What Does OR Mean In Horse Racing?

I was out at the races with a friend of mine who’s a bit of a novice recently.

As he expected, he found a lot of it a bit overwhelming.

There is a great deal of information to take in and it’s hard to learn it all except by experience, but one thing he did ask me about that was pretty fundamental was the term ‘OR’.

He asked me what it stood for and what it meant.

I decided to collate everything I knew here, as well.

What does OR mean in horse racing?

OR stands for Official Ratings. These are one of many statistics which you’ll find on a racecard, and they are updated every week based on the horse’s recent performance. The higher the horse is rated, the higher the OR will be. Ratings are important for a lot of different things when it comes to horse racing and betting.

So, OR is quite a simple concept for you to understand.

You don’t necessarily need to understand every detail of why a horse is rated a certain way—just what it means for your bet and your odds of winning.

Let’s take a closer look.

What does official ratings mean?

When we talk about a horse’s OR, we are typically talking about a system in British horseracing.

For flat and national hunt races, the British Horseracing Authority must evaluate every horse that is competing and assign a rating to it.

The rating will rise and fall, depending on if the horse wins or loses.

Horses almost always have a rating to start with, since they will have competed in other races.

It must simply be updated for the new race.

The official rating, above all, determines the odds a horse will have in a given race.

If a horse is on a streak of wins, its official rating will be higher, and the odds shorter.

If it’s on a winning streak, then the assumption is that it’s more likely to win than others.

So, horses that have a higher rating have a better chance of winning, but the return for wagers will be quite low.

Individual races are generally set their own rating, in order that horses of similar ability can compete with one another.

Thus, a horse’s rating can also sometimes determine whether or not it qualifies for a particular race.

So, how exactly are these ratings decided on?

How are horses rated?

The primary method for rating horses is their recent wins and losses.

If they’ve been winning a lot, their rating is raised, and raised eventually to the point where it qualifies for races against tougher opponents.

Eventually, its ability will plateau, and it will find its peak among horses of a similar ability.

Likewise, if they lose, they will be demoted.

Most ordinary horse races are what’s known as handicap races.

This means that horses are assigned extra weight to carry based on their ability or rating.

Horses within a race are somewhat standardised and grouped in terms of ability, but it’s very difficult to do this exactly.

Ratings also determine how much weight a horse will carry, then.

So, a horse’s overall riding weight, including the weight of the jockey, is also taken into account for its official rating within a particular race.

Ultimately, the thing to remember is that horses aren’t put through any kind of test or evaluation for their rating; it’s simply determined by their streak of wins and losses, so keep that in mind when placing bets.

Horses have to be rated, then, for a lot of reasons.

Fundamentally, there needs to be a standardized way of placing horses in rankings, for the purposes of odds.

Knowing a given horse’s perceived chances of winning is, obviously, the central aspect of betting on horse racing.

Official ratings are based on a few different things, but since you’re just a punter and not a judge, you don’t need to worry about why a horse is rated a certain way—just how it affects your bet.