You will hear me go on about this on a regular basis. Not just to help our members with sound advice but also to remind me that just because a horse is well rated does not mean that it will win the race.

TrackMate is a great tool for just looking at the colours and picking the one with the best ratings but as with anything in life you will miss opportunities and make unnecessary mistakes or losses that could be avoided with just a little investigation.

All the information you need is available on the TrackMate racecard including the forecast ground conditions.

The Going and the weather

There are many reasons why well rated horses don’t run to their best all the time.

Sometimes they just have an off day. We all have them and horses are no different. They could be poorly drawn and literally have no chance from their starting stall or they could meet trouble in running which means they just couldn’t get there in time.

The main reason for horses not performing at their best is that the ground conditions on the day of the race were unsuitable for the horse.

Some horses (not many) will be able to perform to their best on most surfaces or ground conditions but the vast majority have a “favoured” surface for them to perform at their best.

Most horses will go well on a turf surface when the ground is anywhere from “Good” to “Good to Firm” some will prefer it a bit quicker (Firm) and some will appreciate a little bit of juice in the ground (Good to Soft or Yielding).

The Majority of the time the horses are declared for races that will be suitable for the animal and the Trainers will have normally checked the forecast ground conditions as a matter of course.

You should always check the ground conditions before you invest. Often the Weather changes and with it the ground conditions.

It is not unheard of for the going to change from “good to firm” to “Soft” in the space of a couple of hours when it rains heavily.

If your selection has never run well with the ground softer than “good” then it is highly unlikely that today will be any different.

Sometimes it will be beneficial for the trainer to still run the horse under conditions that are not suitable but will help with the horses’ fitness. This is not great for the punters.

As a Trainer, sometimes it is a good idea to run a horse with conditions less than ideal in order to allow the handicapper to reduce the horse’s official rating which means that in the future the horse will carry less weight.

Conclusion

Rain sucks !

In my experience and from many years of observation it is the best policy in the long run to stop all betting activities while the ground conditions are worse than good to soft. Period.

The majority of horses will act on ground in the range from “good to soft” to “good to firm” and this is the range of ground conditions we should be betting in.

This is particularly important on days when the going has changed during the course of the meeting.

“Heavy” ground is the Devils spawn and should be avoided at all costs during the Flat racing season

We would even suggest no bets during the National Hunt season when the ground is “Heavy”.

TrackMate Tip

Make use of your Notebook / Horse Tracking system that is provided for TrackMate members.

Very often, well rated horses who run poorly on unsuitable ground will run a big race next time out even if not so well rated.

Each race is rated individually in the TrackMate system and ratings will differ depending on the form of the other horses in the race.

Have a look at the Trend, is there an obvious bad rating that is affecting the horses overall rating? If there is, try removing the race from the ratings (click race in trend to remove run) and see how this changes the “Picture” of the race.