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Does Phil Smith have a handicapping "mincer" in his handicapping kitchen?
He may have to spend a long time (approximately one tenth of the time he allocates to cooking up the Grand National weights) in order to identify the one horse around at the time which he can use as a "reliable" "yardstick".
Stilvi – I didn’t say the ratings were wrong, just that they "sounded" implausible – hence I would be interested to see what ratings a competent modern day handicapper would come up with given the same information.
Maybe they will find that Timeform’s 212 wasn’t far off – and that Arkle and Mill House were indeed the Robert Wadlow and John Rogan of steeplechasers
There seems to be an implication in this thread [and certainly in Greg Wood’s uncharacteristically flimsy article for which he should be thoroughly ashamed] that Arkle’s rating is an historical "clanger" that Timeform is lumbered with.
Pru will correct me if I’m wrong, but the contemporary Timeform rating for Arkle was something like 220. 212 is the reviewed ‘definitive’ Timeform rating.
The idea that modern handicapping techniques must inevitably come to a different conclusion is a bogus one.
The idea that Phil Smith’s handicapping techniques will come to a different conclusion is, of course, entirely correct. Having shot his mouth off at the National Weights lunch he won’t be ordering a slice of humble pie for pudding.
Doesn’t Arkle still hold the track record at Sandown for 3 miles since 1965? If it still stands, then I find it very significant.
I suspect that the majority of those querying the Arkle rating were not around at the time of his achievements.
Although Arkle was beaten by Mill House in the 1963 Hennessy subsequent events would suggest a mistake three out was a significant turning point. He stalked his old rival and eventually beat him with any amount in hand in the 1964 Gold Cup and forcing the pace (under 12st 7lbs) in 1964 Hennessy gave him 3lbs and a 28 length beating. Arkle had very quickly destroyed the legend of Mill House. Only a week after the Hennessy he was beaten a length in the Massey Ferguson under 12st 10lbs conceding 32lbs and 26lbs to two Festival winners in Flying Wild and Buona Notte.
Even without his subsequent wins – the only defeats being a ‘failure’ to concede 35lbs to Stalbridge Colonist and his career ending injury – in my view he had already established himself as the greatest.
The case against is crushingly simple. The next horse in Timeform’s all-time list is Flyingbolt, Arkle’s stablemate, on 210, followed by a 19lb gap to Mill House and – as of Saturday – Kauto Star on 191. So we are being asked to believe that of the hundreds of thousands of steeplechasers to have raced since the mid-1960s, two were nearly a stone and a half better than all the others, and they just happened to occupy adjacent boxes.
I don’t see this as being inconcievable. Human height is often held up as the classic example of a well-behaved natural distribution. The tallest people table looks very similar:
Are First-Class Cricket batting averages also an example of “a well-behaved natural distribution”?
http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/re … 84199.html
Bradman the Arkle, but no Flyingbolt
Incidentally, Ponsford and Woodfull in sixth and seventh places were ‘stablemates’: opened Victoria’s batting together for most of their careers: Kauto Star and Denman?
http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/re … 82910.html
So Test Match records show a similar ‘skew’
Looking at the dates, one may conclude that the batsmen were better then or the bowlers worse
A daft rationalisation. The pitches were different, cricketers were ‘campaigned’ differently, training regimes were different, fitness was different, outlook was different, money didn’t talk
cf. NH in the 1960s and NH in the 2000s
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there
All good fun Phil Smith, but essentially unquantifiable and hence pointless.
Have a gander at First- Class bowling averages too:
http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/re … 83259.html
http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/re … 83256.html
the ‘law of averages’ ha ha
Am a great Timeform fan.
I have no problem with the rating of Arkle compared to the horses he ran against.
However, since his time there have been advances in feed and training methods (interval training etc). If form shown by Arkle and Flying Bolt were so much better than Kauto Star, then the conclusion must be that all these advances are a waste of time. If it is a waste of time for the best horse it must be a waste of time for the average horse.
Yet if you look at record times, there are few (if any) record times left from the 60’s. That despite watering these days to produce safer (slower) ground. Not saying times relate to how good a horse is. Just, if the average modern horse is capable of producing a time faster than the average 60’s horse, why shouldn’t a best horse be capable of a better time than the best 60’s horse?
There are far more horses around these days with more horses of every standard, including of high standard.
If you look at Womens tennis, you see the game has gradually increased its competitiveness over the last 40 years. As women get stronger etc. there are far more top class women now so it is harder to win tournaments. It was easy for Billy Jean to give a head start to her rivals. Yet it is harder for the Williams sisters to do so. Could it not be the same for horses?
We should not expect Kauto Star to beat his rivals in the same way as Arkle because of the INCREASE IN FORM OF ALL horses and MORE GOOD HORSES BEING AROUND. Yet it could well be that each year or so a horse needs to put up a better performance to achieve the same Timeform rating. Because the OVER ALL standard could be improving each year. So the 191 or whatever of Kauto Star, might or might not be better than Arkle’s 212. We can’t tell.
As I said in another thread:
If a tardis brought back Arkle to race with his 60’s feed and training methods against Kauto Star with today’s feed and training methods; I don’t think the winning margin would relate to the 212 and 191 ratings. If Billy Jean at her best took on Serena Williams at hers. I’d make Serena long odds-on because of training methods.If the average ability of horses is improving then to go back and compare generations that far apart is futile.
Though just think what would happen if Mr. Smith came back and said in fact Flying Bolt was better than Arkle. There’d be uproar.
Value Is EverythingPersonally, I will not be outraged whatever Mr Smith comes up with as I see the venture as more about him than somehow producing the difference between Kauto Star and Arkle.
Bottom line is Kauto Star will never concede in excess of two stone to Gold Cup horses and outside of Kempton will never have the same aura of invincibility that Arkle had.
If we want to start making serious comparisons let’s start with the idea of scrapping all condition races outside of the King George and Gold Cup. Despite possible improvements if the stars of today carried similar weights and followed Arkle’s programme I suspect they would be finished within a year.
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This is Sea the Stars all over again. One minute he’s a 140 horse next minute despite having me and everyone else going Yippee Kayi Ay when he murdered an Arc field he’s a 132 horse. Basically they made complete ass of theselves as either the fooked up with Zarkava’s rating or StS rating and they can’t all of a sudden say Zarka is a 140 horse too.
In many ways Arkle deserved every bit of his 212 rating. In may races he was ntered in his weight would be like 14st and the next in the h’capp would be 9s7lbs if Arkle had run.
You have to look at it lb for lb and think if Kauto was entered in the Hennessy and the top weight allowed was 12st7lbs would the hanicapper have to make up another handicap or would enough horse a round to take him on if getting 2st7b’s to ensure more than 5 or 6 turned up
I think we all know the answer to that one.
Let’s stick Deman in the pot and see what we come up with. Year 1 he wins year 2 not at his best he loses.
Everything about Denman says Mill House. Strong jumping galloper, Hennessy winner, Gold Cup winner.
A grinder who gallops horses into the ground but grind he does quicken noticably he doesn’t.Kauto is without doubt the better all rounder as Arkle was but while Kuato would accelarate then run on Arkle would get faster and faster until it became impossible for another horse to have the slightest chance of getting near him…..even Kauto at his best couldn’t have touched him at Chltenham and there isn’t one other poster on here has blown the Kauto Star trumpet louder than me.
Fulke Walwynn one of the greatest trainers of all time thought his horse, Mill House, was unbeatable and in most era’s he proably would have been. He trained some great horses but this was a real champion….unbeatable in the great man’s eyes.
The public also thought there was no way Arkle could get neat the might Mill Hourse…get near him? he beat him by the easiset 5 lenths you could ever imagine and increased the distance between them every time they met.
This guy wan’t to change Arkle’s rating let him. Does anyone care?. I’d say Arkle deserves his and Kauto dereves his but accurate? probably not,so what to do? Bring Arkle down to 202? or leave him at 212 and go to the trouble of upping the thousands of others. who have ran since the 60"
Timeform are a fook up IMO. Not enough people believe Arkle 212 would have given Kauto 192 Star 20lbs and beat him. Us old azzholes know he probably would have at Cheltenham but the masses think no so Timeform to save their blushes will most ilkely go ahead a change it. My guess is to about 204 and if Kauto wins the Gold Cup well, he’ll go to about 195-197 and Timerform will say aren’t we clever
What they won’t do is rate them anywhere closer becuase they would then just be making a complete fool of themselves.
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Personally, I will not be outraged whatever Mr Smith comes up with as I see the venture as more about him than somehow producing the difference between Kauto Star and Arkle.
Bottom line is Kauto Star will never concede in excess of two stone to Gold Cup horses and outside of Kempton will never have the same aura of invincibility that Arkle had.
If we want to start making serious comparisons let’s start with the idea of scrapping all condition races outside of the King George and Gold Cup. Despite possible improvements if the stars of today carried similar weights and followed Arkle’s programme I suspect they would be finished within a year.
Stonkingly good point Stilvi…..plus most of these ventures as you call them are publicity stunts…….at the end of the day does anyone reaaly care? You ether think Arkle was the greatest steeplechaser of all time or you don’t and nothing Timeform says is likely to change your opinion.
Bottom line is Kauto Star will never concede in excess of two stone to Gold Cup horses .
Why the fixation with horses giving weight to inferior ones? Denman did that in the Hennessy and Kauto is rated much higher than the tank.
Times have changed top class horses don’t spend their lives running in handicaps anymore.
In years gone by a footballer could be way better thn other footballers because he was simply fitter a lot of players spent their spare time on benders in pubs and eating pies. Same with horses fitness levels are now such that they are finely tuned athletes. In Arkle’s day half of them were big, fat, (by todays standards) half fit "chasing types" and the other half were probably being lined up for some betting coup (slight exageration).
From the top Draper yard Arkle and Flyingbolt were probably way fitter than three quarters of the horses they ran against.
I believe strongly that most people’s opinions on sporting greats; viz-a-viz individual ratings, assessments, etc. have an in built generational bias factored into them.
For those of us around in the 60s who think Arkle was the best ( oh yes, he was !
) , there will inevitably arise a cacophony of outraged derision from 80s and naughties generation who will yell, "no… Dessie was the greatest" or "Kauto Star is the greatest of all."There may even be some old codgers still hanging around who will tell us that no, we’re all wrong – Golden Miller was the daddy of ’em all.
The bottom line is that no amount of hard evidence or official ( and unofficial ) ratings will alter our entrenched mindset on who we, as individuals, consider to be the greatest – in whatever sporting field we choose to cite.
Would Kauto Star have beaten Arkle ? We simply do not know.
My guess is that Kauto Star (and Captain Christy) would have given Arkle one helluva race around Kempton but that Arkle’s superior jumping would have won the day –and at Cheltenham, where Arkle excelled –
well, I think Kauto Star would have struggled to get within 10 lengths of "himself" approaching the finishing line. Arkle would simply have run the guts out of him coming up that hill.
Just my opinion.
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On the Pedigree Query site it says that Arkle had the second widest jaw ever measured (1st St Simon), which presumably meant he could get air into his lungs quicker. I don’t know how many horses have had their jaw measured though.
Just to clarify, Timeform’s mark of 212 is being reviewed by the BHA’s h’capper, and not by Timeform themselves.
Horses are obligate nose-breathers Gerald, hence it seems unlikely that being in possession of a wide jaw will allow a greater intake of air unless there’s a correlation with nasal passage width too
On a cold winter day it’s of some interest watching a horse inhale and exhale after a race. Plumes of steamy breath emanating from flaring nostrils but zilch from the mouth, which remains firmly shut.
Presumably there’s a physiological explanation why horses can’t ‘pant’
Interesting that Phil Smith evidently considers that he has the time available to do justice to a project that isn’t his to address anyway, remembering the month he will also spend ‘fine tuning’ the Grand National weights.
How astoundingly arrogant.
) , there will inevitably arise a cacophony of outraged derision from 80s and naughties generation who will yell, "no… Dessie was the greatest" or "Kauto Star is the greatest of all."
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