Old Horse Racing Systems
Introduction
When I started to write this article on old horse racing systems it got me thinking and I paused for thought for quite some time. I have written many UK horse racing systems over the last 8 years and I do not really class these as old horse racing systems. I will be truthful this was quite a hard subject to write about as everybody as an opinion on this. I will explain what an old system is and why I like some of these old systems which have stood the test of time.
What are old horse racing systems?
In my opinion an old racing system is at least 30 years old and has stood the test of time with favourable results and long term profits. The horse racing system should be well known in the public domain and respected and appear on many UK horse racing creditable forums on the internet with positive reviews.
Which old horse racing system do I like?
There is only one old horse racing system for UK horse racing that I like and this is the VDW systems i.e. the Van Der Wheil system ( the flying dutchman ). He was a popular figure in the 1970s and 1980s and perfected a UK horse racing system based on class, form and ability. I fell in love with this old horse racing system but I must confess it took many years to understand it and more importantly to master it. This horse racing system is known by most horse racing punters and pops up on forums worldwide.
So, I will give you my interpretation of this VDW old horse racing system.
Determining If A Horse Is In Form
We simply look at the last 3 most current races a horse has competed in and sum the last finishing positions for these 3 races.
If a horse finished 1st 2nd and 5th then we sum this as follows 1+2+5=8
Now the lower this figure the more consistent the horse is and indicates the horse is in form. But hold on yes, a horse that finished 1st 1st and 2nd = 4 is super consistent and we can say quite confidently the horse is in form.
But horse racing is not that simple, we must also measure this consistent form against class of races it was achieved in.
The horse that finished 1st 2nd and 5th might have been running in better class of races than the horse that finished 1st 1st and 2nd.
So, we need to measure horse form against the class of races the horse achieved it in and I have repeated this statement to indicate the importance of this.
Is A Horse Coming To The Boil?
A horse can take a couple of races to come to the boil in other words is ready to win and you should be able to spot this in the past races the horse has run in. A couple of classic indicators are is a horse running over the wrong distance or is the horse dropping in class.
The Importance Of Race Distance And Going
To me this is a key horse form metric and I take this very seriously and will ignore horses that do not handle certain courses and/or going.
Horse training methods change over time and old horse racing systems do not factor this in but I am a firm believer in these old systems but they might just need a few alterations to make them more current.