How Do You Price a Horse Off Ratings and Weight?

Recorded October 2025 for My $1,000,000 Melbourne Cup Bet. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

When I look at a staying race, I start with a horse's best rating and then I put it next to the weight it has to carry. Those two things have to be married up. A high rating on a big weight and a slightly lower rating on a light weight can end up much closer than the market suggests. That is the whole exercise. Work out what the gap should be once the weights are in, then compare it to what you are being offered.

Marrying the rating to the weight

Take a race where the top rated horse has a peak of one twenty one and is carrying fifty nine kilos. Then take a three year old whose peak is one fourteen, carrying fifty two. On raw ratings there are seven points between them. But there are also seven kilos between them. Once you convert the rating gap into lengths, and the lengths into kilos, there is not a lot left in it. There would be a bit between them, but not much.

So when the top rated horse is six or seven dollars and the lightly weighted three year old is twenty six, the market is not reflecting that. I am not saying the three year old is the winner. I am saying he is entitled to be shorter than he is. That is a different claim, and it is the one worth making.

The Rekindling and Cross Counter profile

The profile is familiar. A three year old comes over, gets in with no weight, and runs a big race in a staying feature. Rekindling and Cross Counter are the ones everyone remembers. Rekindling was rated higher than this horse, around one seventeen or one eighteen, so you are not comparing like with like. You are also never getting the price you got about Rekindling again with that sort of weight.

The rating itself is partly a product of where it was earned. The St Leger is a real Group One, a genuinely hard race to win. That lifts a horse's number in a way a Group Two or Three does not. So some of the rating is class of race rather than pure ability on the day. You have to hold both thoughts at once.

Over the odds is not the same as a winner

I watch the horse and he does not do it for me. The acceleration is not there. The breathing, the eye, none of it grabs me. There are two others in the race on fifty one and a half and fifty one, and the way they are going I cannot see this horse beating them home at the weights.

So I am not having it to win. If he were ten or twelve to one, I would say he is too short and move on. At twenty six, he goes on the short list purely because of the price. It would not surprise me if he ran a big race. I just could not put my money on him to win.

That is the use for a horse like this. He goes into the first four, not the win bet. Price and probability are two separate questions, and getting them confused is how people end up backing horses they do not actually fancy.

Every race on the card, rated, with Kingsley's selections and the speed maps behind them. Your first day is free, no card needed.

More from Kingsley

• How to Spot Patterns in a Horse's Form
• "Should You Back a Horse That Got All the Favours Last Start?"
• Why On-Pace Imports Struggle in Australian Races

From the full video: My $1,000,000 Melbourne Cup Bet

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