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The Paddock

Guide

Racing has a vocabulary of its own, and nobody hands you the key. This page explains what’s on the site: how to read a card, what the race types mean, and what to look for from the paddock to the wire. No betting knowledge assumed.

Reading a card

Everything on Today is built from cards like this one. The numbers point to what each part means.

KeenelandFeature day

Lexington, KY · Sat, Sep 26 local · 2 stakes · Left-handed

Dirt: Fast · Clear, 68°F

Entries ›

Watch on

  • Keeneland.com live streamTrack stream · Free
  • FanDuel TV+Stream · Free with an account
  1. 1
    Run
    Allowance Optional Claiming $62,500

    6.5f · Dirt · $95,500 · 6 runners · 3yo+

    Entries
  2. 2
    in 12 min
    Maiden Claiming $40,000

    5.5f · Turf · $40,500 · 6 runners · 3yo+

    Entries
  3. 8
    G1First Lady Stakes

    1 mi · Turf · $600,000 · 7 runners · 3yo+ · F&M

    Entries
  1. Track and day: one card is one track on one racing day. “Feature day” means there’s a Grade 1 or a cluster of stakes on it. “Left-handed” is which way the course turns: counter-clockwise here, as everywhere in North America; many courses elsewhere run the other way (see Watching a race). The track name opens the course page, with a map drawn to scale and the course’s name in its own language where that isn’t English.
  2. Conditions: the surface and how it’s riding (Fast, Good, Sloppy on dirt; Firm, Good, Soft on turf), plus the weather at the track.
  3. Watch on: where the races are showing for the region you picked in the header. “Free with an account” means a sign-up but no money down; “Subscription” is a paid service; “Free-to-air TV” is ordinary broadcast television; “Funded betting account” is a bookmaker stream that needs a deposit.
  4. Race number: races run in order through the afternoon; the number is what the announcer and the stream use.
  5. Post time: in your own time zone, with the zone named so you know which clock you’re reading, and the track’s own clock underneath when it differs. A struck-through time has already run; green shows the countdown to the next.
  6. Race name: for everyday races this is the type: Maiden, Claiming $25,000, Allowance. The glossary explains each. “Entries” (or the name itself) opens the full field; the Entries button at the top of the card goes to the next race still to run.
  7. The essentials: distance · surface · purse · runners · who’s eligible (3yo+ is three-year-olds and up; F&M is fillies and mares). At tracks with a straight sprint course, “Straight” appears after the distance.
  8. Stakes: the brass rule and badge mark stakes races; G1 is the highest grade. These are the ones worth planning your day around.

Reading an entry

Open a race and you get the field. Here’s one runner taken apart, then the table as it appears.

Post1
No.1
Horse
Cider Pioneer8m · Form 6-3-P-0-P
JockeyB. Keating
TrainerW. Rosales
Wt125
M/L4-1
  1. Post position: the stall the horse starts from, counted from the inside rail. The colour follows the North American saddle-cloth convention: 1 red, 2 white, 3 blue, 4 yellow, 5 green…
  2. Program number: the number on the saddle cloth. In North America it matches the post; in Britain and Ireland the cloth number and the draw are different, so we show both.
  3. Horse: name, where it was bred, age and sex (4g = four-year-old gelding), and recent form with the latest run on the right: 3-1-2 is third, then first, then second. A 0 is a finish outside the first nine; a letter means it didn’t finish (P pulled up, F fell, U unseated its rider) and every one is explained under Form figures in the glossary. On a real card the name opens the horse’s record.
  4. Jockey: the rider. Big-name riders choose their mounts, so a top jockey on a horse tells you something. On a real card the name opens the rider’s record.
  5. Trainer: who prepares the horse. Trainers and owners have records of their own on the site.
  6. Weight: rider plus tack, in pounds. In handicaps the best horse carries the most.
  7. Morning line: the track’s forecast odds: 5-1 pays $5 for each $1. Lower means more fancied. It is an estimate made before betting opens, so the real odds will differ.

The same race as it appears on the site

Entries. Click a column to sort.
11Cider Pioneer8m · Form 6-3-P-0-PJ: B. Keating · T: W. Rosales · Wt 1254-1
22Rebel Duke5m · Form 3-0-3-3-5J: W. Rosales · T: P. Lombardi · Wt 11815-1
33Saddle Marquee3f · Form 3-1-4-3-3J: D. Whitfield · T: R. Gallagher · Wt 11812-1
44Copper Envoy5m · Form 2-5-4-3-PJ: L. Rosales · T: S. Hartley · Wt 1205-2
55Marble Lantern7m · Form P-2-2-5-2J: J. Sutton · T: D. Navarro · Wt 1236-1

Kinds of race

Most races are ordinary, and that is by design. The system exists to make fields even, so every horse has a level where it can win. Stakes are the exception: the best horses and the biggest purses, the races worth planning a day around.

North America

Claiming prices and allowance conditions sort the everyday races; stakes sit on top.

  1. Maiden claiming
  2. Maiden special weight
  3. Claiming
  4. Allowance / optional claiming
  5. Stakes (ungraded)
  6. Grade 3
  7. Grade 2
  8. Grade 1

Britain & Ireland

Handicaps are banded by official rating into Classes 7 (lowest) to 2. Class 1 is the pattern.

  1. Class 7–6 handicaps
  2. Class 5–4 handicaps & maidens
  3. Class 3–2 handicaps
  4. Listed
  5. Group 3
  6. Group 2
  7. Group 1

Japan (JRA)

Horses climb by wins: each victory moves them up a class until they reach Open company.

  1. Newcomer / Maiden
  2. 1 Win class
  3. 2 Win class
  4. 3 Win class
  5. Open (OP)
  6. G3
  7. G2
  8. G1

Hong Kong

Nearly everything is a handicap, banded by rating from Class 5 up to Class 1.

  1. Class 5
  2. Class 4
  3. Class 3
  4. Class 2
  5. Class 1
  6. Group 3
  7. Group 2
  8. Group 1

Australia

Benchmark handicaps (BM64, BM78…) are banded by rating; carnivals bring the Group races.

  1. Maiden
  2. Class 1–3
  3. Benchmark 58–78
  4. Benchmark 84–100 / Open
  5. Listed
  6. Group 3
  7. Group 2
  8. Group 1

Claiming races put every runner up for sale at a fixed price until the gate opens, which stops anyone slipping a champion in against cheap horses. Handicaps do the same job with weight: the better the horse, the more it carries. Allowance and conditions races use rules instead: how many wins, what age.

Stakes are where owners pay to enter and the purse is serious. The best of them are graded by an international panel: Grade 1 (North America, Japan) or Group 1 (everywhere else) is the top; 2 and 3 sit below; Listed is one rung further down. On this site those get the brass rule and the badge.

Distance & going

How far, on what, and how it’s riding.

  1. 5f5f · 1006mFlat out from the gate. Britain’s minimum trip.
  2. 6f6f · 1207mThe standard North American sprint; about 1:09 on fast dirt.
  3. 7f7f · 1408mOne turn, but stamina starts to show.
  4. 1 mi1m · 1609mThe mile. Two turns on most US tracks; one in Europe.
  5. 1 1/8 mi1m 1f · 1811mThe classic US route distance; most Grade 1 dirt races.
  6. 1 1/4 mi1m 2f · 2012mThe Kentucky Derby, the Arc, the Japan Cup (2000–2400m).
  7. 1 1/2 mi1m 4f · 2414mThe Derby at Epsom, the Belmont Stakes.
  8. 2 mi2m · 3219mCup races and the minimum for jump racing.
A furlong is an eighth of a mile: 220 yards, about 200 metres. The site shows distances the way each country writes them: furlongs and miles in North America, Britain and Ireland; metres in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and France. Some courses run their sprints on a straight course with no turns (York’s 6f, Newmarket’s Rowley Mile, Flemington’s Straight Six); those races are marked “Straight”.

Going

US dirt
FastGoodMuddySloppyHeavy
US turf
FirmGoodYieldingSoftHeavy
GB / IE turf
FirmGood to FirmGoodGood to SoftSoftHeavy
Australia
Firm 1–2Good 3–4Soft 5–7Heavy 8–10
Japan
FirmGoodYieldingSoft
All-weather
FastStandardSlow

Fastest on the left. Wet, slow ground tires horses and favours those bred for stamina. It can turn form on its head.

Watching a race

A race is about two minutes long and most of it makes sense once you know where to look. Start twenty minutes before post.

Before: the paddock

The horses are saddled and walked in a ring behind the stands; the stream usually shows it. You want a horse that looks alert and walks with purpose, “on its toes”. Heavy sweating between the hind legs (“washed out”) or a horse fighting its handler is a bad sign. Then “riders up”: the jockeys mount, and the field walks out for the post parade and a short warm-up.

What you’ll hear

  • “They’re in the gate”: loading, usually a minute or two.
  • “And they’re off”: the break. Look for who got away cleanly.
  • “23 and 2… 46 and 4”: the fractions, split times for each quarter mile. Fast early splits tire the leaders.
  • “Being asked”: the jockey is riding for a run. “Under a hand ride” means not yet.
  • “Photo”, “inquiry”, “official”: too close to call; the stewards are looking; it’s final.
A one-mile dirt oval seen from above, with the phases of a race, the stands, and the paddock markedHorses leave the gate on the home straight, run past the stands, around the clubhouse turn, along the backstretch, around the far turn, and down the stretch to the wire. Sprint races start from a chute off the backstretch. Behind the stands, the paddock holds a walking ring and saddling stalls; a horse path leads from it through the stands onto the track.Winner's circle¼⅛1⁄16Sprint chuteHorse pathGrandstandClubhouseWalking ringSaddling stallsPaddockGate & breakFarturnBackstretchFirstturnThe stretchWire

This oval runs counter-clockwise, or “left-handed”, as every track in North America does. Elsewhere it depends on the course: Ascot, Sha Tin, Randwick and Nakayama run clockwise (“right-handed”); Flemington, Tokyo and Meydan run left; Newmarket’s Rowley Mile is nearly straight. Each track’s direction is listed on its card, and it matters: a horse that hangs left is better suited to one than the other. Real courses are rarely this tidy: the course pages draw each one to scale from map data: Epsom’s horseshoe, Chester’s tight circle, Ascot’s triangle.

Before the race the horses are saddled in the stalls, walked round the rings while the crowd looks them over, then led up the horse path through the stands onto the track for the post parade. The striped poles on the outer rail count down the distance left: red for a quarter-mile, green for an eighth, black for a sixteenth. Afterwards the winner comes back to the winner’s circle by the wire.

The race, in order

  • Gate & break: the first two seconds decide a lot. Watch for a horse that stumbles or gets squeezed; it has lost lengths it may not get back. Sprints start from the chute off the backstretch instead, so they run one turn.
  • First turn: usually called the clubhouse turn in North America, since the clubhouse traditionally sits at that end. Riders sort out position; the horse on the inside saves ground, anyone three or four wide is running farther than everyone else.
  • Backstretch: the race settles. Listen for the fractions: “46 flat” for the half-mile is quick, “48 and change” is a crawl that favours the leaders.
  • Far turn: the move. Jockeys start asking at the quarter pole; closers begin to pick off the tiring leaders. This is where you can see who still has something.
  • The stretch: the drive to the line, past the eighth and sixteenth poles. Look for a horse changing leads (switching which front leg lands first); that’s a fresh gear. Drifting wide means it’s tiring.
  • Wire: the finish. Close ones go to the photo; then the stewards check for interference and the result goes official. Nothing counts until it does.

The gate and post positions

The starting gate with eight stalls; stall one is next to the inside railInside rail1red2white3blue4yellow5green6black7orange8pinkRuns toward the first turn ↑
Stalls count outward from the rail. On a tight track with an early turn, low numbers save ground and high numbers have to work across; on a long straight it matters much less. Australia calls this the barrier, Britain the draw. The saddle-cloth colours are the North American convention, which is what the post chips on this site use.

Glossary

The words on the site, and their regional synonyms, on a page of their own.

78 terms in 6 groups: the card, kinds of race, reading an entry, form figures, distances and surfaces, watching.

Open the glossary

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