Records

Weatherbys, the Stud Book and UK Racing Records

Reference entry · Updated 19 May 2026

No other sport keeps its records the way horseracing does. Every thoroughbred ever foaled in Britain or Ireland is in a single, continuous register that began in 1791 and is still maintained by the same family firm. The firm is Weatherbys, the register is the General Stud Book, and the work of recording, validating and publishing the data has produced the administrative spine on which the British and Irish racing industries still run.

The General Stud Book

Volume One of the General Stud Book was published by James Weatherby in 1791. It set out to compile, in a single authoritative volume, every thoroughbred bloodline that could be traced back through racing pedigrees in the British Isles. The criterion has stayed essentially the same since: a horse is eligible for the General Stud Book if both parents are themselves registered in the General Stud Book, with a small number of recognised reciprocal stud books elsewhere — the American Stud Book, the Australian Stud Book, the French Stud Book — fulfilling the same gatekeeping function for their thoroughbred populations.

The stud book is now in its forty-seventh volume. A foal born today in Britain or Ireland is registered with Weatherbys within days of birth, microchipped, DNA-typed against its declared parents, and entered as a colt or filly of the year. The DNA-typing requirement was added in stages from the 1980s and is now universal: a foal whose declared parentage does not match the genetic record is not registered, full stop.

What's in the stud book entry

Field	What it records
Foal of	Year and country of birth
Sire and dam	Both parents, with their own stud book reference numbers
Sex	Colt, filly, gelding (geldings noted on castration)
Colour and markings	Bay, chestnut, grey etc. plus white facial and leg markings
Microchip and DNA	Permanent traceability
Breeder and owner	Updated on transfer of ownership
Race record	Career runs and wins under BHA Rules (compiled from race results)
Stud record	Foals produced and their race records, for fillies and stallions

Weatherbys as the secretariat of racing

Beyond the stud book, Weatherbys runs much of the administrative day-to-day of British and Irish racing. Race entries for the great majority of British fixtures are made through Weatherbys' systems. Owners register their names and racing colours with Weatherbys. Trainers' licences and jockeys' fees flow through Weatherbys accounts. The published list of race entries and the morning declarations that fill the daily racing pages of newspapers and the Racing Post are generated from a Weatherbys feed.

The firm also publishes the official annual statistical record of British and Irish racing — the year-end summary of trainer winners, jockey winners, sire statistics and racecourse statistics. The publication has appeared annually since the late 19th century and is the single source against which the press, the bookmakers and the breeding industry calibrate their annual numbers.

The race-result archive

Every race run under BHA Rules in Britain produces a record that flows into Weatherbys' archive. The record covers the runners, the finishing order, the distances between horses, the going (firm, good, soft, heavy and the intermediate descriptions), the official starting prices and the official handicapper's ratings for each runner before and after the race. The archive is now electronic but is continuous with the printed Racing Calendar that ran in unbroken series from 1773.

Day-to-day access to British race results — the result of the 2.30 at Doncaster, the order of finish in the Lincoln Handicap, the times set on Town Moor — is published immediately by Weatherbys and aggregated by the trade press. A search for "UK horse results" or "racing this week" lands on these published lists. The lists are official: the results that appear in Weatherbys' archive are the results, full stop. Stewards' inquiries and demotions are folded into the archive within hours of the race finishing.

Why this matters for a working yard

The administrative load that Weatherbys takes on means that a working racing yard does not have to be a small accountancy and pedigree office. The trainer enters a horse for a race through the Weatherbys system, declares it the day before, and is paid the prize money less levy and charges within days of the result. Owners receive monthly statements that itemise training fees, race entries and prize money. The system is by no means cheap — there are entry fees, declaration fees, levy and Weatherbys' own charges — but the cost is the cost of a centralised, audited record of every transaction in the sport.

For a young jockey starting out, the relationship with Weatherbys begins with the registration of a riding licence and continues for the rest of the career: weighing-room records, riding fees, fines, suspensions, prize money and pension contributions all run through the same accounts.

Why the stud book outlived its competitors

Several factors explain the persistence of the General Stud Book through more than two centuries of changes in the wider sport. The first is the family continuity at Weatherbys itself — the firm is still run by direct descendants of James Weatherby, and the institutional knowledge has stayed inside the same building in Wellingborough. The second is the closed-loop definition of a thoroughbred — registration requires both parents to be registered already, so the book has never had to renegotiate its boundaries. The third is the network effect: once the stud book held the records, the betting market, the bloodstock market, the insurance market and the breed registers in other countries had a strong reason to defer to it. There is no parallel register competing with it.