The problem with the Novice Chase System ?

[Coggy]

There seem to be a number of decent races with reasonably sized prizes happening at the moment with hardly any runners. At the same time top trainers seem to complain about the lack of opportunities for their top novices.

Is there something wrong with the system when it seems to preclude novices from getting a good grounding before “mixing it” with experienced handicappers ?
Is it simply that the penalty system is too harsh for winning each such event i.e. 7 pounds ?
Would it not assist if perhaps the penalties were graduated e.g. 3 pounds for an event worth up to £x pounds , 5 pounds for an event worth up to £y pounds etc. ?

[Silver Spoon]

Whatever the problem, it needs fixing. It’s happening every season now, and it’s very poor.

[apracing]

I would guess from the above comments, that neither of you have ever owned a novice chaser. There’s absolutely no incentive for an owner/trainer with a novice rated under 140 to run in a standard level weights novice chase.

There are far more handicaps available, and they provide the same (or better) prize money, and a much better chance of getting a win.

The reason for the current situation lies entirely with the changed approach to handicapping introduced by Phil Smith in the mid to late 90’s. He started to give novices a much higher level of handicap mark than his predecessor. He justified this by statistics that told him how many novices were winning open handicaps against older, experienced horses, and he saw it as his job to put a stop to this.

As so often happens, the law of unintended consequences took over and two things happened that he hadn’t foreseen. First, if your novice chaser was given a mark 21lbs higher than would have been the case five years earlier, you now had a horse that could get in to the most valuable handicaps. Second, if trainers know that winning a novice chase will get them a much higher handicap mark, they opt to avoid the novice chases and work their way up through the handicaps.

The BHB, then BHA, have tried all sorts of modifications to the program and conditions for novice chases to increase field sizes, but they haven’t done the one thing that would really make them more attractive. Which was to either sack Phil Smith and his team of like minded handicappers, one of whom is now in charge – or alter the prize momney balance between novice chases and handicaps to make the former more attractive.

Better still would be a recognition that ‘novice status’ is a pointless category. If a horse can win the Gold Cup on its fourth chase start, beating another on its sixth chase start, do we really need to protect young chasers by calling them novices. In France, a horse making the switch from hurdles to fences, would normally first run in a race either restricted by age group, or limited to horses that have never previously run over fences. Then maybe one more run in a race for horses that haven’t run more than twice over fences and then into the general population of chasers.

Ah you say, but what about the Arkle, the RSA etc. Easy – make the Arkle a chase for five and six year olds, make the RSA for six and seven year olds. And if your horse is good enough and versatile enough to win over 2M as a 5-y-old and 3M as a 6-y-old, good luck to him.

[Author]

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