Alan McCabe

Alan McCabe has survived a mid-year move of stables and a couple of months when he didn’t have a runner. In the process he lost several of his best horses as his chief patron and owner of the Haygarth House stables Paul Dixon, brought in Jeremy Glover to take over being in charge. Alan though is now settled into his smart new stables at Averham Park and there are the first signs of better things to come.

14 out of 19 sprint winners so far this year have been achieved on the all-weather and that’s about the same proportion as the stable as a whole since it started in August 2006. The McCabe horses are mainly low grade and obviously get more wins in weaker races of which there are a higher number on the all-weather.

McCabe gets more wins at Southwell, Wolverhampton and Lingfield than Kempton. So far this year the stable has had 4 winners at each of the first three named and just 2 at the latter. Turf wins seem to be scattered around the northern courses with Thirsk and Catterick having the best strike rate while Doncaster has the most winners numerically but a slightly lower winning percentage.

As far as jockeys, Robert Winston has been the most successful jockey for the stable having ridden 18 out of the 33 winners so far this year which includes 11 of the 19 sprint winners. In spite of being a stable which has produced a hefty level stake loss this year, Winston has managed to make an impressive £45.75 level stake profit from a £1 unit.

2008 saw many more winners in the first half of the year (29) compared to the second (13) and it is undoubtedly going to be the same trend this year. At the time of writing (mid-November) there had been 30 winners up to the end of June and only 3 since. Obviously the move of stables hasn’t helped in this regard, with no runners for a couple of months in the middle of the year, but many of the stable’s horses now looked well handicapped and I can see there being plenty of winners in the next four months or so till the end of the all-weather season.

Strike rate and numerically McCabe has always done best with his sprinters and names of horses which should be followed in this department are Fratellino, Tamasou, Cornus, Loose Caboose, Rosie Says No and Fol Liam.