Our Rating Workouts program was originally designed to help you handicap races for 2 yr olds or lightly raced 3 yr olds, races in which you have little to go on except the workouts. In our new Version 2.0, we've extended its usefulness to older horses as well. We have added the concept of "furlongs per day," first introduced to us by the late Dick Mitchell. This measure of fitness, which applies to older horses as well as the "younguns" was calculated by dividing the total number of furlongs worked since the last race by the number of days since the last race. Numbers approaching 0.8 furlongs per day are a solid indication of fitness.

As usual, however, we have modified the concept a bit. What about a horse who has raced 6 furlongs five days ago. We certainly wouldn't expect a horse like this to have worked out since his last race. So, instead of crediting it with zero furlongs per day, our concept is to include the number of furlongs in the last race as well. However the program lets you assign a "weight" to those furlongs. You can set it to zero to eliminate them from the calculation if you don't like this feature, you can also set it to something higher than 1 if you feel that furlongs in races are more significant than those in workouts.

We've added another twist as well. Consider a horse that worked 4 furlongs 7 days ago and 4 furlongs 21 days ago. Ignoring its last race for the moment, the horse would be credited with 8/21 = 0.38 furlongs per day. Now consider a horse that worked 8 furlongs three weeks ago, and nothing since. It would also have 8/21 = 0.38 furlongs per day! Don't you agree that the first horse gives a better indication of current form? Well, we do, so we have also introduced an exponential factor which "penalizes" workout or racing furlongs which are more than 5 days ago, with a factor that grows larger as the time since the workout or race gets longer. In other words, recent races or workouts count more than older ones, and you can adjust the way the program penalizes older events.

Of course, this latest version of Rating Workouts still delivers the analysis of individual workouts which is so useful when looking at younger horses.

One of the problems with handicapping races for 2yr olds or lightly-raced maidens, is that you don't have much to go on except workouts and bloodlines. And, workouts can be difficult to interpret. For example, how do you compare a workout over 3 furlongs run Handily, with one over 5 furlongs while Breezing?

Well, based on our analysis of over 330,000 workouts on more than 200 different tracks during 2004, our Workout program uses a 3rd order model to rate workouts, regardless of distance. (For you non-mathematicians, a "3rd order model" means that it based not just on the distance run, but on the distance squared and cubed as well.) Actually, it uses one of two different models, one for workouts observed to be run Handily (marked H) and another for those called Breezing (marked B).

You can run the program manually, entering distance and time and marking check boxes for "Handily," "Breezing," "From the Gate," and "Dogs Up." Click a button and the rating is calculated and displayed. Or, you can use the program to scan a single file format PP data file from either TSN or BRIS. Pick a race and all the workouts are rated and shown, along with the average rating for each horse, as shown below:

As you can see, a score for each workout is displayed, in bold, followed by a description of the workout in a format similar to what you see in the past performances. The average of all the ratings for the horse is shown after the last workout. And, the "furlongs per day" we talked about earlier, are given in parentheses next to the horse's name. Of course, workouts are just one factor in handicapping and there are no guarantees that a horse will run as well as it works out.

The program is installed from a file supplied on CD. Please remember that you need to download TSN or BRIS past performance files (single file format) to take advantage of the workout listing features.

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