Ladies Day on the Knavesmire, and the card reads like a web rather than a list: the fillies who finished first, second and third in last month's Irish Oaks all re-oppose in the Yorkshire Oaks, the Lowther hides two juvenile head-to-heads the summer has already run once, and the nursery is won, on our reading, by a colt whose defining victory our own Goodwood coverage published as it happened. Around the features sit two more cavalry-charge handicaps and a Listed contest whose biggest figure needs a translator.
This guide reads all seven 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. Along the way we explain the figures as we use them, because the point of these guides has never been tips. It is showing how data narrows big fields to the two or three worth your attention, and letting you take the method anywhere.
How we read a race
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. The engine chips show ability, current form and operating level; the sparkline is the last five race figures. Ten quick answers sit in the primer below, and the full walkthrough of every metric is in the complete data guide.
Sky Bet Lowther Stakes (Group 2)
6f | Class 1 Group 2 | 6 runners | Non-runners: Livenka
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
Ladies Day opens with nineteen juvenile fillies and a Group 2 that is really three races tangled together. Twice already this summer, pairs of these have met and settled an argument: at Naas last month one filly beat another by a length with the two biggest figures in this field, and at Fairyhouse a fortnight earlier two more fought out a finish that both are back to renew. Add a market leader who won at Royal Ascot with our data loudly on her side, a hot Yorkshire stable running the model's top two, and a pace forecast of 9 at the track that famously forgives front-runners, and you have the most tactically loaded juvenile race of the season. The percentages spread just eleven to seven across nine fillies. Races like this are why collateral form, who beat whom, and by how much, and what the clock said, is the sharpest tool a reader can own.
Start with the two form lines, because they carry the two biggest numbers in the race. At Naas on 22 July, Big Negotiator won with a figure of 181, and the filly she beat, Shimmering Sun, posted 170 in defeat; both re-oppose here, a length of Irish form standing between them. Better still, the winner's career-best is not even that 181: back in May she ran a 194 in defeat at Navan, the biggest single figure any of these nineteen has ever produced. The data around the figures deepens the case. Her form trend, the direction a profile is moving measured across recent starts, is +49, the warmest in the field. She is by Havana Grey, whose stock rate 87 on our sire figures and 89 at this exact trip, a sprinters' sire answering at least half of the six-furlong question her five-furlong form leaves open, and her trainer-and-jockey combination banks a twelve-month figure of 113. She has won at this track, she is a confirmed front-runner at the course where leading outperforms expectation by more than a third, and she drops five points in class from the average of her last three starts. The honest ledger: her form volatility is high, a 41 on our consistency measure, which is the statistical echo of that Royal Ascot fifteenth, and volatile brilliance is exactly what a 194-or-nothing profile looks like from the inside.
The second line belongs to Livenka (NON-RUNNER). At Fairyhouse on 8 July she beat Star Of State with a 174, the second-biggest figure in this field, and while the filly she beat has won since, so has she, striding three lengths clear at Naas this month. Her trend reads +13, rising, her style is prominent, which fits the track bias, and the honest entries on her ledger are two: she steps up three points in class from her recent average, the only principal climbing rather than dropping, and her sire figures are modest, Bated Breath's stock rating in the 70s. Form and momentum earn her the bold; the breeding says the price should stay fair. As for Star Of State, the filly she beat, the unexposed danger remains real, two runs and figures of 164 and 143, though her sire's juvenile numbers sit mid-pack and the model's soft spot for the barely-raced, as with Vega King on Wednesday, is an argument about ceiling rather than evidence.
Which leaves the market leader and the model's top pair, and the data has a number for each story. Libertango won the Albany at Royal Ascot with our figures shouting for her, a 170 on debut that led our guide to carry her, and she delivered. Here the same engine reads her differently: beaten at Newmarket since, her trend has turned to minus 18 and she is running 37 points below her peak, the quantified version of a filly the season may have caught up with, and she is a hold-up type facing nineteen rivals at the track that taxes that style hardest. The Karl Burke yard, 110 against a 107 baseline for the month, runs the model's top two, and they are studies in opposite data. Love A Giggle owns the single best breeding number in the race, a damsire figure of 114 towering over a field that otherwise sits in the 70s and 80s, alongside the field's most volatile form profile, a 49, which is how a filly wins at York in May, finishes twentieth at Royal Ascot, and clocks a 151 in defeat at Newmarket all in one summer. Wild Blossom is her mirror: a +39 trend, the best trainer-jockey figure in the race at 115, rising three points in class off the back of winning Glorious Goodwood's big juvenile sprint. If either Burke filly beats our pair, the data says it is more likely the mirror than the rollercoaster. And Jolivette completes the honesty list: the field's best sire-juvenile figure at 90, by Wootton Bassett, attached to the field's coldest trend at minus 20, a pedigree argument fighting a form argument, and in August we side with form.
Big Negotiator's verified figures top the form web; Livenka holds the other head-to-head scalp with momentum.
The full field
Harrys Half Million By Goffs
6f | Class 2 sales race | 6 runners
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
Race two is a sales contest, twenty-two juveniles who all passed through the same auction ring, chasing one of the richest two-year-old pots of the season, and it produces a rare sight: our model putting a 20 on one filly in a field this size. Sales races are class levellers by design, which is precisely why class tells in them, and the day's two big juvenile races are directly linked: the filly our model tops here chased home the Lowther's market leader in the Albany at Royal Ascot. One thread for readers who enjoyed Wednesday's Goodwood rematch: the nursery that shaped our Day One closing race sends a graduate here too. The pace forecast is 14, the second-biggest number of the week, so once again the shape of the race matters as much as the names in it.
A 20 percentage in a twenty-two-runner race is the model saying the class gap is visible from space, and Sun Goddess has earned every point of it. Her season reads second, first, second, first, first, and the quality of those placings is the story: the second at Royal Ascot came in the Albany itself, behind the filly who heads the Lowther market half an hour before this, and her latest win, at the Curragh ten days ago, produced a 205, the biggest figure any juvenile has brought to the meeting. She drops from Group company into a sales race, her stable is running 118 against a 103 twelve-month baseline, among the hottest differentials at the meeting, and her prominent style is exactly where you want to sit when fourteen points of pace forecast burn up in front of you. The one honest line: five runs means the handicapper of the market knows her too, and the price will say so.
Our second selection is a deliberate change of method, because with babies this unexposed the pedigree is the data. Satellite Of Love has run twice, won once, and produced a 169 last time, but the number that earns her the bold is her sire's: Minzaal's juveniles rate 82 on our sire figures, the best of any principal in this race, and our distance figure already has her at 153 over this trip. The sire figure measures how a stallion's two-year-olds perform as a population, before their own form can speak, and it is the closest thing racing has to projecting a ceiling from a bloodline. Both honest caveats printed: her yard's month is running below its yearly level, 84 against 89, and she has no figure on Good ground yet, so two of our usual columns are guesses where Sun Goddess's are facts. That is the trade unexposed always asks you to make.
The dangers split three ways, each carrying one loud number. Kodiak Breeze owns the ground evidence, a going figure of 186 earned at Redcar in May with a win over this trip since, and a front-runner's chance of stealing York's favourite position. Thebesthasyetocome brings the ceiling, a 181 at this exact distance from just two starts, but has not raced since June, and freshness in a two-year-old cuts both ways. And the sleeper is Innichen, joint-warmest trend in the field at +40, two wins in her last three, and third in the very Goodwood nursery our Wednesday guide traced, the form line that keeps giving. In a race with a cliff after the top four percentages, those three and our pair are the race.
Sun Goddess brings Group form to a sales race; Satellite Of Love is the pedigree projection at a price.
The full field
Sir Kevin Sinfield 7 In 7 Grand Finale Handicap (Heritage Handicap)
7f192y | Class 2 Heritage Handicap | 6 runners | Non-runners: Point Lynas
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
The big mile handicap belongs, on our numbers, to one Yorkshire stable twice over. Edward Bethell's yard is running at 115 for the month against a twelve-month baseline of 92, among the widest hot streaks of any trainer at the meeting, and it saddles the model's top two in a race where seventeen runners are covered by eleven points of percentage. What makes it a proper study is that the pair could not be less alike as handicapping propositions: one is the most talented horse in the race and among the least reliable, the other is a thirty-one-run veteran the assessor has finally dropped to a winnable mark. Between them they teach more about reading handicaps than any race this week.
Take the talent first. Point Lynas (NON-RUNNER) produced a 209 last time out, the biggest figure in this field and among the biggest at the meeting, and here is the full honesty of it: he produced it finishing second, at Pontefract, because finishing second is rather his speciality. Twenty-seven runs, a last win dating to July 2024, and a mark now eight pounds above the one that win came off. Our figures adore him, his track figure of 133 says York sharpens him further, his trend is rising, and he wants to be on or near a lead that a pace forecast of 9 will make him fight for. The model puts him top because the engine measures ability, and his is real. Whether the race falls his way is the part the 209 cannot promise, and the each-way terms exist for exactly this profile.
His stablemate is the mirror image. Yorkshire brings no 200s, just thirty-one runs of accumulated evidence and the single most interesting number in the race: an official mark three pounds BELOW the one he last won from, the only negative OR delta on today's card. Remember the rule from Wednesday's stayers' race, that the distance between today's mark and the last winning one decides handicaps, and here is its rarest case, a horse the handicapper has relented on while his form is actually improving: a 174 last time, second and third on his last two starts, trend +17. Add the same red-hot stable, and the veteran's profile is the one our data would build for a big-field handicap from scratch. The name on the racecard at this meeting is the free entertainment.
Three dangers, three different arguments. Centigrade owns the next-best figures, a 155 and a 180 on his last two with a distance figure of 167, attached to a yard running five points below its yearly level, form against stable, and we lean stable. Arctic Dawn is the momentum play, the field's warmest trend at +38 and the only runner with all three conditions figures above 140, including a 140 at this track, off a mark exactly level with his last win. And Blue Brother requires the honesty paragraph: the highest raw one-month stable figure in the race at 122, a fourth at Royal Ascot in June, and a profile our database can only partly see, because his career is split with Qatar and overseas form sits outside our coverage. His blank columns are gaps, not verdicts, the same disclosure we gave the French raider in Wednesday's Juddmonte, and the market will know more about him than our figures do.
The Bethell pair from both ends of the handicapping spectrum: the 209 talent and the well-in veteran.
The full field
Legends Global Yorkshire Oaks (Group 1)
1m3f188y | Class 1 Group 1 | 6 runners
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
The Yorkshire Oaks stages a question the Juddmonte answered emphatically on Wednesday, and adds a twist. Once again an established older champion faces the Classic generation on weight-for-age terms, but this time the reigning queen of the race herself is here too, and her figures are moving the wrong way. Add that the fillies who finished first, second and third in last month's Irish Oaks all re-oppose, and nine runners give you three complete arguments: proven class, fading royalty, and a Classic form line arriving in force. The model has picked its side by a clear seven points of percentage, and for once the pace map may matter as much in a Group 1 as in the handicaps either side of it.
The model's 23 sits on Kalpana because every column of the established-class argument is hers. The best Ability figure in the field at 114 and the best Operating at 116, the same agreeing-at-the-top pattern that carried Ombudsman's case on Wednesday. The best going figure, a 177 on ground she relishes. An official mark of 125 that towers over this field, and the freshest possible proof, victory over this exact trip at Ascot's midsummer showpiece four weeks ago. The tactical picture then adds what the figures cannot: she is the only confirmed front-runner among the principals in a race our pace forecast reads at just 6, which at York means the favourite may be handed the steering wheel and a soft lead. Her trend reads mildly negative at minus 13, the small print of a filly whose peaks came earlier in the spring, and it is the only line on her page the opposition can cling to.
The Classic challenge is led by Johanna Walsh, and her claim is the simplest in the race: she won the Irish Oaks last month with a 209, the biggest figure any of these nine has ever produced, her trend of +50 says she is still climbing, and she meets the older pair on the three-year-old's allowance. A Ribblesdale second at Royal Ascot before that gives the form real depth. The fillies she beat at the Curragh frame her value here: Inis Mor, second that day with a 201 that stands as her distance figure, re-opposes at a similar price, and Sparan Nua, third, arrives with figures of 187 and 198 from her last two starts against a model percentage of just 5, the loudest gap between clock and share on the card, and each-way petrol at a price if the Classic form works out. On the figures the Curragh trio are separated by less than the market will separate them.
Which leaves the champion, and the data must be unsentimental. Minnie Hauk won this race twelve months ago, her track figure of 183 is the largest in the field and was earned doing it, and if this were last August she would be the selection. It is not. Since winning at the Curragh in early May her season reads fifth, second, eighth, that last an emphatic defeat in the very Ascot race Kalpana won, her trend of minus 28 is the coldest here, and her Operating figure has slipped six points below her Ability, the engine's way of saying the current level no longer matches the class. Champions do rebound, York plainly suits her, and the each-way market will love the name. But Wednesday's Juddmonte showed what a defending champion in form looks like. This is the other kind, and the data can tell the difference even when the heart would rather not.
Kalpana's class case is made in every column with the pace map thrown in; the Irish Oaks winner is the rising threat.
The full field
British EBF & Sir Henry Cecil Galtres Stakes (Listed)
1m3f188y | Class 1 Listed | 6 runners | Non-runners: Sunshine Star, Without Prejudice
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
The Galtres is the day's quiet puzzle: fifteen fillies at Listed level, a pace forecast of just 5, and a model that has split its faith between a comeback and a grinder at thirteen points apiece. One powerful stable runs three of the first seven on our list and none of them is the one you would expect to carry its hopes. The lesson this race teaches is about reading a figure's context: the biggest number in the field was earned on a January all-weather night two hundred miles from here, and what you decide that means is worth more than the number itself.
Our top percentage, shared at 13, belongs first to Morrophore, and her case demands both hands on the table. The figures are the best here, a 196 and a 172 on her last two starts with a trend of +33, and the engine has kept its faith through everything that follows: those runs came at Lingfield in the winter, on an all-weather surface, and she has not raced since January. Seven months off, a first try at this trip, and figures that must translate from Polytrack to the Knavesmire. Why trust it? The same reason we trusted Manxman through an eleven-month absence on Wednesday: a Gosden filly does not resurface in a Listed race at York by accident, her going figure of 130 says turf is no stranger, and the class edge her winter numbers imply is larger than the translation risk. It is a profile that wins this race or finishes mid-division with an excuse, and the model has chosen its side.
The other half of the 13 is Perfect Your Craft, and her argument is the opposite in every particular: current, hardened, and handed the race's tactical steering wheel. A 186 last time, a going figure of 144, a summer of competitive Irish form at trips either side of this one, and the only committed front-runner among the principals in a race forecast at 5. York rewards forwardness and a soft lead more than any track in our data, and the Twomey stable, whose Big Negotiator carries our hopes in the Lowther, knows precisely how to use one. Her trend is flat rather than rising, the single honest knock, and in a race this tactical we will take position over momentum.
The depth reads quickly but tellingly. Rhapsody is the most solid alternative: a York winner last September, the 130 track figure to show for it, a Royal Ascot fourth and a Curragh second this summer, and the Haggas yard running ten points above its yearly level. The Gosden trio is the curiosity, because alongside Morrophore the stable also runs Sunshine Star and the once-raced Without Prejudice, a Newmarket winner three weeks ago making an enormous class jump, and yet the yard's own month is running below its twelve-month baseline, 96 against 102, which is why quantity is not conviction. And Merveilleux Lapin owns the best ground figure in the field, a 179, attached to the two things this race punishes: a cold trend and a hold-up style into a crawl. The shape belongs to our pair; the depth is where the each-way money should look.
The comeback and the grinder share the model's faith; we take both, the winter figures and the steering wheel.
The full field
Mews Hotel Ossett EBF Stallions Nursery Handicap
7f | Class 2 Nursery | 6 runners | Non-runners: Big Cigar
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
If you have followed these guides since Glorious Goodwood, the day's second nursery is where the threads tie off. The colt who won the Goodwood nursery we covered three weeks ago, a race whose beaten horses have carried our analysis at this very meeting, arrives at the top of our percentages. The stable whose pair headline our mile-handicap read saddles the biggest figures in this field too. Twenty-two juveniles, a pace forecast of 8, and for once in a nursery, the evidence is not projection: we watched most of it happen.
Form webs are usually something you reconstruct; this one we published as it was spun. Revels won the Hawes and Curtis Nursery at Goodwood on 31 July, a race our Day Four guide covered in full, beating Dubai Champion, who re-opposed in Wednesday's closing race here, with Innichen, who reappeared in today's sales contest, back in third. His 151 winning figure was earned giving that field a proper race from the front, and front-running at York into a forecast of 8 is a proven path all week. The handicapper's response, five more pounds, is the entry fee for a colt whose trend is still rising at +17, whose sire's juveniles rate 81, and whose yard, Karl Burke's, is having the week our Lowther analysis described. In a race where most of the twenty-two are guesses, he is the known quantity, and the model prices knowledge.
The value argument belongs to Weleyff, and it is the Edward Bethell yard again, the stable running 115 against a 92 baseline whose mile-handicap pair carry our Race 3 hopes. Weleyff owns the two biggest figures in this field, a 185 two starts back and a distance figure of 165 that no rival approaches, for the same five-pound rise as the favourite. The engine ranks him second on 8, the gap to Revels reflecting consistency rather than ceiling: his figures oscillate where the favourite's climb. If the Bethell week is what the numbers say it is, an each-way position at his price is the cheapest ticket on it.
The rest, quickly and honestly. Mirzimaan holds joint-second percentage on a 152 from two starts back, but returned no figure last time and races held up, the style this week has punished; treat the 8 as ceiling, not likelihood. Perfect Nation brings the field's warmest trend at +45 and a going figure of 144, the profile that outruns its price without always winning. And Big Cigar carries the top official mark of 94, which is the assessor saying class and the clock so far saying almost: nurseries are where one of those arguments finally wins. Our pair have run the race the rest are still promising.
Revels is the receipted known quantity; Weleyff carries the Bethell week and the field's biggest figures.
The full field
British EBF Fillies Handicap
7f | Class 2 Handicap | 6 runners
TPR percentages · every field sums to 100
Ladies Day closes with twenty-one fillies, a pace forecast of 9, and the week's weakest favourite: our model tops this race with a 9, which after two days of 20s, 23s and 38s is the engine telling you, politely, that the finale is a lottery. When the percentages flatten, the method is what remains: find the biggest verified number, find the strongest momentum, respect the track's biases, and hold both honestly against their risks. As it happens, the biggest number in the race is the biggest on today's card, and the fastest-rising profile arrives wearing the most famous silks in the sport, on the very afternoon the race that made them famous is run.
Do the method in order. The biggest verified figure belongs to Tryst, and it is a 231, earned winning at Yarmouth last month, the largest number on today's card, and she followed it up by winning again at Newmarket three weeks ago. Back-to-back victories, a trend of +42, and a mark six pounds higher that two wins have thoroughly earned. Her percentage of 8 rather than something grander reflects a mid-division style in a big field and a career of fourteen runs that says the handicapper knows her; the last month says he has not caught her yet. Momentum with a monster figure attached is the profile we trust most in races the model calls open.
The rising profile is Starlight Lass, and everything about her asks for imagination. A 174 last time, the field's warmest trend at +49, and the reason the price will shorten anyway: she represents the Gosden stable, with Saffie Osborne in the green and pink of Juddmonte, the silks Frankel carried, on the afternoon of the meeting their International headlines. The data's honesty: she has no banked figure on this ground or at this track, only a modest 77 at the trip, three thin columns that make her the dart of the race rather than its anchor, and her yard's month is running below its yearly level. That is why she wears our second bold and not our first, and why the each-way terms are her friend.
The rest of the method, quickly. The model's own top pick, Machadadorp, is a 9-share favourite with a flat trend and two defeats since her early-summer double, respected rather than feared. Secret History is the conditions play the track argues for: a 140 figure at York itself, a win at Newmarket last month, and a mark just four pounds above her last winning one, the sharpest OR delta among the principals. And a caution the week's threads make necessary: Oolong Poobong carries the Bethell name our Race 3 and Race 6 analysis leans on, but her own numbers, an 18 last time and a trend of minus 50, are a reminder that hot stables still send out cold horses. Back the yard's form through its in-form ones; this is not one of them.
Tryst's 231 and winning run top an open finale; Starlight Lass is the fast-rising dart in famous silks.
The full field
The day at a glance
Where the data landed, race by race.
The data, explained
New to the numbers? Quick answers below, and the full walkthrough of every metric lives in the complete EquiAnalytix data guide.
What is TPR?
TPR (Total Performance Rating) is EquiAnalytix's proprietary rating, built from a database of more than 836,000 runs. Every horse's number is derived from race times adjusted for class, going, pace and race shape, so it measures what a horse actually did rather than what the handicapper thinks of it.
What does the percentage mean?
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. Across our whole database, 73 percent of winners come from our top four ranked horses, which is why the top of the list is where every read begins.
What is the form trend?
The direction a horse's figures are moving, measured in points across recent starts. Warm positive trends mark improvers the handicapper has not caught; cold negative ones mark horses the season may have passed by. Paired with the volatility measure, it tells you whether a profile is climbing, sliding or simply erratic.
What are the breeding figures?
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 they are the closest thing racing has to projecting a ceiling from a bloodline.
What are the conditions figures?
Going, track and distance figures isolate a horse's best performances under today's exact conditions. A high going figure on Good ground matters far more than a career best earned in a bog, and a big track figure says this course specifically brings out the horse's best. Context matters too: a figure earned on winter all-weather must translate before it counts on turf.
What is the pace forecast?
Each runner's early-position style is profiled from its history, and the race pace forecast adds them up. High numbers mean contested speed and favour those who can sit just off it; very low numbers mean a crawl and favour the prominent. At York specifically, two decades of data say front-runners outperform expectation, especially in sprints.
What is the OR delta?
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 he has relented below it. Across our database, handicaps disproportionately go to the small end of the scale.
What is stable form?
A trainer's one-month figure against their twelve-month baseline. A yard running twenty points 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.
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