Last Year's Winner on the race card

Many races now show a Last Year's Winner block: the horse that took the same race a year ago, with its price, connections and our RTR Rank, for Premium and Pro members.

Course and race form matters, and few pointers are sharper than the horse that won the very same race a year ago. RatingTheRaces now surfaces it right on the race card for Premium and Pro members.

Last Year's Winner

Below the race header you'll find a Last Year's Winner block on races we have a match for. It shows the horse that won this race last year, with its starting price, exchange price (XSP), trainer, jockey and sire, and our RTR Rank for it that day. The horse's name links straight through to that race in our ratings history, so you can study the full form of the race it won.

The feature is in beta, so you'll see a "beta testing" label on the block while we expand and refine it. Not every race has one: coverage is strongest on the big festival and feature meetings, so if a card shows "no corresponding race", we simply don't have a confirmed match for it yet.

Show it and highlight repeat runners

Two options in the settings menu (the gear at the top of the ratings) control it:

• Show Last Year's Winner turns the block on or off.
• Highlight Last Year's Winners picks out any of today's runners, or their trainer, jockey or sire, who feature in last year's result, shading those cells gold so a course-and-race specialist jumps off the page.

How to read it

A horse back to defend its crown, especially from the same yard, is exactly the kind of angle the raw ratings can miss. With Highlight Last Year's Winners on, any such runner is shaded gold in the grid; cross-check it against its RTR Rank and figures for today, because proven course-and-race form on top of a strong rating is a powerful combination.

And because the winner links into our history, you can open the race it won and see exactly what it beat, and how it was rated then against how it rates now.