Andrew Beyer (born 17 Nov 1943) is an American expert on

horse race Horse racing is an equestrian performance sport, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its basic p ...

betting who designed the

Beyer Speed Figure The Beyer Speed Figure is a system for rating the performance of Thoroughbred racehorses in North America designed in the early 1970s by Andrew Beyer, the syndicated horse racing columnist for The Washington Post. First published in book form in 1 ...

. In the early 1970s, while working for the ''

Washington Daily News The ''Washington Daily News'' is an American, English language daily newspaper headquartered in and serving Washington, North Carolina and Beaufort County, North Carolina. It was established in 1909. The paper also uses Facebook for sharing new ...

'', Beyer did extensive work on the concept of speed figures and wrote books that helped popularize their use. By calculating variables such as the track conditions and the horse's time, Beyer speed figures give a measure of how fast a horse was in a given race. This number can then be used to compare a given horse's "speed" against its competition in an upcoming race, despite the fact that the horses have all run in different races, at different tracks, and are different calibers of horses. Speed figures have come into general usage and many

racing form In sport, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific goa ...

s include them in their publications. Andrew Beyer is the author of four books on racing and was The Washington Post's horse racing columnist from 1978 to his retirement in 2016. He has been honored with the Walter Haight Award for career excellence by the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters and with a place on the Joe Hirsch Honor Roll at the

National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame was founded in 1950 in Saratoga Springs, New York, to honor the achievements of American Thoroughbred race horses, jockeys, and trainers. In 1955, the museum moved to its current location on Union Av ...

. In 2017 he was presented with the

Eclipse Award of Merit The Eclipse Award of Merit is part of the American Eclipse Awards in Thoroughbred horse racing. The industry's highest honor, it is presented to an individual or entity displaying outstanding lifetime achievement in, and service to, the Thoroughbre ...

, the highest honor bestowed by the Thoroughbred industry. He was a member of the class of 1965 at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

References

* Beyer, Andrew. ''Picking Winners: A Horseplayer's Guide'' (1975 – revisions 1985, 1994)

Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

External links

Cigar Aficionado article on Andrew Beyer

Beyer's Washington Post columns
Living people American gambling writers American male non-fiction writers Horse racing in the United States Eclipse Award winners The Washington Post people Harvard University alumni 1943 births People from Erie, Pennsylvania Sportswriters from Pennsylvania {{US-sportswriter-stub