Talkin' Babies

More on First-Time Starters vs Non-FTSers

As promised yesterday, I took a much deeper dive into a comparison of firsters vs. non-firsters with a study of 2,851 races. The dataset that I worked with today is all 2YO MSW races in North America from 2020 through 2024 with a purse of $60,000 or greater. Over 25,000 horses started in these races, very slightly over half of those having already made one or more starts.

The results aligned with the numbers that I shared yesterday. Based on the above, 10.2% of these races were won by horses making their debut with 12.3% seeing the winner have run previously at least once. That’s a 2.1% difference which may sound small, but certainly is not insignificant.

How about Return on Investment (ROI)? This analysis found the ROI delta between FTSers and Non-FTSers to be quite small, $1.50 for firsters and $1.49 for Non-firsters.

So, what does this tell us? Certainly, as you know already, one should never eliminate runners simply because they are making their first start. However, most importantly, it shows that both firsters and non-firsters both need to be fully analyzed and that services covering only First-Time Starters are just giving you half of the story unless of course the field consists exclusively of FTSers.

I hope that this tidbit of info helps in your handicapping of 2YO MSW races.