Handicap Races at Cheltenham

Speaking theoretically, handicap races are the fairest type of race that you can bet on. A handicapper decides what weight each horse in a race should carry, basing it upon each horse’s ability. The better a horse is, the more weight it will have to carry. The idea is that this levels the playing field, meaning every horse has an equal chance of winning.

In a handicapper’s dream, every single horse would cross the finish line at the same moment. It has never happened, of course, nor is it likely to. The reality is that horses often out-perform their handicap and the information that a handicapper has to decide upon the weight that the horses will carry is limited. Even so, it’s a fascinating type of National Hunt race.

Handicap Races At The Cheltenham Festival

Handicap Races At Other Cheltenham Meetings

Handicap Races Explained

Handicap races are run both on the flat and over jumps, though it’s obviously only the latter race type that we’re interested in here. The idea behind handicap races is that the amount of weight a horse will carry will then affect its ability to run fast. That’s why the better a horse is the more it will have to carry, with the hope being that it will stop it from running away with a race.

Obviously the converse is also true, with poorer horses carrying less weight and therefore having a better chance of winning the race, or at least catching up with horses that are theoretically much better than them. The real key for those watching a handicap race is in picking out a horse that is better in reality than the handicapper thinks that they are.

This perfect balance of a horse carrying less weight than it should be and its decent ability is what prevents owners and trainers with a chance to win races and bettors with an opportunity to catch the bookmakers cold. The handicap weights horses have to carry are based on the British Horseracing Authority’s Official Ratings.

How Handicaps Are Decided

Obviously the handicappers need to be able to come up with a fair method of applying a handicap, rather than simply guessing about a horse’s ability. In order to be given a handicap a horse must do one of the following two things:

• Race 3 times
• Win a race

Once a horse has achieved one of these two things the handicapper can then assess them and award them their mark. Analyse of a horse is based on where they finish in a race in relation to other horses that already have a handicap. If they finish so far behind the rest of the pack for their 3 races then it might be necessary for them to race more than 3 times.

Applying Handicaps To Horses

Once a handicapper has decided upon the rating of each horse in a race, the horses will then be assigned the amount of weight that it will have to carry. The horse with the highest rating will, as you can imagine, carry the heaviest weight and the horse with the lowest rating will carry the smallest weight size.

A good rule of thumb is that a horse will carry one pound less for every point their rating is worse than the next horse in the list. So if one horse has a rating of 59 and carries 9 stone 7 pounds and the next horse’s rating is 56 then they will carry 9 stone 4 pounds. Ultimately, of course, a rating is simply a handicapper’s ‘best guess’ at the ability of a horse.

Rules For Handicap Races

When it comes to handicap races, there aren’t a huge heap of them that have to be adhered to in every event. The BHA’s mission statement for handicapping says that they will be fair, transparent, accountable and consistent in the handicaps they apply. The very idea behind them is to allow horses of different abilities to take part in the same races.

Whilst the rules that apply to handicap races aren’t exactly uniform, handicap races will have their own rules applied to them to mean that certain horses won’t be able to take part in certain races. A horse that has a rating as high as 85, for example, would be unable to take part in a race that is limited to horses with a rating of 0 to 75.

The handicap ratings are updated by the BHA every Tuesday of the racing season, meaning that horses will always be around where they should be in terms of their rating. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the handicappers always get things right. It’s not exactly unheard of for a horse to be under run in one race to get a lower handicap for a more prestigious one.

Handicap Races Major Examples

As always, the very best way of showing you the manner in which handicap races work and how they can be vastly different from each other is by having a look at some more specific examples. There’s no better place to start than with the Grand National, which is arguably the most famous handicap race in the world.

Conclusion

You can see from the various races, then, the huge differences that can apply to handicap events. From the 4 plus miles of the Grand National that is only open to horses aged 7 and up through to the 2 miles and 5 furlongs Lanzarote Hurdle with its 10 hurdles to jump, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they only thing that they have in common is that horses take part in them.

The ability of a horse dictates which sort of handicap race it can take part in, as does its age. There are plenty of different handicap races run during the National Hunt season, with the majority of races that more jump horses will take part in being handicap offerings. That’s something to think about when bearing in mind how the rules of the races are so different.