Official ratings and mark moves
A horse's official rating is the mark it runs off in handicaps. We show its current mark by code, how the handicapper has just moved it, and how that mark has changed over its career.
Every horse in a handicap runs off an Official Rating (OR), its mark. The handicapper adjusts that mark after its races, up for a good run, down for a string of poor ones, and that movement is one of the clearest signals in the form book. We surface it in three places.
The mark, by code
Marks are always kept code for code, because Flat, All-Weather, hurdles and chases are separate handicap ladders. So a horse can hold a different mark in each, shown as FLT, AWT, HDL or CHS.
The latest move
On a horse's history page the title shows the current mark and the handicapper's most recent move, for example (FLT: +1 to 127), meaning it has just been raised one pound to 127. You'll see:
- A positive move (+5), the handicapper has raised it after a win or a good run.
- A negative move (-3), it has been dropped.
- +0, the handicapper looked at its latest run and left the mark alone, deliberately shown so you know it was assessed, not simply unchanged by default.
The mark history
The OR column on the history page shows the mark the horse actually ran off in each past race. Read down the column and you can see the whole trajectory, a mark climbing race by race as a horse improves and wins, or easing back down when it's out of form.
The Horse Database shows the same thing across many horses at once: its OR column carries the current mark and any recent move in brackets, next to Rated LTO, the mark the horse carried last time out. And on the racecards themselves you'll find the OR and LWOR columns, defined in the ratings columns reference and put to work in the Last Winning Mark card.
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