Wolverhampton woes suggest it’s time for more serious action over non-runners

Non-runners tend to be more of a problem for punters on turf, when changes in the going are another reason connections might need to withdraw their horse, but they are also becoming a noticeable issue at one of Britain’s all-weather tracks.

I was keeping a close eye on Wolverhampton’s meeting last Tuesday after a reader had alerted me to the growing numbers of high-drawn runners being declared non-runners at the track. In the event, there were seven non-runners – five of whom happened to be drawn 11, 11, 11, 12 and 12.

Now, this might have all been a coincidence, but it was repeating a long-term pattern at the track. Going back to the start of January last year, I looked at all Wolverhampton's races with ten or more declared runners and found that 91 per cent of the 197 non-runners in that time had been drawn in stalls 11, 12 or 13. That equates to more than 13 per cent of the runners housed in those stalls being pulled out, whereas only two per cent of the runners drawn in stalls one to eight came out.