How Does a Horse Falling Affect Its Next Race?

There are countless things that you need to take into account when you’re looking at the performance of a horse. What was the Going like? Do they tend to favour one type of Going over another? Are they better when working with one jockey or another? Have they raced on the course before and, if so, how did they do?

One thing you might not think about is whether or not they fell in the previous race that they took part in. After all, falling once isn’t necessarily going to have much of an effect on their next outing, is it?

We don’t often think of horses as being confidence driven in the same way that we think of, say, footballers. If a footballer scored a hat-trick in their previous match then we might fancy them to be on the scoresheet in their next outing, too.

A horse winning their previous race doesn’t automatically mean that we’ll fancy it to win its next one because we’ll have to look at the circumstances of the race and whether there are any similarities. Is it the same with falling? If they’ve fallen once will they be nervous in their next race?

This is also an interesting factor when using faller insurance offers, if you think a horse more likely to fall it could be wise to use one.

Examples From Previous Meetings

The best way of exploring whether or not falling can have a genuine effect on a horse’s ability to make a jump the next time out is to look at their records either side of a fall.

In order to do that we’re going to have a look at the fallers from two meetings: the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National Meeting from 2017.

That should give us enough time to explore what sort of difference a fall has made to a horse’s career.

Does Falling Affect Results?

Concluding anything from horse racing results can be a tricky game to play. Unless you’re looking at horses that are world-class in their field like Frankel, for example, you’re always likely to be made to look a fool if you assume certain things will definitely happen next.

That said, we can certainly make some interesting inferences from the two tables above. Firstly, only 4 of the 39 horses had fallen in either of the two races that they took part in before the race that we’re looking at.

Secondly, only two horses fell in the two races that they took part in after the race that we’re looking at. Does that imply that horses tend to learn their lesson about falling? It’s certainly interesting to see that of the four horses that had fallen before the races in question, none of them failed to complete the two races afterwards.

Equally, twelve horses that fell either pulled up, unseated their rider, fell or refused to race in one of the two races that they were entered into after the race that the fell in that we’re looking at here.

It’s reasonably fair to say, then, that falling has an impact on some horses but not so much on others. That’s intriguing, especially as there doesn’t seem to be any obvious correlation between horses doing well before falling and not not so much afterwards or vice-versa.

Does It Make Any Difference?

One thing that we can see is that horses that have done well before falling tend to carry on doing well afterwards, whilst horses that had mediocre results before their fall continued to be mediocre afterwards.

Again, that’s not conclusive. After all, John Constable finished 11th and 10th in two races featuring 14 horses before his fall, then won the two races afterwards. Similarly Gold Present finished 2nd out of 4 and 20 horses in the races before his fall at Aintree and then won two races featuring 12 and 14 horses afterwards.

On the flip side, Foxtail Hill finished 1st in races with 7 and 13 horses before the fall at Cheltenham and then 9th and 2nd in races featuring 14 and 10 horses respectively after the fall. That’s suggestive of a horse that no longer has the confidence that it was running with before it fell.

It’s tricky to offer any sort of definitive conclusion here, but it’s probably fair to say that horses that have enjoyed a confident run before the fall are more likely to take the fall in their stride, so to speak, than horses that haven’t particularly been enjoying their racing before the suffered a fall.

What This Means For Betting

The obvious question, of course, is what this means when it comes to placing bets on horses that you know have suffered a fall in the past. What we can tell you is that 10 of the 39 horses that won one or more of their two races after falling had not won either of the races they took part in before the fall.

Exactly the same number won one of the two races before their fall and then won neither of the races afterwards. In other words, it is not the fall itself that matters as much as it is the horse’s general form.

When you’re looking at a horse’s past behaviour on the track in order to make a decision about whether or not to bet on them, don’t pay too much mind to a fall in the previous race. Try to look at how they’ve responded to previous falls that they’ve had and that should tell you whether they’re the sort of horse that will allow it to affect their confidence.