LAST week’s column focused on the riders fighting out the Irish flat jockeys’ championship, and there’s no sign of any let-up between Dylan Browne McMonagle and Colin Keane in sight. Both men have continued to fire in the winners since that piece went to print.

It’s been said by some well respected judges in the sport that the best riders are the ones who both win on the horses they’re expected to win on, and manage to sneak some extra winners out of races where they probably shouldn’t have been able to win. The latter is where the Wins Above Expectations (WAX) metric can be a helpful tool.

Essentially, WAX, in this context, would mean taking the number of winners that any given jockey has ridden, minus the number of winners they would have been expected to ride according to the odds of their mounts, and coming out with a numerical representation of how they have been performing relative to market expectations.

For example, a jockey riding four even-money shots would be expected to ride two winners (0.5 winners expected per ride at those odds). If they only manage one winner, their WAX figure would be -1, whereas if they rode four winners, their WAX tots up to a more impressive 2.

Given that the success of jockeys heavily depends on the quality of their mounts, and how the horses are expected to perform, WAX figures can highlight those who are elevating the performance of their rides, and/or jockeys who are being underestimated in the market by punters and bookmakers.

The table below is the performance of jockeys on the flat in Ireland from the beginning of the 2025 season (March 16th) to before Thursday’s action got underway at Navan this week.

Sheridan shines

He might be 10th in the overall jockeys’ championship this season, but the rider who has statistically been overachieving, relative to his mounts’ starting prices, is Joey Sheridan. The Group 1-winning jockey would have been expected to ride 10.66 winners, based on the market odds of the horses he’s been competing on, but has actually managed to record 22 - a WAX figure of 11.34. An 11/1 first-time-out winner for Willie Mullins at the Curragh last weekend continued that theme of big-priced winners for Sheridan.

Dylan Browne McMonagle is next in the standings with a WAX figure of 6.99, though snapping at his heels is 7lb claimer Patrick McGettigan, who has been catching the eye this season. He’s got 15 winners on the board for the campaign - 6.65 more than expected.

Chris Hayes isn’t far away with a WAX figure of 6.03, while Leigh Roche (4.83) and Rory Cleary (4.12) - both having improved seasons to this point compared to last year - fare positively on this metric. The WAX top 10 is rounded off by Wesley Joyce (3.53), Keithen Kennedy (3.41), Wayne Lordan (3.1) and Andrew Slattery (2.76).

When taking a quick look at the jockeys who rank highly each year in the end-of-season championship table, it could be a sign of punters slightly overbetting the mounts of six-time champion jockey Colin Keane that he has a WAX figure of -0.2 (it was actually -2.13 before winning an 112/1 treble at Bellewstown on Tuesday). Likewise, Billy Lee, before his injury - despite being close to the top of the championship summit - had a -4.23 WAX figure this season. Ryan Moore, who so often rides short-priced favourites for Aidan O’Brien, is managing to keep his Irish WAX tally in the positive at 0.89.

If riders want to prove that they can deliver when given the right material, succeeding on horses they aren’t necessarily expected to win on is certainly one way of advertising your talents.

IF you were a backer of Pride Of Arras heading into the Derby at Epsom, Ralph Beckett’s comments in the aftermath of his three-year-old’s back-to-form win in the Great Voltigeur at York last week were interesting to note.

The impressive Dante scorer was sent off just 4/1 for the Betfred-backed classic when bombing out, finishing 50 lengths off Lambourn in 17th, and connections made the decision to geld him after trailing the Irish Derby field.

In the aftermath of an excellent display last week at the Ebor meeting, Beckett made a point of stressing how difficult the talented middle-distance performer has been to train after. Hearing the type of managing that he apparently requires, at a time when he’s no longer a stallion prospect, you’d wonder whether backing him at 4/1 for a Derby would have been so appealing for punters if that type of information had been so well publicised before Epsom.

This was part of the exchange between the trainer and Matt Chapman on ITV Racing after the Great Voltigeur:

MC: “When I’ve talked to you about this horse before, you’ve kind of emphasised, you’ve put your head to one side and said ‘You have no idea how hard this horse is to train’. It sounded like it was more than just a gelding operation [that led to this change in performance]. Is it as simple as that?”

RB: “No. He has respiratory issues as well. He suffers from them. Really, you have to walk the line with him. We don’t turn the screw at all. We can’t turn the screw with him at all. That makes things more complicated. He hasn’t been on the grass; he did two bits of work on the all-weather before today, just looking for him to run well rather than win. Now he’s where we want him to be and we’ll roll on from here.”

Chapman even went on to raise the question to Beckett of whether getting Pride Of Arras back to win last week was “among your great training performances”.

To give the benefit of the doubt to those concerned, these issues may have materialised in the aftermath of Epsom and/or the Curragh, and Beckett did mention after the Dante: “He hasn’t had an easy prep, it hasn’t been very easy with him. He had a complicated time of it as well last autumn.”

Some coltish-related tendencies and not moving as well as the trainer would have liked through the first half-mile at the Curragh were also cited as factors in his classic disappointments by Beckett.

Regardless of what has gone on before, there must be a sizeable engine under the bonnet for connections to work with - especially if he’s winning in spite of those issues.