The developers of a racehorse-ratings program seeking to streamline racing-office operations, boost field size, and simplify past-performance information hope to launch a pilot project for the program early next year, officials behind the effort have said. The development of the ratings program, which is designed to be similar to systems already in use to fill races in most major racing jurisdictions around the world, received an official green light from the board of Equibase last Friday. Over the next six months, Equibase, working with outside companies, hopes to develop a fully automated process that will assign a two- or three-digit rating to racehorses across the country reflecting their estimated level of ability. Under the system, racing offices would be able to write races that would be open to horses within a specified range of ratings, such as “those horses rated 60-80.” Horses within that range would be eligible to run in the race regardless of the horse’s number of wins, amount of money won, or a claiming price – the standard conditions at racetracks across the U.S. In such races, maidens could theoretically compete against horses with 20 lifetime wins, as long as they both had ratings fitting within the race’s range. Officials involved in the effort stressed that the development of the system would take six months to be ready for a limited pilot project, which would be implemented only after discussions with horsemen and breeders to ensure that everyone understood the goals of the project. Even after obtaining those approvals, the races written for rated horses would be extremely limited, the developers have said. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. “We’re trying to make sure we’re having all the conversations with the various constituents,” said Kyle McDoniel, the president of Equibase, which is owned by a consortium of tracks in partnership with The Jockey Club. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in the meantime to make sure we get this right.” While the possibility of developing a rating system for U.S. horses has been discussed for a decade, the effort has gained much deeper traction recently due to increasing frustration among racing office personnel, trainers, and horseplayers over the glut of conditions being attached to races. (As an example, an Aug. 4 race at Gulfstream Park had the following conditions: for 3-year-olds and upwards which have never won $12,000 twice other than maiden, claiming, starter, or restricted; or which have never won three races; or which have not won a race since Feb. 4, 2024; or claiming price of $62,500.) Critics say the flood of conditions attached to races are adding confusion to an already complex system for measuring eligibility for races, and that the array of conditions for some races are contributing to a growing number of races that go unfilled. That, in turn, disrupts training schedules and racing-office operations, frustrating horsemen, racetracks, and, ultimately, bettors. Equibase has the data to back up assertions that racing offices are increasingly becoming inefficient at putting together race cards, citing the growth in races written as “extras” to the condition book. Extra races are those that the racing office adds to overnight sheets when races in the condition book are not filling. In 2004, according to Equibase data, when foal crops were much larger, racing offices wrote 59,694 races in condition books, and 35,104 of those were drawn, or 58.8 percent of the total. That same year, racing offices wrote 23,582 extra races, and 8,454 were drawn, or 35.8 percent. Over the next two decades, the percentage of races in the condition book that ended up being drawn steadily dropped, while the number of extra races that were both written and drawn soared. In 2023, even though the foal crop and number of races dropped dramatically compared to 2004, racing offices wrote virtually the same number of races in their condition books: 59,884. But they also wrote 35,280 extra races, up 49.6 percent compared to 2004. At the same time, the percentage of races in the condition book that were drawn dropped from 58.8 percent to 42.5 percent. The fill rate for the extra races dropped from 35.8 percent to 33.4 percent. In short, racing offices are writing a much larger number of races to accommodate a much smaller racehorse population, with worse results. In 2023, 39.1 percent of all races filled, well below the fill rate of 52.3 percent in 2004 – when racing offices offered 14.2 percent fewer races than in 2023. Over that same time frame, according to data from The Jockey Club, the average field size has shed nearly an entire horse, dropping from 8.28 in 2004 to 7.40 in 2023. Supporters of the ratings say that the system would potentially lead to fewer races being written and that those races would generally attract larger fields, since they are not so tightly restricted. “We need to streamline the number of races offered and take some of the choice out of it,” said Rick Hammerle, the longtime racing official who is part of the effort to develop the system, after years of advocating for it. “If there’s one spot to run, that’s where you run. If we can get a horse to run one more time during the year, and if we can get one more horse per race, that’s all we’re looking for. We’re not looking to change the world.” Moreover, horseplayers would no longer have to sift through a maze of often hard-to-find information to determine which condition a horse met to be eligible for the race, which is often a critical part of determining the class of the horse. “Let’s face it,” Hammerle said. “There’s a lot of things going on right now that the bettors are not happy about it. If we can increase field sizes and make racing more competitive, that’s as important as anything we are going to do with this system.” Horsemen, who are somewhat wary of the new system, acknowledge that field sizes need to increase. “We know that sweet spot of between 8-10 horses per race is where horseplayers want us to be,” said Eric Hamelback, the chief executive officer of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, at a recent conference of the organization. Horsemen reluctance The development of the system is not yet being greeted with open arms by many horsemen, in part because most U.S. horsemen are familiar and comfortable with claiming races, which form the backbone of the U.S. racing product. While supporters of the ratings system contend that the ratings system will not fully replace claiming races, the system, if fully implemented, would obviously lead to significant attrition in the number of claiming races offered. Claiming races were developed to ensure competitive races by requiring horsemen to select a price at which they could potentially lose a horse. Most U.S. horsemen believe the system works well, and many trainers take pride in being able to develop a bargain-basement claim into a good earner. The majority of races in the U.S. are claiming races, yet they exist only sparingly in other major racing jurisdictions, if at all. Hamelback said that horsemen are generally “cautiously optimistic” about the ratings system, but he insisted that most horsemen would be wholly opposed to the elimination of the claiming system. “They don’t want to pursue something that takes us to the European-style system, which means claiming races are done,” Hamelback said. “We appreciate any innovation that can help increase field size, that can possibly help extend or gain ownership opportunities, but it would not, in our opinion, be in the best interests of the industry to substitute these races for claiming races in an effort to get rid of them.” Even so, Hamelback said he understood the need to address the current system of writing races. “We’ve got to stop writing races that are non-winners of two unless you are a chestnut breaking from the three-hole on a Wednesday,” Hamelback said. “They’re just so restrictive, to the point that they are written, obviously, for a single person, and as a result you get five horses.” While both Hammerle and McDoniel were adamant that claiming races would remain a major element of U.S. racing even if the ratings system were widely embraced, they also contended that many owners would welcome options that wouldn’t risk losing their horse to another owner. Hammerle said many owners have told him that a ratings system would be especially useful for racemares who are approaching their retirement to the breeding shed. “Sometimes they have a mare in June or July they can’t breed yet, but they can’t run for a tag because they don’t want to lose them, and yet they aren’t good enough for a stakes,” Hammerle said. “They could be rated a 90 and continue to race until they go to the breeding shed.” “We certainly see this as a complement to claiming races,” McDoniel said. “We feel that owners who have made a big investment in a horse and who may not want to run in a claiming race, it gives them another option.” There’s also the question of why horsemen should support a program that leads to larger fields, despite racetracks and horseplayers clamoring for bigger field sizes. Larger fields mean more competition for the available purse. More competition means potentially missing out on a share of the purse more often. Hammerle said that the ratings system would reduce the number of times horsemen enter a claiming race only to find out that their horse is overmatched by a horse dropping into the race from a much higher price level. “It doesn’t matter what the purse is and it doesn’t matter what the field size is if your horse isn’t going to be competitive,” Hammerle said. “This is going to make the races more attractive because you are not going to be afraid of running in a larger field because your horse is going to fit better in that field. Think of all the times where horsemen are saying, ‘Great, look at this, he’s dropping from [$25,000 claiming to $10,000 claiming] and I’ve got no shot.’” Ratings algorithm To generate the ratings, the algorithm will be fed past-performance data on individual horses, with a particular focus on the comparisons between horses that raced against each other. The ultimate outcome of all the data crunching will be a single number that ideally represents a ranking of the horse’s current ability. Obviously, horseplayers and horsemen are familiar with a wide variety of figures produced by handicapping systems that attempt to assign a numerical value to a horse’s performance in a single race. The ratings algorithm being developed by Equibase will likely need a minimum of three starts from a single horse to generate a figure, and, in contrast to a handicapping figure, it will reflect the horse’s body of work over its career, rather than a single performance. Any subsequent racing performance by a horse will influence its rating. “You’ll pick up points for winning, you’ll lose a few points for losing, depending on the performance,” Hammerle said. The algorithm that generates the rating will be public, McDoniel and Hammerle said, and Equibase expects to put together a quality-control panel to evaluate the ratings when the system has analyzed enough data to produce figures for a large number of individual horses. In addition, the ratings will be offered to racetracks free-of-charge, without any strings attached, and without any official stamp-of-approval from Equibase or its developers. “Participation is going to be completely optional,” McDoniel said. “It will be up to racing secretaries whether and how they want to incorporate the ratings into their programs.” The end goal is to ensure that the ratings can be applied across horses running on different circuits and at different levels, so that the conditions for races for rated horses bring together horses of similar ability. “A 50 rating might be a $10,000 claimer in New York, but it might be a $25,000 claimer at Prairie Meadows,” Hammerle said. “But if someone writes a race with a 50 rating, and I have a 50 horse, I should know that I can put my horse in there and it will be a competitive bunch.” While officials would not comment on where a pilot project might be applied, the algorithm would initially be best applied to a group of horses that have raced against each other often and who are likely to continue to do so. The horses that best fit that description are those that race in statebred programs, and the statebred program that probably best serves the purposes of a pilot program is in New York. McDoniel and Hammerle both said that a handful of racetracks have already indicated a willingness to participate in the pilot program. While the algorithm is fine-tuned, Equibase expects to continue conversations with horsemen’s organizations to lay the foundations for putting one or more pilot programs in place, probably in the “first quarter” of next year, McDoniel said. “We feel it will certainly take some time to have all the conversations with everyone we need to, while we’re still putting a development plan together,” McDoniel said. “It’s way more about doing it right rather than doing it fast. At the same time, it’s good to have a target.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.