| By :
David Duffield
Most keen punters use some kind of ratings system as a starting point for doing the form. These ratings may be free (like Zipform in The Sportsman, or the various TAB ratings), membership based (subscribers purchase a meeting or a certain period of time like the Racenet ratings) or maybe you have developed your own ratings system. Whichever ratings method you employ, you must make sure that you allow for the difficulty of a horse repeating a last start peak run. For example if you have a weight/class style ratings method you may have a horse who typically rates around the 53-55 mark when he puts in the best run of a campaign. Say this horse has already had 25 career starts and you think you have a good idea of it's likely peak rating. Yet last start it stepped up to Group level and rated a 60, a level which makes it a clear standout against today's field. On black and white numbers you'd say it was an odds-on chance as it only has to go close to repeating this last-start run and it will win. However the problem is that this career peak of 60 came in it's eighth start this preparation, at it's pet distance and in a race that was run perfectly to suit it's racing style. So while at first glance the horse appears a ratings standout and would likely go around as a short-priced favourite, this may well be a race to avoid. Betchoice form analyst Mark Morrissey is a big believer in avoiding horses coming off a career best performance. "I remember when I was working for Mark Read and Mark was a genius at that. He would have horses hit that very high rating level like 118 and he would say that there is only one way this horse can go and that's down. I saw him take on champions like Placid Ark and Schillaci who had put in phenomenal performances and Mark would say that 'they've gone too high'. And when he took them on they would run nowhere, not even a place. Mark was great at the art of picking the end of a campaign. Mediocre horses tend to plateau a bit towards the end of their campaign, but the champions just put so much into it that they have absolutely nothing left. So if you have the right tools, the right ratings on hand, you can often pick that pattern of when they're going to go completely backwards. "It's also true that a very hard run first up means the horse will often go ordinary second up. But really you need to know the idiosyncracies of each horse. Some will have a three run campaign and others might have nine runs. It really depends on whether it's a tough sort of horse and how much it puts into each run. You want to know your individual horse's characteristics but like Mark said once they get to that very high level it often takes everything out of them and they just can't reproduce that form because usually the horse is weary and finishes down the track next start." So although your ratings might have a horse clearly on top, if this is based on a peak run it's worth taking a closer look at the horse's career performance and in particular the effort it has already exerted this campaign. If you have any questions related to horse racing or betting in general you can email me anytime.
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