Tote favourites – some people love to be with them, some prefer to try and beat them. In this analysis, The Punter looks at which combinations of SA racehorse trainers and jockeys have the best Tote Favourites Strike Rate. As it turns out, some trainers and jockeys are head and shoulders more reliable than the rest. There are also trainer-jockey combinations to be a little more cautious of – some of whom are quite often the tote favourite!
The stats show us that more tote favourites lose rather than win. Only a handful of trainers have a tote favourites strike rate above 50% for the most recent 2024/25 season from 1 August 2024 – 31 July 2025.
Let’s start by looking at the SA racehorse trainers most reliably bringing home the tote favourite.
Tote favourites Win Strike Rate: Trainers
Eastern Cape Champion Trainer Alan Greeff tops the national table with an impressive 71% win strike on a tote favourite. He is closely followed by Patrick Kruyer, a small Cape Town-based yard who may not often end up atop the betting boards, but won 70% of the time when favourite.
The highveld’s WC Mawing (64%) and JJ van Vuuren (58%) complete the top four trainers who are some distance ahead of the rest.
A further five trainers hover around the 50% mark (T Peter, J Crawford, RR Magner and D Kannemeyer). Check out the list above for all other trainers who had a strike rate above 35% for tote favourite wins.
Best Trainer-Jockey combinations: Tote Favourites Strike Rate
Now let’s take a look at which jockeys were the engines of the success for those stables bringing home the tote favourites.
What is striking about the above list is how Gavin Lerena dominated last season, with 8 out of the top 15 trainer-jockey partnerships involving Lerena. Impressively, all 8 of those partnerships had a tote favourite win strike rate of 69 – 84%, with Lerena / Van Vuuren topping the boards.
Richard Fourie and Alan Greeff’s 80% tote favourite strike rate is enough to finish in 4th place, while Fourie/Snaith are 11th on the list. The sole KZN partnership in this list is Gareth Van Zyl and S’Manga Khumalo’s 65% strike rate for favourites.
In the table below, I’ve also listed a selection of ten trainers who were favourite fairly often, but with a below average win strike favourite for tote favourites. These are not the lowest strike rates in the land, but they are some of the lower rates for those who are favourite a significant number of times.
Who is most often the Tote Favourite?
I think the above table is very helpful to punters, because it is ordered by which trainer-jockey combinations most often end up tote favourite.
This gives an idea of what is happening at volume, and offers some insights as to which trainer-jock combos to be a little more cautious of when favourite.
Thankfully for punters, the most common favourite combo – Greeff/Fourie who started favourite a whopping 249 times – also reliably brought them at an 80% strike rate.
This is followed by Bass/Domeyer’s 105 starts as favourite, with this combo just making the top 15 strike rate list as well.
Snaith / Fourie (90 times) and Peter / Lerena (78 times) are the next most common combinations, and both deliver top strike rates in return.
Kannemeyer / Zackey is the 5th most common tote favourite combination (73 starts). While they don’t make the top 15 strike rates list, they do have a respectable 48% win rate when favourite.
Some partnerships to be cautious of
Zackey and the Eastern Cape’s Gavin Smith were also commonly favourite (59 times), but have a far lower win strike rate than Fourie / Greeff (43% vs 80%).
Other common favourite combinations with lower than average win strike rates include Snaith / Van Der Merwe (33%), Nel / Orffer (32%), Miller / Godden (31%), Nel / Moodley (26%), and Crawford / Mxothwa (25%).
Finally, it’s useful to highlight some combinations who don’t make the list of most common tote favourite combinations, but who did top the boards a significant number of times for a below average win strike rate. See below.
So how might these stats be useful for punters?
- It gives some indication of which trainer-jockeys could be followed consistently when tote favourite
- It shows which combinations have a lower tote favourites strike rate, which suggests punters should be more cautious
- Where a trainer has a win strike rate, versus a low favourite win rate, this is an indication of value.
It’s important to note that last season is in the past. Things change and the past is only a guide for the new season, with new dynamics to consider.
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