The Secrets To Better Handicapping & Picking Winners – Know Your Speed Figures & When To Trust Them

By Author: Lee Lane-Edgar
Total Articles: 365
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With the Breeders’ Cup fast approaching, and so many races on the wagering menu, how does a novice bettor make sense of it all.
Sometimes reading the Daily Racing Form or other past performance product can seem like deciphering some abstruse computer code.
For those who want a quick way to assess how fast a horse is compared to his competitors, the handicapper may take a bit of a shortcut and consult the Beyer Speed Figure. It is a number on a scale typically anywhere from as low as 40 to as high as 125. There have been a few exceptions of horses breaking 125, but we are talking about the greatest performances of the greatest horses of all time. Secretariat for example, ran his record breaking 2:24 Belmont Stakes well before the invention of the Beyer Speed Figure but Andrew Beyer, the creator of said Speed Figure, estimated that he would have been assigned a Beyer of 138!
The Beyer Speed Figure can be found right in the center of each horses running line and is in bold type. They are arranged so that the figures for a column down which the handicapper can easily scan the Beyer history for each race a horse ...
... has run. This figure basically gives a mathematically calculated measure of the horses speed, expressed in terms of a whole number. A horse that ran a 100 Beyer Speed Figure will typically have run a couple lengths faster than a horse that ran a 95 Beyer for example. If you are comparing two horses, one of whom just ran a 110 and a horse against which he is running today just ran a 108, then theoretically, the horse that ran the 110 ran 1 length faster than the horse that ran the 108. Of course there is no guarantee that the horse will duplicate the same figure. Perhaps he will regress off of his effort; perhaps his next number will be higher. The Beyer number is just a guide to start with. Other factors such as class, trainer, jockey, running style, and pace to name a few are all things which must be considered as well.
The best horses in racing will be coming together on the Breeders’ Cup card, so we can expect higher Beyer’s than in a typical allowance race. Expect to see horses with numbers usually at least 90 and above (unless a real long shot is entered). The contenders for the Breeder’s Cup Classic are generally seen capable of running figures at least 108, and usually a higher number is required.
Speed figures are just raw times the horses ran adjusted for the speed of the track which can vary greatly from track to track, and even from day to day at the same track. This adjusted time is then converted into what is known as the Beyer Speed Figure. For example, a horse may run a mile on dirt at Belmont Park in 1:36.60. The time is first adjusted for how fast or slow the track was playing. Then that adjusted time is converted into a raw number which is the number in bold on a horses running line as mentioned above.
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