Cheltenham Festival supercomputer reveals who is most likely to win after they ‘dominate historically’
RACING boffins have crunched the numbers on 15 years’ worth of Cheltenham Festival data – to reveal jockeys with stars on their jerseys are most likely to win.
Nearly half (48.2 per cent) of all winning jockeys have sported a starry pattern on their silks, with white stars the best colour to back.
In fact, three of the last five Gold Cup – the festival’s main race – winners have all worn stars as they raced to victory.
The data was compiled by bet365, which also asked a supercomputer to work out statistically, which type of horse and rider was most likely to see success this year after analysing data from 1990-today.
Inputting data like the winning horses’ ages, countries of origin, where their sires were from and more, determined a ‘typical winner’.
And this is likely to be an eight-year old horse from Ireland, whose Sire and Dam were French – with a Great British trainer.
A bet365 spokesperson said: “There may be favourites heading to Cheltenham, but no horse, jockey or trainer is guaranteed success at the Festival with the elite of world horse racing all competing across the four days.
“Each year stars will emerge from Prestbury Park and it’s amazing to see that it is the jockeys wearing stars that have dominated historically.”
The betting giant’s supercomputer pored through data of every winner and contender of the Gold Cup since 1990 to calculate 2024’s likely champion.
The characteristics of all champion horses at the Cheltenham Gold Cup were extracted to determine the features of a ‘typical winning horse’ at the race.
With comprehensive numerical information on the characteristics of a winning horse ready, the next step was to find which horses from 2024 come closest to a typical winner.
They were looking for a ‘similarity score’ of all horses entered, with the horse scoring closest to one, given the highest probability of success.
The supercomputer’s simulations favour Fastorslow, who has a similarity score of 0.9854.
The French horse is eight years old which hits the sweet spot for the age of a typical Gold Cup winning horse and its sire and dam are also of French origin.
Its betting position, as of now, is two, which adds to the similarity and thus the horse has been given a 95 per cent chance of winning the Gold Cup.
The second favourite is Irish horse Shishkin and closely following it is Gerri Colombe from France.
But defending champion Galopin des Champs is down as the tenth favourite, as far as the algorithmic predictions is concerned.
Bet365’s spokesperson added: “The beauty of the Gold Cup – and horse racing in general – is that there is always room for an upset.
“If it were possible predict the outcome of a race with total accuracy then the sport would have been over and done with years ago.
“So, while you can give yourself a sporting chance of success by looking at what’s come before, the future is totally unwritten.”
THE SUPERCOMPUTER’S PREDICTION FOR THE GOLD CUP WINNER:
Age 8
Betting Position 2
Initial Odds 8.00
Ran over 26 furlongs FALSE
Country of origin (Trainer) Great Britain
Country of origin (Horse) Ireland
Country of origin (Sire) France
Country of origin (Dam) France
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