Maltese Cross fans look away - history shows that the Arc draw could hardly have been worse

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The history books tell us that a draw in stall 11 is the worst possible position Maltese Cross could break from in Sunday's Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, with no winners of the race housed there since Racing Post records began in 1988. But what chance did those runners actually have?

We have had eight runnings of the Arc since Longchamp’s redevelopment work was completed in 2018, so let us take that as our sample size.

One metric we can use is Betfair SPs. Using the price of each runner housed in stalls one to 20 since 2018, we find that stall 11 comes out bang in the middle when considering median price (27). That is a far lower median than stalls six (47.5) and 12 (40.5) - those have housed at least one winner - and indicates that stall 11's lack of success is not down to just housing unfancied runners.