What a race carries

Forty four fields, in the order they become known.

A race accumulates information in stages, and knowing which stage a field arrives at explains most of the nulls you will see. Nothing here is missing; it either has not happened yet or was never published.

When it is declared

Known days before the race. The shape of the contest.

course, date, race_time, distance, run_type, surface
class, handicap, age_band, prize
Per runner: horse, trainer, jockey, owner, weight, draw, headgear, official_rating, form

draw is null in jumps racing by design. There is no stall, so there is no draw, and returning a zero would be worse than a null.

On the morning

going and weather, which belong to the meeting rather than the race and are returned once
Non-runners removed from the field
price_path.opening, where the jurisdiction published an opening price

At the off

sp and sp_decimal on every runner
book_percentage on the race, being those prices summed
favourite and market_position, both derived by us from the prices, because the source leaves them empty on a settled race
price_path.touched and price_path.drift

Once it has run

position on each runner, or null where the jurisdiction publishes only placings
casualty where a runner did not complete: PulledUp, Fell, UnseatedRider, BroughtDown, RefusedToRace or RanOut
winning_time, dividends, prizes
result_available flips true

Later still

Two things arrive on a separate pass behind the results crawl, because they live on the horse profile rather than on the race.

sire, dam and damsire
beaten_distance per runner

A null in either means the pass has not reached that horse yet, not that the value is unknown. Coverage climbs daily.

How to tell three kinds of null apart

This is the whole point of the guide.

You see	It means	How to confirm
`position` null, `casualty` set	The horse did not complete	The casualty reason is the confirmation
`position` null, `casualty` null, race settled	The jurisdiction published placings only	`/v1/countries` position_pct for that region
`position` null, `result_available` false	Not run or not settled yet	The race status
`official_rating` null	Not published there, or outside 0–200 and dropped as a sentinel	Coverage
`price_path.opening` null	No opening price published	`price_path.source` says which kind you have
`sire` null	Pedigree pass has not reached this horse	Re-fetch later; it will fill in

Fields we derive

Stated so you know what is ours rather than the source's.

sp_decimal, computed once at load so you are not parsing fractions per row
implied, one over the decimal price
book_percentage, those summed across the field
favourite and market_position, ranked on price with joint favourites sharing rank one
days_since_previous on a form line
expected on the statistics endpoints, which is implied normalised so a field sums to one rather than to the book percentage