Category: FAQ

The form book, which is available online, free-of-charge from ‘Racing Post’, ‘Sporting Life’ and other sources, provides a ‘potted history’ of the performance of a racehorse in all its previous races. While it is often stated that ‘past performance is no guarantee of future results’, the form book is considered the punters’ bible insofar that, in the absence of privileged, ‘inside’ information, reading form is the only way to form an opinion on the likely outcome of a race.

At a basic level, the form book provides a ‘snapshot’ of recent form in the form figures – that is, a series of numbers representing the last five or six finishing positions – alongside the name of each horse. However, form figures alone only tell part of the story. Further investigation of detailed form is usually required to reveal distance and going preferences, any disparity in class, value or weight between previous races and the race under consideration and so on. Only by examining all these factors can the serious punter be confident that a horse has the conditions under which it can run to the best of its ability and, indeed, that the best of its ability is actually good enough to win the race in question.

The ‘going’ is the official description of the ground conditions at a racecourse. It is determined by the moisture content and measured by the Clerk of the Course, either by using a device called a GoingStick, or subjectively. Of course, some horses have distinct going preferences, so accurate going reports allow their connections to make informed decisions about where they should run.

On turf racecourses, the going can be described as ‘hard’, ‘firm’, ‘good to firm’, ‘good’, ‘good to soft’, ‘soft’ and ‘heavy’. ‘Firm’ corresponds to a GoingStick reading of 10 and ‘heavy’ to a GoingStick reading of 5; beyond those upper and lower limits, the ground is generally considered unraceable. Indeed, ‘hard’ going is no longer considered safe for National Hunt racing in Britain.

On synthetic, or all-weather, racecourses, the going on the Fibresand, Polytrack or Tapeta racing surface can be adjusted, to some extent, by harrowing or rolling. The Clerk of the Course relies on the traditional, subjective approach to describing the going, rather than empirical readings from the GoingStick. Going descriptions for all-weather racing a limited to ‘fast’, ‘standard/fast’, ‘standard’, ‘standard/slow’ and ‘slow’, which correspond to dry, moist, wet and sodden underfoot conditions.

The governance and regulation of horse racing in Britain is the responsibility of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), which was formed by the amalgamation of two existing bodies, the British Horseracing Board (BHB) and the Horseracing Regulatory Board (HRA), in 2007. Historically, the Jockey Club governed and regulated the sport, but handed over the governance function to the BHB, which was formed in 1993. Likewise, it handed over responsibility for devising and enforcing the Rules of Racing to the HRA, formed in 2006, and the BHB and HRA merged just over a year later to create the BHA as we know it today.

Like its predecessor, the Jockey Club, the BHA is tasked with devising and enforcing the Rules of Racing and dealing effectively with rule breaches, while at the same time delivering an attractive, compelling horse racing programme. To succeed, such as programme must appeal to owners, trainers and jockeys, racecourse authorities and the wider racing public.

As far as the day-to-day running of horse racing is concerned, the BHA is assisted by Weatherbys, which effectively adminsters the sport on its behalf. Weatherbys provides various racing services, including the registration of horse names and owners’ racing colours, publication of the weekly Racing Calendar, issuing race weights to the media and customising data files for clients such as Timeform and the Racing Post.

In horse racing, the term ‘penalty’ refers to additional weight carried by a horse as a result of winning one or more races in a specified period. In a handicap race, horses are allotted weight according to their official handicap ratings, as determined by a team of handicappers at the British Horseracing Authority (BHA). However, if a horse is entered for one handicap race and wins another after the weights for that race have been published, it will incur a penalty of, say, 5lb or 7lb, which is added to the weight originally allotted.

The ethos of handicap races is that all participants have an equal chance of winning, so a horse that wins a handicap must, by definition, have improved on its official handicap rating. Penalties account for the fact that a winning horse may be turned out again quickly, before the official handicappers have had chance to revise its rating.

Similarly, if a horse has won a so-called ‘Pattern’ race – that is, a Group One, Group Two or Group Three race – on the Flat, it will incur a penalty, according to the race conditions, if it contests a lower-level Pattern race, or a ‘Listed’ race, within a certain period of time. Again, this reflects the fact that the horse in question has already proved itself at a higher level.