UK Horse Racing's Ratings

Race Information

This is the line of text under the Race Title which displays the information about the race.

Reading along this race information line we have the following items of information:

 - Going
 - Distance in furlongs
 - The prize money for the winning horse
 - Number of runners
 - The mean weight of the runners in both stones and pounds, and also in pounds
 - The age range of the horse entered for the race
 - The class of the race

A couple of these may need more explanation.

The age range of the entrants is straight forward; it's the range of ages of the horses which are declared to run. This doesn't have to match with the BHB's requirement for the race. For example a race open to four year olds or more is a little vague; at least here we can see the ages of the horses which turn up.

This is a recurrent theme here with our ratings; we deal with the actual facts and figures of the horses which are present in the race and not necessarily what the BHB think should be in the race. The class is a very typical example. We always hear of a class of a race being such-and-such; but this is only the BHB's own classification of the race and this only tells us which horses are invited to run in the race. The BHB classification doesn't tell us anything of the actual entrants of the race.

Therefore we have made our own classification of races which seems almost heritical to a lot of people but it makes simple and absolute sense. The class of a race is made up from the ratings of the major participants of the race.

For example, let's compare The Derby for 2003 and 2004. Every pundit in the land agrees that the 2004 Derby, which was won by North Light, was a poorer race than the 2003 race which was won by Kris Kin. But, both of these races are classed as class 'A' and when we come to look in the form book all we will see in years to come is that North Light won a race which seems as good as at the Kris Kin race. To us this doesn't make sense; if the race isn't as good then mark it as such and give it a lower class race.

Because of this we rate each race's class in pounds. Then we can see easily how much a horse is rising or falling in class between races. And just because a horse is going from an 'E' to a 'D' race it need not mean that its rising in class; he could easily be falling. If one uses the BHB Classifications then one could easily get the wrong information.

Comment?

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