We now know who are fastest horses in the race, we have a good idea how the race will be run and who will be up with or making the pace, but there is still one more vital piece of the jigsaw to complete, and that is class. There have been many debates in the racing world as to what class means in a race horse. The term class, in this context, is defined in the dictionary as “of superior quality” and I think this is a pretty good evaluation of class.
When you look at superior quality, you have to consider all aspects of a horse, superior speed, superior attitude and superior breeding. To me, these three attributes are what makes up the class of a horse. We have already looked at speed, and concluded that the winner will probably come from the top three or four in the ratings. There are a lot of speed skeptics who will argue that speed doesn't’t carry enough weight to be a major factor in assessing the chances of a horse. But a professional speed handicapper will not back a horse just on his speed figures alone. They will make a list of horses which will have superior figures to the rest of the field, then asses the other factors to determine which are the class horses and which ones are nags.
Now we look at a horse’s attitude on the race course. Many of you reading this will be favorite backers, because you tend to concentrate on favorites, you will probably have noticed that favorites who won last time out or ones that have a good strike rate at this particular distance are good bets, and other favorites who are regularly getting placed and are just finding one too good are bad bets.
Now we look at a horse’s The reason for this can be summed up in one word “Attitude”. Many backer's get sucked into the false sense of reasoning that a horse has been placed second on his last two runs and he is due a win. The reality is the horse may win if up against far inferior opposition, but in general the horse’s attitude towards winning is not good and will probably continue to find one too good next time he runs. These ‘ Sucker ‘ horses are the type’s that the bookmakers love to lay and leave the punter scratching his head with confusion on how he got beaten, or describing the horse as unlucky in the race. Personally I only consider a horse if he has at least a thirty percent strike rate at the distance, and if he was a favorite I would increase that to at least fifty percent.
You are probably wondering that, if a selection is to have at least a thirty percent strike rate, surly it will be going off at a relatively short price. This is not always the case and is where the majority of your profits will come from.When you are studying the form of a horse, you will see that it will be running at different distances, grades and ground conditions, and when you have filtered out today's conditions, this is where you would be looking for your strike rate. The final quality to consider is breeding. A lot of people might think that breeding only comes into play when assessing two year old races where a horse may be lightly raced or is having its first run. You would be amazed by the amount of loosing bets you could have avoided if you took the time to study a horses pedigree. Most experienced form students are aware that clues can be taken from a horses blood line as to what distance or ground etc could be best suited to a horse. This is a specialist subject and mainly applies to two year olds and lightly raced horses.
There is also a numerical rating called a dosage index which produces a figure calculated on the ratio of speed to stamina over four generations. What we are going to look at here is what you might call a horses X factor. A horses pedigree contributes a lot towards a horses attitude towards winning races. As an example of how this theory works go to the bloodstock section of the Racing Post and go to whatever type you want such as flat, jumps or all weather sires. Only going back about twelve months write down the strike rate of winners to runners for a horses sire. After doing this over a good number of races, you will begin to see that no matter how good a horse looks in the form book, if the strike rate for the sires progeny is low, this shows up in the horses inability to win and if the strike rate is high this indicates an ability by the bloodline to win. If you take two horses which look to have similar ability in the form book and bet each one at level stakes over a period, you will see a much higher return from the one with the higher progeny strike.
