Saturday splits the sport in two. At Doncaster, the Futurity Trophy is the last Group 1 of the British Flat season, a mile on soft ground for two-year-olds, with the Listed Prospect Stakes over six furlongs and a sixteen-runner handicap over a mile and a quarter alongside it. At Cheltenham, the jumps season is under way on Good ground, with a nineteen-runner Pertemps qualifier over three miles of hurdles, a staying handicap chase and a hurdle for four-year-olds, several of whom have met here before. Newbury's card, which was due to stage the St Simon Stakes and the Horris Hill, has been abandoned. That leaves six races and two very different kinds of evidence: on the Flat, lightly raced juveniles, their pedigrees and their first few figures; over jumps, handicap marks, course form and the records of horses who know Cheltenham. The races run in time order, so the guide moves between the two courses the way the afternoon does.
This guide reads all six races through our model, and it works the way our coverage always works: the framing of every race is open to everyone, a free account unlocks the complete analysis, and members get the live data tables underneath, the same percentages, ratings and pace maps the dashboard runs, updating through the day. It is written for newcomers as much as regulars. Every figure is explained the first time we use it, from the share each horse holds to the engine's Ability and Operating levels, the conditions figures, course bias, stable form and handicap marks, and the opening race lays the groundwork for the rest. The point has never been a list of horses to follow. It is showing how data narrows a field to the two or three that matter, and how you can take the method anywhere, from a juvenile Group 1 to a three-mile handicap hurdle.
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TPR (Total Performance Rating) is EquiAnalytix's machine-learning rating. TPR V3 is the horse's chance of winning, shown as its share of the race: every field adds up to 100, and the higher the share, the more likely the winner. It was validated on 836,398 walk-forward predictions across GB and Irish racing from 2019 to 2026.
Every horse in a race holds a TPR percentage and every field sums to 100, so the numbers read like the model's own market. On those 836,398 walk-forward predictions, 72.7 percent of winners came from TPR's top four, which is why the top of the list is where every read begins.
Our engine keeps a running estimate of every horse's true level from every run and every beaten length. The Ability figure is what a horse has shown it can do; the Operating figure is the level it is running at right now. When Operating sits above Ability, the horse is in form and outrunning its own record; when it sits below, the current level no longer matches the past. The gap between them, measured in pounds, is what we call form.
The gap, in pounds, between our engine's view of a horse and the official rating the handicapper has given it. A positive number means the horse is better than its mark on our figures; a negative one means the mark asks for more than the horse has shown. In handicaps it is the quickest way to see who is well treated.
The gap between the official mark a horse carries today and the mark it last won from. Small numbers mean the handicapper has not yet punished the horse for winning; negative numbers, the rarest and best kind, mean the handicapper has relented below it. Across our database, handicaps disproportionately go to the small end of the scale.
The spread of a horse's recent performance figures. Low numbers mean a horse that runs close to the same level every time, the profile that finishes in the frame race after race; high numbers mean a boom-and-bust type whose best and worst runs sit far apart. Paired with form, it tells you whether a big figure can be relied on.
The direction a horse's figures are moving across its last few starts. Positive trends mark improvers; negative ones mark horses whose recent figures are slipping.
Going, track and distance figures isolate a horse's best performances under today's exact conditions. A high going figure on soft ground matters far more than a career best on fast ground, and a big track figure says this course specifically brings out the horse's best. Context matters too: a figure earned on the all-weather must translate before it counts on turf.
Sire, sire-juvenile and damsire figures measure how a stallion's stock perform as a population: at today's trip, on today's ground, or as two-year-olds before their own form exists. In unexposed fields such as the Futurity, they are the closest thing racing has to projecting a ceiling from a bloodline.
The record of how runners from each draw and running style have fared at a course, trip and ground, set against what the market expected of them. A Front-Runner figure of +27% means front-runners have won 27% more races than expected. We always quote the number of runs behind a figure, so you can judge how much weight it deserves.
Each runner's early-position style is profiled from its history, and the race pace forecast adds them up. Several natural front-runners in one race usually means a strong gallop that suits horses coming from behind; a single confirmed leader can mean a steady pace that favours those racing handily.
A trainer's strike rate over the last month set against their twelve-month baseline. A yard running well above its own normal level is enjoying a genuine hot streak, and our data says those streaks persist long enough to matter. But hot stables still send out cold horses: check the individual's trend before borrowing the yard's.
A marker for a horse's first run after surgery to help its breathing. Stables often give a horse time off for it, so the flag can explain both an absence and a dip in figures before it.
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The final Group 1 of the British Flat season is a mile on soft ground at Doncaster, a wide, galloping track that rewards a horse who can keep finding through the final two furlongs. Our percentage, the model's estimate of each runner's share of the race, with every race summing to 100, reads: AL HUDAIBA 26, GRAN DIA 20, SERGEI DIAGHILEV 16, NOBLE EXHIBIT 15, BURNING UP 11, BREACHER 6, GIANT SEQUOIA 6. That order leans on class and on the stable behind the leader, but the clock tells a different story, and on ground like this the clock deserves a hard look.
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Six furlongs on soft at Doncaster, and a chance to test one of racing's oldest assumptions. Course bias, the record of how runners from each draw and running style have fared here against what the market expected, says the stall barely matters on this ground: across more than 3,600 runs at Doncaster sprint trips on soft or heavy, low, middle and high draws have all won almost exactly their share. Running style is a different matter. Front-Runners have won 40% more races than expected from 371 runs, and horses held up have won 18% fewer from 1,204. The percentages: BENGAL TIGER 37, HI CORBETT COURT 15, ELEVATING 11, BIG TRIBE 9, ANGELS PASSING 9, CRYSTAL QUEEN 7, ROGUE JEWEL 6, BIG HITTER 6.
Three miles over hurdles at Cheltenham with nineteen runners is about as open as racing gets, and the percentages say so: ACE OF SPADES 12, then DIVILABOTHER, HANG IN THERE and IDAHO FIRE level on 9, GRANNS BOY 7, THANK YOU MAAM, LUCKY BERE and NO MORE BOLERO 6, GOWEL ROAD 4, and nobody else above 4. Course bias offers no shortcut either: in staying hurdles on good ground here, horses who lead, sit handy or come from behind have all won close to their expected share across nearly 1,700 runs. In a race like this, the handicap marks tell the story, and each runner has a different one.
Three miles and a furlong over Cheltenham's fences, where course bias has a clear message for chasers: in staying chases on good ground here, Front-Runners have won 27% more races than expected across 399 runs, while those held up have won 9% fewer. Only one horse in this field is a natural Front-Runner. The percentages: HERE COMES GEORGIE 18, MT FUGI PARK 16, DIAMOND DEALER 14, UNCLE BERT 13, KARNAVAL POINT 10, KATATE DORI 10, SHANNON ROYALE 9, MOON DORANGE 7, NEO KING 3. Two of the top three come from Dan Skelton's yard, and they could hardly be more different.
Two miles over Cheltenham's hurdles for four-year-olds, and a race where the runners have already done some of the comparing for us. Four of these seven met in the same race here in March, and two more met here in January, so collateral form, how horses measure up through races they have shared, sits alongside the figures. The percentages: INDIAN RIVER 26, ONE HORSE TOWN 24, NORTH SHORE 20, LA LUNA ARTISTA 11, LORD BYRON 9, IN THE MINUS 8, TUNISYA 2. Course bias at this trip on good ground leans towards horses ridden in mid-division, who have won 23% more races than expected across 674 runs, while prominent racers have won 8% fewer across 916. There is no natural Front-Runner in the field.
A big-field handicap over a mile and a quarter on soft at Doncaster, and the model cannot separate its top two: CASTLEMONT and JANEY MACKERS on 13 apiece, then CITY OF DELIGHT, A MAJOR PAYNE and ULTRASOUL on 8, BUNYOLA BAY, HAVE SECRET and PEARL EYE on 6, with the other eight on 5 or less. When the model calls a tie, the engine is the natural tiebreaker, and here it is not close. Course bias matters as much as anything. At Doncaster's middle distances on soft or heavy, hold-up horses have won 25% fewer races than expected across 953 runs, while Front-Runners have won 19% more and those in mid-division 13% more. The draw has made little difference. Eight of this field are hold-up types, and none is a natural Front-Runner.
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