Wayne Bailey / 05 March 2010 Free Bet View Market

“I’m a big fan of Geraghty and have backed him as an alternative to Ruby Walsh in the Festival Top Jockey market. If you ask me, he’s still underestimated by punters – especially when riding against Walsh and McCoy and as a consequence, his horses often go off at reasonable prices.”

On Tuesday, I looked at the records of certain trainers at Cheltenham and tried to come up with some possible betting angles to keep in mind during the Festival.

Today, it's time to look at the jockeys although I must stress that it's definitely more difficult to come up with some hard and fast 'rules' to follow as every horse they ride is different - so I certainly wouldn't suggest that you follow the below blindly. Nonetheless, I've come across some stats that may prove interesting, even if you don't use them in a betting way. Only Festival data was used, from 2003 onwards:

Jockey/Trainer combos
Not surprisingly, the best jockey/trainer combination at the Festival since 2003 has been Ruby Walsh/Paul Nicholls and the pair have had 11 Festival winners from 47 races showing a profit of over 17 pts. However some of those wins were before Ruby was top jockey at Ditcheat and prices may have adjusted accordingly. The second best combination was Ruby Walsh/Willie Mullins with four wins from 20 races (loss of 2.25 pts). Interestingly, Christian Williams hasn't scored for Paul Nicholls in 13 attempts since 2003. Similarly, the Sam Thomas/Paul Nicholls combination only had one success (Denman) from 28 races during the period. Tony McCoy had four winners for Jonjo O'Neill, but Timmy Murphy has only scored once (Our Vic) for David Pipe in 25 attempts.

Riding the favourite
The price of each favourite varies greatly so it's impossible to draw any conclusions from this data; but I thought it would be interesting to see which jockeys do best/worst when riding a festival jolly. As I say, the actual price is a better indicator of the horse's chance of winning but I'll bet my bottom dollar that some of you prefer Ruby on your short ones to McCoy (or vice versa!). I only included jockeys that have had at least 10 festival favourite rides since 2003:

* Ruby Walsh won ten races from 26, showing a profit of 4.06 pts.
* Tony McCoy won seven races from 22, showing a profit of 4.63 pts.
* Richard Johnson won two races from 11, showing a loss of 4.25 pts.
* Spare a thought for Timmy Murphy who had no winners from ten races.

Make of it what you will but it's interesting to see that the best two jockeys of our age (in my view) are top of the pile for riding the jolly at the festival.

Riding the 'best' horses
If we take it that the official top-rated in a non-handicap is the best horse in the race, it's probably worth looking at which jockeys do well when riding such horses. Obviously, the top stables usually have the best horses so certain talented jockeys will not find themselves among the data. Again, I looked at Festival racing since 2003 and only included jockeys who had ten or more rides on a top-rated horse.

* Ruby Walsh won 14 races from 68, showing a loss of 11.06 pts.
* Robert Thornton won nine races from 45 and showed a profit of 31.50 pts.
* Barry Geraghty won nine races from 58, and showed a profit of 23.75 pts.

On that note, I'm a big fan of Geraghty and have backed him as an alternative to Ruby Walsh in the Festival Top Jockey market. If you ask me, he's still underestimated by punters - especially when riding against Walsh and McCoy and as a consequence, his horses often go off at reasonable prices. Readers will remember his cracking year in 2003 when he won five races at the Festival soon followed by victory in the Grand National on Monty's Pass.

Flat jockeys in the Bumper
I was at a Cheltenham preview night after racing at Leopardstown on Sunday, and one of the topics of conversation was on whether the Flat jockeys would feel 'bullied' by the National Hunt guys during the cut and thrust of the race. There may be some truth in the idea but to be honest, I can't see the likes of Kieren Fallon getting intimidated and don't see it as a problem this year. There was a general consensus that Flat jockeys should stick to proper Flat races but again, I don't see what the fuss is about and have no problem with them getting involved in the bumper. This year, Fallon will ride Old McDonald for Noel Glynn while Pat Smullen will ride one of Dermot Weld's entries. Fallon came a respectable fourth on Refinement for Jonjo O'Neill in 2005, while Smullen finished third on Rite Of Passage last year which was pretty good considering the winner of the race was Dunguib. Smullen also performed reasonably well when coming home in seventh place on Govamix back in 2003.

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