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Approaching speed figures

Bit of indulgence here but I've just seen Richard Bland win his first European Tour title at the 478th attempt. I guess if he can perservere for that long against the odds then messing with a few numbers here and there is a mere bagatelle in comparison. :D
 
What I'm in the process of doing is going to the next track, looking at what the formulas generate, making corrections and going back and forth. So from Dundalk to Lingfield to Kempton today and probably back again later. This is Kempton, sorted by speed and with Western Hymn leading the way.

1621104243444.png

Here's how it looks after various adjustments. This is getting towards form analysis but I don't see why we can't have two sets of numbers for the price of one. As you'd expect the crack Group 1 horses coming out on top of this particular list and middle distance runners having it all their own way.

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I need to go and get back to Lingfield now and re-calibrate that track again.
 
These two tables show the best performances by distance, the first rating pre-adjustment the second after adjustment. A general premise would be if you add 30 to the horses rating you would be somewhere near its official rating on the day. So Western Hymn could be said to have been 111, and Crystal Ocean in defeat ran somewhere around 126. Its not a million miles out. There is a question over why there are so few decent 5 furlong performances, it might just be that not many decent 5 furlong sprinters turn up at the track.

1621105314602.png
 
These are the top 20 Kempton performances over 5 furlongs between 2013-2020.

If you look at the ORs, only 3 horses with an OR over 100 appeared at this track over 5 furlongs, and each of them appear in a pre-adjustment top 5. I would argue its quite reasonable that my numbers to rate them less generously.

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Meanwhile when looking at the 12 furlong performances the 20th best managed 71, and many of these runners have an OR of 100+.

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Welcome back to Lingfield Park for the latest round of Austin Dillons chase to get some sort of credible speed figures. If it's not obvious, my wife has been out all day and is going to be back late, so though I haven't quite gone down the Beyer route of a load of journals and a bottle of Jack Daniels, endless cups of de-caf coffee have proved a good enough substitute alongside a decent FA Cup Final and the golf.

I have run the sheet for Lingfield here and to be honest, there are 32 performances better than the maximum achieved at Kempton between 2013-2020. In all honesty, I am not too surprised, most of these are from the AW Championships, or by top quality horses like Planteur, Kachy etc and to be fair, I don't really see anything to suggest they are out of kilter with the Kempton running.

Still I have Toriano as the fly in the ointment at this track, but if you look at the ADJ2 column the conversion for form would see a 28lb reduction, so if he were to come against other consistent 82 performers, it would be a negative for him. I've thrown out enough other outliers so I can live with this one.

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And best performances by distance. Speed first and form adjustment second. Proves the point above, the ratings above look fine to me. Dubai Warrior says "hi". Didn't even win the race either.

1621111320703.png
 
Have carried on working these sheets correcting adjusting all kinds of formulas. Its my impression that the outlier zscore of 1.5 is too great for some small field races, so for any race of 5 runners or less I a lm taking a zscore of +1 or -1 to be an outlier.

I also agree with the principle of downgrading but not upgrading a performance as set out previously be O Outlander but I am still of the view that finding outliers is allowing for other potentially useful observations. So if I am downgrading, I will assign a speed figure lower but put a flag that the race was run in a fast time (e.g.Primo Oumo at Dundalk). If I am upgrading the speed figure will again be the lower pre-upgrade one but with a clear marker that it may be capable of better (e.g. Tryster at Lingfield).

I will get the 2021 results before posting any more figures and observations up. The aim at the end is to create my own sheets for each course and a set of figures to match. They look better than anything I' ve ever managed before, thanks to the shrewd advice offered by fellow forum members.
 
What I'm finding is Dundalk runners are getting 86-87 at their best which is 2 or 3 lb higher than Kempton or Lingfield, but the best performers were all very good sprinters carrying nearly 10st (i.e.Urban Beat). Its debatable as to whether Urban Beat could manage 87 at Lingfield.

I will have another look at my standard time calcs. Maybe an error in there.
 
A few changes to my method. I've decided there's nothing really to justify not scaling the ratings to OR, so I've done so. In addition, there is now more flexibility in the going allowance calculations, so the nearer the Z-Score is to 0, the more reliance is placed on the meeting going adjustment, if the Z-Score is 1.5 either way or more, the going will be based on the race itself. However the general bias is still strongly towards the overall meeting rather than the individual race, unless the Z-Score is 1 either way when the race carries greater weight.

These are the 2013-2021 performances at Dundalk now. Most of the better ones are still over 5 furlongs but they are just better horses generally as I see it anyway.

1621924624953.png

With working to ORs it is interesting when you see a race that looks to have been strong when comparing horses OR to their speed rating. This race does suggest that the speed figures flatter the actual horses to the tune of 6lb, but even then, it comes across as those a few horses were a stone or so better than their OR if the performances were to be believed.

1621924859873.png

Here's how the first 7 have run since. 8 wins and 12 places from 25 outings, 55.8pts. Sense of Worth ran off 58 in this race and the handicapper not six weeks later found him good enough to be placed on a mark of 85 for his recent performance at Leopardstown.

1621925014793.png
This looks like an nice enough of using the ratings even if there is some retrospect attached. Pride of Pimlico's next three races at the track earned him 63, 73 and 63 on my scale, so his 66 is shown not to be a fluke even if two of those were only good enough for him to place.

I looked at Pride of Pimlico's race the following week, to see what beat him. Gormanston won the race and was a fairly consistent mid 50s horse but managed a 63 and 67 in recent times as well, and wouldn't have been completely unrealistic competition. Gormanston was 14/1, with Pride of Pimlico sent off 11/4 favourite.

Beleaguerment who was second brought figures of 66-58-59-73-74-67-41-60 into the race and this time managed a 72. He was dropped to 5 furlongs for the 41, with no other races at Dundalk on the record of less than 7 furlongs, and it looks from these figures as though they maybe laid him out to win this race but were denied by one a bit better handicapped. The pattern of those runs implies a 73-74 performance might not have been out of the question.

More recently I spotted this, look at The Highway Rat's figure from a week or two ago. It had managed a winning 66 followed by a 61 here over 7 furlongs earlier in the year, but dropped to 5 furlongs, exploded thus when winning by 7 lengths:

1621926304939.png

The Handicapper slaughtered him and he was given a mark of 91 for a race at Cork the week after, where he was beaten a neck. Doesn't suggest 87 is far out as a figure, and the rest of the field have run fairly somewhere close to what would have been expected so you wouldn't have thought anything else is of note. You'd say the winner would be interesting back on all-weather but as for his price - 6/5 at best wherever he turns up?
 
The Handicapper slaughtered him and he was given a mark of 91 for a race at Cork the week after, where he was beaten a neck. Doesn't suggest 87 is far out as a figure, and the rest of the field have run fairly somewhere close to what would have been expected so you wouldn't have thought anything else is of note. You'd say the winner would be interesting back on all-weather but as for his price - 6/5 at best wherever he turns up?

Can I point out that The Highway Rat's Turf mark is 91, his AW rating is 19lbs lower at 72.
I put him in my tracker when he ran at Dundalk, at Cork I had him running to a handicap mark of 84 (speed figure 67).

THR.PNG

Mike.
 
Can I point out that The Highway Rat's Turf mark is 91, his AW rating is 19lbs lower at 72.
I put him in my tracker when he ran at Dundalk, at Cork I had him running to a handicap mark of 84 (speed figure 67).

View attachment 100943

Mike.
So its fair to say that when he's next on the AW he should have a penalty kick in front of him off that mark but I saw his previous flat mark was 76 so they've raised him to 91 presumably because he stormed that race and not thanks to finishing 12th of 18 runners at Leopardstown. He'll clearly not be allowed to run off 72 in his next AW race.

Obviously not rated any flat runs but in time when I get round to all the ficticious distances and so on I'm sure the conundrum will ensue.
 
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He'll clearly not be allowed to run off 72 in his next AW race.
If his next run is on the AW he will run off 72 and the trainer will be a fool not to, he will be 10lb well in on my handicap on what he has achieved so far.
Obviously not rated any flat runs but in time when I get round to all the ficticious distances and so on I'm sure the conundrum will ensue.
I spent time working on yesterday's card at Ballinrobe, in Ireland they do not publish rail movements just add any changes to the race distances, so at every meeting, you could see different distances making compiling standard times very difficult, I use regression curve estimation to adjust when and where required.

Mike.
 
If his next run is on the AW he will run off 72 and the trainer will be a fool not to, he will be 10lb well in on my handicap on what he has achieved so far.

I spent time working on yesterday's card at Ballinrobe, in Ireland they do not publish rail movements just add any changes to the race distances, so at every meeting, you could see different distances making compiling standard times very difficult, I use regression curve estimation to adjust when and where required.

Mike.
I find it odd that a horse can run off 72, and not be hiked in the ratings as a result. Why are they reassessing him for a seven length win? Do they think everything he been was about 14lb too high?
 
I find it odd that a horse can run off 72, and not be hiked in the ratings as a result. Why are they reassessing him for a seven length win? Do they think everything he been was about 14lb too high?
I think it’s obvious that they haven’t updated the AW rating next time if he runs in Dundalk he will be running off 92, he doesn’t have a separate AW rating.

The RP seems to be listing the latest OR they ran off on the surface instead of the current OR.
 
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AustinDillon75 AustinDillon75

Whether or not this was an oversight by the Irish handicappers, I couldn't find anything on the Irish flat ratings with ref to The Highway Rat's revised updated AW rating, so I sent off an email to them, I suppose it is possible that they missed it, but I find that hard to believe.

Mike.
 
AustinDillon75 AustinDillon75

Whether or not this was an oversight by the Irish handicappers, I couldn't find anything on the Irish flat ratings with ref to The Highway Rat's revised updated AW rating, so I sent off an email to them, I suppose it is possible that they missed it, but I find that hard to believe.

Mike.
When I looked at The Highway Rat official Irish Rating the horse is now rated 92, it doesn’t have a separate AW rating, most horses have the same rating for both, The Highway Rat has never had a separate ratings for AW , the fluctuations are just normal handicapping dropped 3lb for a 4 length defeat in Dundalk, then dropped another 4 lb for a 5 length defeat in Leopardshown, then raised 19lb for a 7 length win in Dundalk and now raised 1lb for his close defeat in Cork.
Such lightly raced horses (only 5 runs to date) will not really be given separate ORs for AW and Turf, a definite disparity in ability with enough evidence would need to be established before they would assume a horse has differing ability on a particular surface and a separate OR considered.
 
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I think it’s obvious that they haven’t updated the AW rating next time if he runs in Dundalk he will be running off 92, he doesn’t have a separate AW rating.

The RP seems to be listing the latest OR they ran off on the surface instead of the current OR.
I know, I was only responding to the The Blues Brother who said he will run off 72 on the AW next time, which was in response to my assertion that he wouldn't. No problem.
 
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AustinDillon75 AustinDillon75

Whether or not this was an oversight by the Irish handicappers, I couldn't find anything on the Irish flat ratings with ref to The Highway Rat's revised updated AW rating, so I sent off an email to them, I suppose it is possible that they missed it, but I find that hard to believe.

Mike.
We'll just have to hope your email doesn't result in his AW mark being blown. If they do run him off 72 I'm going to abandon my betting hiatus and stick the house, the car and everything else on him
 
We'll just have to hope your email doesn't result in his AW mark being blown. If they do run him off 72 I'm going to abandon my betting hiatus and stick the house, the car and everything else on him
I admire your hutzpah, but even in flat racing horses can rear in stalls & unseat, fall at turns, clip heels or even be boxed in with nowhere to go, at least leave yourself a pot to pee in :rofl:
 
Yes - but you get the drift.
I will keep the garden shed just incase.
I don't think there's any racing at Dundalk in the summer, so he may nudge the handicapper with a few runs on the turf or be put away for an autumn/winter campaign at Dundalk, showing my ignorance is there any other AW tracks in Ireland
 
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