Jockey Profiles: Ryan Moore geegeez.co.uk

Jul 17, 2023

The second in my series of articles on jockeys and, this time, Ryan Moore comes under the microscope.

Table of Contents

Ryan Moore was born in Brighton in 1983 and he rode his first winner in the year 2000. Three years later, he broke through the 50 winners in a year barrier and, in 2004, he notched up his first century (132). In his early career he rode primarily for Richard Hannon but, by the mid-2000s, Moore was getting an increasing number of rides for Sir Michael Stoute. It was for Sir Michael that he recorded his first Group 1 success with Notnowcato in the Juddmonte Stakes at York in August 2006. In 2011 he started being noticed by Aidan O’Brien and, by 2016, he had ridden over 100 times in a season for the Irish maestro in the UK and Ireland combined. The Coolmore Stud provided the vast majority of these rides from the Ballydoyle handler, giving Moore the opportunity to ride some of the very top horses in training. In 2017 he secured his 2000th British winner and Moore is a definitely a jockey who justifies a deep dive into his statistical performance.

As with the Hollie Doyle piece I have analysed the last eight full years of flat racing in the UK and Ireland (2015-2023). I have used the Profiler Tool along with the Query Tool as the main vehicles for my data gathering. In all the tables profit/loss quoted is to Industry SP, but I will quote Betfair SP where appropriate.

Let's first look at Moore's overall stats by reviewing his performance on every single runner during this eight-year period:

An excellent strike rate for Moore, in excess of one win in every five, primarily due to the fact that a sizable percentage of his rides are on fancied runners at shorter prices. This market detail also partly accounts for the fact that the PRB figure is very high at 0.63. His A/E index, a ratio that essentially determines value, is around the average for all jockeys.

We can also see that backing all his rides blind would have secured losses of nearly 21p in the £ to SP; to BSP the returns improve, but we still would have lost around 12p for every £1 staked.

It is relevant to distinguish performance in the UK versus Ireland for Moore because there is a quite a difference:

As can be seen, Moore's record in Ireland is far superior in terms of win percentage. This is mainly due to the fact that, in Ireland, 93% of his rides have been for Aidan O’Brien, whereas in the UK this combo stands at just 17% of total rides. O’Brien runners are rarely big prices so as a result of this one would expect to see that high strike rate for Moore in Ireland. However, perhaps what is more significant is if we look at the data for horses from the top three in the betting, comparing Ryan's record in the UK with his record in Ireland.

We are now comparing like for like from a betting market perspective. And yet still we see a stronger performance in Ireland and a much higher strike rate, as well as significantly better returns and a stronger A/E index. It should be noted we get a similar set of results if using a price bracket of say 5/1 or less. Already I am thinking Moore riding in Ireland is something to keep an eye on.

Annual data are the next port of call. Here is a breakdown by win percentage / Strike Rate (SR%):

Six of the eight years have seen a strike rate of over 20%; 2019 and 2020 were the years to dip below that figure. One obvious reason that may help explain this lower level was that Aidan O’Brien slightly under-performed at the same time. Obviously that would have affected Moore's record as he rides so regularly for the stable. Moreover, 2020 was Covid-affected with Moore largely unable to ride in Ireland: he had just 15 rides, across Irish Champions Weekend, with two wins and another five placed horses.

If we track the yearly strike rates of both trainer and jockey we can see there is a clear correlation:

As punters we need to appreciate that in most cases jockeys are only as good as the horses they are riding, and those primarily riding for top stables will win more often than jockeys who ride regularly for ‘lesser’ stables. This is why when researchers drill into data they often use price bands to compare in order to offer a fairer comparison (like I did earlier in the UK v Ireland – top three in the betting stats). Talking of price, let's look at this area next:

The Profiler offers a breakdown of performance by Starting Price splitting the market into seven price brackets. I have taken Moore's record straight from that table:

As can be seen, Moore does not ride many genuine outsiders – less than 50 rides on horses priced 28/1 or bigger in the last eight years. From the table, then, it looks sensible to concentrate on horses priced 17/2 or shorter. When using BSP with these shorter priced runners one would have lost only around 6p in the £ across 3549 qualifiers. That's not too bad given the huge sample. In fact we would have made a small profit to BSP last year (2022) on horses with an industry SP of 17/2 or shorter. Hindsight, eh?

One clear problem with jockeys as well renowned as Moore is securing value. How easy is it to obtain value on a Moore mount? Clearly it is not easy, so we need to keep digging!

A look at Ryan's record at different distances now. I have grouped them into five distance bands. Again I am comparing strike rates:

The one distance bracket that stands out from a strike rate perspective is 1m1f to 1m3f. The data sample is considerable so one would guess there is something going on here. But what could be happening? The first point to clarify is there is not a field size-related bias, even if 7f-1m races have a slightly bigger average field size than other distances.

One factor could be that Moore rarely blasts his runners out of the gates and hence tends to front run in races less than the average jockey. With that in mind, this might be what is hindering his strike rate figures at shorter distances (less than a mile). Over longer distances the front running bias declines considerably and hence in 1m1f to 1m3f this is not such an issue. That is one plausible idea.

Another theory is linked to the fact he rides many of the best bred middle distance horses in the world, usually for O'Brien / Coolmore Stud. Indeed if you look at the distance stats for Moore when riding for O’Brien, the best distance range for the pair is also 1m1f to 1m3f – hitting close to a 31% success rate. Backing this combo over these distances would have yielded a BSP profit of over 15p in the £. This theory, which initially had plenty of logic to it, now has some evidence to give it 'real world' credibility.

My final word on this distance section is simply that Moore may just judge the pace of these 1m1f-1m3f races better than any other distance. That may also have some validity.

I am now going to look at all courses where Moore has had at least 75 rides in the eight year sample period. The courses are listed alphabetically:

As one might expect, achieving blind profits at individual courses is unlikely, but Moore has snuck into SP profit at Chelmsford and Sandown. Using BSP actually does not change things too much with only Naas additionally edging into profit and Lingfield hitting break even.

Moore's record at Goodwood offers up some interesting stats when we compare his data on favourites with other market ranks:

The ‘not favourite’ stats include plenty of runners that were near the head of the market – combining second and third favourites produced just 6 winners from 73! Goodwood obviously hosts highly competitive racing so we do have to factor that in when noting poor or modest looking results. But perhaps a crucial note is that Aidan O'Brien doesn't really target the Glorious Goodwood festival like he does other meetings. Indeed, of the 16 tracks where O'Brien has saddled 20+ runners in the months of July and August, Goodwood has the lowest each way strike rate of all. Moore rode 55 of APOB's 80 such runners during the study period.

Considering Grade 1 UK courses more broadly, punters need to be cautious when focusing strongly on one particular jockey. For example, I think the following table is quite an eye opener. It compares Moore riding favourites at Grade 1 UK tracks with favourites at non-Grade 1 UK tracks. The Grade 1 UK tracks are Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown and York:

It should be noted that the average price of the favourites at the UK Grade 1 tracks was higher, which will have a bearing on the strike rate, but even taking that into account the numbers are still poles apart. I did check horses priced 2/1 or shorter across both types of track and the non-Grade 1 UK courses secured an 11% better strike rate then as well and much better returns of an extra 19p in the £. I rarely back favourites myself, but if there are favourite backers out there, bear those stats in mind if looking to back a Moore 'jolly'.

Before moving away from courses, the stats from these five courses where Moore did not ride at least 75 runners are actually worth sharing:

The sample sizes are not that small and the two stand out stats are the PRB figures for Wolves (0.84) and Navan (0.80) – these are exceptionally high.

Here are the trainers that Moore has ridden for at least 50 times (ordered by strike rate) – there are 11 in total:

* includes prior trainer entities at the same establishment

Moore has a very good record when riding for the Charlton stable, especially with horses from the top three in the betting – with these runners his figures read 21 wins from 54 (SR 38.9%) for an SP profit of £34.03 (ROI +63.0%). William Haggas and Charlie Hills are also trainers that Moore has done well for and, as a general rule, when the jockey teams up with either of these trainers I would look at it as a positive.

As expected Aidan O'Brien and Sir Michael Stoute provide Moore with the vast majority of his rides, with O'Brien offering better stats in that particular battle.

We saw earlier that the overall Ireland versus UK stats differed markedly for Moore. It makes sense therefore to compare Moore's record with O'Brien when riding in the UK compared with Ireland. The graph below plots the relative win and win/placed (each way) strike rates:

We can see a much stronger set of results for Irish races in terms of wins and places. This was to be expected, with there being a heavy selection bias when Moore catches a plane to ride, but it is still nice to see that confirmed. Losses to level stakes correlated with the strike rates meaning they were much steeper in the UK than in Ireland for this jockey trainer combination - 16.5% in the UK, 5.8% in Ireland. This equates to a difference of nearly 11 pence in the £.

Onto run style now. Here is a breakdown of Moore's run style in terms of percentage of runners that match each of the four styles measured on geegeez.co.uk:

These figures are very similar to those you would find if you averaged out all the jockeys in the weighing room. Ryan has raced from the front on 14% of his rides which equates to roughly one in every seven. However, there is a big difference if we compare the percentage of Moore front runners in handicaps to non-handicaps. In handicaps he has taken the early lead in just 9.7% of races, in non-handicaps the figure is 16.7%.

In sprint handicaps (5-6f) Moore has led early just 20 times in 264 races, which equates to just 7.6% of the time. This stat does baffle me. As regular readers will know, front runners in sprint handicaps generally have a huge edge. Moore clearly does not think like this – if he did that figure would be much much higher.

Moore follows the usual trend of jockeys where his front runners win more often than his prominent racers who in turn out-perform mid div and those held up early. I always look at favourite run style data, too, as this eliminates any potential selection bias regarding 'good horses at the front, bad ones at the back'. Here are the relative win strike rates for Moore-ridden favourites in terms of the four main run styles:

Over half of his front-running favourites went onto win. It should come as no surprise therefore that one would have made a healthy profit on Moore-ridden front-running favourites, while significant losses were incurred on favourites that were held up or raced midfield early. Moore on Aidan O'Brien-trained front-running favourites have an astonishing record: 60 wins from 94 runners (SR 63.8%). If your crystal ball had predicted these runners pre-race, you would been able to secure a huge profit of £52.36 (ROI +55.7%).

With the main body of the article complete allow me to share a few extra statistics that may be of interest:

*

So that wraps up my Ryan Moore profile. There is clearly no doubting Moore's qualities as a jockey – from a personal point of view, I just wish he would race close to or up with pace more often, especially in races of a mile or less. Given his superstar profile it is difficult but, as I hope you've discovered, not impossible to squeeze some juice out of Ryan Moore's value lemon.

Until next time...

- DR