What are horse racing ratings?
Horse ratings explained. Horse racing ratings are sets of data that represent (in numbers) a horse’s ability. They are based on a horse’s previous runs. They can be used to your advantage and really improve your results when betting on the horses.
There are official ratings which are provided by the British Horse Racing Authority (you will see these on a race card usually with the abbreviation (OR).
There are also commercial ratings (such as those offered by One Stop Racing) which are specifically designed to rate horses using many pieces of historical data about that horse, in a way which is easy to understand and make betting decisions from.
We will cover both types of ratings this article.
How does a horse get its official rating and why do we need these ratings?
A young horse receives its first official rating (shortened to “OR” on most race cards) from the British Horse Racing Authority (BHA) when it has either:
- Won its first race, or
- Achieved a minimum of three performance figures – that is, have raced at least three times – in order to for the BHA to translate these into an initial handicap rating.
**FAST FACT** If a horse doesn’t meet either of these 2 conditions it must keep racing until it does, presuming it wants an official rating.
Once the horse has this OR number (sometimes also referred to as a handicap mark or handicap rating ) it is then eligible to run in handicap races.
The OR rating will affect the type/grade of race it can run in for the rest of its racing years. A handicap race is one where the weight carried is determined by the official rating of the horse – this allows a more equal chance for each horse in the race to win with an aim to make racing more competitive by grouping similar ability horses (hence the term handicap).
From that first rating the OR can go up or down (on a weekly basis) depending on how the horse performs. So if a horse repeatedly wins races or places then the handicapper is very likely to increase its official rating. The British Horse Racing Authority update the official ratings every Tuesday morning, so for eagle eyed punters, that is the time to keep an eye out!
There is a slight difference in the OR range for National Hunt and Flat racing horses. Those that run in the National Hunt races will have a rating between 0-170 and those that run in the flat season will have a rating between 0-140.
Individual races are set a rating band and only horses with a rating that fits in that band are allowed to run in that race with a few exceptions.
This brings us nicely on to why we have these ratings and what do the handicappers and race organisers do with them!
Why do we have handicap ratings?
A handicap rating is an indication of a horses ability compared with another, they also provide some context to compare the merit of horses currently in training with those that have raced in the past.
In simple terms the higher a horse is rated on the official handicap then the better standard race the horse can run in.
Naturally not all horses have the same ability or speed and to consistently see horses of lower ability run against horses of much higher ability wouldn’t be much fun for anyone and would ruin the competitive nature of the sport
Simple Summary:
- An OR (official rating) tells you how good (or not) a horse is based on its past performances.
- This OR (handicap mark) also determines which grade (or group) race a horse can run in.
- The horses rating can change over its lifetime depending on whether it wins or loses races and this in turn will affect which races the horse is allowed to run in.
How do commercial ratings differ to the official ratings?
While not all ratings are created equally most use some element of historical data not unlike that used by the BHA when producing official ratings. This is then adjusted according to any number of factors such as distance, going, jockey, trainer etc the list can be endless.
One Stop Racing for example uses a series of complex algorithms to produce four different ratings for every horse in every race.
The four ratings are:
- LR – Last Run
- HS – Horse Score
- SR – Speed Rating
- OSR – One Stop Racings master rating.
To view historical ratings from One Stop Racing visit the archive and click on any previous day, this goes right back to April 2021 and is a wonderful resource for back testing.
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