Time and weight are inextricably linked in form ratings - so don't ignore them!

Betting Strategy / Simon Rowlands / 06 August 2008 / Leave a Comment

Simon Rowlands replies to a reader query and dishes out a lesson in the relationship between time and weight in deciphering a horse's true form.

One of you got in touch the other day asking about the relative significance of form and time ratings, which conveniently gives me the opportunity to revisit a subject that I covered in an article for The Sportsman, as follows:

It is more than 100 years since Albert Einstein showed that time is a relative concept, but some in racing still seem to struggle with an altogether more mundane Theory of Relativity as it applies to their sport.

This concerns the question of what adjustments should be made to overall race times of horses to determine their significance one to another. For race times are only really significant in relative terms, not absolute ones.

A time in itself is pretty meaningless. If a horse runs a race in, say, two minutes flat, was it a good time? If it was a 10-furlong race then it probably would be; if it was a five-furlong race then it would not be.

It depends on a lot more than the distance of the race as well. Among other things, it depends on the conformation of the track, the state of the going and the weather.

It also depends on what could be expected of the horse in question. Dubai Millennium, the outstanding 10f horse of recent years, twice broke the two-minute barrier at that trip, but most horses never will.

And it will depend on the weight the horses carry.

That last bit seems to be where a lot of time analysts have a problem.

The argument made by some is not that weight doesn't matter - it clearly does in this particular universe - but that, because its precise effect is difficult to determine, it should be ignored.

There are a lot of factors within racing that are difficult to determine, but that is no reason in itself to ignore them. Indeed, that is often an intrinsic part of the challenge.

Weight is a factor in racing, whether we like it or not. The means employed for bringing horses of different abilities closer together are weight differentials, and with good reason. The alternatives - such as starting horses at different times or from staggered starts - are not worthy of serious consideration.

Ironically, while the precise effect of weight is open to argument, the weights carried by individual horses are among the most accurate pieces of information available to punters.

So, two of the crucial factors that influence race times - weight carried and athletic ability - are already expressed in pounds (form ratings are conventionally expressed on a scale of pounds). If only we could convert the difference between actual time and expected time into pounds we would have a fully integrated approach.

But we can, or at least we can make a good fist of it.

Form handicappers in the UK have been converting time into weight for over a decade now: some of them just might not have realised it.

In the late 1990s, the British racing authorities decided to alter the manner in which racing results were returned. Before then, margins between horses were judged visually, and sometimes rather haphazardly. Since then, margins between horses have been given as conversions of the time lapses between them.

This conversion was initially at a rather crude rate of 5 lengths per second on the Flat and 4 lengths per second over jumps. This was altered recently to a more realistic (but also more fiddly) 6 lengths on Flat on good going or firmer, 5.5 on ground ranging between good (good to soft in places) and good to soft (soft in places) and 5 on soft (good to soft in places) or softer. The corresponding adjustments for jumps are: 5; 4.5; and 4 respectively. On all-weather, it is 6 lengths per second at Kempton, Lingfield and Wolverhampton, 5.5 at Great Leighs and 5 at Southwell.

As a result, if a form handicapper on the Flat reckons that six lengths on good to firm are equivalent to, say, 15 lb under certain circumstances, he is, in effect, also reckoning that one second is equivalent to the same.

The methodology employed by some form handicappers is a bit suspect, but the principle is still pretty clear: if you can convert lengths into pounds to an acceptable degree of accuracy you can do the same with time.

Indeed, you already have done the same with time.

There is a false dichotomy between most form and time handicapping. The two disciplines are dealing with the same information but just coming to different conclusions on account of favouring different criteria.

They are - or rather they should be - inextricably linked.

Form handicappers and time handicappers could learn a lot from one another. One of the things some time analysts could learn is not only that weight matters but that it is realistic to think that you can get to grips with it in this context.

Without considering weight, the time analyst is missing one vital piece of the jigsaw. Without considering time, the form analyst is doing the same.

"Only connect" as E M Forster, another visionary of the early 20th century and a contemporary of Einstein's, once said.