One horse racing handicapping factor that is often overlooked is a horse’s workouts. Workouts or “works,” as they are often called, refers to timed runs on the race track. Works are almost exclusively performed in the morning and professional clockers time the horses and identify them. The purpose of these exercises is to condition the horse and sometimes trainers use them to determine the fitness of a horse.
Bullet works refers to the fastest workout of the day at the distance. The distance of workouts may vary from three furlongs to over a mile, though they usually are for three to five furlongs. Horses sometimes start their workout from the gate or work in company (with other horses). Clockers also sometimes make comments that give a little more information to the handicappers who use those comments and workout information to evaluate the horses.
In spite of the importance and wealth of information about the horses many handicappers don’t trust workouts as a tool or simply don’t know how to use them. The best way to get the most from workouts is to consider them along with other factors to arrive at a conclusion about fitness and what the trainer’s next move may be. For example, let’s say that you notice that a horse just had a very fast three furlong workout after several disappointing races. In today’s race there is a note that the trainer is adding blinkers to the horse. Since you didn’t see the workout you don’t know for sure, but you suspect that the trainer put the blinkers on for that workout and it did indeed make a difference in the horse’s speed.
Other handicappers will see that the horse will wear blinkers for the first time, but those who don’t pay attention to workout times may miss the connection between the fast workout and the addition of blinkers which often help a horse to focus on running and result in a better improvement. While they try to quantify the result of the blinkers you will already have a pretty good idea of what they will do for the horse’s performance. Therefore, you may rate the horse higher in your calculations and accept a lower price on the odds board. While they steer clear of the horse you accept lower odds and the horse wins.
They missed a winner that you managed to cash on simply because they couldn’t interpret the effect of the equipment change. That’s only one example and there are many more ways to use workouts along with other factors to handicap a horse race.
