few years.
From 2018 until the end of 2023 his runners that were dropped from a higher value handicap race to a lower one showed he had 1,008 runners dropped and 143 winners or 14.2%.
And 41% of his runners were actually dropped in race prize (class) next time out.
But for 2024 and 2025 his strike rate went up to 20.5% with 85 such winners from 414 runners and just 40.2 % runners being dropped. You'd also have made a whopping 5 pts from backing them all blind.
Surely this is down to him having better horses now, not just his skill as a trainer, excellent as it is.
If we compare him to another handicap king William Haggas, who's obviously been training a lot longer than Andrew, it's interesting.
2018 - 26 from 101 at 25.7% and LSP +25.7 points 39.8% of runners dropped.
2019 - 47 from 197 at 23.9% and LSP +14.7 points 39.1% dropped.
2020 - 14 from 79 at 17.7% and LSP +2.7 points 34.7 % dropped. (Some sort of crazy stay at home craze swept the country this year)
2021 - 19 from 80 at 23.7% and LSP +22.5 points just 27.3% dropped.
2022 - 23 from 98 at 23.5% and LSP -15.9 points 33% dropped.
2023 to 2025 - 70 from 345 at 20.3% and LSP -7.1 points 38.9% dropped.
There's been a definite decline in the success of Haggas horses dropping in class. Or to be more precise, the rate has gone down by about 15% of what it was, but also the prices of the winners has been reduced eroding any profits into losses.
But here's an interesting stat. The Haggas stable between 2018 and 2023 had a 16.7% strike rate for handicappers going UP in prize money from one handicap to another showing a 152 point loss from 111 winner out of 663 runners. But in 2024 and 2025 they had a 25% strike rate with 63 winners from 251 runners and a LSP in both years totally 59.1 points.
Where as Balding has had a 12.3% strike rate for such horses since 2018 to 2025 with a big -375.8 point loss.
Conclusion has to be that success or otherwise for trainers largely depends on what ammo they have in their yard, but if they have the right candidate both these yards know pretty much what they're doing.
Tufnel, and I wish BDW had given more book examples.
