Welcome to From The Yard. You probably have questions.
WHAT IS FTY? A culmination of well over 10 years of passion and love for the thoroughbred. They have (in our biased view) the most pure form of movement from any creature on earth. Indeed, the first ‘movie’ ever made was entitled The Horse In Motion, a 1878 reel produced by English photographer Eadweard Muybridge utilising a series of images to prove whether or not horses galloped with all four hooves off the ground. It was to settle a bet, no less.
FTY is designed to give an accurate appraisal of the quality of every individual runner and how they compare to their competitors prior to the race, from the stable, to the pre-parade ring, to the mounting yard, to the gates.
WHAT MAKES FTY DIFFERENT TO ANY OTHER YARD JUDGE? Fair question. There’s other services that provide a subjective assessment of runners pre-race, but few of these provide a truly data driven approach, nor do they include comprehensive input from the stables and pre-parade ring. With FTY, you get access to live, independent, unbiased mounting yard assessments to compliment your form analysis. And might we add, that’s in rain, hail or shine.
Our FTY runner prices, percentages and a customisable staking sheet enable those familiar with Betfair to alter their own rated prices with the mounting yard input, or indeed back or lay runners purely based on combination of the parade and latest market intelligence.
WHY DO I NEED FTY? The simple answer is you may not need it. This service is not for everyone who enjoys horse racing, but it may also appeal to those who don’t ‘live and breathe’ it either.
The purpose of FTY is to provide you with something to help sharpen your numbers in the most liquid period of betting. You are serious about your numbers, you understand the variables and the variance, and what you get is no fanfare, just numbers. This is information you cannot get elsewhere. The biggest betting syndicate in the world have their own analysts in-house and they don’t offer their services publicly.
There’s no social posts during the day, no advertising, no sponsorship, no celebrating or commiserating the wins or losses. Just pure concentration and dedication from our end and the respect for the mounting yard in return.
HOW DOES FTY WORK? When first purchasing a meeting, you will receive a copy of the meeting template (currently utilising Google Sheets) which you are able to edit, as well as a link to the live meeting master sheet which you are only able to view and copy information from. The simple meeting process is as such:
Pre-meeting: if desired, change the bank, bet ranges and settings of the meeting template. Input any user information you would like to appear in the spreadsheet and if using a mobile, hide any columns not required for use. All of the results recorded are using the default settings as they appear in the template, with the Betfair price quoted that which is recorded 5 minutes prior to the jump.
Before the race: we recommend users enter the current exchange odds 5 minutes prior to the jump. This will ensure the data is promptly tailored to your specific settings. If left blank, this will automatically update closer to the jump.
The live meeting sheet starts to filter information from the stables and continues to update as the horses warm-up in the pre-parade ring and the mounting yard.
Once the horses gallop off to the gates, the finalised information is blended with the latest prices on the exchange. The in-built default suggestions are independent of any form analysis or subjective input. They are derived from using the mounting yard scores and the Betfair price input 3-5 minutes prior to the jump. That's it. They can also be customised to suit your own bank and Kelly criterion inputs. The analysis continues up until the jump, with late significant behavioural issues or vet-checks noted and factored. View an example race here.
The analysis is limited to 10 customers per meeting to optimise market integrity and opportunity to have betting orders matched.
HOW ELSE CAN I USE THE INFORMATION? Indeed, you can also copy the yard scores or the yard percentages in to your own spreadsheet or database and use them as you see fit. There's many ways to utilise the numbers, with the aim being to provide another edge late in betting using the mounting yard.
This may include looking to back or lay a specific runner and looking for that positive or negative confirmation even earlier than when they enter the mounting yard. Any runner marked with a negative trait, simply denoted by a negative score in any category, should be treated with caution if contemplating a ‘back’, or might have consideration to being a ‘lay’. Conversely, runners showing multiple positive scores early in the parade are likely to feature prominently in the final standings, and may present an opportunity to ‘beat’ the market by taking a position before the late moves come.
If desired, you can also input your own key numbers in to the spreadsheet with preset columns on a separate user data tab.
Get Started
POST MEETING REPORT: as with any form of analysis, pre-meeting and post-meeting are equally as important. After every meeting the numbers will be assessed with horses that significantly improved or regressed highlighted, as well as horses that ‘beat the market’ or perhaps where the market underestimated the mounting yard. These thoughts will be provided to customers purchasing that meeting in an email debrief in the subsequent days. For Friday and Saturday meetings, this will be sent on Monday, whilst Wednesday meetings will be reviewed every Friday.
CAN’T SOME HORSES JUST ALWAYS PARADE WELL OR POORLY? Short answer is yes, with a ‘but’. Longer answer is although some horses tend to look similar start-to-start, that doesn’t mean that key indicators will not change. Muscle development can change with every start, while fitness can quickly progress or regress from a ‘gut-busting’ run. At the end of the day, they are animals, and headstrong at that. Behaviour can be impacting by unseen factors. We all have good and bad days.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR FTY? We’re always looking at ways to sharpen the edge, and twice yearly that includes taking an extended break during the ‘down-season’ to review the work from the previous months. This includes evaluating the performance of individual factors in predicting the outcome of a race, plus how they perform compared with the market expectation. The hope is that with considered and consistent effort, the numbers will continue to remain a useful tool to those looking to back or lay runners late.
There is also the potential for future BOT integration, but we’re taking a slow and steady approach to this. Despite the decade-long experience with the anatomy and movement of thoroughbreds, this data driven study has only been a recent tool we have developed and there’s still refinements to come. Sample size is absolutely key, and monitoring trends has valuable insight in to how the market might behave.
CAN I REQUEST FTY TO COVER A MEETING? Absolutely. With notice we are able to provide custom or private analysis for a provincial or country meeting, or even interstate or overseas. There obviously will be associated costs involved, but we’re always happy to negotiate. Having visited a number of international race meetings, there’s nothing more engaging and thrilling then having a brand new set of horses and jockeys to assess!
CAN YOU TEACH ME HOW TO READ A MOUNTING YARD? Yes, but not during the carnival periods. During the off-peak months (January-early Feb, May-July) these tutorials can be arranged in-person. Ideally this is a one-on-one or one-on-two scenario, whereby you can ask as many questions and get as much experience from one meeting as possible. Your own mounting yard sheets will be provided on the day, that you can complete in tandem as we go from the stables, to the yard.