What is an official rating (OR) in horse racing?
Official rating — A number given by the handicapper reflecting a horse’s ability, used to set handicap weights.
Also: OR, OFR, official mark
A horse’s official rating (OR, sometimes shown as OFR) is a mark — roughly 0 to 140+ — assigned by the official handicapper. It’s their measure of how good the horse is, and it’s what sets the weight it carries in a handicap.
Win, and the handicapper raises your mark; run poorly over time and it drifts down. Punters watch it closely: a horse “well handicapped” — running off a mark below its true ability — can be overpriced. It’s one input into our own rating, which also blends recent form, the market and speed figures.
In non-handicaps there’s no official rating in play, so our racecards show a dash in that column.
See our rating for every runner →
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
What’s a good official rating?
It’s relative to the grade. Modest handicappers might rate 50–70; Group-class horses run to 110+. What matters is the mark versus the horse’s true ability.
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