RaceMetrics Rankings

How to read these rankings

Rating is the current RaceMetrics Rating. Every participant starts on a common baseline and moves up or down after each race depending on the result and the strength of the opposition — beating a highly rated rival is worth far more than beating a weak one. Runs is the number of rated runs behind the figure, and Last run is the most recent one, so you can see how established and how current a rating is.

Only active participants appear: those who have run in the last twelve months, with at least three rated runs for a horse and at least fifty for a trainer, jockey or sire. The thresholds differ because the categories build up runs at very different rates — a top racehorse might have twenty career starts, while a busy jockey has thousands, so a rider with thirty rides cannot be meaningfully ranked against one with four thousand. Without these filters a rankings table fills up with retired champions and small-sample flukes, and stops describing racing as it is today.

What is a RaceMetrics Rating?

A RaceMetrics Rating is a relative strength score, in the family of rating systems used to rank chess players and international football teams, applied to racing. Ratings are exchanged between the participants in each race: the winner takes rating points from those beaten, in proportion to how unlikely the result was. Over time the figure converges on how good somebody actually is, judged only on results against rated opposition. The full method is set out in our methodology paper.

It is not a handicap mark and not a speed figure. A handicap mark is an official assessor's opinion of what weight a horse should carry; a speed figure measures how fast a race was run. A RaceMetrics Rating measures only one thing: who has beaten whom, and how good they were.

How often do the rankings change?

Every day. Results feed in overnight and every rating touched by the previous day's racing is recalculated before the morning. This page rebuilds from that, so the rankings you see are current to the last completed day's racing.

Where this data comes from

RaceMetrics is built on the Proform Racing database — British and Irish racing data professionals since 1995. The same ratings power Trainers in Form, Form Expert and the System Builder. RaceMetrics provides data analysis only — we do not accept bets or provide gambling services.