Horse weights help

[Nayls]

Hi all, excuse a noobie if im being dumb,but im constantly miffed when looking for horses on the racing post online. the reason being that they state the horse is x lb up when it clearly is'nt,well from what i can see it is'nt anyway. take the 430 @ newmarket for example,it states in the diomed under seasonal cross "3lb higher than when winning at bath" but at bath the horse was 9st 3lb & for the 430 newmarket the horse is carrying 8st 9lb! i make that 8lb less! why are they saying 3lb higher?? please help me & clear this up for me. Thanks Nayls

[DM99]

Re: Horse weights help

Hi all, excuse a noobie if im being dumb,but im constantly miffed when looking for horses on the racing post online. the reason being that they state the horse is x lb up when it clearly is'nt,well from what i can see it is'nt anyway. take the 430 @ newmarket for example,it states in the diomed under seasonal cross "3lb higher than when winning at bath" but at bath the horse was 9st 3lb & for the 430 newmarket the horse is carrying 8st 9lb! i make that 8lb less! why are they saying 3lb higher?? please help me & clear this up for me. Thanks Nayls

Each horse is given an Official Rating for use in handicaps. When horses compete against each other, higher rated horses carry more weight than lower rated ones, and so in theory this provides for a much more fair race where more have a realistic chance of winning. It is calculated so that each point of OR = 1lb of weight, so a horse with 10 OR less than another will be able to carry 10lb less to compensate for the difference in ability. "3lb higher" refers to the OR. For example, he may have run off an OR of 60 at Bath, but races off 63 today. The less weight that he carries today is most likely due to him being put in a higher class race with horses of greater ability.