What Does RPR Mean In Horse Racing?
Horseracing can be a confusing world of jargon and vocabulary that most of us wouldn’t understand at first.
It’s such an old and storied tradition that knowing the ins and outs of it can seem esoteric and confusing.
While watching some British horseracing on TV with my son the other day, he heard one of the announcers talking about the RPR of the horse that had won.
He didn’t know what it meant, so I thought I’d help us all understand it better.
What does RPR mean in horse racing?
RPR stands for Racing Post Rating. This is a rating that horses are given by a handicapper of a particular newspaper, the Racing Post. This is essential a ranking guide to help bettors evaluate their choice of bets and make an informed decision. It is different from the OR, or the Official Rating.
Horses are evaluated and given a fresh rating after each race—in British horseracing, they are given an official rating by the BHA.
The RPR is almost an unofficial rating system to help punters choose horses to follow and bet on.
Let’s look at this in more detail.
How does RPR work in horse racing?
The Racing Post employs their own handicapper, and their job is to assign ratings to each and every horse competing in major races in the country.
This handicapper will evaluate each horse after each race, and will adjust their ratings based on their performance and on the day’s weights.
Horse ratings of any kind work in fundamentally the same way.
After each race, a horse’s performance is evaluated, and if they do well or better than their last performance, their rating will go up.
If they do not do as well, their rating will go down.
The RPR is a very up-to-date view of this, and, as I said, after every race the rating will be adjusted, as well as based on the day’s weights.
So, how is a horse’s RPR different from its OR, or its official rating?
How is RPR different from OR?
The fundamental difference is just in the authority of the body assigning it.
Every horse is given an OR by the BHA, which is the officially regulator for British horseracing.
This rating is what determines its eligibility in certain races, and what weights it will have to wear, or handicap, it will have during a race.
The Racing Post and their RPR, on the other hand, are not an official regulator.
They are intended for people who watch the races and make bets on them.
They don’t play any part in that horse’s official standing, and you would only see their RPR if you looked in the Racing Post’s listings.
As I said, the OR is really important for the administration side of horse racing, so having a standardized system is really important, not just for bettors but for jockeys and owners too.
The RPR is more intended as a layman’s system for having a basic idea of a professional handicapper’s opinion of a particular horse.
What does best RPR mean?
The thing about RPR is that it does measure several things, and so often people ask about the ‘best RPR’.
The fact is that there simply isn’t ever really a ‘best’ horse as far as the ratings go, and this is for a few reasons.
For one thing, different horses do well in different conditions.
Also, weights are placed on each horse to attempt to get them on a level playing field.
‘Best’ RPR may indicate that horse is best in a certain category, but not overall.
Having a wider array of ratings helps you to make a better decision about how to bet on horse racing.
The BHA is great and does its job very well, but those ratings are as much for everyone as they are for you—they’re for the jockeys, the racing administration, spectators, everyone.
The RPR is aimed much more at those who bet on the races, and are interested in following the careers of particular horses, while still being an official handicapper.