All weather racing looks like the fairest fight in the sport. The surfaces are consistent, the fields are often smaller than on turf, and the favourite usually sits near the top of the betting where you expect it. So is the favourite the obvious bet?
On the figures below, not on its own. All weather favourites as a whole were priced about fairly, and the more interesting questions sit underneath that.
Are all weather favourites profitable to back?
In an earlier analysis of 36,593 all weather races with a single favourite (2013 to 2026, prices at Betfair SP), favourites won 33.9% of the time, with an A/E of 1.00.
Two terms, so nobody is left guessing. Betfair SP is the Betfair Starting Price, the final exchange price at the off. A/E means actual over expected: the number of winners that really happened divided by the number the prices said to expect. An A/E of 1.00 means the group won exactly as often as its odds implied. Below 1.00, it won less often than the odds implied.
For comparison, the current database covers every race in Britain and Ireland from 1 July 2013 to 14 October 2026. The Betfair SP favourite won 34.4% of 167,257 races, with an A/E of 1.00. Backing every one to 1 point level stakes (the same stake each time), after 2% commission, returned -1.4%. The longest losing run was 28 races. Those numbers describe that particular stretch of racing, and a future stretch will look different in the details.
So the all weather favourite is priced about as well as any other favourite. The rest of this post looks at whether any slice of that group behaves differently.
Why all weather favourites look easy
The pull is easy to understand. Polytrack, Tapeta and the floodlit evening meetings give a level of consistency that turf rarely offers. Fewer surface excuses. A horse that won here last month is running over much the same race shape today.
That consistency is also why the market copes with it so well. A strike rate of 33.9% (the percentage of bets that win) is healthy, but the A/E of 1.00 says the odds already paid a fair price for it.
After commission, a 33.9% strike rate on its own leaves you roughly where you started, so it is not a system.
Track by track: Lingfield, Wolverhampton, Kempton and the rest
Most people looking for an all weather favourite angle reach for the track first, because it is the most visible variable. These are the earlier analysis figures (the sample included Dundalk in Ireland):
| Track | Favourites | Strike rate | A/E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lingfield | 5,545 | 35.5% | 1.01 |
| Wolverhampton | 8,287 | 34.5% | 1.01 |
| Kempton | 5,927 | 34.2% | 1.00 |
| Southwell | 4,178 | 33.6% | 0.98 |
| Chelmsford | 4,291 | 33.6% | 0.97 |
| Newcastle | 4,324 | 32.4% | 0.98 |
| Dundalk | 3,969 | 31.8% | 1.01 |
Every track sits between 0.97 and 1.01. Lingfield, often talked about as a favourites’ track, comes out at 1.01, which is within rounding distance of the whole group. Chelmsford and Newcastle are the lowest, but these figures alone cannot tell us whether such small gaps would repeat.
On this evidence the track is not where a favourites angle is likely to be found. Each of those samples is a few thousand races, so it is a fair read, though still one stretch of racing and not a promise about the next.
Does the sex of the horse change anything?
Splitting the same favourites by sex gives a different picture. These are also from the earlier analysis:
| Sex | Favourites | Strike rate | A/E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gelding | 24,839 | 32.5% | 0.99 |
| Filly | 5,769 | 34.7% | 0.94 |
Geldings make up about two-thirds of the group and sit at 0.99, which is almost exactly what the market expected.
The filly cell is the one worth a second look. An A/E of 0.94 across 5,769 favourites means they won roughly 6% fewer races than their prices implied. It is not a lay system on its own, because a 34.7% strike rate still means a lot of lay bets lose. It is a reason to look a little harder at a filly favourite before backing her.
When a “favourite” stops being a strong one
Not every favourite is the same kind of favourite. Here is the same group split by Betfair SP price band, again from the earlier analysis:
| Betfair SP | Races | Strike rate | A/E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 2.0 (odds-on) | 4,427 | 60.2% | 0.99 |
| 2.00 to 2.87 (Evens to 15/8) | 9,704 | 40.9% | 0.99 |
| 2.88 to 3.99 | 12,149 | 29.7% | 1.01 |
| 4.00 to 5.99 | 9,401 | 21.5% | 1.00 |
| 6.00 and above | 912 | 13.8% | 0.90 |
From odds-on up to a Betfair SP of 6, the strike rate falls as the price gets bigger, but the A/E stays close to 1.00 (between 0.99 and 1.01 in every band). That is what fairly priced groups look like.
Above a Betfair SP of 6, the picture changes. These are favourites in wide-open all weather races, the runners that head the betting only because nothing else has a louder claim. There were 912 of them, they won 13.8%, and the A/E was 0.90.
Ideas to test, not rules
What follows are ideas drawn from those tables. None of them has been tested going forward, and none is a licence to bet blindly.
- Track: an idea worth dropping, not testing. The table above gives little reason to treat Lingfield favourites or Wolverhampton favourites as a system.
- Sex: a filly favourite may deserve slightly less enthusiasm than the price suggests (A/E 0.94 on thousands of races).
- Big-priced favourites: a favourite at a Betfair SP of 6 or more is a candidate to oppose rather than back.
If you want to try any of them, record the bets and check them against a fresh set of races before putting real weight behind them. The guide on how to test a system live shows one way to do that. A short live run can show whether you followed your rules, but it cannot prove an edge has held, so keep a full record and wait for a much larger sample before trusting it.
An A/E gap this size is small, and it will not rescue a bet that fails the basic checks of proven going, proven trip and a sensible step in class. The sensible use is as one filter among several. The guide to laying the favourite uses similar thinking in reverse, and the disparity method is one way to look for the conditions where a favourite is more exposed. If A/E is new to you, what A/E means in horse racing explains it from scratch.
Where to look next
If you want to see these favourites for yourself, open today’s race cards and look at the next all weather meeting, noting each favourite’s sex, trip and price against the tables above.
