Horse Weight and Handicapping

[Furious Pete]

I couldn\'t help noticing that Thoro-Graph has started to post the Horses Weight at race day between the running lines from some tracks, I saw this when studying the form from Santa Anita on saturday.

I was curious as to how you guys factor this into your handicapping. When is it relevant, when is it not relevant, is it the difference from raceday to raceday that interests you the most or do we believe in an \"ideal weight\" that correlates with top form and that patterns could be identified with TG figures, simply put -
what are the working hypotheses out there?

[TGJB]

Don’t know yet. It’s available at some tracks so we figured we’d throw it out and let people work with it.

[Dick Powell]

The Hong Kong Jockey Club form guide lists the weight of each horse for each of their races. For a horse coming off a long layoff, they might be 50 pounds higher than normal then their next few starts might show less weight as they get fit. A horse that is going the wrong way might be carrying less weight than they should. They have mostly older geldings there so you don\'t have to worry about horses gaining weight as they go from two to three years of age, etc.

[Furious Pete]

Thanks Dick, That\'s also partly why I ask as my attention is more on more on the races over there and it\'s so readily available. I\'m sure it could yield some important info if one could only learn to use it properly. I know human athletes who record this info about themselves constantly in their training journals, partially for being able to peak their form at the right times, etc, I\'ll bet some horse trainers do the same for their horses.

But do we know enough about how they do the actual weighing though, as I\'m sure equines fluctuates daily quite a lot as we humans do as well, do they weigh in at about the same time of day every time for instance?

It sure would be interesting to run some large data analysis on this to search for patterns, quite a lot of work though.

[Dick Powell]

Not sure when they weigh them. I think the day before. The problem is horse\'s weight varies a lot on raceday since they have had their feed and water drawn. As long as it is consistently done, it cam be compared.

[Furious Pete]

Also, I believe I\'ve read somewhere here from you TGJB that you could make even more precise figures if you had the horses weights to go by - I believe regarding the weight carried adjustments? Would you mind explaining how you would use that info to make even better weight adjustment? In theory. Certainly something about the relative weight carried, but not quite sure about the details about how you would go about incorporating it into your figures.

My guess is that for US racing it\'s probably not worth the trouble, anyway, but for racing in countries with frequent handicap races and big weight discrepancies it is an interesting idea.

[TGJB]

The differences are minor, but 5 pounds is not the same for a 950 pound horse as a 1250 pound one.

[Furious Pete]

I agree but not sure how one would build it into the figures. In Hong Kong the differences is often 20 pounds from the light weight to the top weight (carried weight i.e the jockey), so it would be even more of a factor.

[Furious Pete]

https://horseweigh.com/about-horse-weigh/reviews/

I guess it\'s not a great sign that not even the horse weigh-vendor could find much value to be added by having the horses weigh, publicly 🙃

[Dick Powell]

Thank you for posting the link. If Mark Johnston, who trains more 2YO winners in the world each year, says they are at their heaviest at age two, I have to believe it\'s true.

There is a fantastic young sprinter in Hong Kong named Aethero who weighs 1254 pounds of 570 kilograms. At 17 hands, it\'s amazing how fast he is. But, it has to be a challenge to keep him sound.