For all racing in Britain and Ireland, Timeform receives the official result of the race on its database about half an hour after the event. Sometimes the handicappers will work immediately from these results, but usually handicapping will take place on the next working day, when reports, timefigures and other details are fully available.

A computerised assessment of the 'difference at the weights' is made, based on the distance of the race, the time the race takes to be run, the weight carried by the participants and their age, the margins separating the runners and a few other factors. The poundage allowance for margin beaten will vary according to the distance of the race as well as the time the race takes to be run. A five-furlong race run in a fast time (e.g. 55 secs or less) will result in a poundage allowance of over 4 per length. For two mile races on the Flat the allowance will usually be only a little over 1.0, while a race like the Grand National, run over four and a half miles and jumps, will result in an allowance significantly less than 1.0.

Effectively all of these various factors establish, in terms of pounds, how much better or worse a horse's performance is than others' in the race. The handicapper's job thereafter is to establish the level of this form in the context of a universal handicap, theoretically including all horses that have run or will ever run.

The handicapper will also review his past assessments of form and individual horses in the light of all new results and information that comes his way. This is a continuous process, and as a result Timeform ratings for individual horses may alter even when the horse concerned hasn't actually run recently but the form of other horses it ties in with looks stronger or weaker than previously. A horse's overall Timeform rating is a measure of the form we consider the horse is currently capable of showing under its optimum conditions (to which reference can be found in its Timeform commentary) and therefore it must be under continuous review. This is all done in order to give the Timeform customer the most up-to-date assessment possible.

There are basically two extremes of types of races for the handicapper to assess -- those in which he knows nothing about the horses beforehand, and those in which he knows a great deal. Handicapping the former might seem an impossible task, but it's not. For a start, we don't really know "nothing" about the horses at all. We will know who trains the individual horses, what the horses' pedigrees are and, in most cases, what level of form the race usually produces. We also have the time the race took to be run compared to other races on the card. All of these facts, and some others, can be expressed statistically (indeed, much guidance on these issues is derived from our own Statistical Review) and used as the basis for any initial figures. As a result, a relatively accurate post-race assessment can usually be made, rather than a stab in the dark.

By their nature, however, these ratings tend to be a starting point and are more fluid than those for races involving fully exposed horses. When dealing with the latter, the handicapper has a wealth of information, form lines and opinion on which to base his assessments. Nonetheless, a few rules of thumb still apply. For instance, all other things being equal, winners of handicaps demonstrate empirically by virtue of having actually won that they were better than the handicap mark off which they were asked to race. There are, of course, exceptions -- weak form, uncompetitive races, lucky winners, races in which most of the horses were out of the handicap, and so on -- but exceptions are exactly what they are. A horse winning off a mark of, say, 100 is usually showing that it is better, to some degree or other, than a 100 horse. Often this applies to an extent to other horses who finish close up, too. That doesn't mean, however, that horses further back automatically have their ratings reduced. As all punters know, there can be many reasons for a horse to be excusably below form. This is an area where the expertise of our handicappers, as well as that of our reporters and comment writers, really comes to the fore. However, some 'pulling down' of horses' ratings is necessary in general to offset the raising of those horses which have run well.

In Britain, Timeform ratings and those published by the British Horseracing Board (which determine the weights actually carried) are not necessarily on the same level, let alone the same for individual horses. This has come about in part as a result of the two organisations having come into existence at different times. Timeform ratings had been around for nearly fifty years by the time the BHB was established in 1993. Great care has always been taken to keep the level of Timeform ratings consistent from one season to the next (once due allowance has been made for certain hidden factors), so that comparisons can meaningfully be made between different generations also. That has helped to earn Timeform ratings a long-held reputation as the definitive expression of a horse's merit historically and throughout the world.

Precisely what figures the Timeform handicapper puts on a race is a matter of judgement, but factors already referred to will usually lead to acceptable parameters for any assessment. The handicapper will use his experience and expertise to make this assessment as accurate as possible given the information available, but he'll also be assisted greatly in this by the remarks of Timeform's reporters -- a report of some length is compiled on all but a few races in Britain every year as a matter of course, as well as all the chief races abroad -- timefigures and so on. In addition, all reports and ratings come under further scrutiny at daily Editorial meetings before they are made available to our customers. Where individual horses are concerned, the handicapper is allowed sizeable scope for fine-tuning ratings to reflect factors such as unlucky losers, badly drawn horses, particularly appropriate or inappropriate conditions, horses winning with plenty to spare, and so on. All of this, we hope, makes for a better product for our customers.