Race participants will often be limited by specifying the horses’ gender, age, and record. These class specifications will be listed in the race conditions. Alternatively, you will see an alpha-numeric code to the right of track name and above the race conditions. These codes are used to convey most of the information included in the race description. That makes it possible for experts to quickly scan the header for race information.
Underneath the horse’s race number are the morning line odds, the standing odds prior to the race. For example, if the line odds are read 3 – 1, a successful bet of $1 will earn you $3. Adjacent to the jockey’s name you will find his statistics in parenthesis. The first number is the Jockey’s total number of starts for the meet, followed by first, second, and third-place finishes. The final number in parenthesis is the jockey’s win percentage. Next to this, you will find in a separate pair of parenthesis the jockey’s races, first-place finishes, and win percentage during the past year. [5] X Research source
The initials used to indicate color in the first line of the column are B for bay, Blk for black, Ch for chestnut, Dkb for dark bay, Br for brown, Gry for gray, and RA for roan. The color initial will be followed with a second indicating the gender of the horse. These are as follows: C for colt, F for filly, G for gelding, M for mare, and R for ridgling. [7] X Research source The final element in the first line is the horse’s age. An example of how this I formatted is “4 (May),” where 4 is the age of the horse, and May is the month in which the horse is born. The age of a horse is measured not by the number of their birthdays, but rather by how many New Year’s Days they have seen. A horse born on December 31st will be considered one year old on January 1st.
There are a handful of rows formatted in this fashion to indicate the horse’s performance under different circumstances. The first row, beginning on the upper left, is the horse’s career record. The three indicate this horse’s performance this year, the prior year, and historically at this track. From the top right down the rows represent the horse’s record on a dirt fast track, wet track, synthetic track, turf record, and the horses’ record with surfaces and distances similar to that of the race in question. [8] X Research source The Beyer speed is a measure of a horses’ average speed relative to the average speed of the tracks it has run. For a $25,000 race average Beyer numbers would be in the low 90s, mid 80s for a $10,000 race, and 57 for a $2,500 race. Top horses might have Bayer numbers in the 120’s. [9] X Research source Next to the wet, turf, and distance symbols you will find a number in parenthesis known as the “Tomlinson Rating. ” This indicates how well a horse performs on those types of tracks. A rating of 320 or more for wet turf or distance suggests that the horse will likely run particularly well on a wet track. For turf a ranking of 280 or more indicates that the horse has an advantage in the race. [10] X Research source
Track condition abbreviations include fr for frozen, fst for fast, gd for good, hy for heavy, my for muddy, sl for slow, sly for sloppy, and wf. For wet-fast. [12] X Research source
Times are formatted like “2:04 3” where “2” is a measure of minutes, “04” a measure of seconds, and “3” a measure of fifths of a second. [13] X Research source
The exponent for the number indicates how many lengths (an approximate measure of the length of a horse) the horse was behind the race leader. [14] X Research source On the far right of the page you will find a number that represents the number of starters. This is important when considering how favorable the horse’s position is. If there are only 4 starters, a third-place position won’t can’t for much. Read comments. On the far right just before the number of starts you will find a comment line. Though short, this will usually give some information about the horses performance that might be hard to ascertain just from the numbers. [15] X Research source
