Welcome To The Sandform All-Weather Racing Website
David Bellingham started his love affair with horse racing from a very young age, but became particularly interested in All-Weather racing in the early 1990s. One of the main reasons was that he was always happy tinkering with numbers and performance ratings, and it was after reading the landmark book Betting For A Living by Nick Mordin in 1992 and meeting the legendary Andy Beyer at the 1993 Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita that he started to work out speed ratings of his own. He originally used a pen, paper and a calculator, but then moved on to a PC having learnt to write computer programs in his previous job as a computer operator. He realised that speed ratings were a particularly powerful tool for All-Weather racing, with more contests tending to be truly run from the start. This passion for racing on artificial surfaces and compiling computer-based ratings has stayed with him ever since.
Having landed his dream job with Raceform in 1997, he worked for them and the Racing Post until 2018. Amongst his duties during that time was writing the weekly King Of The Sand column in the Racing And Football Outlook from 1998 and then compiling the Raceform Split Second Speed Figures from 2000. He also regularly wrote Race Analysis Comments and Spotlights for the Racing Post, both of which he continues to do on a freelance basis.
He has contributed to many other Raceform/Racing Post products, including the Racing Post Annual, Raceform Update, Raceform On Saturday, the Raceform Flat and Jumps Formbooks and Raceform’s 100 Winners Flat. He has had three books published on All-Weather racing: Gold From The Sand (2000), Gold From The Sand II (2005) and The Definitive Guide To Betting On The All-Weather (2008).
The site has been designed to give All-Weather racing followers information which he believes will be of use to the All-Weather racing fan. For example one of the site main products are the Sandform Speed Ratings, shown on the Sandform Race Cards (available the evening before the meeting) and the Sandform Private Handicaps (available at the 4-day stage). These cards show AW form from Britain and Ireland together with selected form on sand/synthetic surfaces from further afield. They also show how different running styles are suited to a particular distance at a given track, so you may find that prominent racers enjoy a distinct advantage at a certain trip at one venue, but are majorly inconvenienced at another. Alongside this information will appear draw statistics for that distance.
The Five-Year Jockey, Trainer and Sire Stats are also invaluable. They cover the six All-Weather tracks in Britain plus Dundalk in Ireland and not only do they show the number of runners (rides), winners and strike-rate in each category, they also give you the profit or loss to a £1 level stake for each jockey, trainer and sire at the track.
Then there is the Sandform Hotlist which shows a list of horses to have recently put up a performance well ahead of the class they were running in, alongside any entries they may have held at the time.
If you click on the Selections button you will be able to see the selections for any All-Weather meetings taking place on that day. Usually there will be between three and five bets per day, depending on the number of meetings, with a bit of editorial stating the case behind each selection. A panel near the bottom of the article shows the top price available with the major bookmakers the night before the meeting, together with a recommended stake based on a points system (between 1 and 3, with 1 being your average stake).
All-Weather Racecourse Websites And Useful Links
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