Key Characteristics
Southwell Racecourse is set in the East Midlands countryside, and hosts both jump and flat action with the flat action being both turf and all weather. It’s certainly not posh but the viewing is great and is a must for real racing fans. Southwell was the only track in the UK to use Fibresand. However in the autumn of 2021 after 30 years of use the course was relaid at some considerable expense to Tapeta joining Newcastle and Wolverhampton who also use the surface.
The course has also has a cut away installed just as you come off the bend about three furlongs from home.
Draw Bias & Pace Analysis
Back on the Fibresand, low numbers were often favoured over 5f and it appears that it certainly is no disadvantage on the new surface either. However looking at the stats for the winners in handicaps it indicates it’s still more than possible to win from the middle as well. Going hard early was the key on the Fibresand, but tactically you can win either from the front or near the pace now. Still hard to come off the back though.
High numbers are next to the stands side rail still over the straight 5 furlongs but the jockeys all tend to wind up going down the middle with very few choosing to use the rail on either side.
On to the round course. At 6f there seems to be a slight preference towards middle at the moment, with stalls 1-4 having about 20% of the winners, stalls 5-8 about 50% and stalls 9-14 about 30%, although very few from the outside three stalls. The cut away certainly helps make it possible for horses to go down the inside but there have been few winners from horses that have been held up and used the strategy.
With the longer distances as you’d expect any bias tends to get lost as there is more running available to get yourself sorted from a “bad” draw. The inside drawn horses do still seem to have a slight disadvantage but this might go as the surface beds in. Horses drawn very wide are still seen trying to jump out and quickly tack across so that they aren’t caught out wide. Coming up the straight it appears that between 5 and 10 horse widths off the far rail is he place to be and after about a furlong of the straight it becomes clear quite quickly as to who is going to be involved in the finish.
Trainers & Jockeys
We will update the jockey and trainer stats as they become available.
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