Having gone full time in this business since last June, I have had a lot more time to look into things that had caught my eye in the past but I hadn't had the time to research.

I am a big stats fan but to access the stats I use, it is necessary to buy the Racing Post newspaper. Because you can't buy it over here in rural Brittany, it is necessary to subscribe to the Racing Post online newspaper which is available from 3 am each day.

In this series of articles, I am going to analyse known, proven, horse fitness and its growing relevence. On the basis of this analysis, I will be giving away two profitable systems – one with a 50% strike rate and a return on investment, (ROI), of 118% and the other with a 30% strike rate and a 125% ROI.

They say a picture paints a thousand words so click on the following screenshot link to show you what put me on the scent:

A random day, it happened to be the day I wrote the ebook, Fit and Fancied Jumpers, and the screenshot is taken from the statistics page which is, as I said, only available in the Racing Post newspaper or in the online version.

As you can see, all three trainers with horses running again within 7 days of having won, have a much higher strike rate with such horses than they do with their runners overall. With Andrew Balding he has won with 27% of his horses that are turned out again within 7 days compared to 13% with all his runners; Noel Quinlan is 56% compared to 10% overall and David O'Meara is 23% as against 10% generally.

This is not atypical. It is more pronounced than normal but, generally, when you look at this list in the Post, you will find that the trainers who fire out their horses again quickly tend to have a better – sometimes, as with Noel Quinlan above, a dramatically better – strike rate than that of their runners generally.

I noticed this years ago, when they first showed these stats, and began to wonder why. I started researching on the old system builder, Racing Systems Builder, RSB, and the first thing I noticed was that more and more such runners were appearing.

It is possible to research way back to 1986 on the flat with RSB. That year just 315 horses were sent out to try to achieve the feat of winning again within 7 days. By 2008, this had risen to 5529!

Why? Why are trainers so much more inclined to try nowadays?

Certainly, there have always been trainers capable of this. Sir Mark Prescott springs to mind as one who can put a sequence together in a short time, and, over the sticks, Martin Pipe used to be famous for it. But nowadays, even the smallest operations seem to have success with their efforts for a quick repeat win.

My theory is that trainers generally have their horses a lot fitter today because they have learned the lessons from pioneers like Martin Pipe and have better facilities to help their horses recover quicker etc.

I will test this theory tomorrow when I take you step by step through the process of building a system based on these observations.

John Cutts

Today's Selection

Sedgefield 1.20 Phoenix Returns – Each way bet – 7/1 Bet 365