Racing Speed Maps – Do Speed Maps Matter?

Christmas Day and what better time to think about racing – for some reason, there’s no races on TS1 or Ts2!

However, watching the replays of races from Awapuni yesterday, once again we saw a number of horses who made attention-drawing late runs down the outside and almost won.  Or to quote a saying of Neil’s – “coulda, shoulda, woulda”.

As Formpro Ratings subscribers already know, over the last couple of years with put more and more effort into our speed maps.  We have developed pretty accurate speed maps for NZ greyhounds and are hoping the next generation speed maps which are being worked on now will be even more accurate.

Does Speed Map Position Matter?

So the obvious question is do speed maps matter in racing?  Or to put it another way, does it matter where a runner is position in a race – is it likely to be advantaged from doing the donkey work setting the pace or do the back markers have an advantage?

Over the course of the next couple of posts, we’ll try and answer these questions and also provide more information on speed maps to help subscribers understand how speed maps can help with your form analysis.

Setting the Scene

Over the next few posts, we’ll explore a number of different aspects of speed maps to help subscribers understand what speed maps do and why the are useful.

We’ll start with a description of what speed maps are and introduce some of the key terms so we can all use a common speed maps language.

We’ll then consider tempo (the pace of the race) and how this can assessed and how along with the speed map it can help find value and some times the winners most other punters will miss.

Then we will get back into the nuts and bolts and see if the speed map results are affected by race distance, track conditions, or the class of race.

The Small Print

Before we go any further, let’s cover the small print.

No one is going to claim that a speed map will be 100% accurate 100% of the time.

However, as most punters know, horses tend to have particular patterns of racing and especially once they have run more than a handful of races, many runners will have a clear racing preference.

Some of this may be physical – just a slow starter for example (I had a share in one that needed to start the race before to be with the leaders early in the race!).  Some may be mental characteristics – some horses just have the pig-headed need to lead the others.

So in some respects, the positions take up early in the race (aka the speed map) can be more accurately assessed than the position at the end of the race!

Regardless, we believe speed maps are a critical part of form analysis and an emerging theme in NZ racing.  The series of posts aims to demonstrate while.

Questions and Comments?

For each of these posts, we’ll open up comments so if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post a comment.

David