Trainer Profile: Paul Nicholls

April 27th, 2016

“Good horses are very hard to replace, so a lot depends on the horses that come along. It’s hard to keep reproducing them, as much as we all go out and try to buy the best, you don’t know what you have until you race them and then you can find out that they’re not as good as you thought they were.”

The above words by Irish trainer Willie Mullins summarise the remarkable achievement of Paul Nicholls to win his 10th British jump racing Champion Trainer title (three on the bounce)!

To dominate the sport of National Hunt Racing is truly remarkable, especially if you consider he’s had to maintain a high level of consistency over a long period of time.

What is not widely reported was in his march to wrestle the 2015 – 2016 trainer’s title from Paul Nicholls, Willie Mullins had fourteen Grade 1 winners in Britain against just two for Team Ditcheat.

So in essence, without the fire power of talent in his yard, Nicholls had to notch up wins the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

So what can we learn from this season and previous years?

In our statistical break down of the last 10 years for the Nicholls stable we determined:

  • A 39% strike rate with horses that are favoured in the market.
  • Horses donning any form of head gear perform 6% below market expectations.
  • Horses ridden by Sam Twiston-Davies perform 11% below normal.

The stats above are just a few of the 10 year trends for the Ditcheat stable and in the document below we categorise the performance of Paul Nicholls trained horses by:

  • Starting Price Rank
  • Jockey
  • Course
  • Distance
  • Recent Finishing Position  

Plus a lot more.

 

Trainer Profile Download

You can download the full report here