[RACE PREVIEW] The 4 Minute Guide to Horse Racing Speed Graphs In Action

Today I’m looking at how I go about writing a horse racing race preview using the speed graphs in the Race Advisor Pro Members Club.

This is a technique I’ve been using for over a decade, and it’s one of the easiest ways to get started profitably betting.

Because the graphs use speed figures, hence the name speed graphs ?, it’s best to begin by focusing on races where speed has the highest impact.

In fact, however you begin your betting journey, it’s best to start by choosing races with the smallest number of major factors impacting it.

The more major factors that affect a race, the harder it’s going to be to analyse.

Personally this means focusing on:

• All Weather racing (ground conditions almost never change)
• Sprint racing (speed is the only primary factor, and there’s less time for unexpected events to happen)
• Lower class (less people betting)

If I have a choice, I will usually choose non-handicap races because the handicappers haven’t tried to level the playing field.

Again… it’s another factor that doesn’t have to be considered.

However, today I have chosen the 18:10 at Kempton, which is a Class 4 handicap race over seven furlongs.

How to Use Horse Racing Speed Graphs for Race Previewing

And here’s what the speed graph for it looks like:

If that just looks like a lot of random lines drawn on a page to you, fear not… I’m about to reveal the secrets between the lines!

Each of the points on this graph indicates the speed figure a horse achieved in a race.

Next to each horse’s name, on the right-hand side of the graph, you will see a figure. This figure is the average speed rating that the horse has achieved over all the races shown on the graph.

The first thing we want to do is to limit the graph to similar conditions to today’s racing.

You will notice that there are now far less races on the graph, and Bella Brazil has been removed completely as she’s not had any races on All Weather before.

I am also going to remove Winning Streak from the graph because this horse is a non-runner.

We can now see the numbers on the right-hand side of the horses name have changed.

This is because the average speed rating is calculated dynamically based on the races shown on the graph.

As I’ve changed the conditions on the graph to be similar to today’s race, these averages have also changed, and it’s clear that Fuwayrit looks to be the strongest with a significantly higher average speed rating than the others.

Hovering over Fuwayrit’s race, we can see it was on the 31st August, the horse came first, and it was a class five race at Chelmsford over 1320 yards (6 furlongs).

We can also see that Lethal Talent is improving on these conditions, and if this trajectory continues then this horse could be a threat.

Baadir is obviously a threat and we have less concern over Taste Of Nectar who whilst able of contending seems to have bounced around a bit more.

Now we have a good picture of what to expect under very similar conditions, I’m going to expand the filter on the graph out wider to take into account flat turf racing over good, good to soft and good to firm ground.

Often horses can come from these types of races into the All Weather and perform well.

This gives us more information, but key is that Fuwayrit (yellow) is still the strongest, and the leap in performance from the Flat race in July to the All Weather in August is significant.

Now we can see Baadir (blue) has been steadily improving over the last year, and must be seen as a threat.

Bella Brazil (bright green) has noticeably performed worse than the others, and I’ll remove this horse from the graph.

Lethal Talent has the worst average speed, but since the long break over the summer has been improving, if this trend continues she could be a threat.

Taste The Nectar is still bouncing around, but has potential.

Where does this leave us?

Fuwayrit looks to be the strongest.

Baadir is probably the next closest threat, with Lethal Talent being a possible if the horse continues it’s upwards trend.

Taste The Nectar whilst having potential doesn’t look to be consistent enough for me to want to bet on. This doesn’t mean the horse won’t win, it means I wouldn’t be comfortable enough with it’s previous performance to place my money on it. It still has the potential to winner, but based on the graphs it’s threat doesn’t look as strong as others.

That’s given a great overview of the runners.

Now I like to check it on our race card.

Looking at the PR scores, we can see that Fuwayrit has been given a 40% chance of winning this race, and the market is currently offering value odds.

Next comes Taste The Nectar, but I have a reliability concern.

Then we see Lethal Talent, who has a strong chance of winning, but noticeably is also a course and distance winner, having achieved both the course and distance win in the same race at Kempton. This is signified by the * in the CD*. That tells us that this horse likes this course and the distance at it.

Baadir has been ranked near the bottom, I’ve removed the two horses we’re not considering from the race card. The market disagrees with this assessment, and it’s currently the second favourite.

A quick glance at some of the other ratings on the Standard race card in this race, we immediately see that Fuwayrit is the best for most of the them, and has won 50% of her races.

Interestingly Baadir has yet to win a race. I’m always more reluctant to bet on a horse that has never won a race before, which gives me more reason to not consider it.

That’s reduced the field to Fuwayrit and Lethal Talent.

How I will be betting…

Based on the odds, I will be betting Fuwayrit to win the race.

At the time of racing Lethal Talent is available on Betfair to place (2 places) for odds of 2.42, and to place (3 places) at odds of 1.56.

While this horse has a chance of winning, it’s far more likely that Fuwayrit is going to win, so it doesn’t make sense for me to hedge the horse in the win market.

However, the place odds look to be very strong as long as the horse continues it’s upward trend.

Looking at it’s previous races this runner has either won or lost by a large margin, so there’s a concern that it may do the same here.

However, based on the field being small, I would take a small bet on the horse to finish in the top three (first half of the field) at odds of 1.56 which I believe gives it good value. If this horse does perform well, I would also add it to my tracker to watch the next time it comes out.

How will you be betting?

I’d love to know how you’re going to be betting in this race. Please leave me a comment below to let me know.

And it you’d like to see more race previews like this then message me below.

You can start your trial to the Race Advisor Pro Members Club here.

THE RESULT: What Happened!

I regularly say that when a race doesn’t go as you expect, you should go back and see if you missed something. This is critical to improving your analysis, and should be something that you always do.

This race did not pan out as I expected, so I’ve gone back to take a look at what I missed.

But first, the result…

The winner came from a horse that we thought had performed noticeably worse than the others.

Second place was taken by Baadirr who always looked to be a threat, but had some concerns and wasn’t offering good enough odds.

The third place was taken by our place horse, and you could have got odds of 1.56 in three place market.

Our very first step when looking back over a race is to watch the replay.

You can watch the replay of this race on Racing TV here.

What’s interesting about the race is that it was playing out exactly as expected until the last furlong.

In that last furlong Bella Brazil had an incredible injection of speed.

However, I’m immediately put at a bit of rest, because the race didn’t go completely against the analysis from the off.

After watching the replay, my immediate mistake was that I’d miss-read the ground as Standard, when it was Standard to Slow.

Looking into each of the horses past races we can determine that this wouldn’t have made any difference, because none of the horses indicated they were significantly better or worse on slower ground.

Except for… Taste The Nectar, who’s only slower ground race was over six furlongs at Kempton, and the horse was beaten by nearly 11 lengths.

So far nothing would have changed in our analysis.

Considering that everything changed in the last furlong, it’s worth considering that I may have missed the pace.

Races like this are most often won by Leaders or Early Pressers, and the horse which gets off first from the stalls. Fuwayrit did just that, so nothing new is revealed there.

Checking other factors, the winner had been 183 days since it’s last good race, only had one good race in the last ten, and won 7% of it’s races.

In fact, in every factor I looked at it was generally the worst from all the runners.

In Conclusion

Having gone back through the race, there’s nothing I can see which indicates Bella Brazil was going to get a surge of speed in the last furlong.

The only good race the horse had, also it’s only winning race, the horse started to compete from the second furlong.

You could say this was an indicator that the horse may prefer to be run like this, but it’s such a small indication that isn’t as extreme as today’s example. It’s very unlikely we’d have given it much merit pre-race.

This allows me to be confident that the pre-race analysis was done as well as possible with the information available before the race, and the result of the race was something which was unlikely I would have ever predicted.

Unfortunately this happens, it’s part of racing, and it’s what keeps us on our toes and checking that our analysis is correct as far as possible.

I will also be using the EyeCatchers tool in the Race Advisor Pro Members Club to track this horse, along with the notes that it likes to finish fast within the last two furlongs.