How to read a racing program

The information contained within a racing program is oftentimes the key to unlocking major paydays at the track. But for a beginner, the layout of a racing form can be a complex conglomeration of confusing figures.

What follows is a guide that will help demystify the process of reading the past performances. There are many different companies that offer past performances, but among the oldest and most relied upon are the ones from the Daily Racing Form, which contain Beyer Speed Figures, which we’ll discuss in a bit.

Our example form

For the purposes of this guide, we plucked the lifetime past performances of 2020 Eclipse Award winner Monomoy Girl, which the DRF recently shared on their Facebook page. From the top left, we see the horses’ name and owner. Jockey name and information, not included in this example, would be immediately below the second line.

Moving rightwards, the next block of information contains the horse’s color, sex, age and month of birth. Below that is the pedigree information (sire and dam), including the name of the breeder, followed by the name and statistics for the trainer of the horse.

The final box of information in the top right corner contains results for the horse’s career in varying situations.

The “meat and potatoes” of the form

The middle of the form is where the “past performances” of a horse can be viewed. For Monomoy Girl, the top-most line reveals that she won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Reading from left to right, we see the date of the race (November 7^th, 2020), the race number and racetrack (10th at Keeneland), the condition of the track (fast), and the distance (1 1/8-miles). Next comes the fractional times for the race followed by the type/class of race (Grade I).

Then we see the Beyer Speed Figure (100), which measures how fast a horse ran given par times at the track in question. “Beyers” were first included in the DRF in the 1990s to give horseplayers a better gauge for comparing horses who have been racing at different tracks.

Next comes the post position and number of runners (10/10), followed by running position of the horse at points in the race related to the fractional times. In the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, Monomoy Girl was fourth at the half-mile mark and six-furlong mark before taking the lead one mile into the race. Her final number indicates she finished first by 1 3/4-lengths.

Continuing to the right, we see the name of the jockey (Florent Geroux), Lasix designation and weight, odds, track variant (outmoded numbers used to compare times before Beyers came along), the top three finishers, and the comment line.

The comment line can shed light on how impressive a horse was in victory, or how troubled a trip a horse may have had in defeat.

Each racing line can be read as such. But don’t worry, once you get the hang of it, you can breeze through an entire race of 10 horses in five minutes.