Ok a very touchy subject in my opinion with regards to UK handicap horse racing form. Any seasoned punter knows that the best horses in a race will have top weight but as they win more races or placed in higher class races the more weight they are allocated. Now I missed this the handicapper allocates the weight based on a horse’s position in a race and class and how it finished its race plus many more variables come into account. The purpose of a handicap race is for the handicapper to get all the horses in a race card to finish in close proximity to each other. They also want to give the more inferior horses in the race a chance. This is a hefty subject so I am just  skimming the surface here. We know 2 pounds of sugar does not feel heavy, wrong!  What would 7 pounds of sugar be like carrying over 1 mile I n a horse race especially in heavy going. Now I not saying you should do this yoursel, this is all hypothetical, just imagine it. Race horses have to carry weight and the old saying weight slows horses down.  Some pro human runners and I mean humans carry weights in a rucksack this is to I think add stamina into their running profile. So, if I get back onto horses in UK handicap races we will now explore weight and class of race and distance in a race example 28th April 2025 Lingfield 2.15.

I will look at this subject in my approach to studying horse racing form I in handicap races. So we have the excellent racing post race card in front of us for an all weather  AWF race at Lingfield it’s a class 6 affair the races I love. I do not know why I like these types of races there is something their that attracts me plus you tend to see the same horses applying their trade on a weekly basis.

I will use a real race card from today when writing this article/blog.

I will use the above race as an example and I am writing this article/blog before the race has been run so I did not know the result. 

Let us take each runner in turn from the racing post race card.

Not to take credit for the dawn I picked Doublethetrouble and Turing which came nowhere, but I will explain more on this later. Easter Icon won the race at 3/1 but my horse racing bot picked the winner but that’s a different approach and it does not involve weight. In this article I am discussing manual hand cranking of horse form, a bot is automated software.

The Colourist  9-6 Would not have backed this horse as in the key race 27th March 2025 it came 2nd over 2f  less in distance beaten by a head. Even the jockey claim of 7 pounds was not enough for me to back the horse or make it a selection There was another key race on the 29th January 2025 the weight was ok but the distance was too short 12f compared to today’s distance. The BHB rating – RR did not affect my judgement. The decimal odds of the race made it not a lay bet.

Conclusion 

The weight was correct but it was not enough to sway me in picking the horse but I think you know the main horse form  culprit, was the distance was too short for its last 5 or 6 races it had run in .

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Easter Icon  9-12   I must confess this was a choice selection but the jump races it ran in its previous races put me off. The weight in it last race 3rd February 2025 was correct but I am never a big fan of horses switching racing codes. The horse definitely got the trip (distance) but I have this thing in the back of my head that horses start to lose speed when they switch from jumps/hurdles to flat. I must also confess that the flat speed does not always count when they switch to jumps. The last key race was 6th February 2024 the weight hike was too much for me but I knew the horse stayed the distance of 2m. The price in today’s race put me off.

Conclusion 

The race on the 3rd February 2025 gave the horse an outstanding chance but price matters in the long term for profit but there is a contradiction in terms here. Price matters if you gain a better than the implied probability of the horse winning the race then more profit is made. I personally like backing double figure priced horses due to frequency of wins needed at shorter prices like 6/4 but that is another subject and I do do not want sound like an old record that’s stuck! This horse was also not dutching material with other selections in the race as it took too much out of the book. In todays race the horse stayed on well.

Standbackandlook 9-9 To be honest I scanned this horse’s form very quickly as it was obvious the distance and weight were against it. So, it took very little effort to eliminate this horse from the race card. My view on this was why waste brain power and increase brain saturation with information gathering, there is a tip there. But the key race if there was one was the 24 July 2024 where the distance was 13f and finished 2nd and the weight was 9-3 and todays race weight was 9-9, there was no jockey claiming here that gave the horse an advantage.  When the race was run this horse really never factored in the race.

Conclusion 

Tip here remove horses from your race card quickly when analysing horse form, you do get the odd miracle worker that wins the race when the horse form is against it!

Turing 9-7 This was a large priced horse lurking at the bottom of the market and these types of horses catch my eye. So, what did I see here to prompt me to make it a selection?  Well my approach on this horse contradicted my approach to our previous horse Standbackandlook.  The key races in my opinion were the11th July 2024 and 21st June 2024 over 12f on turf. The race on the 21st June 2024 at Newmarket in a better class of race did it for me even though it was on turf. The weight carried was in range in these two races and today’s race. The BHB – Official rating OR was quite high in these key races.  I will not dwell on this any further as there is noting else to comment on. Remember you only have to get it right once plus I went for the Betfair place market for 3 places which in my opinion represented value.

Conclusion

Price was the key here and there was a slight marginal difference across the top 3 in the betting in the race card with respect to price. The market was uncertain and this was a driving factor, I just a sneaky double figure priced horse would at least get  a place, I have done this before with the horse Micks Spirit. But I like taking on the top 2 or 3 in the betting market.

Doublethetrouble 9-12 The key race was the 3rd January 2025 and I like this horse as it was on the right side of mathematical probability i.e. the SP was 10/1. The horse was running over the correct distance and finished 4th and was running at a course it new and this is a key horse form component for me. The horse also had a decent BHB – Official rating. The horse had a 7 pound claimer which also stood out which brought the weight down from todays weight 9-12 to 9-5. It had run in some class 5 races and todays race was a class 6. Now I do not want to be smug here, the horse did not win the race but was cruising, but in my opinion tactical position of the horse in the closing stages of the race cost it a place at least.

Conclusion

Now this was not a easy selection based on its previous horse form and took some scanning forwards and backwards across this form. I will back these horses all the time!

Fravanco 9-2 This was another horse I scanned and dismissed very quickly. After the race had been run I scanned it again to see if I had missed anything. The only bit of horse form I could grasp onto was the last piece of form in a class 4 race over national hunt fences/hurdles. I will not waste any more time on this.

Conclusion

Not really much to add to this but at this point in analysis there were two horses that you could have eliminated in your head to make scanning horse form easier. Remember taking notes while reading horse form is the lazy way out and hinders you more than helps you, that’s my opinion, now where is my grocery shopping list!

Smith 8-13 Now this one was a bit strange the key race being 22nd December 2024 it finished 1st on a BHB – Official rating of 49. The weight was +/-1 tolerance from this race and today’s race, but the overriding factors for not picking the horse and I was probably right and wrong here, it was 50/50. The OR of 49 was too low but the biggest factor was the drop in weight, I know it makes little difference 1 pound drop in weight but I recognise this repeating pattern from other races I have analysed horse form in then past. Lastly one previous key race did not sway it for. It came 2nd in today’s race at 12/1 so I got it wrong, plenty of more fish in the sea, we hope.

Conclusion

The OR of 49 for this horse was low grade stuff here and I just did not have enough ammunition from it’s previous 5 or 6 races to justify this being a selection. If you had this race situation 10 times i.e. race conditions you would probably lose more than win, just my opinion!

A tricky race but a good one from a mathematical point of view with the top 3 in the betting hovering around 9/4 to 3/1. So, this was a high book value for the top 3 but I like taking these on. By nature of these prices indicates an open race at the top of the market. That’s why you would have got a way with dutching this race, but guess what good luck with this approach because the 4th or 5th in the betting will come rattling down the outside or 25/1 shot and win the race.