David Nicholls
Fair A/E compares wins with a margin-stripped market expectation. Favourite-heavy samples — top yards, leading riders — naturally read a few points warm, so 1.05 means "beat the margin-free market read", not "the market underrates this by 5%".
Sent out around 470 runners a season, almost all on the flat, winning with 12% of them — beating the margin-free market read across the lifetime window (Fair A/E 1.09). In Group and Graded company the record reads 16% (221 runs).
The record is strongest at Hamilton (21.8%, n=147), Southwell (AW) (19.5%, n=375) and Cagnes-Sur-Mer (22.6%, n=31) — all clear of the yard's 11.6% baseline. In Group and Graded company the record reads well at 16.3% (n=221, Fair A/E 1.21), but debutants struggle at 6.5% (n=139, Fair A/E 1.07). Adrian Nicholls rode 38% of the entries and matches the yard's average almost exactly (12.7%, A/E 1.04) — the partnership beats the margin-free market read. The yard also read well in Class 6 (19.7%, n=797). The record read poorly in Class 2 — 5.3% over 884 runners, 6.3pts below the baseline. 49 Group and Graded wins sit in the archive record — the biggest prize the yard has landed: the Betfred Sprint Cup at Haydock (Sep 2009, £163,810). The stable star of the record was Fremen (USA) — 20 wins from 66 runs for the yard. Seasonally, the yard fired Nov–Apr.
Yard patterns
the angles behind the record · vs 11.6% baselineEach tile is the record in that situation vs the 11.6% baseline — descriptive splits with the sample always shown, not tips. Tiles under 30 runs render muted. Headgear figures use the true-first definition (first gear appearance in the captured career); returns are gear back on after a bare run. Claiming riders are runs where the booked rider carried a weight claim. Group / Graded covers pattern and listed races.
Notable angles
vs their own baselineRecord by conditions
same window as headerRace type
Going
Courses
Class
Market position
Distance
By season
Handicaps
Field size
Rows below n=30 are shown faded — a small sample is a fact, not a trend. Every figure carries its N.
Horses trained
same window as header · most-raced firstWhen the yard fires
strike by month, lifetimeJockey bookings
same window · biggest samples firstCareer highlights
lifetime archive, 2005→Sires in the string
progeny record · win % by ground and tripThe record
latest 50 of 6,643 · newest firstThe latest 50 of 6,643 archived runners, newest first. The full record runs from 2 January 2005 to 15 February 2017.
Drawn from the whole archive (2005 onwards), so it can include runs outside the window the header statistics cover. Non-runners are not listed. A finish shown in letters is a non-completion (F fell · UR unseated · PU pulled up · BD brought down).
Quick answers
- What is David Nicholls's strike rate?
- David Nicholls has won 552 of 4,748 runners since 2008, a strike rate of 11.6% (as at 22 October 2026). Figures are computed from our own results archive.
- Which course does David Nicholls do best at?
- Hamilton by strike rate: 32 wins from 147 runners (21.8%) since 2008. Read from the 15 courses with the most runners on the same basis, and only those with at least 30 — a small sample cannot top the list, and a rarely-visited course is not in the comparison.
- Who rides most for David Nicholls?
- Adrian Nicholls, with 1,823 runners since 2008 — 38% of the total. That pairing has won 232 (12.7%).
- What is David Nicholls's Fair A/E?
- 1.09, from 4,699 runners with a computed fair probability since 2008. Fair A/E compares actual wins with a margin-stripped market expectation, so 1.00 is par: above it the wins came at bigger prices than the margin-free market implied, below it they did not.