The Essentials of Studying Form - Part 4 | How to Measure Weight and Track Conditions

Track conditions and weight are the two Australian horse racing form factors most punters skim over — "the in-a-hurry punters of modern day racing", as Richard Hartley Jnr put it in Practical Punting in August 2000. His answer was two hard and fast rules to decide whether a horse can qualify as a final contender: if it doesn't measure up on Track Conditions and Weight, in his words, then it's best forgotten about. And he puts the weight rule in something you can feel — a horse carrying 54kg and then up to 58kg next start is a rise of 4kg, and translated to lengths, about 2.5 lengths.

What you'll learn:

• Track Conditions, Factor A+ and Factor A — the two rules in full: if the track is slow or heavy and the horse has won 2 or more races on such conditions, individually; and any other track conditions (dead, good, fast) with 2 or more wins under the prevailing conditions
• Why the track rule is written that way — it rates only those runners that deserve a rating for track conditions ability, because a horse that has not proven itself in the current conditions falls into the old don't know category, and that matters most when tracks are rain-affected
• Weight, Factor A and Factor B — the same weight as last start, up to 1kg more from the latest run, or dropping up to 10kg; and, as the second factor, rising in weight by 1.5kg to 2.5kg
• What that leeway is for — why he wants the weight factor lenient or generous, why horses dropping sharply in weight must be seriously considered in major races, and the other side of it: punters get suckered into backing horses which have copped significant weight increases, and mostly it means the kiss of death