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The problem with making Graded races into Limited Handicaps, is that it’s been tried, and it made very little difference to field sizes or betting.
In the early 90’s, there were upwards of twenty Limited Handicaps each NH season, almost all very familiar race names. Go back thirty years to the 1993/93 season and they included:
Edward Hanmer 4 ran 11/8
Rehearsal Chase 4 ran 4/7
Tingle Creek 5 ran 7/4 (one of them from about 40lbs out of the handicap)
Peter Marsh 6 ran 5/4 (again, one 12 y-old miles out of the handicap)
Agfa Diamond 3 ran 8/15
City Trial 5 ran 4/7The odds are the SP of the favourite.
One of the reasons they fell out of favour, was the impression that they favoured a small number of high rated horses, who controlled the races. For example, Run For Free and Jodami dominated the Hanmer, Rehearsal and Peter Marsh that season.
Fwiw, my view is that the race program is probably OK, and the problem currently is that we simply don’t have enough horses rated high enough to fill the races. Which is because they are almost all being trained and/or owned in Ireland.
Constitution Hill has been raised to 173 for Saturday, which puts him 15lbs ahead of the next best 2M hurdler. Two of the seven others rated 150+ are already 10-y-olds, two are in the same stable as CH, one has to go right handed, which would leave just Knappers Hill and I Like To Move It able to take on CH in a handicap with a 24lbs weight range round Newcastle or Cheltenham.
And one question – what purpose does a system of Graded races (level weight or handicap) actually serve in NH racing? We all knew which races were the most important long before someone stuck labels on them.
For breeding?
NH sires and dams mimicking their Flat counterparts in Sales catalogues?
Alan is, as usual, correct to point out Limited Handicaps are nothing new (I think the Peter Marsh used to be one and Little Owl won it in 1981?) but my recollection is they produced some fascinating little contests and certainly were more interesting than a 2/7 favourite with a stone and a half in hand hosing up if it stood up and/or wasn’t wrong in itself on the day.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"I agree that it’s great to see Steeplechasing posting. He was a mainstay of the forum when I joined it. I don’t have an opinion specifically on handicaps, but think it would be better if racing were to operate on a points and qualification system, just like other equestrian sports. Horses should earn their right to run in graded races, and their black type (which is a pedigree tool, as people point out). It would sort the wheat from the chaff for breeding purposes. The system that was intended to improve the breed needs an overhaul anyway, when a mare can get NH black type without leaving the ground. As an aside, eventing reduced, and then scrapped, the minimum cross country weight of 11st 11lb. One argument was that dead weight could have a negative impact on jumping ability/cause falls. Although I can’t imagine racing ever having that conversation, the theory adds merit to weight-carrying performances, particularly over fences.
Louise, many thanks for the kind words. I am less confident of my analysis now, than I was back then, but I’ve found that to be a positive all in all.
AP, great to read you again – that’s a fine post, thanks. I never really understood the point of limited handicaps inasmuch as the weight restrictions often still favour the better horses. Restricted handicaps. As they seem to be calling them these days, for veterans, nurseries etc, are fine, but when seeking to identify the best, open handicaps are the most appropriate tool, I’d say.
There have been some good points made here on the downside of making every graded race an open handicap, but I’d love to see a pilot series. Taking Frankel, we never really learned how good he was, and I wonder if he’d had a couple of tussles giving, say, Excelebration a stone and beating him, then 16lbs, 20lbs etc. Not going to happen in the real world for various reasons, but it’s one of the attractions of an all handicap system (for me, at least).
Just catching up with what’s going on here – and, like many have already said: Good to see you back Joe. You’ve been missed. Elon Musk has a few positives, it would seem …
On the topic in hand: I’ve not much to add to what others have already said, but I agree that open handicaps have often been where we jumps fans really come to appreciate what we have. Dessie’s VC and Denman’s second Hennessy were right up there for me with any performance they put up in a level weights G1. I guess what we’re finding unsatisfactory about today’s campaigning is how those performances are becoming so rare these days. That’s why L’Homme Presse’s performance at the weekend was so warming [and note he now has a rating up there with a GC winner]. The trouble is, even an open handicap has its limits when faced with the extraordinary horse. One handicap with Arkle in it; one without is the classic example cited (before my time, but we’ve all heard the story no doubt). That’s where the issue of weight really does cut in – in that tale wasn’t Arkle slated to carry something like 13 stone to get everything else in the handicap? Ok for a hunter maybe but for a steeplechaser going at racing pace? Interestingly, even he, in a very different time and context, wasn’t asked that question.
Tbf I still think Arkle’s most impressive performance ever was in a Handicap Chase, namely the Gallaher Gold Cup at Sandown Park: https://youtu.be/tamkrqCAegs
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Thanks for uploading that. It was over a decade before I was born and I’ve never seen it. Watching the pair of them over the Railway Fences is riveting. Both jumping superbly, Mill House perhaps jumping even better than Arkle…then getting left eating dust. I know Mill House got beaten a long way in the end but up until the second last when he was cooked and made the tired mistake that was a proper race between two superstars. Imagine seeing the pair of them in full flight in the flesh. Spine tingling stuff.
The first name that always seems to come to mind while talking is as usual Arkle. Nothing wrong with his three Gold Cup wins, but looking at the field sizes of those three races you have 4 – 4 – 5 runners.
Comparing him to Best Mate makes this stat look more interesting: 18 – 15 – 10 runners.
Arkle basically won three Gold Cups in a row beating a total of ten runners. Matey did the same thing while beating 40 runners. Now, you tell me who had a lot more “obstacles” to overcome.
Nevertheless, Arkle’s prep runs before Cheltenham were alwyas quite remarkable: Each year he ran 16-17 days before the Gold Cup in the Leopardstown Handicap Chase carrying 12-0, 12-7 and 12-7……..
“Thanks for uploading that….Spine tingling stuff.”
You’re welcome, greenasgrass.
The footage has exactly the same impact on me.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"@Titus Oates. Good to see you are still here and thank you for the kind words.
All the best.
JoePrompted by the staggering footage of ‘Himself’s’ greatest performance (which I’d seen before), I started digging around in the race record of, and then trying to find footage of, his equally (possibly more) talented stablemate, Flyingbolt. The performances (pre illness) were quite simply staggering (see his Wikipedia entry: Supreme, Champion Chase – followed by 3rd in the Champion Hurdle a day or so later, Irish GN etc. Performance after performance giving away lumps of weight). As for footage. Well there’s several versions of him on Youtube winning the Massey Ferguson (December’s 2.5M Cheltenham chase), where the camera actually focuses on the race for second. FB is long gone! He was obviously a total monster. But then I came across this wonderful 30 minute interview with Jim Dreaper:
This is well worth a listen and a watch. Here there are VTs (which I hadn’t seen before) of both Arkle and Flyingbolt winning the Irish GN, beating the same mare (Height O’Fashion) giving her crazy amounts of weight. FB beats her more easily than Arkle. She then in turn won the same race a year later, with 12 stone on her back. As Dreaper says, ‘those days are long gone; we don’t ask horses to do that anymore’. The consequence, though, is that no modern day great is going to get anywhere near the monster Timeform ratings of the two Dreaper-trained superstars. Sprinter’s 192p (beating Sizing Europe) is probably as high as it’s possible to go. This matters; because it was by running in handicaps that Arkle and Flyingbolt achieved these (justifiable, not outlandish) ratings, and because of the way it positions NH racing’s best as in an increasingly distant past. How many other sports do this? I’d venture, few if any. And how does that possibly encourage a new fan base? The more I think about the question of NH graded races v handicaps, the more I think it goes to the heart of many of the key challenges facing the sport.
Great post Titus Oates, I have long been fascinated by Flyingbolt.
As you’ve probably seen, there is also an “unsung horses” thread ongoing currently, and Flyingbolt must surely deserve a place on that. His ability and achievements were stunning, but he has always been overshadowed by Arkle. Had he raced in a different era, I suspect he would be better remembered.
These two races are examples of what we’ve lost; the Royal Doulton Hurdle must have been the best field ever assembled for a handicap hurdle, and as late as May. In the Golden Age, trainers weren’t afraid of getting beaten, and Cheltenham was not an all-consuming monster100% agree – the proliferation of Pattern Jumps races has destroyed the thing that most distinguished the Jumps from the Flat.
Time was when the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase and the Cheltenham Gold Cup were your only crack at showing who’s boss at level weights, only a lunatic would gear an entire season round one race, so, win or lose, you ran in all these big handicaps during the season and if you were still in good shape come March Cheltenham would be the cherry on the cake of a successful season.
That ethos has been utterly lost by the bonehead idea to introduce races like the Betfair Chase (should be named the Hennessy Killer) and other single-digit field Graded races.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Yeah, too many graded races, and too many are 4-6 runners, and no betting proposition. And I agree about the Betfair – same day as the 2m4f Ascot 1965 (H&T Walker) chase, and a week before the 3m2f Hennessy….
And they’ve also moved the Rehearsal chase a week earlier to the same day as the Hennessy…Shocking race planning….
Flat racing has a pattern for a reason…..Jumping doesn’t really need one; but if it must then cut the number of them. That 2m Novice chase at Sandown is really a Gd1?? Get rid of novice Gd1 races until the spring….
I think I read that Ireland has 9 Gp1 flat races – but 30+ Gd1 jump races…….Ridiculous.
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