RP - How to determine if a Flat or NH race?

[ginty]

Hi,

I was just wondering if there was an easy way to tell on a Racingpost Card if a race if a Flat race or a NH race?

As I am writing automated software to identify each race type, doing a like-for-like match on the title for the existence of words like 'Hurdle' or 'Chase' is not ideal so I was wondering if there was a simpler method.

From what I can see, the presence of a barrier after the horse number in the No. column may be the only way to determine if it is a Flat race.

Or is this not the case? Alternatively, is there an easier method?

GALWAY 03 August 2008 is a good example as both types are running.

Many thanks

[TheOldhamWhisper]

Anything that is NOT a regular flat race will have the word Hurdle or Chase somewhere in the title (or NH for NH flat races).

[ginty]

Thanks for the startling quick response. The code I have written currently does this but I wasn't confident that the title would always contain those keywords. If this is always the case, I'll leave things as is.

Cheers

[mathare]

I use the presence or absence of a stall number because I found text matching was problematic for automation as the titles may not always include 'hurdle' or 'chase' as they sometimes get too long so just put 'hdl', 'chs' or similar.

Plus these phrases can occur in other race titles, for example you may get something like the "Audi Cannock Chase Nursery Handicap" where Chase is part of the sponsors' name

[Win2Win]

If every race is over 2M, it's NH

[ginty]

Ah, see, thats what I was thinking. I'm so easily swayed. :)

Good to see my barrier idea was the same as yours... I'll have both ways coded before too long so I might just run both over each card. Can never be too safe.

Thanks!

[mathare]

If every race is over 2M, it's NH

But the reverse isn't true as you get meetings that are mixed so you can't treat everything that fails that rule as flat

[TheOldhamWhisper]

You should go with Mathare's suggestion - it is proven to work in the software he has written.

[Win2Win]

I only read this bit "RP - How to determine if a Flat or NH race? " :)

[ginty]

Mathare - I was looking at the HTML response and discovered that links to Jockeys and Trainers include a key in the querystring named 'Code'. This carries with it a value of either Jumps or Flat.

e.g.
OWSize("","/horses/jockey_form.sd?jockey_id=81661&code=Jumps",800,480,'no','yes','yes')

OWSize("","/horses/trainer_form.sd?trainer_id=19279&code=Flat",800,480,'no','yes','yes')

Might be a quicker method for your own scraping.