Well Handicapped National Hunt Horses for 2026/27

Every jumps season throws up races that turn out to be far stronger than they looked on the day. A handicap won off 128 where the horses behind the winner are now rated 135, 135 and 137. Anything that finished close up in a race like that ran better than the result said at the time, and some of those horses are still running off marks that do not reflect it.

We went looking for them. We took every hurdle and chase handicap run in Britain and Ireland between 1 October 2025 and 30 April 2026, 2,103 races, and asked one question of each: what are the horses in it rated now?

The answer is a list of 30 horses whose form has been franked by the handicapper, just not on them.

How we found them

1. Pick the yardsticks. For each horse we looked at every rival that finished within 6 lengths of it, either side. A rival only counts if the handicapper has looked at it again since: it has run again in that code, or it has been reassessed.
2. Read the race on today's marks. Each yardstick's mark now, adjusted for the weight and the lengths between the 2 horses that day, tells us what our horse ran to on today's figures. We took the middle reading, so one runaway improver cannot make a race on its own.
3. Only count races that have been franked. The yardsticks' marks had to have gone up by at least 4lb on the median, and we needed at least 3 of them.
4. Compare like with like. Hurdle form is measured against the horse's hurdle mark now, chase form against its chase mark.
5. Leave out the collapsed marks. Horses whose own mark has dropped a long way were set aside. That is a different angle, old form and a lower mark but a reason it fell, and they would have swamped the list.

None of this is a guarantee. Some of those rivals improved after the race, so the figures are a ceiling rather than a promise, and a horse that has had several chances since and not taken them gets marked down in the write-up. Where we think a horse has already been found out, we say so.

How to read the screenshots

Every horse comes with 2 pictures from its horse history page on RatingTheRaces.

The ORC +/- hover. ORC is Official Rating Change. Hover the ORC +/- figure on any run in a horse's history and you get every runner in that race, the mark it ran off, its mark now, and the difference. A big green total means the race has been franked. The horse whose page you are on is highlighted.

The history table. Underneath each write-up is the horse's history, from its latest run down to the key race, which is outlined in green, so you can see what it has done since. OR is the mark it ran off, Beaten is lengths behind the winner, and Beaten By / Beating names the winner, or the horse it beat if it won.

The worked example: Mambonumberfive

Here is the one we would show anybody who wanted to know what this piece is. It is also, as you will see, not a horse we are telling you to back.

1. Mambonumberfive

Ben Pauling · 5 year old gelding · Chase 146

If you want one race that shows what this piece is about, it's the 2m handicap chase at Newbury on 28 November. Mambonumberfive won it off 133 by 2 lengths. Second was Mighty Bandit, now rated 151, up 24lb. Third was Secret Des Dieux, now 142, up 21lb. Fourth was Bluey, who has won twice since. The field is up 64lb in total.

He followed up at Kempton on 27 December off 140 and is now on 146. Our figure for the Newbury race puts him at around 158 on today's marks.

The catch: He's no secret any more. He has run twice off 146 and been 3rd both times, beaten 27 lengths at Warwick and 10 1/4 lengths at Aintree. 146 may be about right for him in big field handicaps. He's here because his form is the strongest on the list, not because he's a bet at any price.

That is the method, start to finish: a race that looked ordinary, a field that has gone up 64lb since, and an honest reason why the horse at the top of it is not the bet.

The full list of 30, with every write-up and every screenshot, is below for Premium and Pro members.