Godolphin Racing: They Don’t Come to Lose

Godolphin racing does not come to lose.

Godolphin, the Maktoum family's private horseracing stable, has become an increasingly scarce presence on the American horse racing stage in recent years, but when they do enter their horses in American races, they are almost always ready to run.

When training operations run relatively few horses, the competence of the establishment is sometimes hard to measure by the win percentage alone as a few unusually bad or unusually lucky race rides can skew that win percentage.In these cases, it is more instructive to look at the In the Money (ITM) percentage , that is, the percentage of their starters that finish first, second, or third.

As a general rule of thumb, if a trainer’s ITM percentage is 45% or higher, that is considered very good, 50% is outstanding, and 55% means you are at the very top of your game. The quality of the competing training stables of course plays a factor, but these percentage are a good general gauge of how capable a trainer is.

By this measurement, Godolphin racing has no equal. They race thier stock primarily in New York, and among those tracks, mostly at Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course. Over the last five meets at these two tracks, they have registered an astonishing 65% ITM percentage over 78 starts.

A comparison of Godolphin’s ITM percentage to top American trainer Bobby Frankel (God rest his soul!) is instructive. Frankel’s ITM percentage over the same last five New York meets from 206 starts is 52%, which is outstanding, but still substantially lower than Godolphin’s incredible percentage.

I thought Todd Pletcher’s numbers would be higher than I discovered them to be. Over the same last five New York meets, his horses have finished in the money 141 times from 367 starts, for an average ITM percentage of just 38%, and in fact his best percentage among the five meets was just 42%. In the years immediately preceding, his ITM percentage was closer to 50%, so it seems that over the last two years Pletcher has become relatively cold.

A look at some of Southern California’s top trainers' stats over the past 1 year shows that Mike Mitchell leads the way with about a 59% ITM percentage, with Julio Canani (trainer of The Pamplemousse), Carla Gaines, Jeff Mullins, and Jerry Hollendorfer all hovering around 52%.

Bobby Frankel’s ITM percentage was also about 52%, which shows he is consistently excellent on both coasts.

It is worthy to note that Frankel starts over two times as many horses as does Godolphin racing, so as to whether the latter are more capable horsemen is not definitive, as they obviously carefully pick and choose the absolutely optimal conditions over which their charges are to be entered.

They may not start many, but when they do, they almost always give a good account of themselves, so the bettor would be wise to think twice before excluding any Godolphin runner from their trifecta.

"We do not wait for things to happen, we make them happen" - H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum