Understanding the Ratings

A short guide to the two headline figures we publish for every horse — the Performance Rating (PR) and the Speed Rating (SR) — and the thinking behind them.

Both ratings are built from raw race data — weights carried, finishing margins, race class, the official handicap marks, and the clock — denominated in the official-ratings currency, and they are our own assessment of each performance. The settled figures, calculated after a race has been run, are derived purely from that data. The pre-race Performance Rating you see on a racecard is a forecast — built from the horse's own form and then tweaked by our horse racing expert AI agent, which refines the figure with its own research and analysis (more on that below). The Speed Rating is always a pure clock-based figure.

The two ratings answer two different questions:

• Performance Rating — how good was the performance?
• Speed Rating — how fast did the horse actually run?

A horse can score well on one and not the other, and that difference is often where the interesting reads are. More on that below.

Performance Rating (PR)

What it is: a merit figure expressed in pounds (lb), denominated in the official-ratings currency — a PR of X means the performance was worth an official handicap mark of X, the same currency the sport itself prices in when the handicapper frames a race. A higher number means a better performance. As a rough guide, modest maiden and low-grade handicap form sits in the lower bands, while Pattern-class performances rate near the top.

What drives it:

1. Weight carried. Everything starts from the weight on the horse's back. Giving weight away and still running well counts for more.
2. Beaten lengths — distance-sensitive. Margins are converted into pounds, but a length doesn't always mean the same thing. Over a sprint, a length is worth more pounds than over a marathon, because ground is much harder to make up at five furlongs than over two miles. Our scale reflects that.
3. A weight-for-age allowance. Younger horses are still physically maturing, so they receive an allowance when racing against older rivals — larger early in the season and tapering as the year goes on. This stops a progressive three-year-old being unfairly marked down for carrying less weight than an established older horse.
4. An anchor to the level of the race. Once every runner's merit is worked out, the race as a whole is set at its true level — and the best evidence of that level depends on the race. In a handicap, the field's official marks say exactly what the race is worth, so the race is anchored directly to them. A Pattern race (Group or Graded company) is likewise levelled off its field's marks. Any other race is anchored to what its runners had already shown — their established form coming in — and a field with no meaningful form yet is set at the level such fields actually prove to be worth, measured from years of our own results rather than assumed. This is what keeps the numbers meaningful across the card: a strong race rates higher than a weak one, even if the winning margins look similar.
5. The company kept — how a young race's figure settles. A performance isn't judged in isolation. For races where the form is still unproven — maidens, novices and the like — the settled figure is provisional for its first 90 days, while the horses that ran in it go out and show what that form is really worth. At 90 days the race is finalised exactly once against that evidence — beating rivals who went on to win counts for more than beating ones who flopped — and from then on the figure never changes. Handicap figures, already anchored to the official marks, are fixed from the start.

A worked example (illustrative)

In a one-mile race, the winner carries 9st 4lb (130 lb). A rival carries the same weight but is beaten two lengths. If a length is worth two pounds at this trip, the runner-up's raw merit is 130 − (2 × 2) = 126 lb. Now suppose a third horse is also beaten two lengths but was carrying 10 lb more — it gave weight away and still finished alongside the runner-up, so it earns a higher figure. The whole field is then shifted so the race sits at the level expected for its class.

How to read it: PR is your form number. It rewards horses that have run well relative to the weight they carried and the company they kept. It is the figure to lean on when you're asking “which of these has the best level of form?”

Speed Rating (SR)

What it is: a clock-based figure, now expressed on the same class scale as the Performance Rating — so a higher number means a faster, higher-class performance, and you can read it directly alongside the PR. Crucially, it still ignores where a horse finished and what it carried; it is driven purely by the time. A front-runner who is collared late and a closer who flies home can post very similar SR figures if they ran the same clock.

What drives it:

1. A course-and-distance benchmark. For each track and trip we build a standard “par” time from years of results, so we know what a sound, representative winning time looks like there. A horse's raw time is measured against that benchmark.
2. The ground — and only the ground. Going and track conditions make whole cards collectively fast or slow, so we measure that day's ground from the card as a whole and strip it out. Crucially, each race's time is judged against what that field was actually capable of — measured from the runners' own established form — not against its class label. A weak field running slowly is running to its level, not through soft ground; a strong field running slowly really is telling you about the surface. That separation keeps a genuinely fast time on testing ground from being undersold, and a slow, weak race from being flattered into looking quick.
3. A level calibrated against the Performance Rating. The figure's scale is set directly against our settled Performance Ratings — from years of results we know what the clock of a PR-90 mile performance looks like at each kind of trip, and the class of the race supplies the context. So an SR of X reads as “ran the clock of a PR-X performance,” and a genuinely fast time still lifts a horse above the level its race would suggest — a smart low-grade performance can climb toward figures you'd associate with a higher grade.
4. Distance sensitivity. As with beaten lengths, a second off the clock is worth more over a sprint than over a staying trip, and the scale reflects that.

A worked example (illustrative)

A typical winner of a given class and trip rates around its class benchmark. Take a Class 4 one-mile race in which a sound winner of that grade is expected to run about 102.0s once the ground is accounted for. A horse that runs it in 100.0s — two seconds faster than the class norm — rates above the Class 4 benchmark; one that runs slower rates below it. Run fast enough and a Class 4 race can post a figure you'd associate with a higher grade — which is the point: the clock still rewards genuine speed, but the number now tells you the class it belongs to. (If the meeting had been running slow, we'd credit the horse for the ground first.)

How to read it: SR is your raw speed number — and because it now shares the PR's class scale, a high SR means a fast, high-class performance, just as a high PR means a good one. It is most informative on truly-run races and strong galloping performances. In muddling, tactical races where nobody goes a true gallop, the clock is modest for everyone, so the SR sits below the form figure (PR) — and that gap is itself a useful read (see below).

Using PR and SR together

Because they measure different things — and now share the same class scale, so they can be read side by side — the gap between a horse's two figures is often the story:

• High PR, modest SR — a smart, race-fit performance that won on merit, but in a steadily-run or tactical race. The form is solid; don't read too much into the slow clock.
• Modest PR, high SR — the horse didn't win the battle but ran a fast time, often doing its best work without a clear run or against the bias of the race. One to note, especially if conditions next time might suit better.
• High on both — the strongest profile: good form and a fast time. Hard to argue with.

Neither rating is “the right one.” They are two lenses on the same race, and looking at both gives a fuller picture than either alone.

How we keep the ratings honest

• Independent settled figures. The after-the-race ratings are derived purely from raw data — times, weights, margins, class and the official handicap marks — and are entirely our own assessment of what happened, from start to finish. Every constant in the system traces to public official data or to our own ratings history. The pre-race Performance Rating is then tweaked by our horse racing expert AI agent, which refines it with its own research and analysis, so a racecard PR reflects both the horse's own form and the agent's read. (The Speed Rating stays a pure clock figure, pre-race and settled alike.)
• No hindsight on a racecard. When a rating appears on a racecard, it reflects only what was known before that race — built from the horse's prior runs. We deliberately keep that pre-race figure separate from the settled, after-the-fact assessment of a past race, so a racecard never benefits from information that wasn't available at the time. Nothing leaks backwards from the future into a horse's pre-race number.
• A settled figure settles once — then never moves. A handicap's settled rating is fixed from the day it is calculated. A non-handicap's is provisional for its first 90 days, is finalised exactly once against what its runners went on to achieve, and from then on never changes — the number firms toward a truer assessment as evidence arrives, on a fixed timetable, and is never re-tuned to suit a result. The pre-race racecard figure is unaffected: it stays the point-in-time snapshot described above.

These ratings are an assessment, not a guarantee. They are a tool to inform your own judgement — best used alongside everything else you'd weigh up before a race.