Smart View is the Racing Post’s revolutionary racecard. Driven by the Racing Post’s extensive database and filtered through expert-crafted algorithms, it takes all the factors on a racecard and distils them into six main attributes for every horse. It then produces an overall score using these six attribute scores.
You would have been better off backing Smart View’s top-rated selection in every race this jumps season, compared with following the favourites. Our engine finds winners the smart way, and here are five examples of its intelligent calculations at Cheltenham on Saturday.
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1.10 Cheltenham
Course score: 97/100
Double Powerful scores top marks as the sole course winner in the opening novice handicap chase. Rightsotom, 0-2 at Cheltenham, is right on his heels after the system made a deduction about his runs here.
Although he has finished sixth and third on his two runs at Cheltenham, they are two of the three best runs of his life on Racing Post Ratings. He was sixth in the Triumph Hurdle, and third in a Class 2 handicap here in April. He loves it at Cheltenham, even if the bare results do not tell you that.
1.45 Cheltenham
Distance score: 100/100
It is quite early in the season for a 3m novice hurdle. Only two of the 13 runners have raced over this far under rules.
Island Bridge is making his hurdling debut. He has run only over 2m in National Hunt Flat races. So where has his big distance score come from? The main answer is his point-to-point win over this distance, at Peppards Castle a year ago. Add in the in-running note that he ‘kept on’ when third in his more recent bumper, something the system can read and take into account, and Smart View reckons Island Bridge is bound to thrive over 3m.
2.55 Cheltenham
Distance score: 100/100
Experience over the 3m distance is much more common in this race, yet Winning Smut has none and his distance score is the joint-highest in the field.
Again, the system has picked up clues from how he has run races over shorter distances. His last three runs, when he has finished first, second and first, have been over 2m6½f and 2m7f. His running notes have ended ‘kept on well’, ‘went second towards finish’ and ‘ran on well’. The system takes all three of those as strong clues that the horse will stay further, so Winning Smut is predicted with confidence to stay the trip.
4.05 Cheltenham
Course score: 100/100
Two horses in this novice chase score full marks in the course category. Pied Piper is an obvious one. He has won twice at the track and has placed at three Cheltenham Festivals.
Anyway is not so clear-cut. He has run only once at Cheltenham, and did not win. However, that run was at March’s festival, where he was second to Caldwell Potter in the Golden Miller. That run remains the best of his career on RPRs, so the system infers that Anyway is as good at Cheltenham as anywhere else.
4.40 Cheltenham
Distance score: 98/100
National Hunt flat races are full of inexperienced horses and it is hard to make strong judgements on them. The system has pushed Bells Grove as one likely to be well suited by 2m. The reason being that his two runs so far have been around 2m2f. On the second of those, when he was outlasted and beaten a neck, our in-running comments said ‘no extra towards finish’. He therefore should do better over a slightly shorter distance.
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The Big Jump Off is your comprehensive guide to the 2025-26 National Hunt season with expert insight from Paul Kealy, Tom Segal and more. You can buy it now from the Racing Post Shop! Alternatively it is available to to Racing Post+ UItimate subscribers through the digital newspaper – part of the ultimate horseracing subscription with Racing Post+ Ultimate.
