Rank Spencer

[stevecaution]

Sweet Jesus, how many times does it have to happen before a jockey gets the message?

Not having a great Ascot and several of my previous selections popping up unbacked. Then you get to your second biggest bet of the week at 8/1 and it flies through for second from the back.

Horsted Keynes was a strong fancy for me today and Jamie Spencer, yet again plants him in last place early in a huge field.

The race report reads:-

“held up in last place, ridden and headway entering final furlong, ran on strongly, not reach winner, to much to do”

Pure Tom Tit in the saddle again from the namesake of another clown:-

[/url:1naugro7]

“Ooh Betty, I had another woopsie in the saddle”

Rank Spencer

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[Ian]

You know what you’re likely to get from Spencer. If you back him you have to be aware that he’s likely to do what he often does.

[Gladiateur]

"..too much to do"

Funny, that. Exactly the same words concluded the race comments for Queen Catrine the other day.

[stevecaution]

You know what you’re likely to get from Spencer. If you back him you have to be aware that he’s likely to do what he often does.

Thanks for that.

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[The Ante-Post King]

As bad a Jockey Jamie Spencer makes himself look he’s not a patch on the weakest jockey in the weighing room,Richard Hughes.Its a fact he gets beaten on more horses that should have won than those who actually do.His Ride on

Tiggy Wiggy

gets the vote for worst of the week,his ride on

Fort Knox

……Beggars belief.You wont see him in the Godolphin silks again.

[stilvi]

Sweet Jesus, how many times does it have to happen before a jockey gets the message?

Nothing will happen unless he is sacked by Qatar, Hays and Koukash. They are obviously more than happy to be short changed on a regular basis.

Spencer doesn’t give a monkeys and never will.

Qatar have benched Bentley but are seemingly happy to turn a blind eye to anything Spencer does. Crazy.

By the way has anything won from tight on the rail all week? As far as I can remember horses have been winning a few horses wide.

[Kenh]

Severe case of pocket talk here.

I find it odd that a punter knows what a jockey may do, thinks he’s a clown,still bets the horse then, when the jockey does that, moans.

I take it that when deciding 8/1 was good value you took into account your view of the jockey.

[stilvi]

Severe case of pocket talk here.

Let voting begin on the most overplayed comment on the forum.

If you back a horse you concentrate on it that much more than someone who doesn’t, presumably someone like yourself.

That horse given anything like a decent ride should have won by daylight. If you can’t see that it might be time to give the game up.

Yes, even Spencer gets it right occasionally but those occasions are few and far between. Unfortunately, it is only the winning rides the media will highlight, not the numerous disasters.

[stevecaution]

Severe case of pocket talk here.

I find it odd that a punter knows what a jockey may do, thinks he’s a clown,still bets the horse then, when the jockey does that, moans.

I take it that when deciding 8/1 was good value you took into account your view of the jockey.

I’ve been plenty critical of Jamie Spencer before when there has been no money involved.

I had a horse I thought Mahatma Ghandi’s mother could have won on and although it was a concern that Spencer was on board I thought it better value than the favourite who was plenty short enough.

I think punters have the right to expect maximum effort from a jockey and at least an iota of tactical nous. Had it been a one-off I wouldn’t have posted this but Spencer has all the dimensions of a cardboard cut-out in the saddle.

Of course Mick Fitzgerald gave the usual "The unlucky horse was…." observation. Unlucky? Yes, it was unlucky that the jockey often seems to think he is sitting in a Ferrari

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[The Ante-Post King]

I agree with your observations Steve,Spencer is the modern day Eddery.

[Kenh]

Severe case of pocket talk here.

Let voting begin on the most overplayed comment on the forum.

If you back a horse you concentrate on it that much more than someone who doesn’t, presumably someone like yourself.

That horse given anything like a decent ride should have won by daylight. If you can’t see that it might be time to give the game up.

Yes, even Spencer gets it right occasionally but those occasions are few and far between. Unfortunately, it is only the winning rides the media will highlight, not the numerous disasters.

Perhaps it would help if you read the whole post I made instead of making ill informed comments suggesting I said something I didn’t. I didn’t make any comment on the ride itself so comments like ‘

That horse given anything like a decent ride should have won by daylight. If you can’t see that it might be time to give the game up’

. are just ridiculous.

If you had bothered to read the post I made you could see it related to someone moaning about losing a bet because of the way a jockey rode the horse, when, they by their own admission, knows the jockey often does that and thinks he’s a clown. I was pointing out that he should have taken that into account when deciding to make the bet or not. Fair enough to moan if it was a one off thing by the jockey but, when it’s a common thing with that jockey, pretty silly to moan afterwards.

[cormack15]

I can’t check just now but I am almost certain that Tom Segal highlighted Spencer as a jockey to follow in big race handicaps up to a mile as his tendency to hold them up often works in his favour because they often go very fast in these races.

Very, very frustrating though when the horse doesn’t get there.

And Tiggy Wiggy. Aaaaaaaargh.

But it’s impossible for these guys judgement to be right all the time. It’s a game of fine margins.

[Nathan Hughes]

I thought Tiggy Wiggy stayed on well. Hughes was at her quite early as she was outpaced. Hughes is not the strongest but I wouldn’t have him the weakest although he is thin and smokes 40 a day. The trouble sometimes with Hughes and Spencer is that they are so good at getting a horse to settle and travelling strong they sometimes overdo the waiting tactics as some horses take longer to accelerate then others but both these should know that.
Also they both more then most tend to drop their hands before the finishing line and will get collared proper one day.

Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026

[stevecaution]

Severe case of pocket talk here.

Let voting begin on the most overplayed comment on the forum.

If you back a horse you concentrate on it that much more than someone who doesn’t, presumably someone like yourself.

That horse given anything like a decent ride should have won by daylight. If you can’t see that it might be time to give the game up.

Yes, even Spencer gets it right occasionally but those occasions are few and far between. Unfortunately, it is only the winning rides the media will highlight, not the numerous disasters.

Perhaps it would help if you read the whole post I made instead of making ill informed comments suggesting I said something I didn’t. I didn’t make any comment on the ride itself so comments like ‘

That horse given anything like a decent ride should have won by daylight. If you can’t see that it might be time to give the game up’

. are just ridiculous.

If you had bothered to read the post I made you could see it related to someone moaning about losing a bet because of the way a jockey rode the horse, when, they by their own admission, knows the jockey often does that and thinks he’s a clown. I was pointing out that he should have taken that into account when deciding to make the bet or not. Fair enough to moan if it was a one off thing by the jockey but, when it’s a common thing with that jockey, pretty silly to moan afterwards.

Nothing wrong with being upset by a poor ride. It would be a pretty sappy forum if we are here to solely praise jockeys.

How many times have you heard them lumping the praise on a jockey for a great ride, when Pavarotti could have won on the horse in question?

Jockeys can’t get it right every time, as Cormack has said, but they are professionals and should be making pretty few mistakes. Jamie Spencer seems think every horse he has under him can finish like a rocket. It looks good when it comes off but not every horse has the same turn of foot.

I think Ryan Moore is light years ahead of Jamie Spencer and even in defeat today on Bold Sniper, who wasn’t really travelling that well, he gave the horse a strong ride and ended up going down by only half a length. Different class and the boys who I talk too in the local bookies who believe Spencer is the better jockey must be waking up in the morning with their gusset stuck to their crotch

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[stevecaution]

Hughes is not the strongest but I wouldn’t have him the weakest although he is thin and smokes 40 a day.

I reckon his backers sometimes get through two packets of fags in the 10 minutes after some of his races

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[stilvi]

If punters moaned about every poor Spencer ride there would be nothing else on the forum.

He occasionally gets it right and what a surprise those are the rides highlighted by the media.

30 runner handicaps are notoriously difficult to get right so when you get one right only for the jock to make a complete mess of things you have every right to feel aggrieved. It wasn’t as if the horse had a half length in hand. The level of superiority should more than counteracted the chances of the jock messing up. The fact that it didn’t says everything about Spencer, not the punter.

If you started totally ignoring jockeys capable of messing up you would hardly have a bet. There are a far more bad rides than good ones. If they had a worst ride of the week it would be a million times more competitive than a best one.

[kasparov]

Some evidence below from the onemilefourandten blog

Introduction

The recent criticism by Luca Cumani of two of Jamie Spencer’s rides this year on Mount Athos by Luca Cumani ( “it’s on record that he was given two very bad rides” has caused a good deal of comment and publicity. Simon Holt devotes his column in the Racing Post Weekender this week (25th September edition) to a discussion of Jamie Spencer’s riding style, concluding that “this is a jockey with a bit of star quality and his career record provides impressive defence against the critics”. As Simon Holt points out, the hold up style he adopts can lend itself to criticism if a horse is perceived as being delivered too late, such as his recent ride on York Glory in the 2013 renewal of the Beverley Bullet. However much of the criticism leveled appears to be founded on one or two rides, rather than by considering his performance over many rides. In this blog post all of Jamie Spencer’s rides in the 2013 flat season (to 25th September) were examined in terms of riding style, Impact Values and ratings. The rides of a number of other jockeys (Ryan Moore, Richard Hughes, James Doyle and Joe Fanning) were also examined. With each of these jockeys having ridden over 400 rides each this season to date, there is plenty of data to interrogate.

Definition of Running Style/Early Pace Position

The analysis that underpins this piece was carried out in the R statistical environment accessing Raceform Interactive (RFI) data. This is the same data used by the Racing Post. In running comments were used to identify the Early Pace Position (EPP) adopted by each horse in each race contained within the database. In this blog post the terms EPP and ‘running style’ are used interchangeably. Five categories of running style were defined: leading(1), prominent (2), midfield (3), held up (4) and in rear (5). Armed with an EPP by horse by race, the most frequently adopted running style by each horse can be identified. These EPPs can be used in conjunction with the remainder of the information contained within the RFI database to examine the relationship between running style and jockey performance. Horses had to have run at least 3 times for an EPP to be assigned to the horse, so if for example, Orfevre ran three times, twice in the lead (style 1) and once prominently (style 2), he’d be assigned an EPP of 1. After this parsing exercise we have the running style adopted by each horse in each race that it took part, and the running style each horse has adopted most frequently in the past.

Jockey Rides, Horse Ability and Starting Prices

To help put Jamie Spencer’s riding style in context the following jockeys were chosen for comparison: Ryan Moore, Richard Hughes, James Doyle and Joe Fanning. The first two are vying for champion jockey in 2013, James Doyle has recently been appointed Prince Khalid Abdullah’s jockey, whilst Joe Fanning is known for adopting front running tactics and should provide a contrast with the riding style adopted by Jamie Spencer. Table 1 gives information about the ability of horses ridden (using the median rating across all rides ) by each jockey and betting market expectations using average and median Starting Prices (SPs). All rides in the 2013 flat season were considered. Ryan Moore rides horses with the most ability, posting a median RPR of 81, followed by Jamie Spencer , Richard Hughes, James Doyle and then Joe Fanning. Note that the SPs for Ryan Moore and Richard Hughes’s rides are close, suggesting the betting markets typically rate their chances similarly. Jamie Spencer comes next in terms of market expectations, with James Doyle last after Joe Fanning, even though, on average, he rides more highly rated horses.

Jockey Median Rating of Rides Average SP Median SP
J Fanning 69 10.4 7.0
R Hughes 76 5.7 4.0
J Doyle 73 12.7 7.5
J Spencer 78 8.7 6.0
R Moore 81 5.5 4.0
Table 1: Median ratings of rides and SP information for selected jockeys

Early Pace Position Profiles

The proportion of horses in each EPP category is given in Table 2, along with wins per category and associated Impact Values (IVs). Impact Value has its usual definition. The IV for front runners is 1.88. As is widely known front runners win more frequently than other running styles. IVs for EPP styles 2 (prominent) and 3 (mid-division) are similar at 0.94 and 0.99 respectively, with hold up horses performing somewhat worse at 0.83 and horses that race in rear reporting the lowest IV of 0.60. The IVs reported here by riding style suggest that the most important decision a jockey can take is whether to front run or not. After that, racing prominently or in mid division has similar outcomes, whilst being held up or in rear suggests that the further back you race from a midfield position, the less likely it is that you will win races. There is an important caveat here – the EPP adopted it is not entirely in the jockeys hands, but conditioned on a number of factors, only some of which are in his control. However we do know that on average horses do appear to have a favoured EPP, and this is useful for some of the analysis that follows.

EPP wins runs proportion IV
1 963 4466 12% 1.88
2 408 3787 10% 0.94
3 1714 15097 39% 0.99
4 814 8550 22% 0.83
5 479 6329 17% 0.66
TOTAL 4378 38229 100% 1.00
Table 2: EPP running styles, proportions and Impact Values

Jockey Riding Styles

Perceptions are borne out by the data – Jamie Spencer rides far fewer horses in mid-division than other jockeys, preferring to hold them up or ride them in rear. Table 3 takes every ride of each jockey and amalgamates by EPP. The differences in EPP adopted by Jamie Spencer are substantial compared with the other jockeys in the table. Note that he rides as least as many front runners and prominent horses as Ryan Moore and James Doyle, it is the mid-division category that he eschews, with more than half of his rides categorised as either held up or in rear.

Jockey EPP1 EPP2 EPP3 EPP4 EPP5
J Fanning 19% 13% 43% 16% 9%
R Hughes 17% 7% 35% 20% 21%
J Doyle 10% 6% 37% 29% 19%
J Spencer 13% 5% 25% 27% 31%
R Moore 10% 8% 40% 23% 20%
Table 3: Riding styles adopted by jockey

Does this result hold when checked against the most frequent riding style of the horses ridden by our jockeys? Table 4 shows there is some evidence that Jamie Spencer tends to ride more horse that have a hold up running style. However, this could have been caused by the fact that he might be the only jockey to have sat on the horse and thus contributed to its running style. This makes interpretation more difficult. On balance, however, comparing the riding proportions in tables 4 and 5 shows that Jamie Spencer does appear to ride his mounts with more restraint than is usually the case.

Jockey EPP1 EPP2 EPP3 EPP4 EPP5
J Fanning 11% 15% 33% 20% 21%
R Hughes 6% 13% 31% 29% 22%
J Doyle 4% 10% 29% 32% 25%
J Spencer 4% 8% 31% 30% 27%
R Moore 6% 10% 33% 30% 20%
Table 4: Riding styles by horse

Relationship between Running Style (EPP) and Ratings Achieved

A measure that compares the rating of each run relative to the maximum rating the horse has achieved is defined as the Relative to Maximum – RTM. Table 5 below shows average RTM by running style style. On average horses run ca. 18lb below their maximum rating. This is no surprise – ratings are negatively skewed – bounded on the upside by ability and the relatively rare confluence of a set of circumstances that allows a horse to achieve its maximum rating, and exposed to substantial downside as any number of events (going, draw, pace, opposition, trip and so on) cause horses to run below their best. Horses with a prominent running style (EPP 2) are most likely to perform below their best. Remember from table 2 horses that race prominently deliver lower IVs than those that race in mid-division. It is possible that the pressure of racing prominently conspires against these horses. The best RTM numbers reported are for horses that are held up or ridden in rear. Given the IVs for these categories are substantially lower than 1, a likely explanation for them running more closely to their maximum rating is that they are running on past beaten horses to be placed rather than winning. This has implications for their handicap ratings relative to their ability. In tables 4 and 5 we have IVs and RTM values by running style classification for all races that took place on the flat in 2013. These tables give us a sense of how often horses win given the their riding style, and to what degree they run close to their maximum form. Now we turn to the same information at the individual jockey level.

Early Pace Position (EPP) Rating To Maximum (RTM) – average
1 -18.4
2 -19.0
3 -17.9
4 -17.7
5 -17.0
Table 5: RTM by EPP style category

Jockey Performance: Impact Values & RTM Ratings

Two approaches to measuring jockey ability are those used by John Whitley, often mentioned by James Willoughby on Racing UK, and Timeform. In this blog post two measures already employed, Impact Values (IVs) and Run To Maximum (RTM) , are calculated at the jockey level. Impact Values by jockey by running style are reported in Table 6 below, RTMs by running style are reported in table 7. Ryan Moore performs the best across both measures. On average his rides perform about 8lb better than average (-8lb vs -18lb) and ca. 3lb better than the other jockeys considered here. Particularly noteworthy is his performance on front runners, where he performs nearly 10lb better than average, with an IV of 3.9. Joe Fanning performs best when he rides front runners. Richard Hughes, James Doyle and Jamie Spencer perform similarly to each other based upon RTMs – about 5lb better than average, but ca. 3lb behind Ryan Moore. If Starting Prices and horse ability are considered, James Doyle performs particularly well. Perhaps the betting market has underestimated his abilities – if so, his recent appointment by Prince Khalid Abdullah and the likely increase in the quality of his mounts is likely to change this.

Turning to Jamie Spencer: he performs best on front running rides, delivering similar IVs to Richard Hughes and yet performing 2.5lb better on average. What of his hold up rides? Considering horse that are held up or ridden in rear (EPP 4 and 5) , Jamie Spencer’s rides perform second only to Ryan Moore in terms of RTM. Yet the IVs for both of these categories are the second lowest of the jockeys considered here. There are a couple of interpretations. The first is that hold up horses are running into places, achieving respectable ratings and yet not winning. The second is that the horses are being ridden in a style that maximises their chances of running close to their maximum ratings, and the IVs will, over many more rides, reflect this.

Jockey EPP1 EPP2 EPP3 EPP4 EPP5
J Fanning 2.52 1.41 1.13 0.39 0.93
R Hughes 2.76 2.25 2.04 1.65 1.75
J Doyle 1.35 1.14 0.97 1.69 1.79
J Spencer 2.73 2.24 1.69 1.21 1.05
R Moore 3.90 1.74 2.21 1.34 2.07
Table 6: Impact Values by jockey by EPP classification

Table 7 below shows RTM averages by jockey by EPP category. A discussion of IVs and RTM by jockey follows table 7.

Jockey EPP1 EPP2 EPP3 EPP4 EPP5
J Fanning -15.3 -20.4 -17.8 -16.4 -15.5
R Hughes -13.5 -11.8 -12.9 -13.0 -12.9
J Doyle -12.6 -15.1 -11.7 -13.1 -13.9
J Spencer -11.0 -14.7 -13.3 -11.6 -12.6
R Moore -8.5 -10.2 -9.8 -9.4 -10.0
Table 7: RTM by jockey by EPP classification

Summary

Ryan Moore is viewed by many as the best rider in the UK – the analysis in this blog post supports this view.
James Doyle rides as well as Richard Hughes and Jamie Spencer and has done so on longer priced horses with less ability.
Jamie Spencer rides horses further back than their usual position in races, and in doing so enables them to run closer to their maximum rating. The data suggests riding further back is a matter of choice. Whilst riding horse further back typically compromises their chances of winning races to a degree, the Impact Values for Jamie Spencer’s hold up rides are significantly above the average and also greater than 1. However they are also below that reported by Richard Hughes, James Doyle and Ryan Moore. It is possible that over time and over many more rides, the fact that his mounts are running closer to maximum ratings will be reflected in higher Impact Values than delivered in the 2013 flat season.

[Author]

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