HC1: the handicap debut badge

A horse's first run in a handicap is its first off an official mark, and some yards are far better than others at getting one ready. HC1 flags every one of them.

The first time a horse runs in a handicap, it finally has an official mark to run off, and nobody yet knows whether that mark is generous. A teal HC1 pill beside the horse's name marks every one of those runners.

What counts as a handicap debut

HC1 means the horse's first ever run in a handicap on today's code. Codes are kept apart the way the handicapper keeps them apart:

• Flat covers turf Flat and All-Weather together.
• Jumps covers hurdles, chases and National Hunt Flat.

So a horse that ran in Flat handicaps all summer and now lines up for its first handicap hurdle still gets the badge, because over jumps it genuinely is a handicap debutant.

Hover for the trainer's record

The badge on its own only tells you the situation. Hover it and you get the number that matters: how this trainer does with handicap debutants, measured against the same yard's other handicappers. That comparison is the point. A big yard wins plenty of handicaps, so its raw debut record means little; what you want to know is whether its debutants run better or worse than its usual handicap runners. The card also shows the yard's record with handicap debutants at today's course, as context rather than a headline.

A fourth line gives the baseline: how all trainers' handicap debutants have done, so you can see whether this yard is ahead of the game or merely average. Figures are since 2015, to level stakes at the Exchange SP, and the A/E is only coloured when the sample is big enough to mean anything.

We tested a stack of candidate angles against years of results before building this one, and the trainer-versus-their-own-handicappers comparison was the one that held up.