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Now that it’s all coming out what this prize money milarky is all about the RP did a good article about it yesterday ..
The axe has cut deepest into the BDRs at Yarmouth on the Flat and Hexham over jumps whose contribution is virtually halved, the tracks set to receive 43.6 per cent and 48.1 per cent less funding than they did this year.
.. was a bit disturbing and then the final blow ..
The system of funding the levy through a percentage of bookmakers’ UK profits is hopelessly counter-productive. Racing has become more and more competitive so punters find it harder to pick winners. Even the handicapper has admitted to a meeting of trainers that horses are handicapped more harshly because of the need to increase betting revenue. It’s a very vicious circle which discourages owners from having horses in training
… how has racing got into this mess.
Is this all down to Peter Savill or is it just greed and more greed on top of it?
I think it’s greed myself and the powers allowing the Big3 free rien.
Hi, have read this forum for a while without contributing but feel the ‘official handicapper’ (of which I am 1/12th) should have right of reply here.
The section about the handicapping came from a quote from Len Lungo who has long argued that jump handicappers are too hard on northern-trained horses in general.
Len is an eloquent critic of the new style of handicapping that has been introduced in the last 3-4 years to combat slippage in the ratings. However I feel that he is misguided in saying that harsher handicapping serves to drive owners out of racing. I am not sure what evidence he has for this (possibly he is alluding to the fact that his patrons the Edinburgh Woollen Mill – edit, Ashleybank Investments? – seem to have cut back their racing interests) but I would take the opposite view – surely the ‘average owner’ feels they have more chance of picking up a bit of (meagre) prizemoney if we produce more competitive and open handicaps?
I know a few owners from my previous life, and I think there is a feeling among them that although you will often lose nearly 100% of the money you spend on a particular animal, but if you get a nice progressive one (which will hopefully happen at some point before you have to sell the house, the car etc.) it may run up a sequence and recoup some of the losses you have incurred on the slowboats, and you can make money backing it, and you might be able to sell it on. The changes in handicapping and race planning have made it harder to do this especially with certain types of horses with which it used to be relatively common e.g. novice chasers and two-year-olds.
We see ourselves as politically neutral though – our job is to produce competitive racing and that’s what we try to do. If you hear a handicapper saying that it was ‘good’ that a 100-1 shot won this or that high-profile handicap, it just means that we are pleased to have set a puzzle which not many were able to solve.
I must say I don’t have a problem with handicaps seemingly becoming more difficult to solve – isn’t that the whole point of them?
I do have a problem with the number of handicaps as a proportion of the total number of races run, but if you’re going to frame a handicap race, then surely you can’t have certain horses, or certain classes of horses, getting favourable treatment.
If the handicappers are succeeding in making these puzzles more difficult from a punter’s perspective, then that’s a good thing isn’t i?
And well done them.
….but that if you get a nice progressive one (which will hopefully happen at some point before you have to sell the house, the car etc.) it may run up a sequence and recoup some of the losses you have incurred on the slowboats, and you can make money backing it, and you might be able to sell it on. The changes in handicapping and race planning have made it harder to do this especially with certain types of horses with which it used to be relatively common e.g. novice chasers and two-year-olds.
just a minor quibble from me about this point, in that I miss the days of the Provideo’s, Nagwas, Timeless Times and others. We don’t see this sort of thing any more and I think it’s to the detriment of the flat racing season. I think it’s a shame, it was always good fun following these multiple winners.
So there, you’ve destroyed something for me
[quote Racing has become more and more competitive so punters find it harder to pick winners. Even the handicapper has admitted to a meeting of trainers that horses are handicapped more harshly because of the need to increase betting revenue.
Who is responsible for that quote? It is rubbish imo. It is irrelevant what handicappers do or think with regards punters solving a race.
It is no mystery why prize money is down, it is because we have bookmakers and less is bet on racing. If we could get rid of bookmakers that would be the ideal but we can’t can we?
I would like to see if it’s viable for racing try to get involved in one of the lesser exchanges if not their own.Hexham are a disgrace, should be shut down despite the location. Not only have they failed to make any contribution themselves to prize money they’ve even failed to use all their levy.
Hexham are a disgrace, should be shut down despite the location. Not only have they failed to make any contribution themselves to prize money they’ve even failed to use all their levy.
Yes, I wondered about that. Why on earth did they not spend the free money available to them? Or have I missed something?
Len is an eloquent critic of the new style of handicapping that has been introduced in the last 3-4 years to combat slippage in the ratings.
.. so what your saying Marcus, is that handicapping has been changed to make racing harder to win at and thereby increase the revenue from punters and on the other hand your neutral. You can’t have it both ways old chum.
Welcome to the forum, btw.
Marcus…appreciate that you can’t step out of line here too much…but when you see a stoutly bred horse of a certain Newmarket trainer running over 6 furlongs at Wolverhampton and finishing never nearer…or a 52 rated steed of a certain charitable Irishman getting backed from 10/1 in the morning into an 11/8 SP…and then winning by 5 lengths – what goes through your mind ?
Is it hard to stay "politically neutral" when you can see what’s going to happen before they leave the gates ? Do you actually see this incidentally and do you feel a sense of annoyance ? Maybe it’s time we totally revisited the handicapping system in this country ?
What about a TRF Q&A session ? I think it would be fascinating.
Replying to the replies:
marb – post 1; a very good question, which is what politicians always say when they don’t have an answer. There are certainly horses that move up and down in the ratings without winning or improving, and sometimes you feel that you should be leaving their rating alone. However, there are two other factors here: 1) the necessity to relate their new rating to the new ratings of the winner and the other horses around them (3rd, 4th etc.). 2) the fact that we are constantly scrutinised by trainers and the media, and to take a different approach is a high-risk strategy, especially if it were to backfire with an easy short-priced winner next time out.
At the end of the day I would rather be hung for being unimaginative and one-dimensional in my approach than for being inconsistent. The one thing that would genuinely destroy me personally, as well as confidence in ‘the handicapper’ generally, is the allegation of favouritism which might arise from trying to give a particular horse a break.
I hope that answers your (very good) question
post 2 – all Irish-trained jumpers that run here are now handicapped by the British handicapper with no reference to their Irish rating. This has been facilitated by ATR televising all Irish racing. The jumps handicappers (of which I am not one) are producing ratings for every Jump race in Ireland and are using their own judgment when an Irish-trained horse is entered to run here. We use the Irish ratings for Flat races as we believe that we have parity under that code.
dave jay – the new style of handicapping was originally introduced with the primary aim of addressing the situation whereby a universal raise in the ratings was necessary in the middle of each NH (Jump) season. The NH handicappers at the time were too lenient and were dropping more ratings than they were raising, and the average (median) rating was declining. Therefore, at some point in the middle of the year it was necessary to increase every rating by a standardised amount so that a rating of, say, 130, represented the same level of ability as a 130 horse in previous years.
A new team of Jump handicappers were appointed and were instructed to do their job with one eye on the median rating i.e. to put horses up more for running well, and drop horses less for running badly. This had the side-effect of making it harder to run up a 11111 sequence in handicaps which is no bad thing IMO. I was not employed by BHB / BHA at the time, but I believe that increasing the levy was not the primary issue of the day – the plan at that time was that the levy system would not be needed in the future …
BSB – we have a policy of handicapping horses based on the ability they have displayed. It is the only way to be fair. Like every other system, it has loopholes.
If we were to totally revisit the handicapping system in this country it would also involve a change in the qualification rules, because the problem you have alluded to with the well-bred Newmarket trainer is to do with the original rating at which the horse is qualified, which is based on the ability it displays at six furlongs.
To make it harder for horses to qualify for a handicap rating would seem to go against our brief which is to produce competitive racing.
I really could go on all night with this one, so perhaps I should stop there and just add that if there were to be a handicapping Q&A, there are others far more qualified than me to be the subject of it.
I really could go on all night with this one, so perhaps I should stop there and just add that if there were to be a handicapping Q&A, there are others far more qualified than me to be the subject of it.
A TRF Q&A with you or one of your handicapping colleagues would be an excellent idea.
Good posts Marcus
There’s also the case for trainers not sending their horses too far next year to win a couple of hundred quid and the long term impact of smaller fields, regarding sponsorship of racing etc.
Hexham are a disgrace, should be shut down despite the location. Not only have they failed to make any contribution themselves to prize money they’ve even failed to use all their levy.
Yes, I wondered about that. Why on earth did they not spend the free money available to them? Or have I missed something?
Reading between the lines, I think there have been a few power struggles at Hexham over the years (Charles Enderby versus allcomers), which have got in the way of attempts to further the course’s interests. I would not be sufficiently close to events there to say whether these clashes have included ones over use (or non-use) of money, but Venusian’s right, the prizemoney has rarely risen above derisory there.
I’d hate to lose one of the most beautifully-located tracks in the country (as well as the home of three ptp meets in late spring), but I concede the place is doing little to help itself survive in a changing financial environment.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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