Hi

I am new to this group and really enjoy the discussions of like minded punters. I have two initial questions.

Firstly, where can I purchase a database with suitable data for analysing my ideas? A year's result would suit me provided the data is accurate and readily usable in ACCESS.

Secondly, has anyone an effective way to rate a horse's fitness? I believe that this is a key factor and if a horse is fit and ready to win a trainer will ensure that it is entered in a suitable race.

I would appreciate any advice on these.

John

Hi Gunny, no idea about the data base.

Fitness is a hard thing to judge, quite a few people will tell you the horse must have raced in the last 21 to 28 days or something like that but unless they can give you the percentage of winners to runners either side of X amount of days all they are really saying is that the large majority of horses have raced within that time frame so of course most of the winners will have raced in that same time frame.

Personally i'd stick to horses that have won one of their last 3 starts this side of a spell,surprisingly a lot of decent priced winners have that requirment and at least you know you are backing in form fit horses.

Hi Gunny,

What your after is not cheap and considering you are asking questions about race fitness, you know as much about horse racing as I do ...************ all after thirty years at it [ for the first five years I thought I knew a lot, but now my kids are the experts].

The best thing you could probably do before spending money on software is to throw your ideas on this forum. Don't worry, unless you have invented a new wheel, they will have been done to death here before many times over. At least you can then use that info for future efforts [I'm not trying to be harsh here but punting MONEY is serious business and can be fun or a life wrecker].

Horses take longer to reach race fitness as they get older just like us. Useualy for the young [ up to 3/4yrs.] is three races and for older horses up to 5 races. They stay fit for up to about 7/8 races and then taper off until at most 10 races. These are all generalities of course but are a useful guide.

Cheers.

Good advice but i did just that and as of this moment there has been 173 veiws and the only person who replied was Gunny 72,fair enough i'm new here but from where i sit there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion going on.

GUNNY.TRY NEALE YARDLEY AT CAPITAL INFORMATION SERVICES.

CHEERS DARKY.

Check out
http://www.trb.com.au

I use it & its brilliant , as I have said in a more resent post , its the most sophistocated form anaysis program in the world , but be prepaired to pay a prmium for this.