How to Read Horse Racing Form Properly – The Form Book Explained

3 September 2024

Michael Lee

Michael Lee

Betting Expert

Michael has worked in the sports betting industry for many years. Following football, horse racing and track and field athletics, he has covered the last three Olympic Games, World Cups and other major sporting events.

All posts by Michael Lee

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Learning how to read horse racing form correctly is a key part in any punter successfully betting on the sport of kings. In this guide, we’ll show you things you need to know about what’s in the form book and what that means for a horse you like.

What Does Form Mean in Horse Racing?

Form can mean slightly different things. For a racehorse, form figures next to its name on a race card tell us about its past and recent performances. This information is widely available, so check it out before looking at the odds on horse racing betting sites and taking a punt.

Horse racing form is a little bit more complicated than the jumble of numbers, letters and symbols we explain below, though. What those figures can’t tell you, however, is where and when horses posted such results, and what the conditions were like.

A deeper dive than simply learning how to read horse racing form is in order, then. Just looking at a horse’s previous race is a very narrow way of making decisions. Granted, recency is arguably more relevant, but the bare figures may not have anything to do with their next assignment.

Away from the numbers, horses may have a D for distance winner next to their name on a race card. That means they have won over the trip of the upcoming race before.

C, meanwhile, indicates a previous course winner. The horse has won at this track before, then. CD together means they have a previous victory over the course and distance of the horse race. Any runner with such track records commands respect.

BF means you’re dealing with a beaten favourite in the past. This horse’s Starting Price was once the shortest of any runner.

When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going

Ground conditions on which horses produced their form figures are completely intangible from the race card. You must research that information for yourself. This is because there’s no easy way for a basic horse racing form guide to include such data.

There are different types of ground and going on turf. Hard is the fastest track conditions and found more often in America than Europe. The scale then goes firm, good, yielding (in Ireland), soft and heavy.

If there’s more mud then grass because of torrential rain saturating a racecourse, don’t be surprised if a meeting gets abandoned. A study of previous form may indicate that some horses prefer softer ground more than others.

Different going applies to dirt racing. Fast is at one end of the scale, then wet fast, good, muddy, sloppy and slow. Sealed conditions mean any rainfall runs off the dirt, meanwhile.

Artificial surfaces for an All-Weather track have fast, standard and slow conditions. Each of these scales have gradations in-between them, so you can get good to firm ground or soft to heavy going on turf, while standard to slow appears for the All-Weather.

Conditions affect a horse’s performance. In general terms, most but not all Flat racing runners contesting shorter races want quicker going than National Hunt horses going over jumps. This is something to remember if you want to know how to read horse racing form right.

Horse Racing Trainer Form & More

The figures for a specific also can’t tell you if the stable it represents is in form or not. Such data requires separate research where recency is important. You can track down data for any horse racing trainers in form over the last 14 days in the UK and Ireland.

This is a very simple percentage calculation of dividing winners from the total number of runners from the yard in the time period. The stable may have won lots of handicap races in recent days, so online bookmakers will shorten the odds of tomorrow’s representatives from the yard.

Jockey form is another aspect, meanwhile. If the person riding a horse you fancy has a number of recent winners in the saddle, this is separate, trackable data too. Websites exist where the calculation of winners divided by the total number of rides is all done for you.

Other things that bare form figures alone can’t tell you include the types of races horses competed in. These are either handicaps where weights allotted reflect the difference between a horse’s mark and the official rating of the topweight or conditions races.

With the latter, there are sex allowances for female horses, i.e. fillies and mares, to consider. In a Flat race, they receive less weight than over jumps. Penalties may apply based on the race conditions if a horse has been successful at a higher level or won races within a set time.

How to Read Horse Racing Form Correctly

Now that you appreciate all of the above, you can see there’s a lot more that goes into understanding horse racing form than the figures. Once you realise how much there is that the numbers don’t tell you, you will hopefully make better decisions on betting sites when placing a wager.

Actually reading horse racing form figures is quite simple. A horse’s entire career starts or just the most recent appear from left to right starting with the furthest back in time. Let’s work through an example for a horse and race at random held at Chepstow in Wales:

His recent career record reads: “220142”. The horse, First Encounter, has three second places in his last seven starts, but also a win on his penultimate outing. A conclusion you may rightly reach about him, then, is he has by and large been pretty consistent on the track of late.

Getting a handle on the combination of numbers, letters and symbols next to the runners is an integral part of any horse racing form guide. As noted above, there’s a wider context you must set everything in of course.

Horse Racing Form Numbers Explained

The numbers themselves aren’t too complicated. A 1 next to a horse’s name in form figures denotes they won that particular race. The very best runners at the elite top end of the sport will have lots of those.

If there’s a 2 in the form figures, then that means the horse finished second on that occasion. In the event that there’s a 3 next to their name, then they finished third, 4 means fourth place, 5 is fifth and so on down to 9 which indicates they came ninth.

It really is that simple. Everything depends on how many horses passed the winning post in front of the runner in question on that day. There are fields with 10 or more to consider, though…

What Does 0 Mean in Horse Racing Form?

A 0, as in zero, against a runner when looking at any horse racing form today isn’t good. It means they finished 10th or worse on the occasion. With a maximum field size of 34 in the UK, that 0 covers a wide range of actual finishing positions.

It could indicate that a horse finished an unlucky 10th after getting no luck in-running or tailed off in last place. You can always forgive a horse one bad run as there may be excuses like draw bias, a going change or the jockey accepting they couldn’t win and easing off.

That being said too many zeros in a runner’s form figures suggests they aren’t firing. This may be because they are badly-handicapped or running in races that put them out of their depth.

Horse Racing Form Guide Symbols

Away from the numbers, there are a couple of symbols to note in amongst form figures. These are a dash “-” and a slash “/”. Both denote slightly different things, but in general terms they refer to breaks in-between racing seasons in a horse’s career stats.

What Does – Mean in Horse Racing Form?

The dash in form figures acts a breaker between runs from the current season or year of horse racing, depending on the code and the previous one. There is no uniform approach across authorities here, however.

For example, the end of the National Hunt season for jumps horses in the UK is either the penultimate or last Saturday in April. The campaign ends in Britain at Sandown Park with the Jump Finale.

In Ireland, however, the season finishes with the conclusion of the five-day Punchestown Festival on the first Saturday in May. Flat racing runs on a year-to-year basis, meanwhile, rather than its core period starting in October and ending in the spring.

The turf season starts in late March and ends in November with only All-Weather racing for horses on the level outside of the beginning and ending of the campaign at Doncaster in the UK.

The / in Horse Racing Form Explained

A slash in-between sets of form figures reflects a prior period of absence from the track that stretches over previous seasons. If a horse picks up an injury and misses a year of competition, then you’ll find the / in amongst the numbers.

It is also used to denote gaps between previous campaigns, so you will likely see both slashes and dashes in jumps racehorse’s form figures. That may look something like this: 2/3242/715-39.

Letters in the Horse Racing Form Guide

We’ve dealt with numbers and symbols, so that just leaves discussing letters in our look at how to read horse racing form properly. There are 10 different ones in current use and they each mean a different thing.

What these letter all have in common is, although their precise descriptions may vary, that denote a horse failing to finish the race. The majority are consonants, but there are a couple of vowels in there too:

What Does B Mean in Horse Racing Form?

B means a horse was Brought Down. It is an even shorter abbreviation than BD, which often appears in official horse racing results. This situation arises when a horse falls or unseats their rider in front of the one in question and it takes them out of the race completely.

What Does C Mean in Horse Racing Form?

C means Carried Out. This is a rare occurrence, but it happens. Rather than stay on the course, another horse decides to run off the track barging into another one and taking it with them. That would meet the definition of being Carried Out. In official results, this is down as CO.

What Does D Mean in Horse Racing Form?

D unfortunately means Disqualified. There are any number of reasons why a horse receives a disqualification from the stewards. The reasons range from a jockey weighing in light to having the wrong allowance weight claim and even cases of mistaken identity.

Although the latter is very rare, it happened in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket in 2020 when Snowfall was declared to run in the race, but Aidan O’Brien stable companion Mother Earth got shipped on the ferry from Ireland and competed instead.

Disqualifications are different from demoting a horse from its finishing position past the post following a stewards enquiry. In official results, this has the abbreviation of DSQ.

What Does F Mean in Horse Racing Form?

F is one of the most common letters to look out for if you want to know how to read horse racing form and it’s an abbreviation of Fell. In other words, the horse didn’t clear one of the obstacles in a jumps race and came down.

What Does O Mean in Horse Racing Form?

The letter O means Ran Out. Horses sometimes simply run off the course. Under the Rules of racing, they must stay on the actual track with wings to hurdle races and steeplechases in the jumps code that they must past between. In official results, the abbreviation RO is used here.

What Does P Mean in Horse Racing Form?

Another crucial letter for understanding horse racing form, P means Pulled-Up. In other words, the jockey has decided his horse cannot continue in the race and complete the course, so they have stopped riding because of injury, tiredness or a mistake costing them all chance.

A lot of horses pull up when they have no hope of getting into the placed prize money, let alone winning. In official results, another of the abbreviations on horse racing, PU, is used for this.

What Does R Mean in Horse Racing Form?

The letter R means Refused or Refused to Race. Some horses have just had enough jumping obstacles in the National Hunt code, particularly over long distances like Cross Country races of the Grand National. When they come to a stop of their own free will, then they refuse.

Refusing to race is slightly different. This relates to the beginning and when horses don’t jump off with the others in National Hunt events or come out of the starting stalls on the Flat. They have Refused to Race by not following the others involved.

Official results use two different abbreviations here. A jumps horse refusing at any obstacle has REF next to it, while any runners refusing to race gets RR by its name.

What Does S Mean in Horse Racing Form?

S stands for Slipped Up. Horses can clip heels, step on a patch of false ground going around a bend and slip. It’s not the same as falling. As a pretty rare thing to happen on the track, in official results they use SU as the abbreviation for it.

What Does U Mean in Horse Racing Form?

The latter U is for Unseated Rider. Horses jumping obstacles make mistakes and when they don’t fall themselves, but the jockey does, this differentiates the two happenings. In official results, UR is the abbreviation they use.

What Does V Mean in Horse Racing Form?

Last, but by no means least when learning how to read horse racing form, a V means Void Race. This arises when ether a runner or their jockey picks up a serious injury and can’t be moved out of the way by vets or medics in time. The abbreviation VOI applies to official results.

Effective Horse Racing Systems Using Form Figures

While we’ve hopefully made it clear throughout this guide that form figures alone can’t always point you towards successful betting, there are strategies using them. Consider these approaches to what’s in the form book:

FAQs

Michael Lee

Betting Expert

Michael Lee

Betting Expert

Michael has worked in the sports betting industry for many years. Following football, horse racing and track and field athletics, he has covered the last three Olympic Games, World Cups and other major sporting events.

All posts by Michael Lee