There is little in greyhound racing as important as the draw.
It is one thing that almost unites the entire sport. What tracks give the best chance to a certain trap winning, just from having that starting position? Which tracks have the biggest differential between their most and least successful trap? We’ll tell you!
Track with the best winning percentage per trap
Most of us have our suspicions. Some tracks vary by season, weather conditions and preparation but over the long haul, what are the most successful traps in the country? The following are for 2024, taken after racing on July 25. The figures are the percentage of races won when the trap is filled so it omits vacant traps. Pelaw has not run enough races to qualify.
It only seems natural to state that backing any trap blind at any track is not going to result in a long-term profit!
Trap One – Towcester
With 22% of red-jacketed runners winning, Towcester is the best track to have a bang railer. That is probably not a surprise given it has always had a reputation for being a difficult track for those out wide.
Trap Two – Swindon
20.9% of the dogs clad in blue at Swindon have won so far this year. It is an interesting outlier on the inside with trap one boasting 17.8% and trap three, 17.3%.
Trap Three – Suffolk Downs & Towcester
Both tracks have a 20.5% strike rate from the white jacket, just edging out Sheffield at 20.4%. The middle is a good place to be at Owlerton with 19.7% winning from trap four as well.
Trap Four – Doncaster
Doncaster just edges out Yarmouth for trap four, 20.1% to 19.9%. It is not Doncaster’s best-performing trap, however, that honour goes to trap one with 20.7%.
Trap Five – Valley
Orange is the toughest colour to sport across the country. Valley has a 21.1% strike rate from this starting position but Oxford are the only other track where trap five wins at least 18%.
Trap Six – Valley
Valley continues to have a serious bias towards the outside traps, a 21.4% strike rate for those in trap six. Given that they are the lead in trap five as well, it makes for a fairly sizeable trend.
Figures for 2023 and 2022
In 2023, Towcester remarkably led in trap one, trap two and trap four winners. They also led from four in 2022. Central Park led both inside traps in 2022 with 19.9% in trap one and 19.8% in trap two. That seems to have been levelled out after the track was re-laid in June 2023. Crayford has the best win rate from trap five in both those years while Doncaster (2023) and Harlow (2022) led the way from stripes.
Track with the worst winning percentage by trap
Where there is a best, there will always be a worst and these are the worst tracks to have a runner in each trap so far in 2024.
Trap One – Valley
With just 15.1%, Valley is ahead of any other track when it comes to the paucity of trap one winners. This should not be a huge surprise given how strong their winning percentages are out wide. Nottingham are second worst at 16.1%
Trap Two – Newcastle
If you’re on the blue…unlucky for you, with just a 15.8% strike rate at the track. The numbers are about average for both traps one and three at 18.1% and 18.9% respectively so it is a bit of an outlier.
Trap Three – Kinsley
Just 16.4% of Kinsley’s winners come home sporting a white jacket. It is not the worst trap percentage at the Yorkshire track, however. That honour goes to trap five but there are seven tracks with worse figures for that starting position.
Trap Four – Suffolk Downs
15% of black-jacketed runners greet the judge first here. They boast more winners from trap three than any other track bar Towcester yet the trap next door has a winning percentage that is 5.5% lower!
Trap Five – Yarmouth
13.4% is the worst figure for any trap at any track in the country. The second bend over 462m is a tricky one for any newcomer to the track but the track not get any easier once you know the place if you are sporting orange.
Trap Six – Towcester
Ever since Towcester was built, it has been a hard place to be a wide runner. In 2024, that is still very much the case with only 14.6% of those who sport the stripes coming home in front.
Figures for 2023 and 2022
Yarmouth had the lowest figures for both trap one and six in 2023, with Towcester taking both outside traps in 2022. Swindon made a pair of appearances with trap three in 2023 and trap one in 2022. Harlow and Sunderland were trap two’s least successful tracks in 2023 and 2022 respectively. Kinsley lost out last year for trap three after having the lowest figures in 2022. Nottingham and Perry Barr notched traps four and five in 2023 with Monmore taking trap four in 2022.
Track Differentials best and worst
In 2024, the average differential across all tracks from best trap to worst is 4.4%. So, for every 1000 races that the track runs, the best-performing trap will win 44 more races them than the worst. It is not a huge gap by any means but there are some tracks that are notably fairer and others that are much wider in the split.
Kinsley has the lowest differential in 2024 at 1.8% just ahead of Nottingham at 2.1%. It is interesting that although Kinsley features as the track with the worst winning percentage from trap three, that is simply because they are very level across the board.
On the wrong side of the margin, we have Towcester at 7.4%. Trap one has a 7.4% better chance of winning than trap six in every race before any other considerations are taken into account. Yarmouth (6.5%) Valley (6.3%) and Hove (6.0%) are the next three in line.
2023
Sunderland at 1.7% and Crayford with 1.9% were the two best in 2023. Monmore and Romford both deserve a mention at 2.1% while Nottingham is right up there again in terms of track fairness at 2.3%. On the flip side, it’s Towcester bringing up the rear again at 6.2% ahead of Harlow (5.9%) Yarmouth (5.5%) then Hove and Perry Barr at 5.1%.
2022
Romford was the fairest track in 2022 at 1.4% ahead of Nottingham at 2.0% and Kinsley at 2.1%. That is a perfect 3/3 for Nottingham in the top few fairest tracks in the country, no matter where drawn. You guessed it, Towcester and Yarmouth were the worst with 7.6% and 7.1% respectively. Central Park was worst of the rest at 6.1 but has dropped to 4% since being re-laid.
Who is going the right way?
There is only one tracks where the differential has dropped each of the years. That is Doncaster. They are at 3.8% so far in 2024, working their way below the average having started at 5.2% on the 2022 figures.
Which tracks are not?
This is a hard one to fathom, especially as they were in the top mentions in both 2022 and 2023, but Romford! They went from 1.4% in 2022 to 2.1% in 2023 but have jumped hugely to a worse-than-average 4.5% in 2024. Suffolk Downs, Swindon and Hove have also gone backwards in those three years.
Conclusion
So far in 2024, judged on the percentage differential of trap winners, Kinsley is the fairest track in the country and Towcester is the least fair.
With only three years of data dug into (and that took long enough), it is hard to be too definitive about the findings. That said, we will be continuing to add to these figures, and giving updates as the numbers progress. It will be interesting to see if those tracks that struggle can try and find a way to level their playing fields a little bit.
