Stats And Trends To Follow At Chester Racecourse

Chester Racecouse - also known as the Roodee is famous and notorious for its tight turns and its short circular loop.

The draw in Cheshire could not be more imperative to a horse's chance of success - a low draw gives horses the advantage with the use of the inside rail, whilst horse's posted wide are left jockeying for positions and have sufficiently more ground to cover.

Winning horses from an inside draw are not necessarily the best in the race nor just lucky, but instead have maximised their opportunity from the best possible beginning.

To check the stall numbers of the participants in any racing contest, the race-cards on the day or the bookie screens in shop or on course often display the number in brackets, to not confuse it with the number of the horse.

If you are unsure with your bet, you usually cannot go wrong with a horse filling stall's one two or three.

With the Chester venue so unique to several courses up and down the land, a certain type of jockey is required with the crucial expertise on how to ride the track correctly.

One jockey to highlight is Liverpool-born Franny Norton, who knows the Roodee like the back of his hand. His runners-to-winners ratio excels above most - in fact, he has the best record for a rider in the last decade.

Several trainers usually look to latch onto the 50-year-old's services throughout the year at Chester - if not riding for regular-retained Yorkshire-based Mark Johnston, particular at the curtain-raising Boodles Festival in May.

Among his many wins in Cheshire in the feature events, he has only gone on to land the Chester Cup on one occasion and it came in 2019 on board Making Miracles.

Over the last five years, aswell as Norton (31), the jockeys with the most wins at the track are Richard Kingscote (37), David Probert (21), Paul Hanagan (17) and Ryan Moore (14).

As for trainers, the most winning individuals over the last five years are Richard Fahey (59), Andrew Balding (41), Tom Dascombe (37), Mark Johnston (29) and Tim Easterby (19)

With the Boodles May Festival coming late spring or early summer, the meeting may be at the subject of some hefty rainfall.. but knowing British weather, we may even get rain throughout the summer months.

Regardless on the time, some horses prefer to run on soft ground - and may have done in the lead-up to whatever Chester meeting they line-up in, whilst others like the going to be much more firm and signified as 'good' or 'quick'.

Try and study the form, and work out which horses have raced and ran well on surfaces that match the going conditions on the day of racing at Chester.

Some novice or maiden events may be hard to predict through the going surface as all the participants are lightly raced or inexperienced, but with horse's that we do know and have seen on the track before, all of them will have their own preferences.

Of course you cannot ask horses what weather or ground they desire, but you can tell from their performances on the track which conditions they favour and relish.