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It would be great if the BHA read the constructive side of this thread with the idea’s to stop this "handicap" deception.
More claiming races instead of handicaps for lower grade racing are what’s needed. I think there were some "Premier Claimers" run at Redcar that even had horses rated as higher than 80 a while back, I don’t know if they’re still around now.
We will be left with the unsatisfactory handicapping mess that is being done by a random number system on a calculator. Dropping horses 5lb that have been beat by huge distances in really low grade races makes no sense to me. It’s not needed, and that is a serious issue that this has highlighted.
It would be great if the BHA read the constructive side of this thread with the idea’s to stop this "handicap" deception.
More claiming races instead of handicaps for lower grade racing are what’s needed. I think there were some "Premier Claimers" run at Redcar that even had horses rated as higher than 80 a while back, I don’t know if they’re still around now.
We will be left with the unsatisfactory handicapping mess that is being done by a random number system on a calculator. Dropping horses 5lb that have been beat by huge distances in really low grade races makes no sense to me. It’s not needed, and that is a serious issue that this has highlighted.
This is actually the main reason American racing switched from handicaps making up the bulk of racing to claiming races. There was a lot of corruption at the smaller tracks, and during the 1940s the entire system of American racing was changed (around the time they outlawed bookies)-there are starter handicaps for horses who have run at or below a certain claiming price in a certain time period, the good old claiming handicap (every $2,000 added to the claiming price adds another pound of weight), but basically slow horses are forced to run for a tag.
- Total Posts 17716
Is it assumed that the potential to lose a horse will encourage connections to run it on its merits? What would prevent someone from stopping a horse with the intention of backing it, should it be claimed, on its first start for a new trainer? Will the lengths current connections go to to keep a horse that has apparently run appallingly be made available to the public? Would collusion between multiple trainers not become a possibility if a promise not to claim a horse – Brian Ellison said in an ATR interview recently that he always calls the trainer of a horse he would like to claim – was rewarded with a nod when it was due to win?
"Armchair Jockey":1sh8x7x9 wrote: Is it assumed that the potential to lose a horse will encourage connections to run it on its merits?
Yes, along with the fact that bigger price=much bigger purse.
What would prevent someone from stopping a horse with the intention of backing it, should it be claimed, on its first start for a new trainer?
Not quite sure what you mean?
Will the lengths current connections go to to keep a horse that has apparently run appallingly be made available to the public?
Most trainers want to get rid of horses that run badly time and time again ASAP-the purses at the lowest levels won’t pay for the price of stabling/feed/etc. There’s a saying that a horse is "for sale" when it’s dropped from a high-class race to a low-class race. Also, most tracks have a sort of quality control in place-if a horse is racing at the lowest claiming level offered at the track and has not placed 1st-2nd-3rd-4th in it’s last [certain # of starts, usually 5 or 6], they’re kicked out.
[quote="Armchair Jockey" Would collusion between multiple trainers not become a possibility if a promise not to claim a horse – Brian Ellison said in an ATR interview recently that he always calls the trainer of a horse he would like to claim – was rewarded with a nod when it was due to win?
First of all, collusion is punished VERY harshly-it’s a far more serious violation than even a drug positive. Racing has had a bad reputation built up from the old days, so to many Americans it’s seen as on par with boxing when it comes to rigged sports. Tracks want to make sure the races appear as clean as possible-hence the move to parimutuel racing in the first place. And again, it just isn’t worth it at the claiming level to have those sorts of pacts-someone else like Michael Gill or Robert Cole will snatch up the horse immediately. Some horses are almost never claimed-horses over the age of 10, horses with well-known issues-but that’s due to common sense, not intervention on the part of the trainer.Is it assumed that the potential to lose a horse will encourage connections to run it on its merits?
Yes, along with the fact that bigger price=much bigger purse.
What would prevent someone from stopping a horse with the intention of backing it, should it be claimed, on its first start for a new trainer?
Not quite sure what you mean?
Will the lengths current connections go to to keep a horse that has apparently run appallingly be made available to the public?
Most trainers want to get rid of horses that run badly time and time again ASAP-the purses at the lowest levels won’t pay for the price of stabling/feed/etc. There’s a saying that a horse is "for sale" when it’s dropped from a high-class race to a low-class race. Also, most tracks have a sort of quality control in place-if a horse is racing at the lowest claiming level offered at the track and has not placed 1st-2nd-3rd-4th in it’s last [certain # of starts, usually 5 or 6], they’re kicked out.
Would collusion between multiple trainers not become a possibility if a promise not to claim a horse – Brian Ellison said in an ATR interview recently that he always calls the trainer of a horse he would like to claim – was rewarded with a nod when it was due to win?
First of all, collusion is punished VERY harshly-it’s a far more serious violation than even a drug positive. Racing has had a bad reputation built up from the old days, so to many Americans it’s seen as on par with boxing when it comes to rigged sports. Tracks want to make sure the races appear as clean as possible-hence the move to parimutuel racing in the first place. And again, it just isn’t worth it at the claiming level to have those sorts of pacts-someone else like Michael Gill or Robert Cole will snatch up the horse immediately. Some horses are almost never claimed-horses over the age of 10, horses with well-known issues-but that’s due to common sense, not intervention on the part of the trainer.
- Total Posts 17716
I was asking more in terms of racing in the UK, Miss Woodford, rather than the States, as I can’t see that limiting low grade horses to claimers would have any real impact.
With regard to my second question, I was merely trying to establish the potential for someone being able to stop a horse and then back it next time out when in the care of a different trainer, knowing that it’s considerably better than it was allowed to show.
Barney should be running the banks over here. He could teach Seánie Fitzpatrick and Mickey Fingleton a thing or two about gambling!
Not to mention his fellow Fermanaghman Seán Quinn
Horses always being prepared to win each race has always struck me as a very grey area, and doesn’t even make a lot of sense.
Criquette Head (or crickethead, if you’re the very ungallant J Lindley Esq of this parish) more or less said that Special Duty had been aimed at our 1000 gns, and it was unwise to read too much into her performance in her previous race.
Poor old Ryan Price (the Capting) got done for laying out big-price winners for the Schweppes, as it was then called, but someone here, rightly or wrongly, assured me it was all strictly on the level.
Horses being laid out for particular races, is a given – just another of the innumerable imponderables for punters not ‘in the know’, connected to the stable, owner, etc.
I think it’s a bit like insider trading. It shouldn’t be done too obviously, because that does ruin any kind of (law and) order, rational analysis, and bespeaks a certain slovenly, contemptuous attitude towards other investors or, in the case of racing, ‘investors’.
I’m not implying that the estimable Barney or his confreres in the coup were guilty in that regard. As someone pointed out on the letters page of the Racing Chronicle Handicap Book, as it was then called, horses that came last in their previous race have a theoretically extraordinary way of coming home first in the next race. It’s as if they felt ashamed, and were that bit more determined to make up for it.
I should be done for reckless, subprime lending, as I’m seldom repaid the loans I have faithfully continued to make to my bookmaker clients over many decades. I’m expecting to be arraigned to appear before the Senate Committee in the US at any time, to give my TRUE version of the sorry events that have brought the world to such a parlous state. I can only offer my abject apologies for my role in this most sorry affair.
So Ken from Derby, your old basket-weaver by appointment, (I have just recently arranged for your escutcheon to be affixed above the portal of my premises), I must obsequiously beg to differ with you on this one.
I shouldn’t knock Jimmy Lindley’s French pronunciation. Most English people are the same. Any latin language for that matter; ‘Infanta of Castille’, for example, ending up as ‘Elephant and Castle’. But as regards French pronunciation, one of the biggest laughs I’ve had all week was being reminded of Bergerac’s pronunciation of ‘Bureau des Etrangers’, as ‘Buro days Aytraaaanjay. Almost as funny as hearing a Frenchman imitating an Englishman speaking French.
Would you believe I read that one, Grimes, all the way to the end.Am I a right eejit or what?
Well, you’ve got more patience than most Andy. I once came across a post I’d sent to the Guardian and was stunned to realsie tat i coud scarcely understand any of it.
I thought about having another look some days later, in case I was just particularly dozy the time before. But the thing is, I couldn’t pluck up the courage, as I feared it probably was indecipherable.
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