Horse racing form abbreviations and symbols

Horse racing form abbreviations fit a horse's record on one line: in an Australian form string, 1 to 9 are finishing places, 0 is 10th or worse and x marks a spell. Racing Australia prints the newest run as the right-hand figure, and the dated line it prints for each recent run adds codes for the course, track rating, class, weight carried, margin and prices.

Letters are rarer and easier to misread. Matched against the placings Racing Australia spells out on each horse's own page (checked 7 October 2026), L marked a lost rider, P a failed finish, N a horse left at the post and D a disqualification. The rest of the race card is covered in how to read a form guide.

What the figures and letters in a form string mean

Racing Australia prints the string in a column headed Last 10, and each character is one run or one break. Here is each symbol beside the way the same run appears in its dated line under the horse:

A 0 hides the real placing, so a 10th of 10 and a 15th of 16 print the same until you read the dated line. A spell is a break between preparations, which Racing Victoria's glossary puts at a minimum of two months (60 days).

There is no f for fell among the letters verified here: a run recorded as Failed to Finish shows FF in its dated line and P in the string, and the stewards' report says what happened. Letters are rare in any case: most strings are digits and x only.

Which end is newest, and where the preparation starts

The right-hand symbol is the latest run. To check, compare it with the last dated line under the horse, the most recent start in a list kept in date order. Barrier trials (lines starting T) and jump-outs (J) sit among the dated lines but never enter the string, so skip them when you match.

Reading from the right also places the horse in its preparation. The figures before the first x you reach are this preparation's runs: a string ending x means the horse is first up today, x5 second up and x52 third up. First up and second up form explains how to read those runs.

Worked: a full form string decoded

Take an illustrative string, not a real horse: 7x13L2x060. Read it from the right, one symbol at a time:

Ten symbols less two spells leaves eight runs. That is one win, 1 / 8 = 12.5%, and three finishes in the first three, 3 / 8 = 37.5%. The horse is fourth up today, its current preparation reads 0, 6, 0 from oldest to newest, and its 1, 3 and 2 all came before the last spell.

The L is not a beaten run. The horse lost its rider, so the race says nothing about its ability that day. Count it as a start, but neither as a failure nor as an excuse.

The codes for the race in a past-start line

Below the record lines, each recent start appears as a dated line, and its first half describes the race. The codes, with examples in the form they take:

The rating codes follow the national scale in track ratings explained, and the class codes sit on the ladder in Australian race classes. The conditions line under each race heading spells out what the codes shorten: a race whose conditions read Maiden, Set Weights, Three-Years-Old appears in later form lines as 3Y MDN-SW.

The codes for the horse: rider, weight, margin and prices

The second half of the line describes the horse's own run:

How much weight an apprentice can claim depends on the winners they have ridden (apprentice claims). The time belongs to the race, so a horse beaten 2.30 lengths ran slower than the printed figure; sectional times shows how to judge a run from it.

Worked: one past-start line decoded

An illustrative line in Racing Australia's layout, not a real race. TRKA stands in for a real course code such as FLEM:

4 of 12: TRKA 12Sep26 1400m Soft6 BM72 $60,000 ($2,700) Jockey D (a) 60kg (cd 57kg) Barrier 9 Rtg 70, 1st Runner K 57kg, 2nd Runner M 59kg 1:23.41 (600m 35.62), 2.30L, 10th@800m, 7th@400m, $9/$11/$10/$12

Read together, the line describes a runner that settled back, made ground into fourth and drifted in the betting. Whether that was a good run depends on the pace and the Soft 6 ground, which the rest of its form has to answer.

The record lines: what 22:4-3-5 means

Above the dated lines, each record reads starts, then wins, seconds and thirds. An illustrative record: 22:4-3-5 is 22 starts for 4 wins, 3 seconds and 5 thirds, so 4 / 22 = 18.2% wins and (4 + 3 + 5) / 22 = 54.5% in the first three.

Where to find the official key

Racing Australia publishes free fields and form for thoroughbred meetings in every state and territory, but its form page prints no key to the symbols (checked 7 October 2026). The decode comes from the same site:

1. Click a horse's name. Its full form page spells each placing out, such as 10th of 12, Left at Post, Lost Rider or Failed to Finish, and its All Form tab lists every run.
2. Use Racing Australia's track ratings table for the scale, the conditions line under each race heading for the class, and the stewards' report for why a horse lost its rider or failed to finish.

Racing Victoria's glossary of racing terms defines words such as spell and length. Other publishers print their own keys, and their codes are not always Racing Australia's.

Misreadings that cost money

Each of these changes the price you put on a runner (illustrative numbers), which is where a misread costs you:

1. Reading cd as a course-and-distance record. In a Racing Australia line it introduces the weight carried. If the misread lifts a runner from 18% to 25% in your frame, you take $4.50 when your fair price should be 1 / 0.18 = $5.56, and each $10 is worth 10 x (0.18 x 4.50 - 1) = -$1.90.
2. Scoring L, N or P as a beaten run. A lost rider or a horse left at the post says almost nothing about ability, yet marking a runner down from 1 in 7 to 1 in 10 for one moves your fair price from $7.00 to $10.00. Read the stewards' report before you score a P: a fall says little about ability, while a horse pulled up lame or after bleeding has told you something.
3. Counting 10 symbols as 10 runs. Every x takes a place in the string, so 7x13L2x060 holds eight runs, and a miscount puts a horse in the wrong part of its preparation.
4. Reading a T or J line as a race. A trial or jump-out has no betting and never enters the string, so a win there shows fitness, not form (barrier trials covers what they do show).

Where B337 fits after the decode

The prices at the end of each form line are history. For upcoming races, B337's Terminal shows live prices on its odds comparison board, which compares 40+ bookmakers across racing and sports. Betfair's back and lay sit next to the bookmaker prices, and each runner's price history (flucs) shows which way the market has moved it. Not every bookmaker prices every race. B337 is not a form guide: it has no ratings engine and makes no selections, so decoding the form and setting your price stay with you.

Its prices are collected on a repeating cycle rather than tick by tick, so one on screen can be older than the bookmaker's own: confirm it in your account before you bet. A free account opens a limited view of the Terminal with live odds. Betfair is a trade mark of its owner, and B337 is not affiliated with it.