hi
O
Outlander
your link is very helpful, thank you. i am indeed a beginner at compiling my own speed figures. I choose Hong Kong because there is a lot of info freely available, and only two races a week so it's relatively easier to manage.
I am indeed going to factor in weight, I'm guessing the average weight of a horse, any racehorse, is around 1500lbs (as said in this article)?
What beginners guide would you recommend? Is there a book, or a guide online, that puts it into very basic terms and how to begin?
This is something I wrote a few years trying to help another member of the forum with Speed Ratings for UK racing, this is a more basic beginners version of my methods , again it uses a class form rating to calculate the going allowance but might be helpful
Hi , I don't worry about how long a horse is this would probably vary between 8 and 9 ft, weight will affect horses differently because horses also range from 1000 lb to 1300 lb and we have no idea what they weigh. So you just have to operate on a best fit for the whole population. I work in seconds per furlong and multiply by 100 , this keeps it simple fits well and every 0.01 sec/ furlong up or down conveniently equals 1 pound in the ratings.
Example horse wins at 5 f Southwell in 58.5 seconds carrying 9st 4 lb and the going was slowing them by 0.12 sec/ furlong and my standard time is 57 seconds.
My calculations would be 1.5 seconds slower than standard
1.5 seconds divided by 5 furlongs = 1.5/5 = 0.3 seconds per furlong slow
0.3 sec/ fur multiply by 100 equals 30 pounds slow
So the time was 30 pounds slow
But the going was slowing them down by 0.12 seconds per furlong
So the going is slowing them by 0.12 multiply by 100 equals 12 pounds
So if the ground wasn't slowing them down the horse would have been 12lb faster
So the rating for this horse is 100 - 30 + 12 + 4 = 86
The 100 is the constant base rating
The 30 is pounds value attributed to the 1.5 seconds the horse was slower than standard
The 12 is pounds allowance to account for the going slowing them down by 0.12 sec/fur
The 4 is the weight the horse carried above 9st, if carry less than 9st thi she would be a negative figure
The 86 is the final rating given to the horse for this performance.
Now imagine if you start by counting the going allowance as ZERO for all races and follow the steps rating all the races on the card.
You could for example return ratings for 6 races of 135, 145, 148, 164, 129 and 130.
You then look at say the RPR ratings or the BHA ratings and for the same races they have performance figures of 94, 103, 100, 110, 91 and 90.
Look at the difference
Race 1 135-94= 41
Race 2 145-103= 42
Race 3 148- 100 = 48
Race 4 164-110 = 54
Race 5 129- 91 = 38
Race 6 130 - 90 = 40
So we can see race 4 is the fastest compared to expected performance because we had it 54 pounds higher than RPR
THE second fastest is Race 3 because it is 48 ponds better
Obviously these horses haven't run this fast the figures are high because the going is speeding the horses up by between 38pounds and 54 pounds
This is where you estimate a going allowance so you could take an average or as I would do take the better times in this case the 54 from race 4 and the 48 from race 3 and average that out to 51
So 51 divided by 100 equals 0.51 seconds per furlong
We have our going allowance speeding them up by 0.51 sec/fur
So we deduct 0.51 x 100 = 51 from the original ratings we had
So now we get 84, 94 , 97, 113 , 78 and 79
Now we can see that race 4 as well as being the best rating on the day is also the most interesting because if we compare them again to the RPR ratings it's the only horse who ran faster than its expected performance rating.
This would be the horse the follow in this case it was also the highest rating on the card, sometimes it can be a lower rated horse that performs best versus expectation, these horses can pay to follow.
