The recent Cheltenham Festival threw up plenty of shock winners this year, not least Poniros, who became the first 100/1 winner of the Grade 1 Triumph Hurdle. Of course, the logic dictates that any festival where lots of hot favourites lose equates to a good week for the bookies, yet plenty of punters would have felt pretty satisfied after taking a chance on longshot winners like Golden Ace, Lecky Watson, Doddiethegreat, and Wonderwall across the four days. Those who went in heavy on big names like Galopin Des Champs and Constitution Hill were left scratching their heads.
Needless to say, seeing longshot winners in the biggest of races is hardly a rarity. In the UK, we have the Grand National on the horizon, and it’s always a race that throws up a bit of value for punters looking for it. Winners of 100/1, 66/1, and 50/1 have all been recorded in the recent past. Yes, at times you have a Tiger Roll type who duly delivers on being a hot favourite, but more often than not you can get a big price.
Kentucky Derby Has Been Rough on the Favourites in Recent Years
Looking across the Atlantic, the online horse betting markets for the Kentucky Derby 2025 are starting to shape up, and it acts as an interesting case study for trends with favourites and longshots. For example, in the last six meetings of the “Run for the Roses,” we can only really point to Authentic (2020 – 8/1 SP) as being anywhere near the top of the markets. In that same timeframe, we have had 80/1 winners (Rich Strike 2022) and 30/1 winners (Country House 2019), with all other winners having odds of 15/1 or greater.
The question, perhaps, is whether this is a lasting trend or not. If you go back a little further, from 2013-2018, for example, the SPs of the Kentucky Derby winners were as follows: 5/1, 5/2, 3/1, 3/1, 5/1, 3/1. We should add the caveat that those runnings included the years of superstars like American Pharoah and Justify, but the point still stands: the trend has moved toward bigger prices. Whether that continues or not is anyone’s guess. But we will say that there is no Justify or American Pharoah-level horse currently in the Road to the Kentucky Derby, so perhaps the door is open to another big price winner in 2025.
Melbourne Cup Has Thrown Up Plenty of Value
Down in Australia, the Melbourne Cup has been absolutely brutal for favourites over the last 20 years. Basically, since the end of Maykbe Diva’s stunning hat-trick of wins (2003-2005), it has become more of a lottery. And yes, we have seen 100/1 winners (Prince of Penzance 2015), and the 2024 winner, Knight’s Choice, came in at 80/1. More interesting, still, has been the underperformance of the favourites in the Melbourne Cup, averaging 7th place over the last ten years.
As we mentioned earlier, there is no sense that this is a trend. All of these races have history stretching back more than a century, and you can always find cycles of years when favourites flopped and 100/1 shots took home the spoils. Yet, it acts as a kind of reminder that the blue-chip, globally-watched horse racing events have been throwing up surprise winners year after year over the last decade.
For punters, using this information should be cautionary. We might well see the favourites win the Grand National, Kentucky Derby, and Melbourne Cup this year, yet it is incontestable that there has been betting value on offer in these races over the last decade and more. All your usual tools – statistics, form, handicapping – still count, but it’s worth remembering that shock winners have been just as common as short-priced favourites in some of the world’s biggest races.
