Opening day of the 2025 Canterbury Park live racing meet is Saturday, May 24! That means it’s time to look back at the 2024 Canterbury Park live meet from a statistical standpoint and use that data to help us better predict the outcomes of the 2025 Canterbury Park races.
Canterbury Park will continue to offer an industry low 10% takeout on their Pick 5 each day and will be running a regular schedule of Wednesday and Saturday evening, and Sunday afternoon. It pays to play the Pick 5 at Canterbury Park! The Pick 5 will begin each day with the second race.
Here’s a look at some final statistics for the thoroughbred races run at Canterbury Park in 2024, as we prepare to unlock the 2025 Canterbury Park handicapping puzzle. Good luck in 2025!
The Favorite
The public correctly selected the winner 37% of the time in all thoroughbred races run at Canterbury Park last year. That was 2-percentage points below the national average for winning favorites at all racetracks in North America in 2024, and 10-percentage points lower than the Canterbury Park win percentage for favorites in 2023. As the sport has evolved over the past few decades, the percentage of winning favorites at the national level has been slowly increasing from approximately 35% twenty years ago, to 39% last year. This is due to a variety of factors, including decreased field sizes and more sophisticated handicapping tools available with technology. That being said, it was great to have a 2024 Canterbury meet that offered competitive racing and plenty of value for winning horses, which translated into solid payoffs in the various wagering pools offered to the public. Let’s hope the 2025 Canterbury Park live race meet continues that trend!
Last year, thoroughbred races on dirt had a favorite win rate of 39%, while the turf races had a favorite win rate of 35%. This holds true every year; the turf races have a lower percentage of winning favorites than the dirt races. Other categories of winning favorites were as follows: Sprints (41%), Routes (32%), Allowance/Stake (39%), Claiming (38%), Maiden Special Weight (32%), Maiden Claiming (38%), 2-year-olds (33%). Nothing really sticks out from the 2024 data, but going back several years into the Canterbury Park data, the percentage of winning favorites in the maiden claiming races has tended to be one of the highest categories at Canterbury Park. If you are looking for a solid single in a horizontal wager, the maiden claiming race is a good place to start.
The Odds
Last year, heavy favorites that were bet down to 7/5 odds or lower won 108 races out of 240 attempts. That’s a 45%-win rate, and the ROI on win bets for these runners was $0.82 per dollar, whereas the place and show ROI both checked in at $0.83 and $0.91, respectively. Based on this data, it appears the heavy favorites did not outperform their expectations and did not beat the takeout in the win pool. Fading the chalk was the way to go in 2024!
On the other end of the spectrum, there were only 10 winners at 20-1 odds or higher last year, but nearly 700 runners went to post at those high odds. Betting them all to win would have resulted in a 45% loss to the bankroll, and betting to place and show on these longshots was even worse. Horseplayers who prefer place and show betting would be better served to concentrate on the lower-priced horses to find their plays.
Historically, Canterbury Park has not been a “longshot” paradise, and last year 77% of the thoroughbred races were won by horses at odds below 6-1. That has proven to be consistent year after year.
The Jockeys
Sources confirm that Harry Hernandez will be back at Canterbury Park for the 2025 race meet. Hernandez was the 2023 leading rider with 51 wins opted to ride in Texas in 2024. He will be a formidable presence in the jockey colony this year. Also, Leandro Goncalves is returning after several years away. Goncalves is a former leading rider at Canterbury Park who should also be prominent in the 2025 jockey standings. Last year’s leading rider Luis Fuentes is currently injured, and second leading rider Serafin Carmona is riding in California this year. So big changes in the jockey colony in 2025. Returning riders include Eduardo Gallardo, Fausto Da Silva, Alonso Quinonez, Kelsi Harr, and Constantino Roman. These riders were all prominent in the jockey standings in 2024.
The Trainers
Mac Robertson has been a dominant presence in the trainer standings at Canterbury Park for the past twenty-five years, and he easily won the trainer title last year with 46 wins, a 17-win gap over Jose Silva Jr. who finished second. Robertson figures to be the logical choice for leading trainer again in 2025. He has some pretty consistent results over time, typically doing very well in the higher-level Allowance and Stakes races, especially for Minnesota breds. He often excels with his two-year-old runners. And he is equally sharp on both the dirt and the turf. Unfortunately, from a wagering perspective, his runners offer very little value on the tote board. His ROI in 2024 in most categories was hovering around 85 cents on the dollar, which was significantly better than it had been the previous year.
Following trainers a bit lower in the standings is where the money may be found. Last year, Tony Rengstorf and Matt Williams both showed flat bet profits for the meet while finishing 4th and 6th in the trainer standings, respectively.
Best of luck playing the 2025 live racing meet at Canterbury Park!
