The weight carried hover

Weight is at the heart of a handicap. We show it on the horse's name, and hovering goes well beyond a single figure, giving you the horse's record carrying similar weights.

The weight a horse carries is one of the biggest levers on its chance, so we don't just print a number and leave it there. Hover a horse's name and you get its record carrying weights like today's, in context.

Assigned and carried

The weight beside the horse's name is the weight it's been allocated. That isn't always what it carries: when a claiming jockey rides, they claim a weight allowance, so the horse actually carries less than allocated. In that case the card shows both, the allocated weight with the carried weight in brackets, for example 10st 5lb (9st 12lb). Everything beyond that, including the record in the hover, is measured on what was actually carried, after any claim.

The record behind it

Hover the name and you'll see how the horse has performed carrying similar weights, grouped into 7lb bands. It's split into two tables:

• In handicaps: where the weight is the handicapper's opinion of the horse.
• Other races: maidens and conditions races, where the weight is set by age, sex and penalties rather than merit.

We keep them apart deliberately, because weight means two completely different things in those races. Blend them and a horse can look like it failed under a weight it was simply allotted.

"In the weights", the bit that matters

Each row also shows where in the weights the horse sat in those runs, top weight, a few pounds off, or well down the handicap. That's the important context: a raw strike rate at a big weight flatters a horse, because carrying a big weight usually means it was well in against weaker rivals. So read the two columns together rather than trusting the strike rate on its own.

On a horse's history too

Every horse's history page also carries a Wgt column next to its official rating, and each row's record is shown as it stood at that run, so you can follow how it has coped with weight right through its career.