The horse racing handicap system can be a real head scratcher; here's a quick explanation of how it works, so you can take full advantage of the stats and visuals which THM offers you on our unique Handicap tab.
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What's a Handicap?
Let's start with the basics. In handicap races, the weight carried by a horse is based on its Official Rating; this is to try and give each horse an equal chance of winning. The weight a horse carries is a combination of the jockey's weight and the weight of the saddle.
Let's consider two horses in a race - one is rated 85 and the other 90. The horse rated 90 is considered to be "5lbs better" than the horse rated 85, therefore it will have to carry a weight 5lbs greater than the theoretically inferior rival. Simple enough?
On this basis, if every horse was handicapped to its true ability and all horses ran exactly as they should, the end result would be a blanket finish with all the horses crossing the line at exactly the same time. Wouldn't that be a sight? But of course in horse racing we know theory only goes so far.
If a horse performs well in a given race, the handicapper will usually respond by increasing its Official Rating. This means it will either have to carry more weight next time, or likely move up in class to race against better quality opposition. The "HCAP MOVE" indicator found amongst the host of THM Handicap stats shows you how a horse's Official Rating has changed since its last run. This can be used to your advantage.
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Visualiser
THM's Handicap Visualiser elegantly displays all that's beautiful about a horse's handicap history, covering 2 main components:
- Dashed Line: This flat line indicates the current Official Rating of the horse.
- Green Line: This displays all previous handicap history for each race and the finishing position achieved in that race. You'll need to hover over each point to view the finishing position
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The Visualiser in action
The above example displays the Handicap History of Summerghand, racing tomorrow in the 18:15 at Ascot. He's an old boy now so has had quite the handicapping journey. We can clearly see that he's dropped to his lowest handicap in quite some time. He was rated as high as 113 in his heyday! He's a full 20lbs lower than that today - a result of him regressing slightly with age.
That's not to say he's no longer capable! He definitely is, and this is shown by the recent handicap increases earned by good performances. The key decision to be made is whether he retains enough ability to win off a handicap mark of 93 under these race conditions.
Mr Professor is a horse with a very different profile. Here's a much younger horse, still open to more improvement having not yet reached the pinnacle of his ability. For a horse that's on the upgrade and being raised in the handicap, we have to consider whether the horse is capable of improving again sufficiently to offset its rise in the weights. It appears this lad needs another jolt of improvement and a career best to be victorious from this handicap mark. But horses do improve!
Each horse has its own unique profile; we're only outlining a couple here. Now we'll leave you to get stuck into the Royal Ascot handicaps tomorrow.
Best of luck!