Horse racing ratings: the RaceWatch Ratings Hub

What is an official rating and who sets it?

An official rating is a figure in pounds set by the official handicappers in Britain and Ireland. It is reviewed after each run to reflect the level of the horse's form.

The handicapper watches the race, looks at who the horse beat and by how far, converts the margin into pounds and adjusts the rating. Because ratings are in pounds, a horse rated 90 is judged 10lb better than one rated 80, and that difference becomes weight in a handicap.

Flat and jumps ratings are on separate scales. Jumps ratings run higher, with the best chasers rated well above the best Flat horses, so a Flat rating and a jumps rating cannot be compared directly.

What is the difference between an official rating and a speed rating?

An official rating measures the level of a horse's form against other horses. A speed rating measures how fast it ran, adjusted for going, course and weight.

The two often agree, but when they differ it is informative. A horse that wins a slowly run race can earn a good official rating from the horses it beat while recording a modest speed figure, because nobody went fast. A horse that runs a fast time in a strongly run race may deserve more credit than its finishing position suggests.

The RaceWatch Score is a third kind of number: a machine learning score from 0 to 100 that reads each runner in its race. Each measure answers a different question, so the most useful habit is to notice when they disagree and ask why, rather than trusting any one of them on its own.

What are the views in the Ratings Hub?

The Ratings Hub has six views: Today, Boards, 2YO, Trainers, Movers and Screens. Each name gives the focus of the view, from today's racing to two year olds and trainers.

Seeing ratings side by side answers a basic question for every race: who is the best horse on the book? In a handicap, the ratings are already built into the weights, so the top rated horse carries the most. In a conditions or Pattern race, where weights are fixed by the conditions, the rating gap between runners is a direct measure of how much better one has shown itself than another.

Two year olds deserve separate attention because they carry few or no ratings early in the season, and the gaps between them change quickly as they improve. Movers, as the name suggests, is the place to look for ratings that have changed.

How do rising and falling ratings help?

A rating trend shows whether a horse's mark has moved up, held or dropped over recent runs. It separates improving horses from those on the way down.

An improving horse is often one step ahead of its rating, because the handicapper reacts to what the horse has done, not what it will do. A horse in decline is the opposite. The OR Timeline tab on each racecard shows how a rating has moved, Trajectory picks out horses that look well in or are emerging, and Marks+ shows the rating bands where a horse has done its best.

Read the trend with the form. A rising rating backed by easy wins is different from a rising rating earned by narrow wins, and a falling rating after runs on unsuitable ground is different from one after tailed off efforts.

What do ratings leave out?

Ratings measure ability on a standard scale but ignore going, trip, draw, pace and course, which often explain why a horse runs above or below its mark.

Two horses on the same rating can run very differently on soft ground, because one handles it and the other does not. The same applies to trip, draw and the way a race is run. That is why the highest rated horse is not automatically the one to beat, and why the racecard's Form, Draw and Breeding tabs matter as much as the rating column.

The chart on this page shows how horses in each rating band have fared in handicaps over ten seasons. The differences between bands are a reminder that the rating decides the weights, not the result, and that the market already takes ratings into account.

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