Looking for a Derby winner? Seek some Dr's advice

If you are hoping to pick a Derby winner this year, you may just want to seek some doctor's advice.

Researchers Dr David Marlin, Jane Williams, and Dr Tim Parkin have applied research skills normally used to predict injury and illness risks in horses to devise a winning formula for predicting which horse will win this Saturday.

According to their findings, punters should look for a horse which is short in the odds, is Irish-bred, has been ridden by only one jockey and has won at least twice as a two-year-old.

Their results revealed that horses starting the race as favourite were 4.8 times more likely to win than those that did not. The statistics also showed that for every win as a two-year-old, the likelihood of the horse winning the Epsom Derby was multiplied by 1.5.

Horses born in Ireland were also 2.8 times more likely to win than horses foaled elsewhere and those that had been ridden by the same jockey throughout their career were 2.5 times more likely to win than those ridden by multiple jockeys.

Proving controversial, the findings also showed that breeding had no direct affect on a horse's likelihood of winning the Epsom Derby.
The three specialists in animal health examined data on all 344 horses competing at Epsom between 1988 and 2009, gaining information from The Racing Post website, trainer and stud websites.

According to the model the current favourite Jan Vermeer (2-1) has the best chance in the race and is four times more likely to win than the next horse predicted.

[Image Rennett Stowe via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence]