Rowleyfile Preview: Melbourne Cup 2016

Australia’s Melbourne Cup is, famously, “the race that stops a nation”. But, before it achieves that annual distinction – on Tuesday 01 November this year, at an hour which will depend on your time zone – it first starts a nation on an obsession with the numbers and statistics from which it is hoped that the winner will be unearthed.

In particular, much agonising and many column inches are devoted to figuring out the effect of the (barrier) draw on the chances of the various protagonists. The completion of that draw this weekend for this year’s race prompted one local news agency to state that “the most important statistic is that no horse has ever won from stall 18”.

European racing enthusiasts might raise an eyebrow about such a fixation with starting position in a race of nearly two miles in duration, but in a field of 24 the draw undoubtedly plays some part. Much more questionable, however, is the idea that individual stalls might be “favoured” or “jinxed”.

A horse’s stall position is a discrete entity – it can emerge from one stall and one stall only – but the effect of the draw should not be. If, say, middle-numbered stalls have an advantage then you should expect this to apply across a number of them and not just to one or two in isolation.

The fact that stalls 8, 10 and 11 are among the most successful in the long history of the Melbourne Cup (five, six and seven wins respectively), but that stalls 7 and 9 are among the least successful (two wins apiece), is down to little more than variation and the simplistic nature of the measure used. That is why it is better to look at groups of stalls collectively and to judge in a way which is less crude than the binary “did it win or not?”

In keeping with the methods used successfully in these previews over the years, I looked at the last 10 runnings of the great race and extracted impact values (wins and places compared to chance) and % of rivals beaten as they relate to the draw. This is what the figures said:

It can be seen that horses berthed in stalls 9 to 12 inclusive have won five of the last 10 Melbourne Cups, which is three times what might have been expected given their representation and the races’ field sizes. Such horses have made the first four about one and a half times as often as by chance and beaten 54% of their rivals (where 50% would be “par”).   

In other words, the apparent advantage lessens as the means for measuring it becomes more sophisticated, but it is still there (just) when all is said and done.

At the same time, horses drawn in stalls 13 to 16 have won less often than might be expected but placed more often and beaten 57.1% of their rivals: those are fairly good numbers once you look beyond the crude measure of “win or lose”.

The same methods can be used to look at some other metrics, such as age, whether or not a horse was trained locally, and the weight that it carried. These are the findings:

Five-year-olds have been the best age group, winning twice as often as by chance, though they have been only just better than par by the superior measure of first-four impact value and % of rivals beaten.

Interestingly, being trained outside Australia and New Zealand has been a positive in the last decade, possibly due to lenient handicapping of such horses, as has been carrying a higher weight (though, ideally, not a very high weight). 

As is customary with these things, no one horse ticks every box, even with only a small number of categories. There are positives and negatives, or at least neutrals, with each contender.

However, some runners emerge better than others. In particular, Big Orange scores well, being a foreign-trained five-year-old with a high weight (he has joint-top-weight), and his draw in stall 7 should be regarded as neither good nor bad.

The other foreign raiders Bondi Beach and Oceanographer come out of things well, for all that the former is just a four-year-old and drawn even nearer the inside and that the latter is near the bottom of the handicap.

And the big “home” hope Hartnell (who started his life in Britain and won at Royal Ascot in 2014) emerges with plenty of credit, too. He is a five-year-old, nearer the top of the weights and coming from one of those central stalls. What is not to like (besides his ex-pat status)?

It must be the height of hubris to attempt to forecast the first four home in a race which is like the Grand National, but without the fences. Nonetheless, the above “trends” point me towards the following:

1 Big Orange

2 Hartnell

3 Bondi Beach

4 Oceanographer

The classy and tactically versatile Big Orange’s odds (20/1 in one place at the time of writing) are biggest of that quartet and make him the betting recommendation.

Recommendation: 1 pt e/w BIG ORANGE at 20/1, ¼ the odds first four