High Percentage Trainers

I realize I've left a few loose ends by not finishing my discussion of lousy horse names, and my attempts to calculate AEI/CI per crop. I'll get back to those shortly, but wanted to mention part of another study I'm working on. This is one that I'm doing for a client - we're swapping research for a small share in a 2YO filly that his partnership owns. The study is going to focus on which factors can be used to improve the percentage of claimed horses that go on to become stakes quality horses. I'll be looking at a number of factors, but the one I'm the most excited about at this point is the idea of restricting claims to trainers with high winning percentages. On the one hand, a low percentage trainer is generally going to be a worse trainer, and may make more mistakes...including not identifying a potential star. However, I think this would be more than outweighed by the fact that a high percentage trainer likely gets that high winning percentage by entering horses in spots where they can win...which means generally entering them at or below their 'true' class. They realize that its tough to be profitable at the claiming game, and accept the fact that in order to be profitable, they're going to have to lose a certain percentage of their horses.