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It’s not nonsense. Trainer has been saying it for a good while.
The 2nd and 3rd were too close for comfort. On good ground they wouldn’t have been close.Where’s the evidence?
Better on good ground is the trainer’s default mode for all his horses. It was only good-soft anyway.Might Bite beat Tea For Two 3 lengths.
Tea For Two was beaten 3 1/2 lengths in last season’s King George and also won the Betfair Bowl in between – both on good ground.There’s some evidence Might Bite could’ve done even better had Nico increased the pace more gradually from 4 out. Also some evidence he idled on the run-in. But where’s the evidence he’s better on good ground?
Value Is EverythingThe ground in the King George was soft.
Read this about Might Bite, Ive nothing to add. Its there in black and white.
http://www.skysports.com/racing/news/12040/11167744/ground-key-to-might-bite-chance
BHA handicapper has it as a pretty poor King George. https://www.britishhorseracing.com/handicappers-blog-festive-period/
He’s already hotly backtracking over his Betfair assessment of Bristol De Mai. There’s much to be said for any official being willing to reconsider and change his mind, but for supposedly the top man in the country at his job dropping a horse who patently did not run his race by 6lbs after one run smacks of utter panic.
How many runs does it normally take for a handicap chaser/hurdler to be dropped 6lbs?
Radical overreaction imo and he’s put himself in a very tough position for when Bristol De Mai returns to his proper form. Another interesting angle added to the Cotswold Chase at the end of this month.
The ground in the King George was soft.
Read this about Might Bite, Ive nothing to add. Its there in black and white.
http://www.skysports.com/racing/news/12040/11167744/ground-key-to-might-bite-chance
The ground was officially Good-soft, Soft in places at the beginning of the meeting; changing to Soft, good-soft in places before the start of the King George. But that’s only one person’s opinion of the ground. Race times together with sectionals suggest it was more like genuine good-soft.
Again, you’re taking what one man thinks as fact. Might have seemed last year Might Bite was better on good ground, but has now put up two better performances on softer. There’s obviously a chance he’ll do even better given the opportunity of racing on good ground again, but that’s as yet speculation; based only on the trainer’s opinion and what some think of his action. As yet there’s no evidence of him wanting good ground on “form” to date, let alone being a “stone better”.
If he is a stone better then he’s a long odds-on shot for the Gold Cup, not 4/1 as it is now.
Value Is EverythingBHA handicapper has it as a pretty poor King George. https://www.britishhorseracing.com/handicappers-blog-festive-period/
He’s already hotly backtracking over his Betfair assessment of Bristol De Mai. There’s much to be said for any official being willing to reconsider and change his mind, but for supposedly the top man in the country at his job dropping a horse who patently did not run his race by 6lbs after one run smacks of utter panic.
How many runs does it normally take for a handicap chaser/hurdler to be dropped 6lbs?
Radical overreaction imo and he’s put himself in a very tough position for when Bristol De Mai returns to his proper form. Another interesting angle added to the Cotswold Chase at the end of this month.
I agree, Joe. When a horse is palpably below form there’s no evidence of it being a worse horse and therefore no reason to reduce its rating, let alone by 6 lbs. However, just think the handicapper has reconsidered and in reducing the rating has now admitted he got it wrong… Which is fair enough really.
Value Is EverythingWhen Might Bite was first re-assessed after the King George, his mark was shown as 165 (+3) and I noted that this looked a little light. They have now shown him up another (+4) to 169.
My own feeling, if that is worth anything at all, was that Might Bite would end up on the same figure as Sizing John on 170.
Bristol De Mai’s problem is that how many horse’s who have run as often as he has suddenly get raised 13 lbs?
Given the extreme ground it was always likely that there would be some dubiety about any rating awarded in the aftermath. The new figure still reflects a career best, just ahead of the 166 he earned at the same track on soft ground.
That first Haydock romp represented a 12 lbs rise over his previous mark of 154 and it looks like history may be repeating itself, as Bristol De Mai dropped by stages from that 166 mark to 159 after disappointing at Aintree behind Tea For Two.
It seems perfectly acceptable that the Handicapper may be trying to find a sensible half-way house for now and show some patience. He even made a remark regarding the Racing Post figure of 185, which seemed to puzzle him somewhat.
Be patient Joe, if Bristol De Mai is the second coming it will be reflected in the ratings in due course.
Handicappers in general do seem quick to put a horse way up there and then generally take forever to drop them again. In cases like this though, with extreme ground involved in the equation and bearing in mind the 12 lbs raise last year ended up looking an error subsequently until a repeat romp in the same conditions, it’s reasonable to question whether the 13 lbs rise may have been hasty.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Steve, we are not talking here about a journalist or a tipster – this is the BHA jumps handicapper, who should arguably be the best judge money can buy. Yet he seems to have taken a literal view of the King George run when even a punter with a year’s decent experience and an objective mindset could see the horse ran nowhere near his form.
If he did run to form then T42 has improved by stones, even allowing for those who believe he did not run his race at Haydock. In assessing the Betfair, Smith even reached a per length measure by according it five-eighths of a pound (when half a pound under such circumstances would have seemed perfectly adequate). His colleague has now pretty much ignored Smith’s assessment entirely and, without any per-length explanation has just said, I’ll whop off 6lbs. Whatever you think of Bristol De Mai, it’s amateurish nonsense from a handicapping viewpoint and he’s left himself in the position of a yo-yo.
I heard about the ulcers and am always reluctant to listen to excuses. I’d sooner have the yard form being poor or the horse having a bad day. Whatever caused it, he was nowhere near his form, even his good ground form. Bristol De Mai ran almost a stone better in the Gold Cup than the King George. If he skates up in the Cotswold, what will the handicapper do then, having stupidly painted himself into a corner?
Again this is like the Master Minded debate we had the other week. We know the horse (BDM) had his optimum conditions at his favourite track. If the horse was also at peak fitness, had the perfect run up to the race and everything on that day was A1, then should the handicapper rate this performance accordingly or adjust for this by giving him a lower mark saying this was a one off exceptional performance due to everything been in his favour.
For horses like this (IMO BDM), who although not quite one trick ponies, but do put in these peak and trough performances, is the handiacpper therefore justified rating in this yo-yo method.
Would BDM have won the Betfair with these ulcers, albeit by a smaller margin?
You would imagine with the ulcers he would have been in the pack rather than away from the pack… hard to assume but obviously they would be detrimental to the performance.
Joe, Handicapping is not and will never be an exact science.
Nobody on the planet can get it right all the time.
If you are going to criticise him for getting it wrong in dropping Bristol De Mai, then how can you have any confidence he got it right in bumping the horse up for a runaway win and putting him into a position 3 lbs ahead of the Gold Cup winner after previously sitting 10 lbs behind him?
The two Haydock runs aside and you are left with a horse at a respectable but defined margin behind the best.
If Bristol De Mai can prove he’s good enough I’ll hold my hands up but it seems clear where, and in which conditions, he can dominate his opponents.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
You would imagine with the ulcers he would have been in the pack rather than away from the pack… hard to assume but obviously they would be detrimental to the performance.
Some interesting data regarding horses in training and ulcers:-
http://www.clydevetgroup.co.uk/equine/newsletters/apr07.htm
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Didn’t realise you could give horses omeprazole. Something I couldn’t stock enough of when I worked for the NHS but something I avoided like the plague whenever I had any problems with acid etc. Sorts out one problem but causes others.
Joe, Handicapping is not and will never be an exact science.
Nobody on the planet can get it right all the time.
If you are going to criticise him for getting it wrong in dropping Bristol De Mai, then how can you have any confidence he got it right in bumping the horse up for a runaway win and putting him into a position 3 lbs ahead of the Gold Cup winner after previously sitting 10 lbs behind him?
The two Haydock runs aside and you are left with a horse at a respectable but defined margin behind the best.
As far as handicapping a horse is concerned; wherever and whenever the horse runs below form has no bearing on the horse’s rating. As long as he’s still thought capable of showing his “best form” that is what he needs to be rated on. So you can’t just take out BDM’s Haydock runs, Steve. I agree the BHA handicapper over-estimated BDM’s Betfair Chase performance by some way, but there’s still a high probability he improved there – is on that form less than 10 lbs behind Sizing John. Haydock remains BDM’s best form and that’s still what he needs to be rated on – whatever that form might deserve. BDM may well only show his best form on bottomless ground on a flat left-handed course when able to dominate and when the stable is in particularly good form… Timeform rate Bristol De Mai 2 lbs below both Might Bite and Sizing John. That of course does not mean they believe BDM will finish 2 lbs behind those two on good ground at Cheltenham. BDM simply can not be rated lower because when racing under those same Haydock conditions again it’s probable he’ll run to the same form.
Value Is Everything
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