Whether you’re a beginner to horse racing or an experienced punter, the racing form guide is one of your best tools for finding a winner.
For new punters in particular, the information and the numbers in the racing form guide can feel overwhelming and you may not be sure what it all means. This guide on reading the racing form guide is based on the online form that you will see at top bookmakers.
There are also some premium form guide tools, such as Punters.com.au and RaceNet, that can make doing your form a little bit easier.
1. Horse Details
This will give you the name of the horse, the saddlecloth colours, the name of the track where the race is scheduled to be run, the horse’s trainer, its starting position in the barrier, and the weight it will be carrying for the race.
2. Breeding Details
Breeding details include the sire and dam of the horse, along with its age. Breeding becomes a more important factor in long-distance races and on heavy tracks.
3. Racing Colours and Jockey
The silks the horse is wearing for a race make it easier to spot in the field if you are actually at the meeting or watching on the telly, but punters are more interested in the jockey who is steering.
4. Historical Performance
This section carries far more weight than the first three. It gives the horse’s career statistics regarding races entered, the number of wins and places (2nd or 3rd), and the prize money earned.
5. Career Spell, Track and Distance, Track Condition
Just as is true with their human athlete counterparts, horses benefit from resting or being spelled.
Punters will often expect a horse making its first start after a spell to perform better, and this section of the form guide will supply that detail.
This section will also let you know which distance is the best for a particular horse and what sort of track conditions it prefers.
6. Recent Results
Again, as with humans, horses can experience hot streaks or slumps, so information about the last three races in which the horse took part might tip you that its performance is improving or is beginning to deteriorate.
This will help you to more objectively assess a horse’s odds and ferret out those better-than-average selections, especially when you start to take place wagers and other exotic wagers like quinellas and exactas.
7. Speed Maps
Speed maps show the horses’ early speed from the barriers and their expected settling positions in the run. This is important when looking at horses who like to lead and assessing how easy they are going to get and maintain the lead.
If there is a lot of speed in the race, it can cause the horses up front to tire late and bring the backmarkers into play.
8. Sectionals
Sectionals data usually provide early, mid, and late speed. Sectionals data is used to create speedmaps and is worth looking at when figuring out how easy a horse might find the lead, or how strong a horse is going to be late in the race.
9. Advanced Form Guides and Calculators
Advanced form guides and calculators, such as those available at Punters.com.au, provide the functionality to apply your own weightings to these factors to help predict the winner.
I find this extra information especially valuable when looking at Group 1 races and longer distance races.
One of my favourite ways to look at sectional data is to find runners that had strong late speed last start, and are up in distance for the next race. This is typically a sign that the horse will do well over the longer distance and it may represent value in the market.