Getting Data into spreadsheets

[Fletco]

Hi All I was wondring how any of you who prepare your own ratings especially speed ratings get your data into your spreadsheets (or databases). I have been compiling my own speed ratings for the AW since about September. There are a number of reasons I find this usful Only 4 tracks to worry about (I did use varience to RP Std times but have changed to use my own average calculation as Kempton was throwing some funny figures before Christmas) Most horses run repeatedly over the winter months and there are not too many first time outs with no 'history' once the winter season is in full swing. And thirdly I feel I can ignore, or at least devalue any going correction as I feel the going varience between meetings is not as great as during a flat season (Heavy - Fast). I have been having some small success with my ratings, and feel I could expand into the turf flat season when it starts, but my problem is the amount of work this would involve (it's not that good a system to give up the day job...yet) Currently I cut and paste the results from the Racing Post ach evening and this only takes around 10 minutes (or 30 if I have any catching up to do) These are pasted into a spreadsheet and with a bit of data cleaning and a couple of macros I have my ratings. This is fine for one or two AW meetings in the winter, but in th summer with around 5-6 meetings a day (with evenings) I feel this will prove too large a task (especially as I'm not too sure how they'll hold up) At last, the question... How does anyone who prepares their own speed rating get the essential data into their chosen database, be that a db or spreadsheet? Any suggestions greatly received Regards Fletco

[JohnHenderson]

Re: Getting Data into spreadsheets Fletco I maintain quite substantial databases for both Flat and NH, and almost all the data comes from the Post website. I download the data for the relevant races from the Post's results pages via Excel's "New Web Query" function. Once the data is downloaded it is easy enough to change it into the right format for one's databases via macros (for example, I save the distance won or beaten by on a cumulative basis - the horse finishing 8th shown as beaten say 5l, rather than just the half a length he finished behind the horse finishing 7th). Yesterday I saved the data from five handicaps at Nad and one at Southwell, and it took me about half an hour to download all the data, reformat it where necessary, transfer it into my Flat databases and, where necessary, prune earlier entries for the same horses. (In one database I keep all relevant performances but in another, which provides data input to my race analysis sheets, I retain only details of horses' last three runs, and therefore run a macro every time I add new entries to prune out what would otherwise be the fourth last races of the horses in question.) Once I've got the data into my databases the ratings for the race are calculated automatically by use of Excel formulas, and can then be extracted instantly when I analyse the next race in which any horse in my database runs. In effect, I trade time after racing (when one is not up against the clock in quite the same way) to reduce the data assembly time when I analyse a new race, thus increasing the number of races I can analyse and allowing more time for reflecting on the data. So far, I have only been able to download the Post's results data using the new web query function using Excel 2000. Later versions will download Post cards, but I haven't been able to get them to download the results pages. There is probably a way to do that, but I haven't yet found it. Still, Excel 2000 contains all the functionality I've needed thus far.