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Or See Enough winning the 1996 Grade 2 Rendlesham Hurdle, a
I was going to cite this lovely fella… My biggest ever winner!
Mostly NH examples so far.
They would be wouldn’t they, there’s hardly likely to be a number of winners over the years in the top handicaps on the flat from horses well out of the weights when there’s hardly any runners that fit the criteria in the first place in the races.
Noddies Way is hardly the norm, who knows, maybe they were hoping to be balloted out and get a refund but having paid the entries they were fully entitled to take their chance.
Hardly a reason to make a mountain out of a molehill.I don’t really see what the big deal is.
Let’s face it too, handicaps (even the Cesarewitch) are not the top end of racing.
If a trainer wants to be one of 32 then so be it. Can’t be that many 2m flat races of a season I wouldn’t have thought.Prufrock wrote:Welcome to my world, Jose.
As one of my favourite philosophers, Kurt Wagner, once said: "truth rises from dissent".
I wish I was intelligent enough to definitely know what the meaning of your comment is. Sadly I’m not.
Sorry, possibly a bit too cryptic.
I am engaged in a debate over on my blog with someone called "Jose".
Sometimes, I think it is worth people saying and writing unpopular things, as you have just done and as I did, rather than checking themselves and falling into line. Even if they are not "right" they serve a useful purpose in challenging the orthodoxy.
Kurt Wagner is an alt-country singer with a nice line in kitchen-sink revelations, BTW.
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Kurt Wagner is an alt-country singer with a nice line in kitchen-sink revelations, BTW.
A bit like his great grandfather Richard, then? He fancied himself as a philosopher too. Must run in the family.
Sometimes, I think it is worth people saying and writing unpopular things, as you have just done and as I did, rather than checking themselves and falling into line. Even if they are not "right" they serve a useful purpose in challenging the orthodoxy.
Kurt Wagner is an alt-country singer with a nice line in kitchen-sink revelations, BTW.
Better than Westlife then? I’ll recommend him to RFC alongside my burgers.
As for the general opinion of everyone bar Fist, I’m not surprised. I considered this a significant enough race to eliminate a horse who had no hope. I still do, and I can’t work out why there is no discretionary element allowing this. Maybe it is not a significant enough subject to create a thread over? Fair enough if it’s not. And I feel there are races available for Noddies Way. And given his only win on the AW – clearly if he returned to previous form – he could win a race in the next few months for connections and my other thread. In fact, with such a horse, if they wanted to try to improve his handicap mark, they might be better off running him in a low grade race over shorter.
- Total Posts 17716
I considered this a significant enough race to eliminate a horse who had no hope. I still do, and I can’t work out why there is no discretionary element allowing this.
Unraced Derby winners are not unheard of, and I think Merry Hampton was the latest of these. You can read about him here:
http://www.horseracinghistory.co.uk/hrh … nt?id=1243He’d never
run
before, and he never
won
again, though he was a reasonable success at stud. He certainly deserved to take his chance in the Derby. Would you really have rather had him removed?
If more are declared than safety numbers allow, then horses are taken out these days not by ballot, but in ascending order of ratings. I don’t see that there is a problem with this, and if anything it rather adds to the charm of the race.
Thought: if Noddies Way have been trained by Henry Cecil, would there have been any fuss whatsoever?
Mostly NH examples so far.
You might like to take a look at a succession of Flat races during the 2000 and 2001 seasons which I suspect you’d think will make Noddies Way’s purported tarnishing of racing’s credibility look very small beer indeed.
Let’s take October 27th, 2001, and the http://www.racingpost.co.uk Conditions Stakes (class B) at Doncaster, as an example – it’s as good as any. The top-rated animal Watching coveted an OR of 105 at the time, but look at some of the opposition;
Millsec (rated 30)
Waterfront (rated 17)
The Castigator (rated 14)
Time For The Clan (rated 14)
Laund View Leona (rated 14)The race was not a handicap, of course, but in being a decent conditions race the extent to which the above-listed were badly in with Watching was simply amplified all the more.
Millsec and Laund View Leona got all sorts of sex allowances, but the other three named did not, and were pencilled in to race off 8st 9lb, the same as Watching. Waterfront and The Castigator duly did, thereby taking on Watching on 88lb and 91lb worse terms respectively than in a handicap.
Harvey Bastiman, however, couldn’t do the weight on Time For The Clan, and ended up posting 13lb extra. Meaning: that a competitor ended up taking on a 105-rated horse on 104lb worse terms than a handicap.
As I say, it makes Noddies Way’s handicapping discrepancy pale somewhat.
Unless you knew at the time, you’re probably wondering at this remove what in heaven’s name motivated Robin Bastiman, along with Gerry Kelly and Alan Berry, to enter sub 30-rated no-hopers into conditions race upon conditions race during these two seasons. Simply put, appearance money.
Enticing financial carrots were offered just to turn up in an attempt to swell the numbers in these often thinly contested events, but they ultimately gained little other than to allow the aforementioned trainers to trouser tens of thousands of quid with horses who’d never win that much on merit!
Grubby opportunism on those handlers’ part? Some might argue that. An astute identifying of a way to offset training costs? Almost certainly. A damning indictment of the reluctance of those training the horses for whom conditions races are genuinely meant to enter them up in sufficient quantity? Definitely.
You have to wonder sometimes about a fraternity whose upper echelons clamour for opportunities for their better animals and then don’t use them in sufficient quantity to exclude the equine equivalent of the riff-raff. Around the same time as the "conditions squatting" above, Haydock was offering sweeteners to any and all connections for running their horses in its frequently badly attended novice chases, including refunding all travel costs. Yet its 2m class 3 novice on Greenall Gold Cup day (as was) in February 1999 could still only muster;
– a 1-12F Martin Pipe certainty which never broke sweat to win,
– a 70-rated Ginger McCain inmate, which fell, and
– two Ted Caine runners rated 67 and 52, who mopped up £2,500 for filling the frame at a respectable distance.If the better trainers still wouldn’t entertain a £6,000 first prize pot and all expenses covered, you’d have to wonder what they actually would go for.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
http://www.racingpost.com/horses/result … &popup=yes
A personal favourite from that era Jeremy – a then 113 rated 2000 Guineas winner, his 103 rated stablemate and a lovely break in the OR’s to the 46 rated Lion of Judah in a 16 runner conditions race.
Helali Manor certainly did her bit in those days too http://www.racingpost.com/horses/horse_ … _id=534671
graysonscolumn, thanks for those examples. Really interesting to see what trainers did do to gain vital money for their connections with the lowest of low grade horses.
http://www.racingpost.com/horses/result_home.sd?race_id=300592&r_date=2001-05-25&popup=yes
A personal favourite from that era Jeremy – a then 113 rated 2000 Guineas winner, his 103 rated stablemate and a lovely break in the OR’s to the 46 rated Lion of Judah in a 16 runner conditions race.
Ye gods, that’s a beauty, isn’t it!
"Proof, if any were needed, that the current system of giving appearance money to no-hopers in conditions events is no more than a bad joke", wrote the
Post
‘s duty post-analyst on the day. Maybe, but any more or less so than the alternative of a £6,873 first prize a good way into the season on a reasonable surface being settled by the outcome of a match?
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
A damning indictment of the reluctance of those training the horses for whom conditions races are genuinely meant to enter them up in sufficient quantity? Definitely.
Although with the handicapping system as it is, you can understand a trainer’s reluctance to run in these conditions race when finishing ‘too close’ can damage significantly a horses handicap mark. Take the 4-y-o race at Cheltenham on Saturday, I wouldn’t be rushing to back poor Clerk’s Choice in many handicaps off 162.
In fairness the horse has copped £31,000 for winning the race and i’m sure other trainers with horses rated in the high 130’s (think last years Fred Winter field) could have had a go at the race for that sort of money.
Trainers aren’t always the brightest in racing – you only need to look at Australia Day to see this.
Just to proffer some examples from the flat, all taken from past runnings of the Cesarewitch.
Inchcailloch won the Ces in 96 from 8lbs out of the handicap.
Establishment finished 4th from 10lbs wrong in 2001
Misternando started 7/1 fav despite being 6lbs wrong in 2003 and finished 6th. Because he was out of the weights, he was on offer at 33/1 earlier in the week.
Madiba managed to beat 13 of a 31 strong field in 2006 despite being 27lbs out of the handicap.
Despite Phil Smith regularly claiming it’s nonsense, horses still get slaughtered for one performance in non handicap company. A hurdler called Occasionally Yours got put up 20lbs for winning a novice at Huntingdon recently under a penalty. His crime was to beat a horse recently switched from Ireland with a mark of 110 despite arriving with a career record of 0/19 over hurdles.
Occasionally Yours had already run in six handicap hurdles and the idea that he suddenly improved by such an amount is laughable. Especially as he’s owned and trained by the Blackmores of Cool Roxy fame, hardly a team noted for betting coups.
The ex Irish horse got dropped 4lbs and was beaten again at Plumpton yesterday, but I doubt if Occasionally Yours will benefit from any review of the form. I also doubt if Mr Blackmore will risk running a handicapped horse in a novice race ever again.
AP
On the Feather ran in a 10f maiden at Nottingham on October 6th. Heavy ground, the field made up off generally disappointing types that having been living up to yards/pedigrees/owners etc. She finished second at 66/1 in a race where it’s hard to believe any of her rivals gave thier running and was clobbered from a mark of 51 to 69.
The Millman yard do have hostory though. You don’t win a Northumberland Plate, Ebor and a Ces in the same season unless you know how to lay one out
This is slightly off topic for a second.
I see Pippa Greene is again entered up tomorrow. Could someone just confirm for me if this horse now has 2 different handicap marks as the RP states – Turf of 72 and AW of 80?
If that is the case on the basis of 1 AW run, I really wonder what is going on at BHA towers. The fact the horse is in the process of the random rating drop for being beat irrelevant distances almost doesn’t matter.
Jose,
It’s a bug in the way the Post update their database. When a new mark is published which applies to turf and AW, they only update the turf figure until such time as the horse runs again.
You can check current ratings on the BHA website – it’s updated every Wednesday:
http://www.britishhorseracing.com/resou … a/ratings/
AP
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