A pro punter's warning: why so much talk about handicap marks is pure nonsense

A lot is said in racing about handicap marks – and most of it is nonsense. Handicap marks, or official ratings, matter for three reasons: they decide which races a horse can run in; they decide what weight they must carry; and they are a rough guide to an animal's approximate ability. Apart from that, I cannot think of another logical reason why anyone would need to know them.

But my opinions go very much against the grain. How often do we hear that a particular horse is close to its "previous winning mark" or "well in today"? It comes at us from all angles. Trainers, punters, jockeys, TV presenters and pundits talk about them as if they mean something. Which, of course, they don't.

If you think about it logically, just because a horse has won off a mark of, say, 117 in the past and is running off the same mark today, what is that telling you? The answer is virtually nothing.