“You can’t tell the players without the program!”, as the old saying goes. And, you can’t tell which horse is which or which horse has the best chance to win without up to date statistics of their past performances.
Each horse has a code tattooed under it’s upper lip. When the horses are in the paddock (prep area) they are checked to see if the right horse is wearing the correct corresponding program number.
Horse racing allows about 30 minutes between races and for several good reasons. One, so the jockeys can clean up and prepare for their next race and two, so the fans can sift through all the statistics to find who they want to win the next race. This is the ultimate challenge… picking the winner.
To attempt to do so one must be armed with scads of information i.e. number, jockey, weight, sire & dame, owner, trainer, age, winnings, distances, past races including times, place in the race, pace of the race, types of races and on and on and on. There is however one necessary tool available with all the above information and even more, and that is the Daily Racing Form.
On their website the DRF describes them self thusly: Daily Racing Form, “America’s Turf Authority Since 1894,” was born in Chicago on Nov. 17, 1894 when it first appeared as a four-page broadsheet. Over the last 113 years, DRF has been the country’s only daily national newspaper dedicated to the coverage of a single major sport. DRF is the most complex newspaper in North America, publishing up to 2,000 unique pages of statistical and editorial copy every day, in as many as 25 daily editions, 364 days a year (with the exception of Christmas Day).
Carefully deciphering and comparing all the information on all the horses in a race might give you the horse with the greatest potential to win, it doesn’t guarantee a winner. There is many unseen variables that may or may not play a major role in a race. One of those variables is appropriately called “Luck”.
“You can’t tell the players without the program!”, as the old saying goes. And, you can’t tell which horse is which or which horse has the best chance to win without up to date statistics of their past performances.