Inaugural Bettors’ Best Friends Awards: Lobo is top trainer

Determining a bettor’s best friend among the trainer ranks is more difficult than jockey, because a disproportionate number of trainers make a disproportionate number of the total starts available relative to their jockey brethren, and those big names all get over bet.

You have to go all the way down to the 63rd trainer by starts, Flint Stites with 402 starts, to find the first positive ROI, and even his was just plus 0.9 percent. Next was 76th-ranked Blaine Wright with a 6.3 percent ROI. That means just one of the top 75 trainers by starts, and none of the top 62, had a flat-bet profit from his or her charges. Jockeys, on the other hand, had three names with a flat-bet profit among the top 75 by mounts and two among the top 62, including our inaugural Bettors’ Best Friend Award winner Gerardo Corrales. When determining the jockey award, HRN looked at the top 20 percent of riders by starts. For trainers we did 10 percent, which gives an average of about three starts per week. If a bettor only has one or two opportunities a week or a few opportunities a month, then that’s more of an acquaintance than a best friend. So, after much number crunching and exposition in this article, Paulo Lobo was a bettor’s best friend in 2022 by nature of his 23 percent win rate, his plus 36.0 percent HRN Impact and plus 30.3 percent ROI. True, he doesn’t lead any of his peers in any of those categories among this set, but the consistency to win at that clip combined with the HRN Impact and return on investment made him a key player for bettors in any race with a Lobo runner. Scott Becker, currently based at Hawthorne, topped the win percentage list with a 32.8 percent strike rate from his 320 starters. Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert was next at 28.9 percent. Becker’s plus 11.5 percent HRN Impact and minus 0.5 percent ROI were bettor friendly but not best-friend level. The top trainer by HRN Impact was Tianna Richardville, who won 54.6 percent more times than bettors expected, but similar to Becker, she just missed a flat-bet profit with a minus 0.5 percent ROI.

Randi Persaud won more than expected with a plus 49.1 percent HRN Impact and paid off when it happened at plus 16.5 percent ROI, but the low win rate of 10 percent kept him from claiming the dollar-sign trophy.

This chart includes the top 15 trainers with at least 159 starts this year ranked by HRN Impact. On the bottom end Henry West Jr., currently based at Delta Downs, was at the bottom of all categories with a 2.4 percent win rate, minus 48.7 percent HRN Impact and minus 84 percent ROI.