How to Measure a Trainer's Success: A Different Way of Looking at the Numbers

By Bill Finley 
When it comes to assessing the abilities of the sport's trainers, it sometimes seems that only one number matters–their winning percentage. Above 20% and you're good. Below 10% and you're not good. Somewhere in between and you're mediocre. 

Horsemen seem to have become so obsessed with their winning percentages that some trainers will not run a horse unless the conditions are perfect. If that means racing them no more than three or four times a year and only in spots where they are 5-2 or lower, so be it. 

“I know I'm boasting a little, but I think I do a helluva job,” said Wayne Lukas, who is winning at a 12% rate this year, and said that he doesn't particularly care about his percentage. “We don't have a stable with the depth we used to have where we could knock out 25% like we did in the eighties. We still have the ability to take two, three horses and get the very most out of their abilities. I'm not afraid to run at 5, 6, 10%. I don't care. What I care about is doing a good job for my clients. After all these years of knocking out $270, $280 million and winning the races I've won in my career, if I have to worry about my reputation at this point I'd really have a problem.” 

So who is doing a better job for their owners? The 20% trainer who runs a horse five times a year and wins once, or the 12% trainer who runs a horse 12 times a year and wins two races? 

The answer should be obvious, but many high-profile owners want nothing to do with trainers who don't regularly win at high percentage rates. Lukas, himself, no longer attracts the type of owners he used to get during the prime of his career. 

So is there a better way to measure how good a job a trainer is doing besides his or her winning percentage? I decided to give it a try. 

What trainers get the most out of the stock in their barn and maximize earnings for their clients? Isn't that what really matters? There's obviously no perfect way to measure this, but I took a shot, nonetheless. 

Courtesy of Equibase, below is a listing of average earnings per horse in a trainer's barn. For instance, if a trainer had 10 horses and they made a combined $100,000, then his barn averages $10,000 in earnings per horse. For a horse to be considered part of a trainer's stable, it had to run at least one time under that trainer's name. 

We realize this way of analyzing trainers is flawed. A trainer with an abundance of 2-year olds would be penalized as would claiming trainers who may have a horse for no more than one or two starts before they go off to someone else's barn. It also doesn't take into account that some trainers may be blessed to buy dozens of expensive horses at the sales and never get them to the races. And, obviously, trainers with cheap stock can't possibly post the types of numbers that the Pletchers, Bafferts and Motts do, no matter how talented they are. 

That said, here's a different way of looking at the sport's top trainers and who is getting the most of what is in their barns, which means doing the bets job for their owners. 

The numbers run from January 1 through Dec. 1, 2014, and to qualify, a trainer must have had 75 total starts during that period. They are listed in order of highest average earnings per horses in their barns.

(To download the complete chart, click here)