Is the DRF a good warm-up for the Cheltenham Festival?

Last weekend saw the sixth renewal of The Dublin Racing Festival (DRF), where a large swathe of Irish trained Cheltenham Festival contenders were strutting their stuff on the flat galloping plains of Leopardstown Racecourse.

But what do the stats say when it comes to those horses that had their final Cheltenham Festival prep-run at the DRF?

Are there any major stats clues we should be taking note of?

Let’s take a look…

Overall Stats

If we look at the last five renewals of the Cheltenham Festival we see that there have been 140 races run during that time frame…

27 of those races have been won by a horse that ran at the DRF last time out… so 19% of the Cheltenham Festival races were won by a horse that ran at the DRF…

You couldn’t make a profit backing every horse that goes DRF >> Cheltenham (-£50.56 BFLSP if you did back them all) but it’s a chunky enough set of Cheltenham Festival winners to work with, so let’s dig a bit deeper…

Horses that WON at the DRF

A very simple filter but also a profitable one… returning the following figures…

15/58 | 26% S/R | +£45.97 BFLSP – W&P 31/58 | 53% S/R

7% above expectation

A solid set of stats but it’s worth looking closer and splitting the horses that WON at the DRF LTO into their NH Race types at Cheltenham…

…so the Hurdles and Bumper horses show much stronger figures than the Chasers…

Also well worth noting that 14 of the 15 winners came in GRADE 1 races and horses aged 9+ were 0/7…

The distance splits are also interesting for the horses that won LTO at the DRF… with 14 of the 15 winners coming over trips of 2m5f or less at Cheltenham whilst those running over 3m+ in March were 1/14… hardly damming stats for the stayers but something to keep in mind at the very least…

If we throw those pointers together you come up with an interesting DRF to Cheltenham angle to keep in mind…

WON at the DRF LTO | Running in a Grade 1 Hurdle or Bumper at Cheltenham Festival | 2m5f or less | aged 8yo or younger

I also mentioned this angle in the latest Racing Podblast Cheltenham Special (Queen Mother Champion Chase Early Look)

The Trainers

May as well start with the obvious…

WILLIE MULLINS

13 of Willie Mullins’ 34 Cheltenham Festival winners (from the last 5 festivals) had their ‘warm-up’ run at the DRF

Backing them all blind would have left you -7.77 out of pocket so some tweaks need to be made to find profits…

And career starts is a good starting point, with those that had 7 or less (UK or Irish) career starts on their CV (by the time we reach Cheltenham) providing the stronger stats…

1-7 career starts = 9/49 | 18% S/R | +£45.99 – 10% above exp

8+ career starts = 4/66 | 6% S/R | -£53.76 – 43% below exp

…so the lighter raced of his team providing some chunky profits at Cheltenham if they had warmed-up at the DRF…

If we use that 1-7 career starts as the basis and then add in the following two filters…

2m0.5f – 2m5f trips

Horses with 1-3 seasonal starts

…you get a tasty enough little Mullins DRF >> Cheltenham angle…

Willie Mullins | Ran at the DRF LTO | 1-7 career starts | 2m0.5f – 2m5f | 1-3 seasonal starts

.

HENRY DE BROMHEAD

6 of Henry De Bromhead’s 14 Cheltenham Festival winners (from the last 5 festivals) had their ‘warm-up’ run at the DRF

Now 3 of those have been HONEYSUCKLE so the stats are a little skewed by that… but nonetheless I did at least find a potentially interesting HDB DRF >> Cheltenham pointer that may be worth keeping on the radar…

H De Bromhead | Cheltenham Festival | 2m0.5f+ NON-Handicap races | SP 9/1 or less | Ran at DRF LTO

6/10, 4p | +£18.06 BFLSP (form line of 2111112212)

.

GORDON ELLIOTT

5 of Gordon Elliott’s 20 Cheltenham Festival winners (from the last 5 festivals) had their ‘warm-up’ run at the DRF

Elliott, unsurprisingly, isn’t as easy to pick apart as some trainers… 🤨… but he does hold strong, albeit limited, stats with his DRF >> Cheltenham runners under the following… 

G Elliott | Cheltenham Festival | Geldings wearing NO Headgear | SP 9/1 or less | Ran in a NON-Handicap at DRF LTO

5/13, 6p | +£13.98 BFLSP (form line of 32F1234231111)

So only 2 of the 13 failed to at least place at the Cheltenham Festival…

.

.

Beaten Favs at DRF

There were a couple of hot-pots turned over at this year’s DRF (Lossiemouth, Blue Lord, Facile Vega…) so I also wanted to have a look at how similar types fared when trying to bounce back at the Cheltenham Festival…

…and not very well was the answer!

Only 1 of the 22 DRF Beaten Favs managed to haul themselves into the winners enclosure at the Cheltenham Festival the following month… for overall stats of…

1/22 | 4.5% S/R | -£12.57 BFLSP – W&P 11/22 | 50% S/R

61% below expectation

…in their defence the Win & Place stats are decent and plenty do manage to find themselves there or thereabouts come the winning post…

.

…and last but not least on the DRF >> Cheltenham Festival stats…

,

Look out for the Mares…

Especially those mares that had gone no more than 2 runs without placing (so a win or place on one of last two starts)…

At the last five Cheltenham Festivals Mares going DRF >> Cheltenham Festival (with a win or place on 1 of last 2 starts) have returned…

8/26 | 31% S/R | +£86.81 BFLSP – W&P 10/26 | 38% S/R

143% above expectation

Again Honeysuckle does make up three of those wins so that needs to be factored in… but it’s still an angle to at least keep in mind…

---

With only five Dublin Racing Festivals’ in the form books it’s hard to say if the above are stats/angles that will continue to produce the goods but it’s clearly a meeting that is set to have a serious bearing on the Cheltenham Festival for years to come… plenty of Irish yards are using the two day meeting as the final stepping stone on the path to Cheltenham and at the very least the above stats will give us a building block for future analysis as we tightening things up as more DRF’s enter the form book…

.

The Racing PodBlast Queen Mother Champion Chase Preview

A huge thanks to the many of you that have been tuning in to the Racing PodBlast over the past few weeks and months 👍

The latest in our Cheltenham Festival preview shows was posted yesterday (Wednesday 8th Feb) and this time we had the QMCC under some deep analysis… we also fired out some DRF thoughts and pointers for you to tuck into as well…

If you are still to have a listen then to save you heading off to a different platform I’ve embedded the show below…

.

You can grab all previous Racing PodBlast episodes on this link

Cheers – Ben (NTF)

p.s. I’ll have some awesome FREE NTF Guides available soon for the 2023 Cheltenham Festival, so if you are not already on the free NTF list make sure you fix that today…