The Game of Kings is one of the oldest sports still being played, but it perseveres as a spectator favorite. The 2025 Breeders’ Cup betting online strategies with the highest success will be based on research and numbers.
Similarly, trainers, owners, jockeys, and the entire team behind a winning horse will look at a wide range of data to enhance the way they care for and prepare their champion horses. In this article, we take a look at how data is transforming horse racing.
Wearable Technology
Wearable technology is one of the biggest and most impactful technological integrations in the world of horse racing. Biometrics, GPS trackers, heart rate monitors, and gait sensors can evaluate the horse’s performance in incredibly granular detail.
These devices are able to serve as early detectors if a horse is experiencing the early signs of an injury. It will manifest in the biometric numbers, and when coupled with predictive analytics, allows teams to have a much better idea of what is going on with an animal.
Consequently, they can treat injuries earlier and prevent them from happening in the first place with much greater accuracy than ever before.
This matters in more ways than is even obvious. Of course, sports fans never want to see the star of the show get hurt, even if said star happens to have four legs. But one of the uncomfortable realities of horse racing is that injuries can be very severe, and in many cases, life-ending.
While a baseball player with a bad leg might think about early retirement, racehorses with a comparable injury may be at risk for premature euthanasia.
It’s happened even recently with high-profile animals, such as Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, who died prematurely at four years old. While these stories will probably always be a part of racing, strong analytics can at least reduce their frequency.
Analytics in Breeding
Breeding markers are now refined through data algorithms. Breeders are able to evaluate DNA markers that are specifically connected with stamina, speed, and the ability to recover quickly.
Pedigree and prestige, of course, still play their role, but with less of a superstitious angle. Where in the past the assumption was “this horse’s parents were good at racing, so this horse will be good at racing,” now, through analytics, breeders are able to point to specific DNA indicators that explain how and why a horse is going to be impactful.
Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics also has a place in making algorithms more precise, depending on the situation. Data-driven betting decisions can help gamblers identify mismatched odds on a horse that is undervalued.
This is important because those types of bets that wind up having the best payouts are high-performing horses that have been underestimated for some reason. Big data can also be used for bankroll management to develop better systems.
For example, the Kelly criterion exists to give gamblers the optimal bet size, and probability-driven models provide a more scientific approach to placing wagers.
The Kelly criterion is a formula in which you take your bankroll, the probability of winning, and the probability of losing to determine how much you should bet. The goal is to steadily grow your bankroll proportionate to your wagers.
So, for example, if you were going to bet on a coin toss, and you’ve determined that there’s a 60% chance of hitting heads, the wager would look something like this: 1 times 0.6 minus 0.4, divided by 1, equals 0.2. This means that your bet should equal 20% of your bankroll.
Predictive analytics support systems like this by making the odds more accurate. When it comes to flipping a coin, it’s easy enough to determine the probability of seeing a certain result. Horse racing, with all its volatility, is considerably harder. Better, smarter data can be enormously impactful in this context.
Certainly, it does not strip risk from the proposition altogether – no amount of data can predict the future.
But it does add clarity to areas of gambling that were previously only guesswork. Going forward, predictive analytics may be used more in real time to develop constantly updated odds on a race. This will make it easier for bettors to develop a strong understanding of animals that they might not otherwise have had exposure to.
Nostalgia Supported by Numbers
It’s important to understand that analytics isn’t exactly changing racing. The factors that it’s evaluating have always been there – they just haven’t always been measurable. Large datasets make it possible for riders, gamblers, trainers, and owners to understand the science behind the sport in ways never foreseen.
It’s an exciting element for the sport, not only from a gambling perspective, but it will make racing safer and more sustainable for many generations.
