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This is probably a naïve question relating to the OR of a horse. To a certain extant I have ignored this in the past but now want to try and get a better understanding of it.
I’ll try to give what I understand of it and perhaps I could be corrected where I have gone wrong.
Looking at Bristol De Mai he is going into the Cotswold Chase on Saturday rated 167 when he ran in the King George on Boxing Day he was rated 173.
So does this mean that his run in the King George is rated as 167?
No, I don’t know what mark he ran to in the king george (it certainly wasn’t anywhere near as high as 167) but what happened is the official handicaper decided that he had overrated him for his Betfair chase win (which pretty much everyone thought before the king george anyway) and dropped him six pounds. If he doesn’t win tomorrow he could see a further drop, while even if he wins I’ll doubt he’ll go up much.
If I were you, Chestnut, I’d continue to largely ignore OR’s. Although they are sometimes a useful guide when an exposed handicapper has repeatedly failed to win off an OR above a certain level the same snapshot of a horse can be viewed by examining how it has run in a higher class of race.
All ratings are educated best guesses. OR’s tend to be cautious, unimaginative and reactionary. You are better off using a ratings service such as Timeform or Racing Post Ratings (RPR). I prefer the latter, you need to subscribe to the basic website membership.
This will arm you with a horse’s lifetime form including an RPR for each of its runs, basically a performance rating for each race. They are generally decent estimations, with experience you will sometimes develop an opinion that they have got one badly wrong.
Assuming most RPRs are pretty accurate you can use them to get an overview of a horse’s career and, taking into account all the normal factors such as going, distance, etc., you can predict what RPR all horses in an upcoming race might run to, adjust for weight and hey presto (if you’re talented enough).
Bristol De Mai’s chasing RPRs show steady improvement disguised by wild inconsistency, last season ranging from 156 to 170. The trend has continued this season: 174 at Wetherby; 185 Haydock; 151 Kempton. The horse had his ideal conditions at Haydock so probably warranted 185, he evidently had stomach ulcers or something at Kempton so you can put a line through that (it was clearly not his running so his OR being dropped 6 in response highlights the inadequacies of ORs). The question today is do you trust BDM to run to his Haydock level, albeit the ground will be Heavy, but on an undulating track? There is nothing wrong with his previous chase runs at Cheltenham, all on Good. If he’s recovered from the Kempton problem and you’re ok with stableform he should be able to run to at least 185. It’s not level weights so perhaps something can beat that on adjusted figures. I’ll be looking to see about that because BDM is a short price and 3 of his last 6 runs, for various reasons, have been below par – my feel is that I just don’t trust him enough to run to 185 to back him at that price.
Having said all that, I think American (5/1) should improve a little and rates the biggest danger but Bristol De Mai would still have about a stone in hand. Bit worried about the stableform but BDM can be a fair bit below his best and still just win. Not worth backing at the price though.
Thanks for the info.
What I would like to know is if BDM did not run to 167 in the King George what did the official handicapper think he did run to in that race? (By the way I am not specifically interested in BDM I am just using him as an example)
As you say thejudge1 if he ran to, for example to 150, in that race and the handicapper decided only to drop him to 167. I would like to know exactly what the handicapper thought he ran to in that race. Is that information available anywhere?
I would like to look at race results and see the mark that the official handicapper thinks each horse ran to.
As now when you look at the results you have the mark that the horse was prior to the race, and of course used for the allocation of weights. I would like to know what a horse ran that race to.
That’s the trouble with ORs, Chestnut, what the handicapper though BDM ran to in the KG is just not available. So I largely ignore ORs and use RPRs.
So if I look at the RP and I have not got a copy today or have access to their form online. It will give a rating that they assess each horse to have ran to in every race?
Only in the results section the day after in the paper. For the current day’s races the paper generally only shows a horse’s last 3 runs, Chestnut, in the form section and does not show the RPR for every horse that ran in those races, just the first three and the horse in question if it did not win or place.
If you subscribe to the website you get access all the time to the form and rating of every run of every horse going back to 1986! The Essential Membership gets you this for £14.50 paid monthly or £145 paid annually (which works out £12.08 per month). So, with the paper costing £2.40, if you generally buy 5 papers each month it works out cheaper to subscribe to the database.
For BDM, for example, he was rated:
Charlie Hall 174
Betfair 185
King George 151
Today ??? (can take a day for rating to appear)I reckon he ran to about 160 today. Was right to be worried about NTD stableform, of his 9 runners today only Wholestone ran anything like, the rest were pretty poor. BDM finished 10 behind Definitly Red at levels. DR had improved by 3 last time to a best rating of 167, I reckon he improved again today to 170. American’s previous best was 164. I think he blew up and then ran on again today, rather than improving he was beaten 8 lengths by DR while receiving 4 pounds so a total of 12 pounds/lengths for a rating of 158, 6 below his best.
James Willoughby addressed this issue on Luck on Sunday when he absolutely slammed the handicapping system and Phil Smith in particularly, stating why isn’t the whole system more open and less secretive.
As chestnut pointed out in his earlier post why isn’t what the handicapper rated BDM for his King George run freely available?
Similarly whenever an Irish horse wins a big race here such as Rule The World in the National we never get an updated rating from Smith because he doesn’t need to unless the horse is entered in another British handicap, it’s all wrong.
Willoughby was calling for a complete overhaul of the handicapping system, more or less abolishing all handicaps apart from the Heritage ones and having graded racing instead.
Thought Willoughby was absolutely spot on (for once) with all he said.
Agree with most of what you say, yeats. The secrecy is not good for anyone – we need to see integrity in the handicapping system and we want there to be obvious precedents to justify ratings.
I’d assume the BHA handicapper acts somewhat like Timeform in the event of a well below-par run from a horse. Rather than giving it a specific rating for that performance they might say the run “wasn’t worth a rating” and drop its master rating a certain amount on wellbeing/form grounds.
An OR or Master Rating, continually tinkered with as it is in the manner described by LS, is a waste of time. That’s why I use RPRs. RPRs are Performance Ratings, all of which in a horse’s career can be viewed in the circumstances of each run and used to predict the performance of the horse in the race you are studying in numerical terms.
Fro my post above: I reckon he ran to about 160 today. Was right to be worried about NTD stableform, of his 9 runners today only Wholestone ran anything like, the rest were pretty poor. BDM finished 10 behind Definitly Red at levels. DR had improved by 3 last time to a best rating of 167, I reckon he improved again today to 170. American’s previous best was 164. I think he blew up and then ran on again today, rather than improving he was beaten 8 lengths by DR while receiving 4 pounds so a total of 12 pounds/lengths for a rating of 158, 6 below his best.
RPRs now out: DR 171, BDM 161, American 159. I’m losing my touch!
I use ORs as a guide. I take no notice of RP ratings or Timeform ratings. And its done me no harm.
Same here Mike, whenever I look at RPR I get a sore head trying to fathom them. BDM 185 being a decent example but I notice it almost weekly.
Think OR is quite accurate most of the time personally although I agree that the system should be a lot more transparent.
Willo’s idea has some merit but his main moan persay was that horses are being put up in rating by the handicapper for racing’s being ‘re-assessed’ therefore being penalised for sitting in their stable. I agree this isn’t right and needs abolished, but a complete overhaul seems OTT.
The reassessed in the box abolition is a tricky one. Say I was a small trainer and my star horse had a chance to win a big handicap say off OR 140.
And say Nicky Henderson had a horse also on 140 who came 2nd narrowly last time to a horse on 143 who then won 2 handicaps and went up to 156.
If that Nicky Henderson horse ran in my horse’s race off that same mark of 140 in other words there was no reassessment then my stable star is probably not going to win.
We should be now using the rules to help the smaller trainers? Not for me.
If you swap that analogy around and the small trainer is punished for his horse standing in his box, how harsh is that?
Horses improve at different rates, even though a horse has improved 16lbs doesn’t mean the horse in behind has.
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