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What benefit does racing get from the continuing practice of fixing the weights for some handicaps weeks in advance, producing the sort of thing we saw in the Bunbury Cup on Saturday.
That race had a ludicrously short priced favourite winning in a desperate finish, greatly helped by being allowed to race off a mark 3lbs lower than the one he was given after his second at Ascot. And the runner-up was running off a mark 1lb higher than his current rating. So a 4lb difference, that would presumably have produced a different result.
All because the weights for the Bunbury Cup were fixed the week before Royal Ascot. This is a throwback to the days of the Druids Lodge gang, when the big races that formed part of Spring and Autumn Double were the biggest betting events of the year. And much of that betting was done ante-post – but does anybody even offer an ante post market on the Bunbury Cup before the week of the race.
And with the information about handicap marks freely available to anybody that’s interested, the need to publish the weights weeks in advance is surely redundant. A prime example of ‘But we’ve always done it that way’, the attitude invariably used to avoid any change for the better in racing.
Just to add that the John Smiths Cup on Saturday, another race which has the weights set more than a month in advance, had 13 of the 18 runners racing off a mark different to their current rating. Bonkers!
Completely agree.
And let’s not mention the worst of them all… the world’s greatest steeplechase itself.
The whole system lends itself to skulduggery, which isn’t ideal when racing is trying to (at least appear to) be more open and transparent.
Its swings and roundabouts I guess probably, you potentially would lose some horses backing up quickly between big handicaps if you didn’t have that incentive of being well in. Would More Thunder have come here after Ascot if he was off his proper handicap mark? Maybe but maybe they’d have given him more time.
Regarding the National I think it could impact on antepost betting quite significantly if you removed the early weights had no idea if your horse was getting a run or not, particularly for the Irish runners where the BHA marks aren’t really known.
Ante-post betting is insignificant these days, even bookmakers will tell you that. In the National the money bet on it ante-post is miniscule compared to the day of the race market, so not a factor.
Even though I backed him why should Rough Quest have been 17lbs well in after finishing second in the Gold Cup?It is fairer all round if all horses in all races run off their current marks, I’ve yet to hear a good reason why they shouldn’t.
Other horses may have run if More Thunder hadn’t and/or he was running off his correct mark. The betting would have been more open although I don’t think an extra 3lbs would have stopped them from running him. He would have still been fav but a little bit bigger price, running just 3 weeks after his previous race. He may not have won though.
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