FAQ

UK Horse Racing's Race Ratings

The idea behind the new table in the detailed ratings, below, came about from a passage in Andrew Beyer's book on Speed Rating.

Bath 4.45 - 15th June 2013

He was having problems with horses with continually improving speed figures and then dropping off in ability. I was finding this with the Improving and Deteriorating horses and I was continually scratching my head over this. I see, time and time again, horses flagged as 'Deteriorating' but winning and comparatively few 'Improving' horses.

Beyer looked at the figures of a little over 4,500 horses whose figures were improving as in our 'Improving' horses and he found that:

25% improved again in their next race
4% ran the same figure as their previous race
71% declined in the next race of which over two-thirds declined significantly

What of the horses he marked as declining, or what we have flagged as 'Deteriorating'?

32% continued their decline
4% ran the same figure as their previous race
64% ran an improved figure next time

When I read that (Andrew Beyer, "Beyer On Speed", pages 40 and 41) a light went on which may explain why I could never get to grip with what these numbers were doing. And if Beyer was having problems with his figures with these horses in these patterns which are a part of a 'Bounce Theory' or what Beyer calls "The Three And Out Pattern".

Anyway, this is worth looking into and I may see, as I develop, the Speed Rating code if there are also parallels here with the each of the Horses' Race rating figure.

Created 15th June, 2013