Which jumps trainers have the best records after lengthy breaks?

Who are the best at preparing horses for their return to action?

The majority of the field for Sunday’s Greatwood Hurdle arrived at Cheltenham with a recent run of one sort or another under their belts. But not the first three who were all returning from breaks to varying degrees.

It was the first run of the season for runner-up Adagio who hadn’t run since Aintree in April, while No Ordinary Joe in third was making his first start since a couple of outings very early in the current season in May.

However, winner West Cork defied a far longer lay-off, returning from 631 days off the track since his last run in the pre-pandemic days of February 2020.

As the length of his absence from the track suggests, West Cork had a setback – ‘a freak little injury’ – according to his rider Harry Skelton who revealed that the plan to bring him back in the Greatwood had only been hatched about five weeks before the race.

West Cork’s win was a fine training performance from brother Dan, but it prompted us to interrogate the Timeform database to see which other jumps trainers have the best records when it comes to winning with horses returning from a lengthy break.

The rule of six (months)

Let’s look first at trainers with horses returning from six months or more off the track. In many cases, this doesn’t necessarily imply anything untoward has happened to the horse in the meantime but could merely constitute a summer break between the end of one campaign and the beginning of the next.

Topping the list here is Willie Mullins who, over the last five seasons, has had more qualifiers than any other trainer for this category yet also achieves the best strike rate (691 runners, 235 winners = 34.01%) which has yielded a level-stake profit of £43.52 to a £1 stake. Mullins has engineered some of the best training performances of the Cheltenham Festival in recent years.

Arctic Fire came back a 418-day absence, having chipped a bone, to win the 2017 County Hurdle under top weight and the following season Penhill won the Stayers’ Hurdle on his first start for 323 days since Punchestown the previous April.

We’ll return to Mullins below, but next in the list is his nephew Emmet Mullins who also has an excellent strike-rate, albeit from a much smaller sample (27/8 = 29.63%). A good recent example for his yard came last month when Noble Yeats won a beginners chase at Galway on his first start for seven months (213 days).

The top British-based trainer by this measure is Jedd O’Keeffe, again with a small sample (22/6 = 27.27%). Stable star Sam Spinner returned from absences of 224 days and 193 days respectively when making successful debuts over hurdles at Newcastle in November 2016 and then over fences at Wetherby in October 2019. Stablemate Mr Scrumpy, a fairly useful hurdler, won on his seasonal debut at Wetherby in both 2019 and 2020 after absences since the previous spring of 201 and 214 days.

Another smaller Irish trainer who comes out well in this list is Matthew Smith (40/10 = 25%), best known for smart hurdler Ronald Pump who made a winning debut over fences at Fairyhouse in November 2019 after 203 days off. The trainer’s most noteworthy success after a break, though, was probably Prince Garyantle’s 25/1 win in a 24-runner handicap hurdle at the 2018 Punchestown Festival when returning from 188 days off. The same horse had also been successful on his first start for the yard the previous spring after an even longer absence (263 days).

As might be anticipated, Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls perform well by this measure and have very similar figures. But, in contrast to Mullins, both Henderson (519/121 = 23.31%) and Nicholls (549/123 = 22.4%) would return a substantial loss if backing their runners blind.

Other trainers with larger strings and good strike rates after absences of 180 days or more include Anthony Honeyball (21.58%), Noel Meade (20.88%), Fergal O’Brien (19.75%), Olly Murphy (18.97%) and Kim Bailey (18.18%).

The 500 club

But which trainers fare best when it comes to really long absences of the West Cork type, winning with horses who have been off the track for 500 days or more?

As the Greatwood result suggests, Dan Skelton has a good record with runners after lengthy absences. While sixth in this list by strike rate, he’s trained more winners after a 500+ day absence than any other British-based trainer in the last five years (57/8 = 14.04%).

Interestingly, five of those eight winners were also making their first start for the yard. West Cork’s owner Mike Newbould had his patience rewarded with another of his horses when his useful chaser Yorkist came back from 538 days off to win at Aintree in November 2018.

The longest absence defied by one of Skelton’s winners was 783 days when Horseshoe Bay landed the odds on his stable/hurdles debut at Worcester in August 2017 more than two years after his last run on the Flat in the Group 3 Bahrain Trophy for Sir Michael Stoute.

But once again it is Mullins who has overwhelmingly the highest number of runners – and winners – after lengthy absences (109/33 = 30.28%) with his strike-rate holding up remarkably well in the circumstances. Douvan might be the highest-rated horse Mullins has trained, but he also proved hard to keep sound in his latter years and was having his first start since his shock defeat in the same race a year earlier when falling in the 2018 Queen Mother Champion Chase.

He was sidelined again after finishing second at Punchestown later that spring but gained the final success of his career, on what was also to prove his final start, when defying an even longer absence - 569 days - to win the Clonmel Oil Chase in November 2019.

Faugheen was a more durable star for Mullins and the Riccis, though he too had a lengthy interruption to his career after winning the Irish Champion Hurdle in January 2016, not returning until 665 days later when picking up where he left off to win the Morgiana Hurdle at Punchestown in November 2017.

Mullins often likes to give his French imports plenty of time to acclimatise before their first runs for the yard, though one who had to wait longer than most for his Irish debut was Chacun Pour Soi who finally appeared in a beginners chase at Naas in March 2019 almost three years to the day since he’d last run in France. He was well worth the wait and has since proved himself another top-drawer chaser for Douvan’s connections.

The only trainer who comes close to Mullins’ strike-rate with horses who’ve been off for 500 days or more is Harry Fry (21/6 = 28.57%). His notable training feat was bringing nine-year-old Jolly’s Cracked It back from almost two years on the sidelines (706 days) to win a handicap hurdle at Ascot in November 2018.

Venetia Williams can match Fry’s number of winners but with more horses (39/6 = 15.38%). Useful chaser Burtons Well had his problems judging from his light campaigns and some lengthy absences between them but he came back from 664 days off to win a veterans’ handicap at Aintree in October 2019.

The other trainers above Dan Skelton by strike-rate in this table are James Ewart (20/3 = 15%) and Nicky Richards (21/3 = 14.29%), with the latter’s exploit of winning a maiden hurdle at Ayr in January 2020 with Mayo Star after an 833-day absence on his first start for the stable worth a mention.

More from Sporting Life

• Racecards
• Fast results
• Full results and free video replays
• Horse racing news
• Horse racing tips
• Horse racing columnists
• Download our free iOS and Android app
• Football and other sports tips
• Podcasts and video content

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.