At home or away? NH Jockey performance by Inhouden Stal or Anders
The iconic BBC TV program A Question of Sport is one that I’m sure many readers will remember: writes Dave Renham. One of the regular rounds was ‘Home or Away’, where team members could answer a ‘home’ question about their own sport for one point, or an ‘away’ question about whichever sport was worth two points.
Introduction
That was the inspiration for a study in which I analyzed several jump jockeys and split their data set in two. One cohort was for performance with their main or retained trainer, and the other was for their performance with other trainers. By ‘head trainer’ I mean the trainer with whom the jockey has completed the most rides in a given calendar year.
For some jockeys this means the trainers or stables where they are contracted, where they are known as the stable jockey. For example, Harry Skelton is Dan Skelton’s stable jockey; Nico De Boinville belongs to Nicky Henderson, and so on. These jockeys ride to their ‘home’ stable, so to speak. For others, they may not be contracted specifically to a stable, but there will be a trainer from whom they get more rides than anyone else.
Of course, even jockeys who have the vast majority of rides for one trainer will get rides for others – these are the ‘out’ trainers, so to speak.
Therefore, I plan to start by looking at a group of jockeys comparing their overall performance for their head trainer to that of all other trainers combined. From there, I’ll dig deeper in hopes of uncovering some positive and negative angles that we can hopefully leverage in the future.
The data comes from eight full years of UK National Hunt racing, ranging from 1st January 2018 to 31st December 2025. Wins/losses are calculated based on the Betfair starting price (BSP), with returns adjusted by 2% commission on all winning bets. I haven’t included jockeys who rarely ride; all jockeys in this section have ridden multiple times for both cohorts.
Home vs. away: biggest differences in winning and hitting percentage
Let me first compare the winning percentages – below is a graph showing the NH jockeys who had the largest difference between winning percentages for their head trainer compared to all others combined:
The winning percentage doesn’t tell the whole story as we know, but these ten jockeys have won much more often for their head trainer compared to other trainers combined. Below are the ROI percentages of these ten jockeys, based on a single unit level bet. However, to prevent big prize winners from potentially distorting the figures, I have placed a restriction on horses priced at BSP 20.0 or less.
Here we see that only six out of ten achieved better returns with their head coach, while four (Bass, Deutsch, Hammond and Mania) did better with other trainers together. That said, Fox, Gethings, O’Brien and Powell have all had significantly better returns driving for their head coach.
Here are a few snippets to share (with the price limit of BSP 20.0 or lower):
- David Bas has achieved a strike rate of over 20% for Henry Daly and David Dennis. The sample size was quite small (53 rides and 28 respectively), but both also made a decent profit. He had a similar record to Charlie Longsdon when he rode mainly for Kim Bailey – he now rides mainly for Longsdon!
- James Davis had an excellent full set of stats when looking at his drives for his current head coach, Nick Gifford. He has had 31 winners from 154 (SR 20.1%) for a profit of £46.13 (ROI +30%). Almost all of these profits come from chases.
- Dirk Vos rides for the Lucinda Russell yard and their combined record on Scottish circuits is worth noting, with the aforementioned price ceiling: a strike rate of 19.6% thanks to 111 winners from 567 for a healthy profit to BSP of £90.11 (ROI +15.9%).
- Paul O’Brien now drives mainly for Harry Derham, and their track record together is excellent. Their success rate was a very impressive 27.1% for a profit of £49.85 (ROI +14.4%).
- Brendan Powell has struggled to work with Alan King – they are 0 of 22 with the price limit, 0 of 14 with higher prices. On a more positive note, riding for Joe Tizzard at Ascot, they have a very good record with 10 wins from 24 (SR 41.7%) for a profit of £30.65 (ROI +86.1%).
Home vs. Away: Top NH Jockeys Win Strike Rate Differences
Below is a comparison of the home and away wins of a further ten jockeys, including some of the biggest hitters, namely Sean Bowen, Harry Cobden, Gavin Sheehan and Harry Skelton:
Nine out of ten continued the theme from earlier with higher win strike rates for their head coach. James Bowen just bucked the trend, with a 15.4% win rate for other coaches, compared to 15% for his head coach. However, these statistics are potentially somewhat misleading as he has had over two hundred rides in the last two years for two separate trainers – Warren Greatrex and Nicky Henderson, and over a hundred for his father’s (and now brother’s) garden, Peter/Mickey Bowen.
Let me compare these jockeys as I did before by displaying their ROI percentages with the maximum BSP 20.0 price limit:
In terms of ROI%, seven out of ten had worse returns for their head coach. That said, most of the differences between the numbers were small. It seems that for Skelton and O’Neill, riding for their head coach has yielded much better returns.
Top trainer combinations
Here are some additional stats for these jockeys with horses costing BSP 20.0 or less, starting with Brian Hughes. He has an excellent track record in combination with the following trainers:
I would definitely keep an eye on one of these Hughes-trainer combinations in the future. An added bonus before we go any further is that if we had backed the second or third favorite when Hughes rode for any of these six trainers, we would have made a significant profit of £97.30 (ROI +48.4%) thanks to 53 wins from 210 (SR 36.4%).
It will be interesting to see how Harry Cobden things will go well next season when he starts his role with JP McManus. I wonder how often he will be able to ride for other trainers compared to the last few years as a stable jockey for Paul Nicholls. The reason I say this is because a trainer he occasionally rides for, James Owen, has achieved excellent results (BSP 20.0 or less) – 18 wins from just 58 rides (SR 31%) for a profit of £13.35 (ROI +23%). Hopefully Cobden can still ride for Owen occasionally in the future.
Ben Jones has done well driving for Ben Clarke. Excluding these big outsiders (from BSP 20.01+), their combined record saw 18 winners from 65 (SR 27.7%), making a healthy profit of £73.44 (ROI +113%).
Sean Bowen is currently a stable jockey to Olly Murphy and since their partnership began growing in 2023 their combined record has been positive. The last three full years (2023 to 2025) with horses priced at BSP 20.0 or less produced 249 wins from 879 rides (SR 28.3%) for a profit of £73.48 (ROI +8.4%).
During this three year period the two of them were the dynamite at Ffos Las, taking 13 wins from just 27 runners (SR 48.2%) for a profit of £45.37 (ROI +168%).
As for the other trainers, there are three with whom Bowen enjoyed an excellent track record with the established price cap between 2018 and 2025. They are shown in the table below.
Here are three more trainer/Sean Bowen combos to keep an eye on.
Onward to Gavin Sheehan now, and his record with trainer Jamie Snowden with horses sent away with a BSP of 20.0 or lower. The last five years have been extremely solid for this combination, with the last three being particularly good. The table below shows the annual splits from 2021 to 2025:
Four out of five winning years, with the losing year showing only a very small total loss. Sticking with this period from 2021 to 2025, the Sheehan/Snowden combination excelled at the Huntingdon combination with 18 first places from just 35 runners (SR 51.4%) for a profit of £32.70 (ROI +93.4%).
Selected NH Jockeys: single ride on the day
Finally, in this piece I looked at some data for these 20 jockeys when they went to race just one ride on any given day, as long as the price for the horse in question was BSP 20.0 or less. First, when that one ride was for their head coach; second, when that one ride wasn’t for their head coach.
‘Home’ coach statistics
I’ll start by looking at their ‘one ride a day’ stats when it was for their head coach:
The figures for Nico de Boinville are particularly impressive given the significant sample size. When he had just one ride a day for his boss Nicky Henderson, their success rate was almost 32% with an excellent return of almost 20p in the £. Brian Hughes also has an excellent record, albeit from a much smaller group.
‘Away’ coach statistics
And here are the stats for the same jockeys when the only ride of the day is not for their head trainer. Again, to qualify, the price of the single horse must have been 20.0 BSP or lower.
From 2018 to 2025, 14 out of 20 jockeys with these runners would have made a blind profit, which is remarkable. One negative point to note is Sam Twiston-Davies’ record, with his only daily rides in both groups resulting in losses of 35p and 28p respectively.
Three others to note in the ‘out’ column
Before I close this piece, I want to share one more thing with you. There are three jockeys, outside of the 20 I have discussed, that I would like to highlight in terms of their single ride records on a day when they are not riding for their head trainers. These are Rex Dingle, Richie McLernon and Jack Quinlan. Their statistics were as follows:
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This article covered several jockey angles that were new to me, and hopefully a fresh perspective for you as well. I hope and expect that we can use some of these figures to our advantage in the coming months.
Until next time…
– DR
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