MyRacing’s top tips: the beginners’ guide to reading form on a racecard

Racecards can often be confusing for the uninitiated as there’s a lot of information to take in and not all of it is explained. We have you covered however and this beginners’ guide to reading racecard form aims to clear any confusion.

Here we explain what the letters, numbers and symbols mean, which can help you to make informed decisions. Check out our free tips page for daily content across British and Irish racing.

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Reading form figures

The list of number next to a horse’s name denotes their recent finishing positions, with their latest run furthest to the right. For example, a horse with form figures of ‘09461-‘ won last time out and finished sixth before that. Each number denotes a finishing position and a ‘0’ denotes that the horse was 10th or further back.

Bolded figures mean the race was on the all-weather on the Flat or a point-to-point if it’s National Hunt. This is a particularly important distinction for the latter as point-to-points aren’t considered to be ‘under rules’. Numbers to the left of a hyphen represent form from the previous season, whilst a forward slash means the horse has missed an entire season or more.

What do the letters mean?

The numbers in a horse’s form figures are often combined with letters and they represent the following:

F= Fell

P= Pulled up

U= Unseated rider

R= Refused

C= Carried out

O= Ran out

S= Slipped up

V= Void

D= Disqualified

Headgear

Horses wear a variety of pieces of headgear to hopefully aid their performance and these will be shown on the racecard.

H= hood

B= blinkers (if being worn for a first or second time a 1 or 2 will be beside the letter)

P= cheekpieces

T= tongue-tie

Ht= hood and tongue-tie

V= visor

Other important information

There are many other abbreviations that are helpful to understand so we’ve included some key ones below:

C (course): A previous winner at the track.

D (distance): The horse in question has won over the trip in the past.

CD (course and distance): This means that the horse is a previous winner at that track and over the same trip.

BF (beaten favourite): They failed to win last time out, despite being the market leader.

OR (official rating): The handicapper gives every horse a mark which decides how much weight they will carry in handicaps and establishes their eligibility for each race.

If you back any of our selections you can watch them live on the free Racing Post app or racingpost.com. Simply log in to one of your bookmaker accounts and click ‘Watch live’ on the racecards.

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