The emerging trend that can keep you ahead of the pack at the Cheltenham Festival

Trends analysis is commonplace in the financial industry, where large sets of data are used to help predict how stocks might trade in the future, and there are plenty of people who use a similar technique in racing. The idea is that data from past runnings of an individual race can help make decisions about the type of horse who might win that race in the future.

My colleague Kevin Morley is one of the leaders in this field and his ten-year trends analysis can be found for all the big races in Britain and Ireland both in print and online in the Racing Post. His verdicts for all the Cheltenham races can also be found every day of the festival.

One of the big challenges for trends analysts at Cheltenham recently has been the changing nature of the races at the meeting. The inception of many new events in the last decade has had a profound impact on those that already existed and the type of horse who wins them.