Patterns In The Sand....

Chapter Five: Compiling the speed ratings for a race

In Chapter Two I mentioned the nightmare issue of retrieving speed figures from a written notebook or from your weekly copy of  RaceForm Update. I know it's a nightmare, because this is how I started when trying to keep speed ratings figures up to date. Initially I just didn't grasp the sheer quantity of data that would be involved. Finding figures for a sixteen runner race and copying them out could take hours.

Pretty soon I decided to keep all my records on a computer database. I am fairly at home with a personal computer so it was not too difficult for me to set up a database program. Database applications such as Microsoft Access are really not as daunting as you might think, and they can save you a big chunk of time. If you think you may struggle, then there is the Access For Dummies book which you can get on Amazon, or you can enrol on a local evening course.

After a week on a database course, or with your head buried in a self-help book, you will be able to use commands such as 'sort records' to keep your horses in alphabetical order, the 'find' command to locate the record of a particular horse, and the 'show marked records' to show just those horses you need for a particular race. You will be able to simply copy and paste records to new tables to produce race cards for entire meetings in minutes.

I still found myself referring to the RaceForm results supplement to find over which course and over what distance each speed figure had been earned. The solution here was to append this information to each speed rating, and so I would add L for Lingfield, S for Southwell, W for Wolverhampton, and today there is also K for Kempton.

As well as showing the course with an abbreviation, I also show the appropriate race distance in my figures. Finally, if a figure is for a winning performance I place an exclamation mark after the rating to show the horse won the race.

By way of an example, a horse whose performance had earned a rating of 74 when winning at Southwell over six furlongs would be shown as 74! S 6f

By harnessing the power of my computer, and with a little practice, I was soon able to compile figures for a seven race card in less than thirty minutes.

The figures in action

At this point you can see how we arrive at a speed figure, and how to store and retrieve them. moving forward, let's take a look at what they look like when we analyse a race.

You can see below the speed ratings for runners in the Winter Derby at Lingfield in 2003. There were fourteen runners that day, but only eight of these had run on the all weather since the September.

Parasol was the top rated horse on his last performance with a rating of 80. He opened on course at 7/2 before being sent off the joint favourite at 5/2 with Kirovski. Frankie Dettori went straight to the front with Parasol, quickened around three furlongs from home, and just held off the fast finishing Adiemus. Parasol earned a rating of 85 with that run, and broke the track record for the new Polytrack surface.

1st Parasol 5/2 JF

2nd Adiemus 11/4

3rd Goblet Of Fire 25/1

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