That is true. But having a 50-1 can have a pretty large effect. For example, if a guy had 100 starters a year and had a dead average ROI ($1.64) for a 3 year period, and then he won with a 50-1 shot, his ROI would skyrocket all the way up to a positive ROI of $2.02. So one crazy longshot would turn a dead average ROI positive for a 3 year period.

Who are the other trainers with the highest ROIs the last 15 years? I bet they are not any of the guys who we suspect of cheating. Because as you said before, the fans catch on to the cheaters pretty quickly and the high ROI will disappear after 3-4 years at the most.

You'd be wrong in some cases ... because those type of trainers tend to do so much statistical damage in those 5 or 6 year runs before everyone figures out how good they are.

And when everyone starts to radically overbet the horses on paper - they still won't lose at a strong enough rate to give back what they won before bettors caught on.

Trainers with more than 1,500 starters and a profitable ROI since '96

Jeff Mullins 4,717 starts $2.01 ROI
Lloyd Mason 4,498 starts $2.01 ROI
Tim Kreiser 3,134 starts $2.04 ROI
Steph Beattie 2,790 starts $2.02 ROI
Larry Jones 2,765 starts $2.02 ROI
Jimmy Jerkens 2,454 starts $2.01 ROI
Julio Cartagena 2,291 starts $2.02 ROI
Ramon Preciado 2,010 starts $2.07 ROI
Mike Maker 1,985 starts $2.00 ROI
Bruce Alexander 1,953 starts $2.04 ROI
Andrew Leggio Jr. 1,928 starts $2.06 ROI
John Shirreffs 1,641 starts $2.04 ROI

I think certainly Cartagena, Steph Beattie, Preciado, and Mullins are the four names on that list who get a lot of slander heaped at them.

To get a better idea of how much some of these trainers get overbet on name alone.

Steph Beattie ran 311 horses in her boyfriends name (David Wells) - the horses that raced in his unfamilar name yielded a $2.83 ROI. So, the horses win at just a 1% profit on the betting dollar when they race in Steph's name - but yield a 41.5% profit on every dollar bet when they race in a name the betting public isn't familar with.

Julio Cartagena - another Mid-Atlantic high percentage pure magic claiming trainer. Only a 1% profit when they race in his name. 486 times he raced under the less familar name Keisy Cartagena ... the ROI spiked to $2.49 from $2.02

proof that Steph Beattie doesn't cheat, it's her boyfriend that does :rolleyes:

Do you guys correlate the fact that Shirreffs has very few, if any, claimer starters?

I look at the other trainers mentioned here, and the bulk of their starters seem to be claimers.

Not that I am suggesting anything, but is there a place out there where one can see a trainer's drug violations? Nobody is that clean, are they?

Wiggins did have one very costly positive. Rapid Proof's connections lost $300,000 when he was disqualified from 1st in the 2005 Muniz when he tested positive for an anti-inflammatory steroid.