- This topic has 32 replies, 19 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 7 months ago by
.
- Posts
I’ve now sent the questions to Phil.
Thanks to everyone who contributed questions, some good stuff in there.
I’d like to ask a couple of questions, with a little elaboration, please Phil.
My questions are, would you consider it … for want of a better word … sacrilegious to rate a horse higher than Sea Bird II or Arkle in their respective codes, even if said horse warranted such a rating? I ask as purists consider these two horses almost immortal for their feats, and put them on a pedestal above reproach. It is almost as if it is blasphemous to consider any horse, post-1990, to have equalled them. Why should that be so?
Also, if you had the opportunity to rate a horse as high or higher, would you try to find excuses not to?
For my second question, it has always puzzled me as to why Hawkwing was rated so highly for winning an average Lockinge in a bog, yet High Chapperal and (moreso) Rock of Gibraltar under-rated for winning everything in sight. What made Hawkwing’s single soft ground performance so ‘good’, yet the like of Harbinger’s stunning KGVI performance, ROG’s run of GP1 wins, etc, open to interpretation?Thanks for taking the time to answer an old Rainsfordian’s questions
Hi Phil
Many thanks for taking the time.
A cheats charter Heny Cecil calls it. I wouldn’t be in complete agreement with him but I think the onus is very firmly on you the handicappers to ensure fairness is maintained in the system. To what extent do you see responsibility for integrity in racing as part of your job’s remit?
I understand picking out individual races in such a crowded program could be considered unfair but I think one race that can be considered a cameo for all that is wrong with the handicapping system is the Nursery run at the Ebor meeting in August 2009.
Bond Fastrac is openly campaigned in his second ever run at Redcar. He wins and is awarded a handicap mark of 85 for the victory. Thats just 3lbs lower than the median mark awarded to the winner of Newbury 2yo maiden races despite Redcar having only 4 or 5 courses below it when it comes to the strength of 2yo maiden races run there.
Yurituni, a horse associated with high profile professional gambler, Harry Findlay had the following Raceform comments included in his write up following its first 3 runs
Run 1 – …
she ran on in taking fashion under mainly hands-and-heels riding once getting the idea
Run 2 – …
caught the eye on her debut at Windsor over this distance and, despite that experience, 5f really is too sharp for her.
Run 3 – …
was moving up from 5f to 6f and wasn’t knocked about when fading.
The result of your teams handicapping leaves the openly campaigned horse having to concede a
massive
18lbs to the horse who hasn’t been off a yard in its first 3 runs. Yuritini is gambled on and connections walk away with the prizemoney, the weight concession probably crucial in her narrow victory.
With reference to the above race to what extent do you think your teams work encourages owners to try their best and therefore uphold integrity in the sport when seemingly they will punished for doing so. Are cheats not encouraged by the scenario above? Isn’t it this, that Henry Cecil is alluding to.
How much does profiling of owners, trainers and jockeys take place when you are working out races. Are the records of previously known piss takers (imo) such as Barney Curley, George Baker (trainer), Tony Culhane etc factored into racecourse performance when evaluating their horses?
Should Barney Curley’s horse The Bonus Ball be returned from its current mark of 85 to its pre Folkestone mark of 93 following the discovery by the BHA of a metabolite of tranqualizer in the horses urine following that run last March. If not, why not?
How much do you refer to Raceform and Timeform before allotting new marks?
How long does your team take when evaluating lower level foreign form? 30 seconds per race by the looks of it. Belle Noverre another huge mistake by your team at Hamilton today (18th August). Do you see a need for improvement in this area?I have tried in all of my answers not to be rude with any of the questioners, even when with some aren’t exactly complimentary about the team and who have expressed their questions in a somewhat provocative way. The answers have taken me a day to compile and given that amount of time I have given freely then to write the above question is I feel very insulting to my team who actually work incredibly hard and produce amazingly competitive races as is acknowledged by most observers.
Is the performance of your handicappers internally monitored. Is there an official process of continuous assessment?
Why are you in such a rush to allot marks after a third run? In 2010 so far some 87% of all runners have been assessed after 3 runs. Would horses like Nelson’s Bounty not give you reason to be more circumspect in allotting marks to lightly raced horses? It gives followers of racing without inside information no chance imo. Your policy at the moment turns people away from the sport.
Why don’t the BHA publish performance ratings for each race? They could be published by the PA on the Sporting Life website thus giving followers who don’t have the resources to purchase private ratings access to a free set. May well stimulate interest.
Many thanks, Phil.
Paul Fitzgerald
Hello Phil, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.
As there have been a number of weighty questions for you to muse over I’ll keep mine simple (also I haven’t really got any issues with British Handicappers).
1) As an Official Handicapper you are not allowed to bet on the horses, do you enjoy a flutter on any other sports?
2) Do you believe that the competitiveness/spectacle of other sports would be improved by the introduction of handicaps, for example Women’s Tennis or Darts
Btw, the blogs on the BHA website make for some interesting reading sometimes – good work.Thank you!
Many thanks to Phil – open and straightforward answers to some very tricky questions.
Much appreciated.
Thanks to Phil Smith for replying to the questions.
The replies were interesting, I suppose.
Thanks for the answers Phil/Paul,
It’s interesting to see that you measure your success by the number of close finishes that we see every day. Given that anyone that doesn’t win closely wil be personally punished by your good self, isn’t that a bit like a Communist dictator pointing to a crowd of smiling flag wavers, with guns in their backs, as evidence of how much everyone loves their dear leader?
Another success tonight, with True to Form winning closely
Since you ask:
9) Can you justify the BHA handicappers’ frequent references to “yardsticks” and “rating races around” certain horses when extrapolation of this ilk is scientifically questionable?
Yes – because it works. Who says it is scientifically questionable? I would be fascinated to see the proof rather than an opinion.
I find that an absolutely astonishing reply from someone in your position.
I myself have made the point numerous times, including here: http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing … 50110.html.
The relevant remarks in this context are:
[Smith’s] blog on the BHA website contains repeated references to "yardsticks" and of rating races "through" given horses. This type of handicapping – often described as "yardstick handicapping" – is limited, to say the least.
Smith, as a former mathematics teacher, should know very well that extrapolation from an individual to a larger population is a much riskier business than the reverse process of interpolation from a larger population to an individual.
"Extrapolation error", as it is known, is the main reason why yardstick handicapping is fundamentally flawed. No-one can be trusted to guess which horse the yardstick should be with the kind of accuracy that is being sought.
Indeed, given how dynamic a horse’s ability is under different circumstances, it is entirely possible that NO horse in a given race has run to the precise level it had run to previously, no matter how much we might wish it otherwise.
It is far better, as a general approach, to establish a race’s overall strength in the context of the wider horse population and to allow that – and the result – to guide the assessments of performances of individual horses within that race. This is basic handicapping theory, not to mention plain common sense.
Take this season’s King George VI Chase as an example. Using Timeform’s ratings and differences at the weights as a guide, Kauto Star could have been rated as running to anything between 184 (with only him running to form) and 231 (with Ollie Magern running to his previous rating).
More realistically, Kauto Star would have run to 184, 200, 188 or 196, depending on which of the first four was assumed to be a true "yardstick". Now, that degree of variation, and the subjectivity it lends itself to, does not exactly inspire confidence!
I was not exactly being original or ground-breaking in making these remarks. Mistrust of making a generalised assumption from a small sample, when there are better alternatives, is elementary common sense and scientific/statistical practice.
And mistrust of yardstick handicapping is just about the first thing that any wannabe handicapper learns – or is taught – when they start taking the discipline seriously, surely? The proof has been in the performance of ratings of every handicapper I have ever worked with.
The above example illustrates the pitfalls clearly enough, I believe. But to take a more recent example you yourself have provided, if this year’s King George at Ascot was rated on the assumption that Cape Blanco "ran to form", why has it not been revised in the light of the fact that we now know that Cape Blanco’s form is almost certainly a good deal better than it appeared going into the Ascot race?
Does yardstick handicapping only work retrospectively? Should we go back and look for a different yardstick now that Cape Blanco’s level of form has proved to be dynamic and not fixed and suitable for "yardstick" status? Should we consider the possibility that NO horse conveniently ran to its previous rating in the race? Should we, perhaps, adopt a different overall methodology which is not so open to subjectivity?
A lot of your answers seem to be along the lines of "it works, so why should I change it?" when there is no evidence that you are investigating ways of "it working" better, more efficiently and less expensively.
That, in a nutshell, seems to be the chief problem of perception from which handicapping at the BHA is suffering.
I’ve given my thanks for the replies – now I will move onto the content in reply to my questions.
What I have learnt.
Of the runs in 2007, Jea De Roseau was given a rating of 100 on the basis of a race in Ireland behind Won In The Dark.
In 2008 Jeu De Roseau was dropped a grade in BHA terms, which is what I now understand the 5lbs to be, for being beat 54l and 89l. Jeu De Roseau apparently appeared to be outclassed, not detiortating.
And Jeu De Roseau, whilst having not run to a BHA mark of 100 since the 7th August 2007, was dropped to a mark of 82 ahead of the run on the 10th May 2010. The mark of 82 was a revised mark because that was the best level this horse had performed at since he came to Britain, despite the fact the horse was given a rating after its’ 4th run.
But, again, despite the fact I "accused" Mr Smith and his team of randomly selecting numbers that they drop horses after a long abscence, I did note the following carefully.
Our experience tells us that if a horse has been off for a long time they usually need dropping to make them competitive. It was not a random amount as that was the rating we had it performing to at Market Rasen when he first came over here. We don’t necessarily drop all horses for an absence only those who appear to have been in decline when they were active.
Sadly, it is not stated what the averages would be in such circumstances of dropping a horse because of an extended absence. I will go and find out for myself. Although, does this not directly contradict the point about not dropping a horse 5lbs if they are detriotating? Perhaps I’m reading that wrongly.
But what makes my questions more interesting in my own opinion is the fact I left it open ended. Open ended in the sense I didn’t mention the Jeu De Roseau’s flat performances’ in Britain.
Because this horse had done exactly the same on the flat thanks to the horses’ connections in the same style.
20th December 2007 – Beaten 15l, rated 66
14th January 2008 – Beaten 46l, rated 64 (amazing drop if you buy how little 2lbs matter according to Smith in his reply about Prufrock’s subject) But that did drop the horse a "grade" in effect.
4th Feburary 2008 – Beaten 47l, rated 56.Returns to the flat rated 47 on the 5th June 2010 and won by 3l. So judging by the reply, this horse gained its’ flat rating from running in Ireland originally, showed nothing so was then rated according to the best flat run in Britain, which I suppose makes 47 from the beaten 15l run, and returned 2 years later. The horse is now rated 61 again.
Totally mind-blowing.
Thanks for answering the questions…
, although I must admit I’m disappointed by your response to my question…
They key is not that the BHA would provide a "set in stone" rating – it would be advertised as a provisional rating.
Take the King George – say you had come up with 140 immediately after the race – and that figure had been discussed on TV and put into context with former KG winners and former champions like Sea The Stars. Suddenly, (with a bit of help from the TV presenters) you would have provided a context for thousands of people who probably have no knowledge of handicapping or ratings. The message to newcomers/non experts would have been
"You have potentially just seen the best horse of the last 20 years"
Can you not appreciate the power of that in terms of stimulating interest in the sport??
Yes – the rating would be "debatable" and indeed subject to revision (plenty of experts wildly disagree about the rating now, weeks after the event). But that just isn’t the point….
We don’t give horses a rating e.g. Harbinger after the King George and then change it a few hours later after an adverse press reaction. We take the time to think it through first
Put those claws away, Phil
The general air of somewhat curt tetchy defensiveness pervading Mr Smith’s replies was both unnecessary and unexpected
Can only speak for myself, but I wasn’t intending to ‘attack’ the status quo; rather I was just suggesting alternatives that may be worth considering, and was hoping for constructive, firendly dialogue rather than a back-against-the-wall justification for the current way of things
"The NTF like it and would be highly unlikely to support a change" is a poor, weak rationalization and just not good enough IMHO
Disappointed but thanks anyway
Decent set of (prompt) answers TBH. I knew I’d be older by the time the answers came back, but am now wiser too.
Thanks Phil- I don’t by any means agree with everything you’ve written, but I do respect your judgment.
2011 Totesport Ebor, 4yo+, Limited Handicap for thoroughly exposed horses. So when will the Ebor be stated as a 4yo+ handicap?
I’m sorry, reading through that piece from Phil Smith on the BHA website, I just got the feeling the BHA want a limited 1m 6f handicap for older horses. All the excuses possible – 3yo’s would be unexposed, the competitiveness of the race would be in danger, no incentive for older horses’ to stay in training.
However from a competitive racing point of view the current system should remain.
That is just an alarming statement imo.
It is funny, because a few of the recent Ebor winners weren’t 100% exposed, and some would say in hindsight they had as much in hand as any 3yo ever could.
Sergeant Cecil 96 to a peak rating of 117 – Group 1 Winner.
Purple Moon 101 to a peak rating of 116 – Group 1 Placed around the world.
All The Good 100 to a peak rating of 112 – Caulfield Cup winner.
And to think this is a race that allows claiming jockeys, Irish runners who have never set foot on a British racecourse, and yet 3yo’s have to be 106+ to get a run.
Really interesting thread. Thanks to all who contributed, particularly Phil Smith for his answers.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.