King of Stats: all of the numbers ahead of British Champions Day
Published:Frankel leads the headline acts heading to Ascot for British Champions Day, but there are six monster races for punters to get their teeth into.
These statistics may help identify some of the potential results.
• 2 – Only two of the six favourites were successful on the inaugural British Champions Day last year, with Deacon Blues and Frankel taking the spoils. Excelebration and Frankel look like the biggest banker material this time and it is 4/5 on the win double that they land the QEII Stakes and Champion Stakes respectively.
• 2 – Only two of the last 30 winners of the Champion Sprint have been aged over four. This rules out 12 of the current 19 entries and three-year-old Slade Power has had a lightly-raced season compared to many of his rivals. Slade Power is 8/1 to win the Champion Sprint.
• 3 – In terms of their race distance, no horse heads to Champions Day with a better record than Sapphire, who has won all three career starts over 1m2f. She is 7/2 to make it four from four over the trip in the Champions Fillies & Mares’ Stakes.
• 4 – No four-year-old has won the QEII Stakes in the last decade, which is bad news for odds-on favourite Excelebration. All of the last four winners have also been three-year-olds. Elusive Kate could be the pick of the age group this year at 11/2.
• 6 – Frankel has to beat Cirrus Des Aigles by a minimum of six lengths in the Champion Stakes to have any chance of being the highest-rated racehorse of all time. Frankel is currently rated at 140, but Dancing Brave was previously given a mark of 141.
• 10 – The QEII Stakes certainly tends to favour the market leaders, with all of the last 10 winners coming from the first three in the betting. Excelebration (4/7), Cityscape (4/1) and Elusive Kate (11/2) currently occupy these three positions.
• 115 – Each of the last two and four of the last six winners of the Long Distance Cup have had a Racing Post Rating of exactly 115. John Gosden’s Caucus is the only horse in this boat this year and is 20/1 to triumph.
All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date
