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The ratings of those horses in the 60’s is questionable and you cannot put them in a list alongside those rated today.
Well, according to Timeform ( who set the ratings ) they can and do.
From Timeform :
" Great care has always been taken to keep the level of Timeform ratings consistent from one season to the next (once due allowance has been made for certain hidden factors), SO THAT COMPARISONS CAN MEANINGFULLY BE MADE BETWEEN DIFFERENT GENERATIONS ALSO. That has helped to earn Timeform ratings a long-held reputation as the definitive expression of a horse’s merit historically and throughout the world. "
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
If Cormack was trolling, i appreciate his work. An excellent troll attempt, and something i’d be quite proud of. If he expected anything other than "Arkle is the best blah blah will never see another horse like him blah blah blah" and wasn’t trolling, i don’t see the merit in this discussion.
I have implicity answered your question. It was 80 years ago, in a relatively uncompetitive era, in a different cricket world. Numbers are totally dominate and incredible, but i remain skeptical comparing him to modern day cricket players. Bradman dominated by seperation his own cricket era/world. Leave it at that.
Which they wrote books and made films about – why be so dismissive?
The comparison was flawed, given one is restrospective, the other a tactic developed and deployed to beat Bradman/Australia. It isn’t similar.
Sorry Doctor Spock – I am clearly just a romantic with no implicit substance to me. Just a friendly debate whch I enjoy but if course most of it is opinion. I would say seperation does exist and there is such a thing as a freak of nature. With respect j17 your posts are excellent but you come across as a bit of a Doubting Thomas almost afraid to believe what he see’s if it defies your idea of logic. Sometimes animals and horses come along that are freakishly good. Frankel was one, Arkle another.
One last question – are you and the Ginge related?
Seperation like this is strange to say the least. It isn’t merely seperation, it is borderline bizarre. I think Arkle and Flying Bolt frankly have overstated ratings, because the difference between what we deem modern day greats in the 180’s aren’t 30 pounds shy of Arkle.
Doubting Thomas always reminds me of paedophiles for some reason. So i hope not!
Frankel is in the highest tier for best flat race horses of all time. The topic has been beaten to death, with regurgitated nonsense stemming from false propositions and beliefs based upon unrelated historical perceptions, but he certainly was a fantastic fantastic race horse. The best i’ve ever seen. However, whether you believe he is the GOAT or not, their is no real seperation between Frankel and previous greats. No undisputed #1 GOAT exists on the flat. Yet in National Hunt, we have this huge gap. I simply don’t buy it.
I am actually quite mediocre at math, so perhaps i am related to Ginge. Or atleast 37% chance of being related.
I think Bradman and Arkle are the greatest of all time, but whilst I believe the cricketer’s claims are completely irrefutable, I would say that the horse’s are merely very probable!
Cricketers are pretty comparable over the last 80-odd years as the sport has not had such a massive leap forward in technological terms as other equipment sports (e.g. tennis). One could say that bowlers are fitter nowadays and fielding is vastly better so it makes it more difficult to score runs. But then, Bradman would have had to contend with uncovered pitches and very little in the way of bodily protection!
Furthermore, if one takes Bradman out of the list of Test averages there is a morass of players from many different countries and eras filling the 50-60.97 (second-best Graeme Pollock) bracket. This authenticates the figures I believe.
Arkle and Flyingbolt, both from the same era and the same stable, look suspicious to me. They were clearly exceptional weight-carriers but, recency bias aside, I really struggle to believe that Himself was fully a stone-and-a-half better than Kauto Star.
He may well have been
a bit
better though!
Mike
An interesting debate and who can blame Cormack for starting it? We are in the middle of a long and gloomy winter and there is little else to talk about with the National Hunt season I mean Cheltenham still 6 weeks away. If you don’t like it don’t read it.
It’s a fallicious question. The comparison is impossible to judge, given diversity in distances and that is was 50 years ago. We also know how the majority react to such a question.
I cannot see how it is fallacious. It is what the racing fraternity does all the time. Just recently we have had the question: is Frankel better than Dancing Brave or Sea Bird? Different distances and five decades have not frightened people away from making a comparison. The International Classification does it, the BHA does it, a few racing pundits and publications make their living from it. People compare two horses: best form for Horse A is at Newbury over two and a half miles on Soft in October; best form for Horse B is at Cheltenham over two miles on Good in February, and they are so confident of making an accurate comparison that they are willing to bet money on it.
Just asserting that the passing of the years, or distance, make comparison impossible is not enough, you would have to give reasons why that is so, and state how many years and how much distance is the barrier beyond which we cannot proceed.
I heartily disagree that Sprinter Sacre is anywhere near as good as Arkle, but will defend anyone’s right to say it:
a la Voltaire.
fair play to him for remembering mark. Most who saw Arkle have enough trouble remembering who the prime minister is and whether they’ve emptied their incontinence pants, let alone a race
I love all the old stories. Ryan Price and the Schweppes Hurdle is one of his favs
The ratings of those horses in the 60’s is questionable and you cannot put them in a list alongside those rated today.
Well, according to Timeform ( who set the ratings ) they can and do.
From Timeform :
" Great care has always been taken to keep the level of Timeform ratings consistent from one season to the next (once due allowance has been made for certain hidden factors), SO THAT COMPARISONS CAN MEANINGFULLY BE MADE BETWEEN DIFFERENT GENERATIONS ALSO. That has helped to earn Timeform ratings a long-held reputation as the definitive expression of a horse’s merit historically and throughout the world. "
That’s what they claim and are bound to do so.
Also, isn’t drug testing going to be more accurate these days ?
I cannot see how it is fallacious. It is what the racing fraternity does all the time. Just recently we have had the question: is Frankel better than Dancing Brave or Sea Bird? Different distances and five decades have not frightened people away from making a comparison. The International Classification does it, the BHA does it, a few racing pundits and publications make their living from it. People compare two horses: best form for Horse A is at Newbury over two and a half miles on Soft in October; best form for Horse B is at Cheltenham over two miles on Good in February, and they are so confident of making an accurate comparison that they are willing to bet money on it.
Just asserting that the passing of the years, or distance, make comparison impossible is not enough, you would have to give reasons why that is so, and state how many years and how much distance is the barrier beyond which we cannot proceed.
I heartily disagree that Sprinter Sacre is anywhere near as good as Arkle, but will defend anyone’s right to say it:
a la Voltaire.
Just because those questions were posed, does not mean it is a particularly worthwhile exercise to do so. It cannot be definitively answered. Form assessment in itself is not an exact science, but will play dividends in the long-term when variance assumably levels itself out. Given however, we are trying to assess horses from a span of many many years and work out the minute differences in their ability, it becomes an impossible task.
We cannot use time as a particularly viable measurement for rating GOAT’s. Races aren’t time trials and are run in a variety of circumstances affected by many variables. Unlike Human athletes, it is also much harder to know whether a horse is being extended to the absolute maximum. Sea the Stars did just enough, whilst Frankel the opposite ; yet claims for both never being truely extended to their max output can be reasonably claimed.
When ratings are relatively close amongst the elite, it becomes an impossible to task to reasonably assess the GOAT. Knowing who is better between Frankel and Brigadier Gerard is almost impossible. Horses, unlike humans, do not have the same historical definitive measurement. The 100M history shows me Bolt is in absolute terms the fastest man of all time. Yes, that event has developed drastically, however, time is the definitive measurement in that sport. Thus, time must be used. Horse racing has no definitive parameter that allows us to rank in absolute terms greats from the 1950’s with greats today.
Long Run’s top three ratings are 180+ (KG 2011) 178+ (GC 2011) 178 (KG 2010)
Denman’s 181 (Hennessy 2009) 178 (GC 2010) 177 (Hennessy 2010)Perhaps relevantly Long Run’s were all achieved in wins but Denman’s a win , a second and a third
Other than that much of a muchness though the + after Long Run’s ratings (possibly better than rated) may have swung Timeform his way.
Personally, my heart will always be with Denman, but the head doesn’t really care as its currently full of short-circuiting white noise due to rating and percentage overload
To see a dodgy jumping Long Run, ranked above the best Staying Chaser of the last two decades (in my opinion) is outrageous.
It may not give the lie to cold, calculated bare-form ratings but it certainly displays their limitations doesn’t it?
The awarding of a number may go some way to quantifying (that word again!) the raw ability of a horse but tells you next to nothing about its character, technique, demeanour or attraction
Long Run, for all his ‘form in the book’ and top races won is not a horse I’ve ever warmed to: his attitude is wanting, his fencing is untidy, and he lacks charisma; whereas Denman was (when fit) the toughest most genuine chaser you could wish to see, his fencing was superlative, and had looks and charisma that made grown men weaken at the knees and had grown women swooning
These differing visceral all-too-human responses to racehorses contribute significantly to the allure of this sweet multi-faceted game; but – if a punter too – such a welling of emotions must be kept under wraps when coldly calculating a bet
If you find that a ‘horrid horse’ warrants a bet against your ‘favourite horse’ go ahead and place the discomforting wager
Are Denman and Long Run unequal near-equals as Timeform suggest? Would they have all but dead-heated in a Gold Cup? Dunno and I’m not going there…but had they ever met I’d have weighed-up their chances dispassionately despite passionately hoping Denman would win
edit:
just read that again and it does come across as a bit preachy and pompous. Not the intent, really
I don’t think its pompous at all – I enjoyed reading it.
If peak Long Run and peak Denman ran in a match over the Gold Cup C&D and were both 5/6, I’d have every penny I could conceivably afford to lose on Denman.
Sprinter Sacre has done nothing wrong in all his chases so far, that cannot be denied. He is the most impressive jumper of all time, including Arkle, that cannot be denied. As to who would win a race between the two? Well Sprinter Sacre would probably win over 2 miles and Arkle over 3.
It’s just fantastic to be able to watch this horse in action and as Arkle did in the 60’s, he just takes your breath away. They just amaze in different ways. Sprinter Sacre with his natural jumping ability and Arkle with his endless stamina and weight carrying ability.
PS. I would just like to point out that Paul Nicholls seems to need some sort of speech therapy, as he can’t pronounce the letter ‘S’. When asked, on the ‘Morning Line’, which horse he would like to train, that he didn’t already have. He said, ‘The New One’, who promptly got turned over. Really Paul? Really?
Arkle ran in 26 chases without falling. He was a superb jumper of fences. He slipped on landing the 1963 Hennessy ( Taaffe said he would have won otherwise ) and clouted the stands fence in the first circuit the 1966 Gold Cup before sauntering to victory.
As for the Denman/ Long Run argument : no doubt in my mind Denman would have proved much too strong at Cheltenham, had they ever met. Likewise, in my opinion Long Run would have come out top round the flatter, tighter confines of Kempton Park.
The the very best horses ( like Arkle
) can win anywhere.Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
Sprinter Sacre has done nothing wrong in all his chases so far, that cannot be denied.
He is the most impressive jumper of all time, including Arkle, that cannot be denied
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.That is just too tempting. I think I will deny it!
Pendil?
http://pitmacbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/30-09-2012-14-44-31.jpg
http://pitmacbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/30-09-2012-14-32-30.jpg
As I’ve said before, It’s a shame there is so little footage of Pendil; he was such an athlete, his jumping was a joy to watch. Are there no recording of King Georges in the seventies, Pendil and Captain Christy?
Also just watched Flyingbolt win the 66 Massey-Ferguson at C’Ham by a distance under 12-7. Over-rated?The idea that anybody can cite a specific horse as being the best jumper of a fence of all-time is ridicuous. There are hundreds of thousands of horses who have jumped a fence who none of you have ever seen. Many lower grades animals can be spectacular jumpers.
Entirely pointless. Can’t we simply say Sprinter Sacre and Arkle are both extremely profficient jumpers of a fence, rather than tumble down the path of hyperbole and exaggeration once more.
) can win anywhere.
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