- This topic has 17 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 11 months ago by
.
- Posts
I thought it was a joke when I first heard but cyrname has been rated 178 now over Altior at 175. Just shows how farcical the ratings system is in my opinion. If there’s anyone who has any clue about horse racing it’s pretty clear Altior is the better horse. Even if they raced over 2m4f I’m confident Altior would win comfortably and cyrname would have to give him 3 pounds !! Hahaahaha absolute joke. Atleast timeform have it a bit more realistic
Altior 180p and cyrname 173+I agree. I really don’t know how anyone could sit there and say they think Cyrname is 3lb better than Altior no matter how impressive he has been a couple of times. Baffling.
I always take ratings with a pinch of salt
but you’d need a KFC bucket load of salt for this oneCharles Darwin to conquer the World
ORs and Timeform ‘master ratings’ are a flawed guide to comparing horses’ merits and predicting future performance (the two things that really matter) because they are constrained from placing a pure, reasonably accurate figure on specific performances. RPRs are nearer to being pure performance ratings. See my post on the ‘Ascot Chase 2019’ thread. If Altior faced Cyrname at 2m 5f at Ascot on G-S and Altior jumped markedly left he would be beaten in all likelihood.
Granted, but Altiors rating will be based on him as a 2m horse not a 2m 5f horse. The ratings basically say that Cyrname is 3lb better over his favoured distance than Altior is over his favoured distance. I think that is daft. I’d love to hear the explanation as to why.
You have to admit that Cyrname was mighty impressive in the Betfair Ascot Chase, earning a speed figure from me of 137 compared to Altior’s current top speed figure of 138.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r1FcjEUEFRXIlojKmtcyGH6NIv9nbBdr
Using the tools I have available to me, the BHA handicapper has over rated Cyrname by 10lbs, they say 178, my figures say it should be 168.
You can’t really blame the BHA handicappers, comparing rail movements and actual going allowances on any day, there wouldn’t have a clue, so they don’t have an actual time figure to work from they just guess.
Mike.
Given the ORs of the other runners, how easily Cyrname beat them all, and the distances, I don’t see that the Official Handicapper had any option but to put C’s OR up at least 10lb.
I doubt we’ll see C in another handicap anytime soon, but if the Official Handicapper had merely put him up to 168 the trainers of others in such a handicap would have every reason to feel aggrieved.
FF, I’ve tried to explain why the OR is wrong on the other thread. At their favoured distances I have Altior 1 ahead of Cyrname. If they met at 2m5f you would have to consider whether Altior would perform worse or better than at 2m and if better by how much. The horse is hardly crying out for a longer trip but is extremely likely to get it, therefore, on balance I would have to predict he’d run to the same figure as at 2m.
Interesting as always, Mike. Coming from a totally different method you also have Altior 1 ahead of Cyrname!
So, your converted figure for Waiting Patiently, Mike, is 157 (based on his speed figure of 126)? How can there be a difference of only 11? You once told me your pound to length conversion for the GN distance so you are using the ‘opposite’, i.e. over 1L = 1lb for 2m5f and shorter whereas RPR (and me) seems to use 1=1 across the board? What is your 1=1 distance – about 3m 1f?
Anyway, your converted figures are way too low!! But then we totally disagree on the role of time as the sole measure. The BHA would have taken into account all the other factors as well as time when producing its OR.
The BHA handicapper’s reasoning is set out here:
https://www.britishhorseracing.com/cyrname-looks-the-real-deal/
Breaking the track record on good to soft, and being very much faster than the other chases on the card are good pointers, if they have taken account of changes to the track.
It is not farcical, shocking, a joke, or baffling. Just a small difference of opinion about the many factors involved in rating the race.
The handicappers have their hands tied a bit, they also tend to stick too tightly to winning distances and sometimes ignore important context.
One horse beats a 140 rated horse by 15 lengths, therefore is now rated 155, lets move on… It’s a shame as the more importance placed on winning distance, the fewer horses we see pushed out and extended, hiding their true talents and personalities.
Altior likes to win by a length or two, Sprinter Sacre was always happy to try and win by a furlong, that fact flatters horses with the latter’s personality when it comes to rating, I don’t know Altior’s real talent, because he rarely wants or has to show it. I suspect he would be a fair bit better over longer, he simply is good enough to win everything at 2m and so doesn’t need to step up in trip and take the risk, I suspect he is better that Cyrname at all distances.
Altior had to win 9 times in a row before he was rated 170, Cyrname’s win streak is at 2, Altior’s now at 17, but the win distances excite handicappers.
GoldenMiller34
So, your converted figure for Waiting Patiently, Mike, is 157 (based on his speed figure of 126)? How can there be a difference of only 11? You once told me your pound to length conversion for the GN distance so you are using the ‘opposite’, i.e. over 1L = 1lb for 2m5f and shorter whereas RPR (and me) seems to use 1=1 across the board? What is your 1=1 distance – about 3m 1f?I have never used 1lb = I length, I have my own lb per length figures ref my standard times list.
Standard times:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_t6JFfgmzfC3FB9mRvk38VNujNbE6tyICyrname raced over Ascot’s 2m5f8yds(C) distance on Saturday, my lbs per length for the distance is 0.65
17 x 0.65 = 11.05
Standard time = 308.0s (5m 8.0s)
200 Constant) / 308.0s = 0.65The BHA lbs per length scale is different to mine…
https://www.britishhorseracing.com/regulation/performance-figures/Mike.
Cyrname is a classic example of the difficulty in pinning any horse to a master rating. He had raced twice in the autumn off 150 without winning. I make the recency point to eliminate the improvement some horses show over one summer. He had his summer off and was no better apparently when he returned.
After his November run, he got 56 days off, during which Derham (I think) mentioned they had altered his training regime – I don’t know the details of the alteration but have yet to listen to the FF Podcast on which Derham guested.
Cyrname returned hoodless and stepped up slightly in trip. He lined up off 150 and passed the post effectively rated 165. Less than a month later he lined up off 165 and passed the post effectively rated 178.
28 lbs of improvement, the majority of which almost certainly came from one of the factors the trainer changed, all of the factors combined, or a mix of some of the factors. My point here is that most of what happened with Cyrname happened off track during that 56 days. He did not suddenly find 15lbs of improvement cantering to the start at Ascot in January.
I wrote on my blog on Friday that I could not see Cyrname repeating that first Ascot run. Horses racing with such intensity from the front can take an awful lot out of themselves (Kalashnikov at Warwick last season quite likely a good example (EDIT: sorry, I meant Saint Calvados)). Cyrname also had to overcome the likelihood that the new factor(s) in his training regime had settled to become the norm and therefore, perhaps, losing some or all of their effectiveness.
That January Ascot run was outstanding. His Saturday run was remarkable to my eye. And this brings us to the crux – Cyrname (all else being equal – no undiscovered injuries etc.) started the season with exactly the same engine he deployed on Saturday. He was a 178 horse in November, but the key had not been found to unlock the extra that allowed him to show that engine’s full power.
With that in mind, how scary do you find it that there could be hundreds or thousands of Cyrnames out there waiting for that key to be found? How scary must handicappers find it? We have more data than we’ve ever had on form, times, sectionals, stride analysis, yet it’s all guesswork. Educated and well established guesswork in many cases, but that’s all it is. Unless a horse is understood by its trainer as an individual, it’s very unlikely in my view that we will ever find out that horse’s capabilities.
I don’t think it’s the rise in handicap that’s in turn rising eyebrows, after all, 28lb rises from say 130 to 158 aren’t uncommon. It’s the fact the horse has been declared the best in the country after being deemed only decent a couple of runs earlier.
I could poke holes in the horses he beat for a fair while and with nothing concrete to go on, then high 160s is more than enough of a bump in my eyes.
Altior’s smallest winning distance over fences is 3 1/4L, Ricco. It’s not that he doesn’t want or like to win in a different style but that in the better races at 2m seems to get tapped for toe briefly when they quicken up just before the straight. Interestingly, that point is towards the end of the zone in which Sprinter Sacre would power away from his field and have a race wrapped up. I reckon Altior would also get caught for a bit of nip at the same point over 2m5f and thus put up similar figures as at 2m.
Thanks for the info, Mike. Quite a difference between you and the BHA at the National trip, about the same as between BHA and RPR with the latter clearly using 1=1!
Albeit I didn’t study the form beforehand, Joe, but I too thought Cyrname’s January run would prove a flash in the pan. Thought he would be swallowed up and finish last lol. I don’t know that there can be many horses in training with the unlocked capability to improve in the manner of Cyrname. I’d like to credit most trainers as possessing the ability to ultimately find the key to all their charges. So he could be a very special horse – if he improves further, even by half as much as on Saturday, in his next outing that would be scary. But there are the odd examples of this, Hunt Ball springs to mind, though usually from a much lower base.
I suppose a word of warning could be that there seems to be something about this Ascot card. I thought Waiting Patiently was very impressive last year and in 2017 Tenor Nivernais thrashed Go Conquer by 30L over 3m, earning an official hike of 10 in the process and bettering any previous RPR by 8 at the age of 10. Neither horse has won since!
Good point GM, but perhaps that says more about how good Altior is.
What I guess I meant, is that keen runners will always catch the eye and produce more dominant displays. Ar Mad springs to mind and similarly rose 31lbs after two eye-catching runs.
Altior’s gait is leisurely, and to me he appears to only do what he is asked and nothing more, hence the flat spots he hits, it does his rating no favours.
Altior will be even better over 2m4f. I think he would give cyrname an absolute hiding. He’s the best horse since sprinter scare. He won’t hit a flat spot over 2.5 miles as he sometime does over 2 miles and the way he finishes out his races you have to say a step up in trip would suit this horse and at worst be of equal effectiveness.
He’s a stone better than cyrname over 2 miles or 2.5 miles. People forget that cyrname win like many others last weekend was exaggerated after the flu fiasco. Just to name 1 horse, waiting patently had only had his flu jab the previous week. God knows how many others had recently had a jab or how many had their training interrupted . And we know for a fact that cyrname has his in December. Cyrname will never run up to that rating ever again because it was false. The other horses underperformed rather than him over performing. I don’t care if you disagree but time will tell when he never runs up to that rating again unless he improves massively which I doubt
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.