Mind the gap: when to follow festival runners returning from different layoffs
There is a perception that January and February are effectively a pause in the jumps season, when horses being prepared for the Cheltenham Festival are kept under wraps to guard them against injury or a hard race that may then leave a mark on the big day.
However, with 46 days to go, evidence from recent seasons suggests around two-thirds of the winners at the festival in March will be given at least one more run between now and the start of the meeting.
Because of this I thought it would be interesting to investigate the relationship between the different layoffs of horses gearing up for the premier meeting of the season and their relative success against expectations by analysing the results of all festival races since 2006.
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