Two Group 1s for the two-year-olds, the Royal Lodge, and then the race the week is named for. Pierre Royal won the 2026 Cambridgeshire at 33/1 from stall 9, with a 25/1 shot second, a 100/1 shot third and Gavriel, the 4/1 favourite, fourth: the first three home came from the low third of a 27-runner field. Across the meeting favourites won 8 of the 21 races, seven of them in the pattern, Listed and maiden races and one in the eight handicaps. This page is the record of how it went, race by race, with OddsLens's call in every race settled in public, losses included, exactly like the 7,200 calls on the record. Below that, what our results database says about the course itself: 243 flat races on the Rowley Mile from April 2025 to the eve of the meeting, favourites, the draw and the big handicaps, and the numbers are not what the folklore says.
The meeting in one line. Favourites won 8 of the 21 races, a 38% strike rate, better than the 27.7% they have managed on the Rowley Mile since April 2025, and still 13p in the pound down, because all eight came at 5/2 or shorter. The split is the course's pattern exactly: 7 of the 13 favourites in the pattern, Listed and maiden races won; 1 of the 8 in the handicaps did, and those eight handicaps were won at an average of 12/1, three of them by 20/1, 22/1 and 33/1 shots. In the eight sprints over five to seven furlongs with eight or more runners the winning stall was in the low third six times, the middle third once and the high third once.
OddsLens's calls. Twenty-one calls over the three days, one of them a non-runner. Six winners from the 20 that ran, a 30% strike rate: Gregory at 4/5 and King Of Berkshire at 6/4 on the Thursday; Alobayyah at 4/1, Talk Of New York at 8/13 and Fortitudine at 13/8 on the Friday; Sun Goddess at 6/4 on the Saturday. £1 on each at the price logged returned −£3.95, a −20% return: Thursday −£2.70, Friday +£2.25, Saturday −£3.50. The Cambridgeshire call, Hand Of God at 9/1, finished tenth. Twelve of the twenty beat the closing price, an average closing line value of +8.7%, and the money still went the other way, which is what a losing meeting at short prices looks like. Every call is on the record with its price and its time.
The 2025 meeting ran Thursday 25 to Saturday 27 September, 22 races. Favourites won four of them, an 18% strike rate, and all four came in the pattern races for two-year-olds; not one favourite won a handicap. Five winners were returned at 10/1 or bigger. The features went like this.
| Day | Race | Winner | SP | Favourite finished |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu | Somerville Tattersall Stakes | Distant Storm | 6/5F | Won |
| Thu | Jockey Club Rose Bowl | Miss Alpilles | 20/1 | 5th (9/4) |
| Fri | Rosemary Stakes | Francophone | 9/1 | 4th (5/2) |
| Fri | Princess Royal Stakes | Silent Love | 4/1 | 7th (13/8) |
| Fri | Rockfel Stakes | Zanthos | 15/2 | 5th (11/10) |
| Fri | Joel Stakes | Zeus Olympios | 2/1 | 2nd (4/5) |
| Fri | Godolphin Stakes | Lion's Pride | 20/1 | 3rd (5/4) |
| Sat | Royal Lodge Stakes | Bow Echo | 85/40F | Won |
| Sat | Cheveley Park Stakes | True Love | 2/1F | Won |
| Sat | Middle Park Stakes | Wise Approach | 11/8F | Won |
| Sat | Cambridgeshire (23 ran) | Boiling Point, stall 6 | 14/1 | 16th (5/1) |
| Sat | Closing handicap (13 ran) | Elarak | 18/1 | 4th (7/4) |
The shape of that table is the shape of the meeting: the market gets the two-year-old Group races right and the handicaps wrong. Boiling Point won the Cambridgeshire from stall 6 at 14/1 with the favourite nowhere, which, as the next section shows, is close to the course's normal.
One meeting is an anecdote. Here is the course over seventeen months: every flat race on the Rowley Mile from April 2025 to the eve of this meeting in our results database, 243 races at official starting price. (The July Course is a different track and is kept out.)
Favourites on the Rowley Mile lose more than twice as much as favourites anywhere else. A 27.7% strike rate against a national 34%, and 23p lost in every pound against 11p. The reasons are the ones you would guess: big, competitive fields, a straight course where races are run in two groups, and a betting public that arrives with strong opinions about Newmarket form. The sample is 260 bets, which is enough to trust the direction and not the second decimal place. The one carve-out is soft ground, where the favourite has won 5 of 16 and shown a profit, and sixteen is far too few to build anything on. The national figures, by price band, are here.
Ask about the draw at Newmarket and you will be told "stands' side" or "far side" depending on who last won. The numbers say something more specific: it is the middle that suffers. We took every five, six and seven-furlong race with eight or more runners since April 2025, split each field into thirds by stall number, and counted the winners.
| Stalls · sprints, 5–7f | Races | Share of runners | Share of winners |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest third | 37 | 35.6% | 43.2% |
| Middle third | 37 | 32.0% | 16.2% |
| Highest third | 37 | 32.5% | 40.5% |
Six winners from the middle third in 37 races, half its fair share. Fields on the Rowley Mile split towards one rail or both, and a horse drawn in the centre either races alone or has to choose a group late. Low and high are equally good. Over the longer trips, and the Cambridgeshire is run over nine furlongs, the effect fades:
| Stalls · 7½f to 1¼m | Races | Share of runners | Share of winners |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest third | 21 | 34.3% | 33.3% |
| Middle third | 21 | 32.2% | 28.6% |
| Highest third | 21 | 33.5% | 38.1% |
Twenty-one races is a small sample and none of those gaps is worth money. What is worth knowing for Saturday: in the six races here with fourteen or more runners over a mile and a quarter or less, the winner came from the low third twice, the high third four times and the middle never. Six races proves nothing; it is consistent with the sprints. Watch where the field splits, and be suspicious of a middle stall that has to make its own way.
In our window the Rowley Mile ran eight flat handicaps with 14 or more runners, the Cambridgeshire among them.
Eight races is a small number and it says what the 243 say: the Rowley Mile is where the favourite in a big handicap goes to lose. The Cambridgeshire has been won at 14/1 (Boiling Point, 2025) in this window, and the typical winner of a 20-runner handicap here is a 12/1 shot. That is not a reason to back a 33/1 shot instead; the bigger the price, the worse the bet, across 179,202 runners. It is a reason to treat the favourite's price as the market's guess, not its verdict.
Flat races on the Rowley Mile since April 2025, trainers and jockeys with at least 15 runners and seven winners. Strike rate is wins over runs; the return is £1 on every runner at SP.
| Trainer | Wins / runs | Strike rate | £1 return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charlie Appleby | 35 / 117 | 29.9% | +15.7% |
| Andrew Balding | 20 / 104 | 19.2% | +9.9% |
| John & Thady Gosden | 17 / 100 | 17.0% | −11.3% |
| William Haggas | 15 / 85 | 17.6% | +7.1% |
| Charlie Johnston | 8 / 64 | 12.5% | +52.3% |
| K R Burke | 7 / 42 | 16.7% | +22.0% |
| Ralph Beckett | 7 / 56 | 12.5% | −27.6% |
| Richard Hannon | 7 / 62 | 11.3% | −36.8% |
| Jockey | Wins / runs | Strike rate | £1 return |
|---|---|---|---|
| William Buick | 32 / 130 | 24.6% | −1.8% |
| Oisin Murphy | 22 / 123 | 17.9% | −15.7% |
| Tom Marquand | 17 / 95 | 17.9% | +27.6% |
| Billy Loughnane | 11 / 105 | 10.5% | −52.4% |
| Kieran Shoemark | 9 / 56 | 16.1% | +22.5% |
| Cieren Fallon | 8 / 39 | 20.5% | +44.9% |
| James Doyle | 8 / 54 | 14.8% | +4.4% |
| Ryan Moore | 8 / 55 | 14.5% | −29.6% |
Charlie Appleby's 35 winners from 117 runners at a profit is the one line in either table that looks like more than noise, and even that is the Godolphin string at its home track, not a system. Charlie Johnston's +52% comes from eight winners; one 20/1 shot is most of it. Treat the tables as background, not as a reason.
Since April 2026 the OddsLens model has made 116 calls on the Rowley Mile, this meeting's twenty included, every one logged before the off with the best price at that moment. Thirty-one won, a 26.7% strike rate, for a −14.5% return at the logged prices and an average closing line value of +9.9%, meaning the price we logged was on average ten per cent bigger than the price the market closed at. Across every course the same record is 7,200 calls, 28.5% winners and a return of -2.1%. Newmarket has been one of the model's worse courses, which is exactly the kind of thing a public record is for.
Festival weeks are the hardest markets of the season to beat, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. The Cambridgeshire Meeting has Group 1 two-year-olds whose form is three runs deep, a nine-furlong handicap with a hundred entries, and a course that punishes the wrong side of the track. OddsLens will make a call in every race anyway, because that is the deal: every race, logged before the off, losses left in. If it has a bad week at Newmarket, as it has had before, you will see exactly how bad, next to everything else.
Follow the festival free → Check the record first
Don't. Check it instead. Since April 2026 every top call the OddsLens model has made, 7,200 of them, sits on a public ledger with the odds at the moment of the call and the official result. For context, backing every favourite over the same races lost about 10p per £1; we published that data too. We show the maths, not promises, and the record updates every evening through the meeting.
Method. Newmarket figures cover every flat race on the Rowley Mile course from 15 April 2025 to 19 September 2026 in the OddsLens results database, 243 races, official returns, starting price, non-runners excluded; the July Course is a separate track and is excluded. "Favourite" means the shortest starting price in the race; joint favourites are each backed for £1. The draw study uses races with at least eight drawn runners, split into sprints (5 to 7 furlongs) and 7½ furlongs to 1¼ miles; each field is split into thirds by stall number, so the low third holds the spare runner when the field does not divide by three, which is why the runner shares are unequal. Big handicaps are races with "handicap" in the title and 14 or more runners at SP. The 2026 card, times, entries and prize money are from the racing data feed on 22 September at the entry stage and will change at final declarations. The OddsLens record figures are as at 22 September 2026 and update daily on the record.