The beginners' guide to sectionals - and how it can find you winners over jumps

The best way to assess a horse's performance for any given race is to handicap it. But handicapping is much more than a stones-and-pounds measurement. At its most fundamental level a handicap rating is an expression of time.

For example, what is a length? The official definition is given not in terms of distance, but time, as calculated using this table. Each time is what the official result will turn into one length.

From here, you can see that when handicappers talk about pounds per length, what we are actually describing is the difference in time that 1lb in weight should theoretically make to a horse's performance.