It’s tipping down (how apt, for racing), it’s raining cats and dogs.

Your carefully thought out racing selections from yesterday evening have all been declared non-runners or you are unsure if they perform on the ever-worsening ground conditions.   What to do?

If ground really is that important to your selection process, use Smartform to program current and historic going as a variable with different numeric levels, however you feel it’s appropriate, for example:

1 = Hard

2 = Firm

3 = Good to Firm

and so on….

If you think that’s a little inflexible, widen your categories to be more forgiving of previously inaccurate going descriptions, so category 1 = Hard, Firm, and Good to Firm.  Category 2 can cover Good, Good to Soft and so on – right down to Heavy.

Keep your selections (or add the new going condition to your selection model), and run them against their previous historic performances on the prevailing going in Smartform.  For sure, you’re going to have to write a small program to do this (or get us to do it for you), but it’s not so hard.  There are a large number of methods you can use to evaluate performance on different types of going, but let’s say that any selection must have recorded a previous Smartform handicap rating on today’s prevailing going within N% of its best ever rating, in order to remain a selection.  As ground conditions continues to worsen, you may find today that you are running everything for a condition of Heavy going – but it is August in Britain, what do you expect?  😉