Part 2: “What Our Transatlantic Cousins Can Teach Us About Picking Winners. And Losers!”

UK Form And Its Shortcomings

Under the reign of Queen Anne, during the period 1702-1714, horse races involving several horses on which spectators placed bets took over from match racing and horse racing became a professional sport, with racecourses founded throughout England, including the track at Ascot, founded by Queen Anne herself, in 1711.

In 1750 in the Star and Garter pub, Pall Mall, the first meeting of what was to become The Jockey Club was convened.

Their initial remit was to ensure that races run on Newmarket Heath were done so fairly, and the statutes they instated were soon embraced by many of the racecourses operating in Britain at that time.

The estimable daily racing newspaper, The Sporting Life, was first published in 1859, and lived until the ripe old age of 139, before being amalgamated with the Racing Post in 1998.

The reason for this selective and potted history lesson is that between the robust regimen of the Jockey Club, and the widespread dissemination of information propagated by the Sporting Life, horse race wagering became much more common practice from the middle of the 19^th century.

Wagering had been a part of horse racing since the middle 1600’s, but it gained a new aura of trust and respectability with the publication of both rules of racing and official form and results.

At some point, and I can’t find any evidence of when, some clever soul must have realised that if all horses raced as equals (i.e. with just a saddle and a jockey on their back), some of them would prevail too regularly to sustain betting.

The reason for my contention is that horse racing as a sport would surely honour the fastest horse, just as athletics as a sport honours the fastest athlete, rather than try to find ways to give slower and less capable horses a chance to win.

However, in order to make betting more interesting – and therefore more popular, and in turn therefore to generate more revenue – measures were needed to even out the theoretical chances of all horses in a race.

Thus ‘handicap’ races were conceived (anybody know when?), where the best horse is allotted the most weight to carry, in order to attempt to level out its chance against the other contenders.

This weight measurement became the pre-eminent unit of form analysis in British horse racing. Weight equals lengths, and lengths beaten – or in front of – another animal is still taken as a fairly literal interpretation of the respective merits of the beasts in any given contest.

To my mind, this is patently ridiculous. There are so many basic imponderables ignored by a study predicated on this concept.

Elements such as the pace of the race: that is, how fast was the race run? Was the race run at a similar speed throughout? Or was it stop / start? Did the winner lead off slowly and ‘steal’ the win? Or did it come from far back, outstaying tired runners who’d shot their bolts?

How can you infer that in weight and lengths?

Elements such as the going, the distance and course: what were the underfoot conditions? And when they recorded the going as good to soft at Cheltenham and horses were breaking track records, did they think we didn’t know they were lying? (For God’s sake, let’s get out of the dark ages and use a common scientific turf moisture measuring tool, like the penetrometer or some such!).

The distance of the race: yes, it was a mile on the race card. But did you know they’d moved the rail in ten feet? Around a two furlong turn, that makes a significant difference to the overall distance.

The course: A beat B by five lengths around the turning 5 furlongs at Chester. Therefore, he should win by the same margin on the straight course at Sandown with all other things equal, right? Wrong.

What if B is a huge tank of a horse? He’d have no chance of finding any kind of rhythm on the bullring that is the Roodee. Much better suited to a stiff galloping dash like that at Esher’s finest. I’d take B to put five lengths into A on a straight track.

Of course, you will rightly identify that most savoir faire students of form will factor in a number of these elements and, indeed, this information is now much more freely available thanks to the wonders of the information age.

Nevertheless, UK racing still has at its heart, lengths beaten and weight carried.

Furthermore, there is some evidence that weight actually makes very little difference to a horse’s performance. Sure, if you put an extra two stone on its back, then that has a bearing. But if you put the equivalent of a bag of sugar or two on the lumbar of a ton of rippling equine sinew, do you seriously think that will do the trick?

The fact is that horses going up a few pounds win far more often than those going down a few pounds.

In Nick Mordin’s excellent “Betting For A Living”, he did a survey of 222 races over a three year period, where in each case two horses who had previously finished close together (within two lengths) were going head to head again.

When the weight differential remained the same, or the loser from the first meeting carried more weight, the loser lost again 56 times out of 96 – or 58%.

When the weight differential allowed the loser to carry less weight, it lost 73 times out of 126. Or 58%.

In other words, an average weight pull of 2.45lbs made not one iota of difference overall to the chances of the losing horse from the first time reversing the placings next time they met.

According to weights and lengths, that weight turnaround should allow the tables to be turned on each occasion (distance depending).

Looking at this from another perspective and, irrespective of collateral form between runners or mutual previous adversaries, there is a distinct pattern in handicaps. Take a look at the following data:

Years: 2004 2005 2006

Weight Rank - Descending (handicaps)

CATEGORY WINS RUNS STRIKE% LSP LSP% VSP%

1st (top weight) 1354 10842 12.49 -1721.74 -15.88 -8.39

2nd 954 8291 11.51 -1630.81 -19.67 -11.58

3rd 860 8235 10.44 -1577.51 -19.16 -15.08

4th 849 8324 10.20 -1979.05 -23.78 -11.32

5th 770 8104 9.50 -1438.82 -17.75 -12.85

6th 710 8138 8.72 -1692.27 -20.79 -13.90

7th 556 7641 7.28 -1960.25 -25.65 -21.59

8th 518 7239 7.16 -1777.71 -24.56 -18.17

9th 396 6461 6.13 -2102.38 -32.54 -22.22

10th+ 1187 23035 5.15 -6503.10 -28.23 -21.29

There are two points to make here:

1. There is an exact linear relationship between a horse’s weight position in the handicap hierarchy, and its win strike rate (‘chapeau’ to the handicapper!!). Top weights win just about once in every eight handicaps, whereas those tenth or lower win only around one in twenty.
2. Losses are limited the most when solely backing top weighted horses in handicaps, with about 84p returned for every £1 wagered at SP. With horses at the tail of the handicap, you’d lose pushing 30p in every pound!

In summary in this post, I’ve tried to highlight some of the shortcomings in simply taking the collateral form methodology as a means to identify the most likely winner of a horse race.

I totally accept the accusation that I may have exaggerated the import of weight and lengths in relation to some of the more sophisticated readers’ approaches.

However, I still believe that the majority of ‘skim’ form students (i.e. those who look beyond the 1’s, 2’s and 0’s to the left of a horse’s name, but not much beyond them) perceive distance beaten and weight carried as informative determinants in their quest to solve the puzzle.

We’ve seen here that small deviations in weight actually have a very limited likelihood of instigating a form reversal and, in the case of handicap races, a highly weighted horse should – on balance – be seen as a positive factor.

In the next exciting (!) instalment, we’ll start to look at alternative approaches, starting with my favourite – and probably the most obvious – element, speed.

Until then…
Matt

N.B. the next piece in this series will not be until early next week. I trust that won’t spoil anyone’s weekend ;o)