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Master Minded is a modern day example of a horse with a silly rating. 186 on the back of one performance in a race extremely difficult to rate. On any other form he’s a 175 horse not 186 he never has been the best chaser in training in reality. One huge rating and people get swept away on a media / press bandwagon. If someone tells you something often enough …………………………….. .
No need to apologise Aristo, it’s a moving elegy to an undoubtedly great horse. In its way though, it also suggests to me that the personality cult surrounding the horse was so pervasive that even level-headed handicappers got carried away.
I didn’t do statistics in any depth, but I’m sure there’s someone on here who would be able to put a figure on the likelihood that ability in the horse population over the last 45 years could be spread in this way ie. two horses nearly a stone and a half clear of everything else, and living side by side.
If it’s anything less than a million to one, I’ll be very surprised. It’s surely more likely that the horses Arkle was beating were unusually poor, and also perhaps that their trainers and jockeys had accepted defeat before they turned up.
I can’t have that personally – after winning the race last season grindng from the front, if they thought the horse was back at full fitness they would surely not have changed a winning tactic.
Paul Nichols was pleasantly surprised at how well he ran PC. He said before the race that if he ran the same way he did last season quite simply he wouldn’t get home. He’s probably right but he said he wasn’t 100% fit before the Hennessy but did. Probaly he’s not the easiest horse to acess at home. who knows? The other horse in question was very raeley 100% fit but still won big races in a canter. No two horses are the same.
Arkle was such a freak yet he was rated only
two pounds
above his stablemate at the time. There were an awful lot of freaks in the 1960’s.
I am no expert on measuring different generations of racecourses but if the evolution of racehorses is comparable to the evolution of human beings then Kauto Star would defeat Arkle by a distance.
I do however remember reading somewhere that due to in-breeding horses are actually becoming slower so maybe Arkle would destroy Kauto.
If you think that Arkles rivals went to the races thinking that they might not beat him read up on the 1966 Hennessy; Stan Mellor had a plan..and it worked..we spoke to him a couple of years ago about it..believe me, people wanted to beat him!
Arkle was a complete freak lads. There’ll never be another one like him and it’s completely pointless comparing today’s horses to him. Just enjoy the horses that are around now for what they are but don’t insult peoples intelligence by suggesting they could be as good as Himself.
The problem with this statement is that according to Timeform, there was indeed another one very much like him – only 2lb inferior in fact – who was living in the next-door box at precisely the same time. Quite a coincidence, no?
Yet every other horse ever bred to jump a fence over the last 50-odd years – a quarter of a million or so perhaps, and possibly many more – has been at least 19lb inferior to the pair of them (and the third-placed horse in Timeform’s all-time list, Mill House, was also racing at the same time).
I find that very difficult to believe.
Super post….
I do however remember reading somewhere that due to in-breeding horses are actually becoming slower so maybe Arkle would destroy Kauto.
That certainly isn’t true.
It is impossible to compare horses of different eras based on times surfaces are different horses don’t even run on fast ground anymore really.
In any case you can have a handicapper break a course record all depends on circumstance. A strong tailwind and I might even run 100 metres in 20 seconds.
"H" my old mate I have noticed those who are coming away with such statements are saying so without any foundation to it.
Airsto, I put it down to youthful exuberance and downright belligerence on their part – if not ignorance.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
could Kauto Star give lumps of weight away to his peers in the same manner as Arkle did – and still win ?
I almost started another thread on a similar theme, but seeing as it’s been raised here:
Paul Nicholls said today in his RP column that three runs a season is all Kauto will have from now on. The Gold Cup and King George are presumably givens for two of the three, with another to ‘prep’ for the King George I’d have thought. With the new format of the Betfair Million there’s no need to go to Haydock as he has done in recent seasons and the James Nicholson is little more than a racecourse gallop, so what about a handicap for that third race?
A major handicap (that attracts more than 4 runners) is the one thing missing from Kauto’s nigh-on immaculate CV, and I think in terms of Kauto’s schedule the Paddy Power would be just about the ideal race. It gives plenty of time before Kempton and being over a shorter trip is unlikely to take too much out of the horse. The problem is of course that Mr Nicholls probably has one lined up for that already (no, not Silverburn
).The ideal race foregoing any considerations of his schedule would be the Racing Post Chase but it will never happen with the KG a month before.
Arkle was such a freak yet he was rated only
two pounds
above his stablemate at the time. There were an awful lot of freaks in the 1960’s. :wink:
Ian, the man who knew Arkle best was Pat Taaffe, that gentle, quiet spoken horseman who rode him in most of his greatest victories. He wrote a lovely little book which can still be found from time to time in the good second hand bookshops (try Rutland Books in Uppingham, proprietor Edward Baines knows the time of day on these things) called My Life and Arkle’s. He rode both horses (we are referring to the versatile, but temperamental and fragile, Flyingbolt incidentally) and states clearly that there was in fact more than a STONE not TWO POUNDS between them. Maybe at two and a half miles it might have been nearer half a stone but not at three miles plus. Great champion Kauto Star is without question but a fit Arkle (and he was very fit) would have been his superior over all distances from three miles plus and Pat Taaffe believed he would have also won the Grand National.
I’ve got an old copy of Ivor Herberts ‘Arkle’..the most poignant part of it to me being the last chapter ‘It is early May, 1966, and Arkle is waiting to go away on his summer holidays with ‘Meg’ the Duchess’s fat and solemn old hunter mare who is his sobering grass companion. he is surrounded at Greenogue by three artists, two photographers and one sculptor and he does so want to get out into the fields….’ I do wonder what the next chapter in Kauto Star’s biography will be, but I hope his journey will be a safe and glorious one.
Paul Nicholls said today in his RP column that three runs a season is all Kauto will have from now on.
That sucks!
Arkle’s Timeform figure of 212 may be arguable, but the fact is that for Kauto Star to achieve a figure anywhere close to that, he would have to win good class handicaps – and would also have to give weight to some very good horses.
Had Kauto, for example, been able to concede the 14Ibs to Monet’s Garden at Aintree last season ( which he wasn’t able to do ) then Timeform would have allotted him a figure into the 190s. Who said so ?
Timeform, that’s who !
The reason why Arkle, Flyingbolt and Mill House achieved such lofty Timeform ratings during the 60s was because of their ability to consistently beat top class opponents in handicaps – conceding them lumps of weight.
As yet, Kauto Star has not done so – and it seems, will never be allowed to.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
- Total Posts 17716
Would the Liverpool team that ruled British and European football through the 70s and 80s be competitive against the team of today? Could they match, stride for stride, the more recent accomplishments of AC Milan, Manchester United and Real Madrid? They were utterly dominant, much like Arkle, so why not? Or is it just too implausible that what we know to be top class football now could be bettered by history?
Class is relative, and the likes of Arkle would have had to have been given the marks they were because they were so much better than those contesting the best races at the time. But how likely is it that, over forty years ago, there were as many top class racehorses (rated, for instance, 165 and above) as there are now given a vastly inferior number of horses in training?
I would suggest that, despite the idiocy of some decisions, handicapping is far more accurate now and were Arkle racing today a rating of 212 would be an impossibility. It just doesn’t tally with what we know to be likely. That said, no-one can say for sure and with conditions now so remarkably different (in terms of training methods, ground preparation etc) it will never be confirmed either way.
It’s scandalous………………that so many took DJ seriously, in his opening post.
Arkle Schmarkle, Kauto Schmauto…………..the Defenders of the Arkle faith are just as bad as those who refuse to believe that such superiority could ever be possible.
Better that Kauto Star is ‘measured’ against a relative contemporary whose career achievements are so much better a match anyway; namely Desert Orchid. Once it has been established whether Kauto Star was better/worse than Desert Orchid, then perhaps the debate can move to Arkle.
I would dearly love to see connections run Kauto Star in the Hennessy as his pipe-opener for next season. I would also accept the Munster National at Limerick or the Servo Computers Chase at Cheltenham as a kick-off point. Just…please….not the BetFair Chase or the James Nicholson.
Kauto is better than Dessie much as I adored the grey everyone did.
Why are people so obsessed with horses giving weight in handicaps, chasers in particular? Can’t quite grasp why that is such a big thing with some people. Personally I like to see class horses contesting class races.
The racing world has moved on the structure is different now. Come on people get with the times.
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