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Gain an Edge In Betting: How to Evaluate a Horse’s Performance Before a Race

| February 16, 2022

Knowing how to evaluate a horse’s performance before a particular race is vital if you want to increase your chance of winning. Therefore, before you select a horse to bet on a specific race, you should take time and do your homework first. 

Evaluating a horse’s performance is what trainers do to know if their horses are ready to take the stage and win the race. As a bettor, it is also crucial that you evaluate horses to identify which one would give you profit. 

Here is how to know whether a horse can win the upcoming race you are wagering on. This way, you can change your bet on time and never risk losing your money. 

Determine Each Horse’s Locomotor Profile

Determining a horse’s locomotor profile will tell you if the horse is a sprinter, a stayer, or a miler. You can accomplish this by using longitudinal monitoring. Longitudinal monitoring fairly measures any physical condition improvement and the appropriate response to the training given to the horse.

Two indicators must be examined to construct a racehorse’s locomotor profile: stride length and stride frequency. 

When racing, if the stride lengthens, it becomes more difficult for the horse to maintain a fast pace. Similarly, maintaining a long stride becomes difficult when the horse wants to accelerate the pace of his strides.

Therefore, learning to judge horse pace should be a part of your evaluation before a specific race that you plan to participate in betting. 

Read the Form

A form is the record of the horse’s performances in the past races. It’s one way punters use to predict the horse’s future performances. If you are evaluating a horse, you should compare his form to the other contenders of the race. 

It will give you a good overview of who will likely perform best in the upcoming race. Check the race card of the horse, and you will see the form arranged with numbers that run from left to right, with the oldest race being placed to the left and the most recent ones being on the right. 

As you look into the race card, you will see numbers 1 to 9, which indicated the horse’s position when he finished the race. Meanwhile, the number 0 denotes that the horse finishes the race outside the first 9. 

The symbol “–” distinguishes between racing seasons. Moreover, The numbers preceding the “–” are from the previous season. You can also see the symbol “/” that represents a longer gap, such as if the horse skipped a whole racing season. At the same time, the letters P or PU indicate that the horse was stopped by the jockey and didn’t complete the race.

Walk and Trot Test Result

Specialists use the walk and trot to identify the horse’s lameness. Suppose the horse is showing lameness before the race. Expect that it will not give out a good performance, putting your bet at risk. Plus, lameness results from injuries, which is vital when assessing a horse’s performance before a race. 

Experts need at least 15m straight space with a solid surface to allow the horse to walk and trot forward and back. By doing this, you can have a good view of how the front and hind legs perform. 

To identify the horse’s lameness through this method, you should look if the horse walks as if there is a nail on its right front foot. If you notice this kind of behaviour during a test, there is a high chance that the horse is suffering from an injury. 

This examination aims to know whether a horse is fit to race in the event or not. With this data, you can know whether it is beneficial to you to bet on that horse when you see them on the lineup during the race. 

Familiarize the Training of the Horse 

Assessing and comparing a horse’s present athletic performance to his previous fitness level enables the trainer to create a more thorough evaluation of the horse’s capability to perform well that day. It also enables the trainer to assess the horse’s physical state ahead of the race.

Therefore, you can also use this method to know if the horse you pick will be at its best on race day or not. Collect as much data as possible regarding the horse’s training sessions and performance to know if he is well conditioned to run in the race. 

To do this, you must choose a reference training session that will act as a tool for your comparison versus the horse’s recent training. For a better result, the reference training session should be those before a race the horse won. 

The first factor you should look out for is the horse’s heart rate elasticity. A horse in good condition should be able to gradually raise its heart rate as the endeavour increases and quickly decrease it as the effort declines in intensity.

Learn How to Assess a Horse

Learning to assess a horse before a race is a vital skill expert bettors have. So, if you want to become a successful punter and increase your chance of winning a bet, you should start learning how to evaluate a horse and become one of the most successful bettors of today. 

Category: Betting

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