Q: What do
Workout Form Patterns mean?
A:
Workout Form Patterns Documentation (also see discussion -->
HERE)
FPD - Furlongs Per Day. When there are 2 or more workouts since the last race, and within the past 30 days: count the furlongs worked including the distance of today's race and divide by days since the last race. 1 furlong per day = FPD, less is -FPD, more is +FPD. We're trying to get a coarse idea of how much public work the horse has been doing to return to racing. You can only put so much value in this info - this does not tell us how much private work the horse has done, the frequency, the speed, the pressure during (e.g. working in company, working inside/outside other horses, etc), the distance, etc. Consult other Workout Patterns for some of these.
5f / 6f - 5 or 6 Furlong Workout. The last workout within 9 days of today's race was either 5 or 6 furlongs, an important endurance distance associated with at least a certain degree of fitness, especially if combined with a good Speed Rating and coming at the end of an evenly spaced series of works (see HWL group). If the last work was within 6 days = +5f or +6f. Consider referring to William Scott's excellent book '
How Will Your Horse Run Today', some of which is now rather outdated, but including his treatise on the 5f workout, beginning on Page 42.
SRW - a Short Recent Work between 2f - 4f within 3 to 5 days of today's race
SW - Super Workout. Depending on distance and recency, a designation for the LAST workout within the past 14 days, run faster than a certain time for each distance.
GW - Gate Workout. Within the past 8 days, a workout from the Gate. Extra credit for more recent gate workouts (* ! + modifiers)
HWL1 - Heavy Workload 1. 3 or more workouts within the last 21 days. +HWL1 for 4 works in 20 days or 3 works in 16 days. -HWL1 for 3 works in 21 days
SAR - Heavy Workload 2. Between 4 and 7 workouts since the last race at *regularly* spaced intervals. Extra credit for more workouts.
SCW - Special Condition Workouts. SCW1 - Comparing workout immediately prior to the last race within 60 days to workout immediately following that last race - the latter workout is faster and may indicate that the last race did not adversely affect the horse.
SCW2 - Comparing workouts immediately preceding and following the last 2 races with an out of the money finish (worse than 3rd), the later workout should be faster, perhaps indicating that the previous 2 races also did not adversely affect the horse's condition and it may be ready to offer at least as good an effort today.
SCW3 - the horse had 1 or more 6f or longer works since the last race (within 21 days) and finished in the money (3rd or better) in its last race.
SWG - Special Work Group. Denotes that 2 or more significant patterns were observed, consisting of: FPD, 5f or 6f workout, SRW, HWL1, SAR.
PIW - Progressively Improving Workouts. Comparing the past 3 workouts within 75 days (preferably shorter), each next workout should be run at increasing average speed.
TCW - Turf Course Work. For a horse's first Turf race, its last workout is on Turf.
Adjunct to Workout Patterns themselves are the Workout Rank and the Workout Speed Rating.
WR - Work Rank. A computation based on the average percentile of a horse's workout rank for all workouts in a day (when at least 5 workouts recorded that day), plus furlongs worked and raced - over the past 30 days. A measure of its fitness.
SR - Speed Rating. A rating of workout time, based on a parallel time chart equating times for different workout distances. Speed Ratings of 92+ may indicate the horse is extremely fit and sharp, especially if the workout distance is 5f or longer.
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