By 2YO EdgeMan
I’m often getting asked by my polite and inquisitive Edgies, “Mr. EdgeMan, at what tracks, and more specifically, at what meets do you see a high percentage of favorites winning 2YO MSW races?”. It’s an excellent question, so always being one to oblige with answers, I’ve done the analysis and will break it down for you below.
We’ll start by looking at ‘our universe’ of 2YO MSW races since these events are certainly not all created equal. Many of you who had followed me prior to my move to this great site know that I only bake in the highest quality of 2YO MSW races in North America when I do analysis like this. Specifically, the tracks that we previously considered what we believe to be the ‘Top 10’ as they relate to these special races – they were: Saratoga, Keeneland, Del Mar, Belmont, Churchill, Santa Anita, Kentucky Downs, Aqueduct, Woodbine and Gulfstream. To change it up a bit, we’ve decided to also include Oaklawn this year, giving us a ‘Top 11’ (ten is a boring number, anyway). OP’s purse in these races last year was $90,000, so they definitely deserve to be amongst the ‘EdgeMan Elite’, plus their numbers don’t change the averages much because they only ran 14 juvenile MSW races last year, which is pretty typical for them.
We decided to do a five-year lookback for this analysis, as that gives us a statistically credible total of over 2,500 races. Going back much further than five years begins to make the data a tad stale. So, let’s dig in.
All told, there were a total of 2,711 2YO MSW races at our ‘Top 11’ tracks from 2018 through 2022. In those races, the favorite visited the Winner’s Circle 1,012 times for a 37.3% win ratio. We’ll use this as our average to weigh the other tracks / meets against. I can already anticipate your next question, “What meets should we consider?”. That’s an easy one – since I’m doing the investigation, we’ll look at the eight meets that interest me the most, and they also happen to be the ones we follow like a hawk: Keeneland Spring and Fall Meets, Churchill Spring, September and Fall Meets, Belmont Spring Meet (more on this in a minute), Saratoga (of course!) and Kentucky Downs. With the renovations going on at Belmont, the fall meets have gotten a bit wonky because they are being run at Aqueduct. So, we’re not going to consider BEL Fall in this study. Hence, we land on our eight meets.
The meet with the highest percent of winning favorites goes to…..drumroll, please…..Keeneland Spring. OK, OK – we know that’s certainly not a shocker – 22 of 44 or 50% on the button (can anyone say, ‘Wesley Ward’?). However, right on their heels, and one more favorite winning would have put them in the lead, is Belmont Spring as they’ve had 45 of the 91 races won by favorites, which computes to 49.5%. Third, and barely three percentage points above our average of 37.3% from above is Keeneland Fall at 40.5%, or 49 of 121. Those are the only three meets that are above the average.
Three more came in within two percentage points of the average – Saratoga at 36.6% (117 of 320) and Churchill September & Churchill Fall, both at 35.8% (34 of 95 and 64 of 179, respectively).
Lastly, only two meets out of the eight that we calculated produced a lower-than-average rate of winning favs and they were Kentucky Downs – 17 of 55, or 30.9% and Churchill Spring – 33 of 109 – 30.3%. In case you are interested (and are a nerd for numbers like I am), the average of the eight meets that we broke down comes in at 37.6%, very close to the average of the ‘Top 11 Track’ overall average.
So, there you have it. Never let it be said that the EdgeMan doesn’t share his insights and statistics on the Wonderful World of 2YO Maiden Special Weight racing! More soon…
