Is Course and Distance Form Important?

I think a lot of people, if not most of us, at one time or another have taken previous wins at the distance and over the course, as one of the main form factors to consider when reading a race.
Most of the papers and online content publish their race cards, with either the fact that the horse has won over the distance (D) or at the course (C), or they will show the number of times a horse has won over the distance and at the course.
We do this here at Inform Racing on our race cards, with an example below.
All images can be clicked to enlarge them if needed.

Here you can see that the 9/1 winner, So Darn Hot had previously won once before over the six furlongs.
In fact, the first three home had all won over the distance once or twice before and the favourite Brosay who hadn't, came sixth.
Of course there are many other factors to consider but this is a good example of how previous distance form could be useful.
Let's test a few things here using the system builder.
If you are a subscriber to Inform Racing, you can access the system builder and test an almost infinite number of theories. From the most simple to the very complex and use your results to create your own, profitable winning systems.
I have concentrated on flat turf racing handicaps for this post. From 2021 onwards and for races over 1m 4f or less, which resulted in over 84,000 bets and a winning strike rate of 11.02%

Using the result breakdowns available on the system builder, you can see how the previous distance runs and previous distance wins, affected the winning percentages.

For these tests, we are not all concerned about any profit and loss figures, at least not at this stage. As you can see in the far right hand column, it shows the lowest and highest winning BSP's and with many showing winners at BSP 160, BSP 355 and even BSP 436.
These big winners and of course many other losers at big BSP's are certainly going to skew the profits and losses however the strike rate will give us an idea of what is happening in reality.
Looking at the distance winners
Horse Distance Winners, shows that horses that have run at the distance before but haven't won (0), as well as horses that have never run over the distance (NA), have a 10.14% and 10.44% strike rate, which combined equals 10.29%.
Horses that have only won once or twice previously over the distance, have a combined winning strike rate of 12.46%.
Now whether you think that 10.29% and 12.46% are pretty much the same or not, the latter is actually a 21% increase in strike rate between horses that have never won over the distance and those that have won either only once or twice.
I think this is pretty significant and this is over the long term of about four years and 84,000 runners.
Remember these are just flat turf stats and you can test your own ideas, or look at different race types, distances or whatever you want to, using the Inform Racing system builder.
And what about those multiple distance winners?
This is quite interesting, because those horses that have won three times or more over the distance, have practically the same winning strike rate as those horses that have never previously raced over the distance and only a 3% better strike rate than those that have run over the distance but haven't won.

When we look at horses that have only won once or twice at the distance, these are those that haven't had a large number of races and horses that are possibly a little unexposed.
Horses that have won 3 or more times over a distance, have more likely run more races - not for certain but probably more likely.
If we go back to the Horse Distance Runs breakdown, whilst there isn't any large difference in strike rates, those that have only run between once and six times, have won more of their races. I am going to stick with a maximlum of 4 previous distance runs, to really get those that are less exposed
So, let's see what happens if we combine horses that have only run over the distance between 1 and 4 times, as well as only won over the distance either once or twice.
Well this increases the strike rate to 14.6%, which is a 17% increase on just horses that have won only once or twice and a 42% increase on horses that have never won over the distance before.
Note: You can use the system builder to find your systems or test your ideas, as we are here, save them and then run them each day to get any selections listed for you in a flash.
So in this case, you won't need to spend hours looking at each horse to see how many times it has run over the distance and won over the distance. Just open your saved system, click Declarations at the top and any selections are found for that day for you immediately.
Let's delve a little into previous course form
Horses for courses they say don't they? Well it can be an important factor but like we have seen with the previous distance form, there may be a few things we can take from this by checking past results, again using the system builder.
Running the first set of rules again for all flat turf race handicaps over 1m 4f or less, from 2021 onwards, we can look at the result breakdowns below.

Certainly, no course wins has the lowest strike rate of 9.96%, but whilst having had one or two course wins have the better strike rates, having three or more does not give any significant advantage.
By combining those that have had either just one and two previous course wins, we get a strike rate of 13% which is a massive 30% better than horses not having won at the course, when having previously raced at the course. NA as before, shows horses that have never previously run at the course.
If you go back to an earlier image, you will see the result breakdown for Horse Distance Runs. Whilst the percentages are not that different, the two best strike rates are for horses that have run over the distance between 1 and 4 times before.
Again, these horses are likley to have not had many previous runs before but are also certainly somewhat unexposed at the distance. Playing around with these stats a little, I found that like our other data, just having had the 1 or 2 previous runs at the distance was best overall.
Combing this all together.
Taking our best strikes from Horse Distance Runs = between 1 and 2, Horse Distance Winners = between 1 and 2 and Horse Course Winners = between 1 and 2, we can run the following set of rules.

Whilst this does reduce the number of bets considerably, it does improve the strike rate to better than 19%, which is far better than any that we have encountered so far.
Don't forget, that there are dozens of other filters that you can use within the system builder to refine these results further, such as the draw, the run style or the handicap marks.
You could also just take any selections each day as a short list to look at further and there are many other opportunities to find more bets or selections using all weather racing, chase and hurdles races too.
You could also divide up the race distances, so look at 5f and 6f together, or 7f on it's own being it is quite a specialised distance, or maybe the longetr trips over 1m 4f.
Course specialists
When looking at course form, it is interesting to see which courses are more worth looking at for previous winners.
Running the same rules as we first did but adding that the horse must have had at least 1 previous course win, you can see below the top and bottom five courses on the result breakdown list.


Quite a difference in strike rates between the top and bottom courses here, showing that previous course winners returning to Lingfield have three times more success than they do at York.
Previous course form at both Newmarket tracks is quite well known to be an advantage. Salisbury and Lingfield both have their own idiosyncracies, while Ffos Las is a surprise as it is really just a flat oval track, but the stats do show that previous form here is rather valuable.
Summary
Hopefully this blog post will give you some food for thought and maybe some ideas about previous course and distance form.
Of course there are plenty of winners that win at the course and the distance for the first time. You could easily take what I have written with a pinch of salt. You may well feel that despite the percentage differences I have shown, such as from 9% to 11% to 19% or whatever, they aren't really that significant.
You may be led to feel that in fact, previous form over the distance and to some extent at the course, is not really that important and is something that you will take less notice of in the future.
However, if you want to increase your success rate and be more studious, you can combine the best of these stats together, filter your bets more proficiently and increase the chance of finding a winner by 50% or more.
And as I have said before, once you have saved a system set of rules, just load it each day, check the declarations button at the top and you can get any selections for the day in a flash.
A quick side note:
Subscribers to Inform Racing gain free access to over 50 profitable betting systems to download and use alongside the system builder. One of the lay systems is based around horses that have won three or more times at the course before.
Along with some other filters added to the rules, this system has made an average of 160 points profit each year since way back to the start of 2018.
It has already made 36 points in the first 18 days of 2025, so this system that has made a profit every year for the last seven full years, has started very well again this year too.
Subscribers just login and navigate to the top of the Betting Systems page on the menu to get this free system plus all of the others available too.