The principle race on the racecard at Musselburgh, the Scottish Sprint Cup provides an opportunity for sprinters of northern based yards to compete for some excellent prize money.

In what looks like a competitive field this year, we use Proform to reveal three factors that could have an influence on the outcome of the race; draw, pace and track bias.

To get to grips with each of these biases, you will require an understanding of the running styles of each horse, draw statistics and plenty of time to collate and process the data.

However using Proform, everything you need is shown by a few clicks of your mouse button.

 

Scottish Sprint Draw Bias

In flat racing, the term “draw “or “stall berth” is the position across the course from where the horses must start the race.

At some courses, the draw bias can play a significant part in determining the outcome of the race and knowledge of this factor can provide a distinct advantage to the punter.

The image above from our horse racing software is ordered by draw position, in this case high to low.

The ‘Draw IV’ column is an index which is a statistical measure of whether the stall is performing better or worse than expected.

A value of 1.00 would indicate that horses which start in the stall win no fewer or no more than expected i.e. there is no bias for that stall.

Below 1.00 is indicative of underperformance of the stall, possibly due to a bias, above 1.00 is above expectation suggesting a draw bias. 

So for example, horses drawn is stall 16 have an impact value of 1.51 suggesting that horses that start from this berth over 5 furlongs at Musselburgh are 1.51 times more likely to win. Horse drawn in stall 2 are 0.50 less likely to win.

However, in our example the impact value is a measure of the draw bias only so you will need to consider other factors before discounting the chances of a horse based on the draw bias alone.

 

Scottish Sprint Pace Bias

Pace analysis helps to us to understand how the race will unfold and evaluate the likely pace scenario.

The ‘Paceform’ column in the image above summarises the horses pace profile from its previous races.

So the symbol “H” indicates that the horse was held up in the race, “P” raced prominently and “L” Led.

Using this information certain patterns emerge.

For example, Hawkeyethenoo in all its previous runs shown on our race card view has raced held up (“H”) so it’s a fair assumption that he should adopt the same running style in today’s race.

Caspian Prince will probably aim to lead in the Scottish Sprint Cup based on his previous running style.

To make it easier to anticipate the running style for each in today’s race, Proform uses data from the horses last three runs to arrive at a pace rating in the ‘Pace’ column and pace percentage.

Given a maximum pace rating of 12, we can reasonably deduce that Caspian Prince is likely to be up against Red Barron in a dual for the lead.

 

 

Musselburgh Track Bias

The final piece of the pace jigsaw puzzle is the course track bias.

Proform analyses the performance of each running style for every course and distance in the UK and Ireland and summarises results so you can determine if a particular running style is helped or hindered by the way the track rides.

For example, using the Impact Values (IV) in the Course & Distance PACE statistics image above, over 5 furlongs at Musselburgh horses that ‘Led’ are 2.25 times more likely to win. Horses that race ‘Held up’ are 0.55 less likely to win.

 

Scottish Sprint Draw and Pace Prediction

Using the information above, we can now pull together all of the factors above and create a table detailing the anticipated draw and pace makeup for the race

 

Visualised Pace and Draw Information

Although the information above provides a handy summary, unfortunately the table does suffer from the fact that it’s an artificial representation of the race dynamics and ideally you would like to see the information presented as your eye would view the race so you can anticipate the following:

• Will the hold-up horse drawn well, get boxed in? 
• Will the front-runner be able to dominate from a good draw, or have to use up too much energy getting to the lead from a bad/wide draw?
• Will a contender draw on the inside get boxed in?
• Hold up horses disadvantaged?
•  Distance to the 1st turn, does draw berth help or hinder?

Unlike other data sources that provide raw figures and leave it to you to make sense of the numbers, our Proform Race Guides visualise the key pieces of information for you in a useful graphic.

Scottish Sprint Cup Draw and Pace Prediction

 

Do you want to see more?

Every day on our web site we provide a FREE stats and Race Guide.

As well as providing detailed horse racing statistics with profit pointers, our race cards contain horse ratings for each contestant, unique pace information for every runner plus other time saving features to make pre-race analysis easy.

To download today’s Proform Race Guide for the Scottish Sprint Cup, click on the link here