Racing runs somewhere in Britain or Ireland every day of the year, and almost none of it is the Grand National. Most of it is a small track on a wet Wednesday working through its card, the day's list of races, while other tracks work through theirs. The same few questions decide all of them.
Two of those questions are settled before a horse is entered. One is the trip, how far the race is run, written in miles and furlongs with a furlong an eighth of a mile; the other is whether there is anything to jump.
The third is the going, which is the state of the ground. That one is still moving on the morning of the race, because every hour of rain takes it further from firm towards heavy.
Two bets carry the sport. A win bet backs a horse to finish first, and only first. An each-way bet splits the stake in two: half on the win, half on the horse finishing in one of the places the race pays out on.
Read the trip, the going and the weight each horse carries before you look at the price, and a list of names you have never seen sorts itself into the horses the race suits and the ones it does not.
The racing year
British and Irish racing runs as one thing from a betting point of view, sharing a day, a rhythm and the same settlement rules, while racing from the rest of the world is settled on its own terms. What changes through the year is which kind of racing is doing the work.
- Flat racing. There is nothing to jump and the season runs from spring to autumn, which makes it the cleanest test of speed there is. It carries the five Classics: the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas in spring, the Derby and the Oaks in early summer, and the St Leger in September.
- The Flat's big weeks. Royal Ascot comes in June, Glorious Goodwood at the turn of July into August, York's Ebor meeting in August, and Champions Day at Ascot closes the turf Flat season in October.
- Jump racing. Horses jump either hurdles or steeplechase fences, and the two together are called National Hunt racing. The season runs from late autumn into spring, pointing all winter at the Cheltenham Festival in mid-March and the Grand National at Aintree in early April.
- The all-weather. Six British courses race on Polytrack or Tapeta rather than turf: Chelmsford City, Kempton Park, Lingfield Park, Newcastle, Southwell and Wolverhampton. They keep the show on the road when the turf is frozen or under water.
How a race works
A racecard is the list of runners for a race with its conditions printed above them, and most questions are answered there before you reach a price.
- Hurdles and fences. Jump racing comes in two sorts. Hurdles are lower and flexible and a horse can brush through one, which is why young horses start over them. Steeplechase fences are bigger and fixed, and ask more of horse and rider.
- The trip. Distance is written in miles, furlongs and yards, so a race shows on the card as 1m 0f 31y or 3m 3f 9y. A horse that wins well over a mile is being asked a different question over two, and plenty answer it badly.
- The weights. A handicap is a race where the weights are set to give every horse the same chance. Each one carries an official rating, the ratings become pounds at roughly a pound a point, so the best-rated horse carries the most. The idea is that they all reach the line together. They never do.
- The draw. On the Flat, horses start from numbered stalls, and the stall a horse draws is printed on the card. On a straight sprint course one side of the track can be worth lengths. Jump races start from a tape, so there is no draw.
- First past the post. Win and each-way bets on British and Irish racing pay out on the horse that crosses the line first, even where the stewards later demote it for interference. A short list of exceptions sits in the rules.
The markets
Win
Back a horse to finish first. Winning by a nose and winning by six lengths settle the same way, and so do second and last, so there is nothing to work out once they have passed the post.
Each-way
Each-way is two bets on the same horse, so it costs twice the stake: one to win, one to place. The place half pays less than a winner would, and it pays on horses that did not win.
Every race prints its terms on the line above the runners, next to the distance: how many places it pays and what fraction of the win odds goes on them. They change from race to race, so read that line.
A field of fewer than five runners pays no places at all. The place half goes on to win instead, so the bet settles as a win whether you asked for one or not, and the terms line says which kind of race you are in.
Taking a price, or taking SP
SP is the starting price, struck at the moment the race starts, when the market stops moving. Take a price earlier and you keep that figure, whichever way the market goes afterwards. Some races carry no price until the runners are close to the start, and SP is the only way in.
A racecard can carry other bets besides those, and the racing rules say what each settles on.
What moves a price
Money moves it first. Support arriving for one horse shortens its price, so it pays less than it did an hour ago, and the rest of the field is pushed out.
A non-runner does more than take a name off the list. Once a horse is withdrawn before the starter sends the field on its way, the stake on it comes back, and winning bets already struck on the rest are cut under Rule 4, the deduction that accounts for the horse that is no longer in the way.
How much comes off depends on the price of the horse that came out. A short-priced favourite withdrawn takes a large slice off a winning bet, and an outsider barely moves the numbers at all.
The market stays open until the race is away, so a horse can be one price at breakfast and another at the off.
The ground can shift under all of it. Rain between the morning declarations, when the runners are confirmed, and the first race softens the going, and every horse that wanted it quick is now in a race it did not enter.
What to look at before you bet
- The going against the horse's own record. The scale runs firm, good to firm, good, good to soft, soft and heavy, driest to wettest. A horse whose wins all came on fast ground is taking on something different the day it turns soft, and the one bred for the mud is no use in a dry July.
- The trip and the track. A mile winner does not automatically stay a mile and a half, and a stiff uphill finish asks for a different horse from a sharp, flat circuit. Form at the course itself is worth more than it gets credit for.
- The handicap mark. The mark is the rating the handicapper has put on the horse. One that has come down since it last ran well means less weight against this field than it carried then, and marks fall through a losing run.
- The yard. Some trainers send their horses out fit enough to win first time up, and others want a run into them first. A stable with winners on the board is one whose horses are working.
- The booking. A stable putting its best rider on a horse is telling you what it makes of the chance. Where an apprentice takes the ride, the number in brackets after the name, a (5) or a (7), is the weight that rider claims off the horse's back.
- The pace. A race with several front-runners in it, horses that want to lead from the start, goes fast, and that suits one held up at the back until late. A race with none can crawl, and the horse finishing fastest has too much ground to make up.
The horse racing quick guide
- Start with the race, not the runners. The conditions at the top of the card say what sort of horse the race is looking for.
- Then find the horses that have done it before. Over this trip, on this ground, at this sort of track, recently enough to mean something.
- Choose win or each-way before the price is on screen. Settle on the bet, then look at what it pays.
A dead heat, where two horses cannot be separated at the post, splits the stake between them. That, a non-runner and whatever the stewards decide afterwards are settled in the racing part of the Sports Betting Rules, worth ten minutes before you need them.
The day's meetings are on the cards, and the greyhounds are the other half of the racing.
