The Power of the Handicapper

[apracing]

Here are some fairly startling figures that confirm what I’d guessed was happening to the UK racing program. My thanks to the poster that provided the numbers in another place and as he posted, ‘it seems that the bookies ten year plan is progressing well’.

Year H’cap Non-H Ratio
2005 4289 4314 0.99
2006 4811 4142 1.16
2007 4961 3942 1.26
2008 5321 4186 1.27
2009 5473 4177 1.31
2010 5663 3919 1.45
2011 6007 4153 1.45
2012 5866 3798 1.54
2013 6340 3830 1.66

But leaving aside the benefits to the bookmakers, the numbers also point to the official handicapper now being the most important factor in the career of the vast majority of horses in training.

Unless you own a horse good enough to contest Listed races or better, or you are willing to risk losing your horse for the sort of low valuation offered in claimers and sellers, there is no alternative to the handicap system.

For example, suppose you own a 4-y-old gelding, rated 80 and best at around a mile and a quarter. If you sent such a horse with a reasonable record to an auction, you could expect to realise a price of at least £20,000, and potentially a good deal more if he looked to have prospects over hurdles. So there’s no way you are going to enter in a claimer with a price tag of less than £20k, which immediately rules out 95% of the claimers run in the UK, and all of the selling races.

Equally, you’d be mad to enter an 80 rated horse for a Listed contest, or even a conditions race, where he’d be sure to meet horses rated 90+ at level weights.

So essentially, it’s 0-85 or maybe 0-90 handicaps as your only realistic option. You may think this has always been the case, but there has been another significant change in parallel with the increase in the number of handicaps. As recently as fifteen years ago, an 80 rated 4-y-old could have run in the John Smiths (or Magnet as it was then) Cup, and at least have a chance at big prize money. Last year the lowest rated horse in the race ran off 90, and the same change has taken place in practically every valuable handicap during the season.

So your horse is stuck in a limbo, unable to get into a Saturday race, basically running midweek for around £6 – £10k at best. And every race on offer is identical, no entry conditions other than the rating band. It’s interesting to note that the programs of Jumpers Bumpers in recent days have produced some novel sets of entry conditions designed to avoid the whole card looking the same, as well as to produce competitive races. But nobody seems to think that the same sort of imaginative conditions could be applied to everyday handicaps.

For example, why not:
a) for horses which have never won a race other than a maiden or a handicap of class 5 or below
b) for horses which have not won a race since – and then a date which could be six months or a year back.
c) for horses which have never won £5,000 (i.e not picked up a single prize of that amount from any race)
d) for horses 6-y-olds and upwards (i.e veterans races)

The use of such conditional clauses in race entries would also push the recent winners together into the remaining open handicaps, and one would hope that might lead to them racing for more than the standard minimum for the class, to compensate for their inability to get a run in the top class handicaps.

It would also revive the ancient art of trainers trying to place their horses to best advantage within the handicap system, something that is impossible at present when all handicaps are designed to fit the Henry Ford dictum of ‘you can have any colour as long as it’s black’.

There are numerous problems with the existing handicapping process in the UK, mostly brought about by the complete failure to join the modern world, but until we can sort out that part of the sport, surely we can do something to avoid the inevitably monotonous nature of 6,000 plus vanilla handicaps every year.

[stilvi]

Wouldn’t mind seeing the same stats for Saturday only. I suspect the ratio would be off the scale of frightening.

[Drone]

Are those – indeed startling – figures Flat and NH combined?

8603 races in 2005, 10170 in 2013: an increase of 1567 overall but a decrease in non-handicaps over the same period of 484, which is even more startling in my view as it seems it isn’t just the increasing fixture list that has caused an increase of the – presumably ‘poor’ – handicaps introduced to fill the new – again presumably ‘poor’ – meetings, but there would seem to be a concerted effort to replace established non-handicaps with handicaps

Are these lost conditions events on the Flat largely the run-of-the-mill Classified Stakes that seemed to be a familiar and common part of the Flat programme when I was a regular follower of that code?

And if the figures include NH then I’d guess it’s the replacement of conditions Novice Chases with Novice Handicap Chases that’s contributed to the decrease

[apracing]

I’m sure those numbers are Flat and NH combined, but I don’t have any breakdown as to specific types of race.

My feeling would be that on the flat, there’s been a reduction in maiden races (especially early season 2-y-old races and 3-y-old races later in the year), a reduction in sellers and as Drone suggests, an almost total removal of Classified Stakes.

Over jumps, we’ve all noticed the increase in novice handicap chases this season, but I suspect a major influence on both codes has been the decision to allow handicaps to be divided. Certainly ten years ago, the money available for divided races was always aimed at maiden races as a priority and that policy seems to have been reversed.

So whereas a seven or eight race card might have had two divisions of a maiden and one handicap with a lot of horses eliminated, now we have one maiden and two divisions of the handicap. See Kempton in two days time for an example – one maiden on an eight race card and two divisions of a class 6 handicap.

[indocine]

This is what come off my dbase (flat only).
Again subject to my programming limitations, but it looks right.

2001 H=2151 NH=2164
2002 H=2196 NH=2258
2003 H=2280 NH=2347
2004 H=2338 NH=2749
2005 H=2535 NH=2619
2006 H=3024 NH=2399
2007 H=3270 NH=2248
2008 H=3381 NH=2276
2009 H=3697 NH=2370
2010 H=3898 NH=2274
2011 H=3831 NH=2275
2012 H=3810 NH=2118
2013 H=4095 NH=2113

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