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What would you estimate to be the chief criteria for allotting Racing Post Ratings to a horse in a particular race, folks?
I’ve just been looking at Palypso De Creek’s ratings. On his performance in a Class 6, hunter-chase worth £987, and completed in a time 101 seconds above standard, he was rated at an RPR of 125.
Before he left France, he won a Grade 3 hurdle worth £74,000, and was rated on that performance at an RPR of 132 – a mere 7 lbs higher!!!!
By the way, I’m not knocking their RPR’s. Just deeply puzzled. They prove brilliant assessments again and again, particularly perhaps with outsiders, where the potential tends to be overlooked in the betting on statistical grounds.
I’m not an expert but I often find that those ratings are very justifiable.
With the French race, Palypso De Creek won that event carrying bottom weight and year on year, that kind of rating is typical for the particular race. That it is worth £75k speaks more about levels of prize money than it does actual quality of racing. Telramund won an £18k listed juvenile hurdle yet only achieved a 107 in his four starts in Ireland.
Most of the times I’ve noticed that with enough French and UK form, the ratings tend to be comparable. Off the top of my head, Nagpur earned a 134 from 18 starts in France whilst in 13 UK starts, the best he’s achieved was a 137 at the festival.
As for the hunter chase, he beat Always Right who possessed an OR of 140. On his best form, Palypso De Creek is certainly capable of running to 125 as an 11yo. The race itself, which he won in 2013, is traditionally one of the better pre-festival hunter chases on the calender having been contested fairly recently by the likes of Baby Run, Offshore Account, Jurancon II, Take The Stand, Robbers Glen, Knife Edge, Legal Right and Sleeping Night.
The ratings you mention make enough sense to me, although I couldn’t tell you exactly what goes into the art of compiling RPRs.
Does anyone know if the RP goes back and changes the ratings as a results of subsequent form
eg…….a 2 year old maiden race with no prior form where the first 3 all subsequently win group races…..would they go back and bump up the rating for the 4th horse if he hadn’t run again since ?
I assume the initial ratings are actually ratings for the race rather than the horses, ie average ratings for that kind of race not specific to todays runners……so there must be room for a new assessment after a few of the horses have run again
I don’t believe they do but I’m not sure
I know for certain that they do in juvenile hurdle races. Presumably, the practice would also occur in categories with similarly sparse form density.
Thanks Bachelors Hall. It makes a good bit more sense to me now, particularly in the light of the previous winners of Palypso’s race … though less than a grand for first prize and a time a minute above standard still puzzles me somewhat.
After all, while some handicaps pay a lot better than some grade and group races, generally I wouldn’t have thought such a low prize money (and I think a Class 6 race) would attract the better hunters. But the history of the race evidently indicates otherwise.
You can usually add 20 to any French jump rpr to get a truer reflection – Palypso’s 132 was 2008 & would say he’s declined a bit since then, I got him on 141 at present.
I keep a close eye on French jump racing nowadays and I completely ignore the RPR when assessing the form of a French horse.
I confess to having no idea how the Post do their calculations, but my guess is that the weight carried must be a factor, even in races run at level weights.
Because almost all French NH races are run with weights much lower than we are used to here, I reckon that somehow produces lower RPR figures.
To give an example, P’Tit Zig won a Grade 1 4-y-old hurdle at Auteil last autumn carrying 10-8 and got an RPR of 149. The same horse finished an undistinguished sixth in the Champion Hurdle carrying 11-10 and got an RPR of 160.
I somehow doubt that the owners think the Cheltenham run was the better of the two!
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