Breathing Operations Part II

By James Condron

It was rather disappointing to learn this autumn that the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) had decided against requiring trainers to declare when their horses had recently undergone ‘breathing’ or ‘wind’ operations. The reasoning behind this decision appears to be that the BHA were of the opinion that as the outcomes of the procedures can differ in relation to their effectiveness, it would not be worth the effort or cost in providing this information to the public. This stance is a little patronising to punters, who are not credited with sufficient intelligence to realise that the results of a breathing operation can vary and is not guaranteed to turn a horse’s fortunes around. In addition, Julian Muscat makes a valid point in a column in the Racing Post on 22nd September 2010, that while wind operations do not always have the desired effect, neither do first time blinkers, visors, cheekpieces nor tongue ties, all of which are declared. Despite this, every cloud has a silver lining and the fact that this information is not readily available offers the discerning punter an opportunity to capitalise. In a previous piece, I proposed a simple system for this National Hunt season, which is to follow horses that have had a breathing operation on their next three starts.

To recap, the reason I selected three races, is that any improvement in a horse’s performance is likely to have levelled out after three runs and a horse’s true ability should be apparent, whether it be the handicapper ‘catching up’ with the particular horse and allocating a stiff handicap mark or the progression of the horse to graded company, where the effect of the breathing operation is likely to be far more minimal than at a lower level of competition. I have created the below database of horses to follow which have recently undergone breathing operations from stable tours in the racing newspapers such as the Racing Post, Racing Post Weekender, The Irish Field and websites such as www.attheraces.com before producing a table to record results and ongoing profits or losses based on the horses’ starting prices.

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The current running level stakes profit of €8.89 resulting from a strike rate of 16 wins from a total of 66 bets (24.2 per cent) is quite respectable but could have been even higher with a little more luck when one takes into account that 13 of the bets placed finished second (19.7 per cent).

I found further encouragement for this system from the comments of trainer Paul Nicholls in his weekly Betfair blog, which stated that most horses that have undergone a breathing operation normally need their first run back as they usually spend up to 28 days in their box after the procedure. Therefore, horses on the list that have run once since the operation can be expected to strip fitter on their next outing and perform better for that race and subsequent outings.

By James Condron