FAQ

What is the UK Horse Racing approach to the Official Rating, and how is it used?

In short. It isn't.

The Official Rating (OR) doesn't even touch nor come close to the Model. We don't even look at it at all.

This is quite a different approach to other ratings providers start with the Official Rating and then go on from there making their own modifications.

Our approach is simple in concept even though infinitely more complicated in execution; we believe that in order to be the best we had better start off elsewhere. We believe that we can make a better set of figures than can the Official Handicapper and therefore it makes no sense to even start with the Official Ratings.

If we believe that the Official Ratings are not as accurate as they can be (we don't think for a moment that ours are perfect, just that ours are more less inaccurate) then it makes absolutely no sense to start with them.

This is similar to our belief that, for example, the Race Class as provided by the BHA is wrong, so we have our own classifications. We don't believe that the official Weight for Age tables are correct so we have our own.

So, back to the question. No, we don't use the Official Ratings at all and if you asked us we couldn't even compare ours to the BHA's as we don't hold the Official Rating in any of our databases.