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How is it possible to judge the value of the form of the UAE Derby? After Mendelssohn’s victory on Saturday the Racing Post have moved his rating from 115 to 122, an increase of 7 pounds. But to reconcile a 7 pound upward shift for him they have said that all the other eight runners ran well below form. They rated the others at:
Rayya – minus 20 of her previous best rating
Reride- minus 26
Gold Town – minus 37
Seahenge – minus 35
Taiki Ferveur – minus 45
Yulong Warrior – minus 50
Ruggero – minus 64
Threeandfourpence – minus 100I guess the dirt surface, normal progression and the distance might have contributed to Mendelsshon’s improvement. But I find it hard to accept why all of the other eight runners would run exceedingly badly. Running for a £900,000 first prize (and simarly huge place money) at Graded/Group Two level would make the trainers have their horse in top form. There was no severe going problem that can sometimes cause this sort of winning distance; the other three dirt races were in the normal range. There was no unusual early pace problem; entering the final bend seven of them were well in touch and going well.
Since all the other horses ran so badly according to the RP itself, then the RP handicappers had no reliable horse to base the race ratings on. Even the time of the race would not be significant because they are still making changes to the dirt course year-on-year to improve it, and that distance is rarely run at Meydan. So, how did they rate it? How would you tackle the problem of finding a solid starting point to begin calculations, or would you accept that an RPR of 122 is a good guess? That puts Mendelsshon at the same level as such horses as US Army Ranger, Idaho, Poet’s Voice, New Bay, Mutakayyef and Zelzal of recent years.
for me on the meydan dirt track this season, I would just forget about trying to come up with ratings.
Tbf I would not like to be rating horses on that track
Sorry cant help MV in the to hard pile for meMy thoughts on this blanket supposedly professional assessment that ‘nothing ran its race’ are probably boringly well known by now on this forum.
While I accept that it’s wise to dig very deep for a possible reason when an outstanding performance is racked up, the least logical place to turn, to my mind, is the avenue that says that every other horse chose the few minutes of that one day in the calendar to effectively run amiss.
Probably better rating it against the World Cup itself run over half a furlong further. Mendelsshon ran 6 seconds quicker than that (same weight), but in the World Cup would of received 10 lbs i believe. The last furlong he covered in 13.5 seconds.
I said the following over on the Meydan Festival thread:-
I see the Racing Post ratings man set himself up for a fall by Rating Mendelssohn right up to his best for his Dundalk run first time up. We are supposed to believe that the colt only ran to 6 lbs better today with a new mark of 122. This has resulted in having to award ridiculously low marks for every other horse in today’s race ie:-
Rayya 80
Gold Town 75
Seahenge 69
Yulong Warrior 56
Threeandfourpence 8Hamstrung by overrating the Dundalk race by miles he left himself resorting to nonsense to cover up his errors.
The Racing Post man reckoned Mendelssohn ran right up to his best at Dundalk. Something that would seem highly unlikely. O’Brien is notorious for his horses needing their first race of the season and it seemed folly to assume that Mendelssohn had run to his peak in early March.
Joe says not every horse can run below form in a race but Meydan has seen some crazy poor runs from horses this spring and I wouldn’t be surprised by anything happening there.
Threeandfourpence had a RPR of 8 at Meydan, after supposedly running to 108 at Dundalk. What the hell was that all about?
If you are going to say that one horse ran to it’s form, it would be Rayya surely? She beat Gold Town, the UAE 2000 Guineas winner, quite comfortably. If we say Rayya ran to her form, the problem then becomes what figure we need to award Mendelssohn. If Rayya ran to her best of 101, we have to give Mendelssohn 143 and that is into Frankel territory in a race run in March.
If we look at Meydan this year, Jordan Sport is a good example of a horse producing a spurious performance. Generally around about the 100 mark on RPRs, he ran a stinker in February on 81 but lo and behold he ran away with a race on the dirt by 7 lengths from Yalta and the Racing Post pushed him right up to 116. Was it the dirt then? Well probably not, because in better company next time on dirt, he could only manage 100, which is probably the horse he really is, given that his last five runs read:- 100, 102, 81, 116, 100
Another amazing race this spring at Meydan was Yulong Warrior’s Listed win on 10th March. The horse came in with RPR’s of 84, 83, 82, 73 and 88 on his previous five starts but over the extended 9f on dirt he romped to an 11 and a bit length win and earned a new RPR of 106. To keep the rating as low as that the RPR man had to award the odds-on favourite Masar a rating of 22 for that race. Masar is a 113 rated RPR at his best and ran within three lengths of Mendelssohn at the Breeders Cup where he was award 111 for his run there. Yulong Warrior’s race saw an 80/1 runner up and and a 66/1 third. Second favourite Last voyage ran to 46 and it looked a classic freak result.
How did Yulong Warrior get on next time then? He ran to 56 behind Mendelssohn ie 3 stone 8 lbs lower than his Listed win.
I think all horses can run poorly in a race where they get out of their comfort zone early. They are never able to run the race efficiently.
Some people will not be convinced but I have found it prudent to oppose these big margin winners and not, as some say, been on the road to the poorhouse. For what it’s worth I gave Mendelssohn a first thought mark of 120 and if that makes me unprofessional, then it’s no surprise as I am not a professional handicapper. I’d like to think it’s a better option than getting a milk bottle in my trousers and trying to argue it should be 150.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
ps If we rate Rayya on 101 and Mendelssohn on 143, we need to rate Threeandfourpence -13.
Did he really come out the back of the stalls in reverse?
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Rayya to be trained by bob Baffert now.
The official Irish Handicapper put Mendelssohn up 6 lbs to 122. Timeform were more bullish, giving him 127.
Timeform observed that things will be tougher in Kentucky, emphasising that dominating the race in the same manner as Meydan will be more difficult.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
It’s the terminology as much as anything else that’s at fault imo. A horse not running to its best is completely different from a horse not running its race. That latter has always meant to me that the horse is amiss – physically incapable of running anywhere close to its optimum – and by stones rather than pounds. That’s where ratings systems fall into traps.
The easiest way to see the fault is to assume the winner did not run and that everything else finished in the order it did and the time it did. Would they all still be rated stones below their best? No. And that is aside from the utter lack of logic which decrees that a whole field of randomly assembled horses ran dreadfully except for one which ran the best race of its career.
Julian Muscat in the Racing Post offered what seemed to me the most reasonable argument I’ve read. I’m pasting here for those without access:
Seeing is believing, and many who saw Mendelssohn storm to victory at Meydan on Saturday felt they had seen the winner of the Kentucky Derby.
British bookmakers were unanimous in promoting the colt to the head of the market, with BetVictor so impressed they offer no better than 4-1.
In normal circumstances it would be de rigeur to suggest that fans of Mendelssohn should wait until May 5 before backing him at American odds, but the Ballydoyle factor plays so strongly with US punters that only a wildly impressive winner of one of the remaining domestic trials can now displace Mendelssohn as favourite.
On the face of it, everything looks good. Mendelssohn has already won in Grade 1 company in the US, so travelling is not an issue. On his dirt debut on Saturday he posted the extravagant winning margin of eighteen and a half lengths. His sire and dam both excelled on the surface. The early fractions he posted at Meydan demonstrate that he has plenty of tactical speed, and in galloping right to the line, he lowered the 91/2-furlong track record by more than a second.
The only trouble is that this collective positive is militated by a series of caveats that make you wonder whether Mendelssohn’s overpowering triumph was too good to be true. Let’s not puncture the genuine bubble of excitement that Europe has a contender for a race it has yet to win, and let’s acknowledge that Mendelssohn’s ‘Run For The Roses’ is going to bring the great race to life on this side of the Pond. But 4-1? No thanks.
The inside rail bias at Meydan that Ryan Moore exploited has been well documented of late. Some esteemed US turf writers alluded to it in their assessment of Mendelssohn on Saturday, but the sheer extent of it cannot be glossed over. Although the bias has existed at Meydan for the past three carnivals; it has never been more pronounced than this year. Just look at the results on Saturday.
Heavy Metal, who blew out badly four weeks earlier when he was unable to lead along the inside rail, returned to the ‘golden highway’ on Saturday to win as he liked. Then Mendelssohn shattered the track record before Thunder Snow’s huge upset victory in the World Cup itself – in which he lowered the track record by nearly two seconds after racing along the inside rail.
Indeed, the only one of four dirt races on Saturday to elude the inside-rail front-runner was the 6f Golden Shaheen. That race was led out by Jordan Sport, a 16-1 chance who had never previously competed in Group 1 company. He was out of his depth, yet the winner, Mind Your Biscuits, still managed to lower the track record by more than half a second.
The track was riding faster than ever. Given the circumstances, any inside-rail runners who set stunning fractions are likely to have been flattered.
The influence of an overt track bias is common currency in the US. We sometimes see it in Europe, although no bias here has been quite as pronounced as that which tainted the Ebor festival at York in 1991.
As the three-day meeting unfolded it became obvious a thin strip of ground, one horse-width off the inside rail, was the place to be. One front-runner after another galloped to victory, in particular 16-1 chance Terimon, who raced down the Knavesmire’s very own ‘golden highway’ to upset Derby winner Quest For Fame by two lengths in the International Stakes. Terimon never came close to repeating that form again.
It later transpired that joggers had been allowed access to the course at York over many months. They had compacted the thin strip of ground over which so many horses had gained a distinct advantage, in the process making a mockery of one of the season’s signature fixtures.
It is also true that Mendelssohn beat very little in the UAE Derby. Runner-up Rayya made her debut less than four months previously and had featured prominently in as weak a division of three-year-old dirt fillies as has ever been seen in Dubai. And Reride, the US challenger who finished third, never took a single stride on the ‘golden highway’, having raced wide throughout.But the biggest cause for concern where Mendelssohn is concerned is that he will enter the Churchill Downs cauldron without having felt a single grain of sand smack into his face. Mendelssohn’s stablemates, Seachange and Threeandfourpence, copped it by the bucket-load on Saturday. The two horses who finished within spitting distance of Mendelssohn at Dundalk three weeks earlier were beaten out of sight this time.
That’s not to say Mendelssohn has to make all in Kentucky. He can track the pace one or two wide, where he will have clean air. That’s as good an early position as there is to be had. A fast break will be required to secure it, yet even then, Mendelssohn may yet have to run through some early kickback. How will he react? A moment’s hesitation on his part will have serious ramifications in the 20-strong field. A promising early position can become a lost cause in a handful of strides.
Bold Arrangement, trained by Clive Brittain, came closest to landing the Kentucky Derby for Europe when he chased home Ferdinand in 1990. However, Europe’s failure to triumph at Churchill Downs is itself no impediment to Mendelssohn’s prospects. Arcangues won the 1993 Breeders’ Cup Classic having never raced on dirt, while Arazi, Johannesburg and Wilko all won the Juvenile in similar circumstances.
It’s more that Mendelssohn heads to Kentucky on the back of a performance which told us only that he enjoys running on dirt. Those fast sectionals, the extravagant winning distance and his pedigree credentials are all highly seductive, yet while that combination is persuasive, it begs one question.
Thunder Snow won the Dubai World Cup by five and three-quarter lengths from West Coast, who is the best older horse in training in the US. Why, then, is West Coast a best-priced 7-1 for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, with Thunder Snow available at 25-1? We all know the reasons for that. Those same reasons apply equally to Mendelssohn’s Kentucky Derby bid.
The inside rail bias at Meydan that Ryan Moore exploited has been well documented of late. Some esteemed US turf writers alluded to it in their assessment of Mendelssohn on Saturday
But that quote does not say that Rayya ran on the exact same strip of ground as Mendelssohn did all the way round and was never more than a length behind until the final turn. Surely she must of benefited from the bias also ?
For me he would of won if he was stone last and went wide all the way round. Could you imagine if Saxon Warrior or a Frankel Colt did that, this forum would of exploded.
Phenomenal performances should always be treated with a note of caution.
When Master Minded won his 1st QM by 19 lengths from Voy Por Ustedes everybody was left speechless and his (official) rating soared to 186. Three weeks later Voy Por Ustedes beat him by 18 lengths at Aintree and was rated only 173 after that…… Master Minded “kept” his rating of 186.
Why wasn’t he down rated a few pounds???So Mendelssohn is the dog’s bollocks but his chance of winning the Kentucky Derby is less than 20%.
Mmm.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Interesting article on how Mendelssohn came about. Quite a good read for anyone who is interested.
https://www.kentuckyderby.com/horses/news/tales-from-the-crib-mendelssohn
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