Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Facts:
1) On the rating I use Black Oval had 7 lbs in hand over the field. Even if we assume Black Oval is the biggest dog in training, do we believe that her temperament is so bad she couldn’t take advantage?
2) She was pulling double all the way up the straight. Given that fact – which is unarguable in my view – are we to believe that Black Oval’s rider was waiting to unleash her five yards from the line for a late swoop?
3) Her rider seemed more concerned keeping her from the leaders than getting near them. Bearing in mind Black Oval had 7 lbs in hand, are we to believe that he was not confident of victory at any stage, or are we to believe it was an inept ride, or is this a horse that no rider is capable of winning on (even with 7 lbs in hand)?
4) Plus let’s not forget the alarming drift on betfair. Are we to believe it’s normal for horses to drift so much, even horses with temperament, when – yes, again – the horse has 7 lbs in hand of his rivals?
If folk disagree with me or anybody else on this matter, then that’s fine. But what happened yesterday was bad in my opinion – and in the opinion of several people whose opinions I greatly respect – and I do not believe there was any injustice over what happened to the jockey and trainer.
Anyway, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. And no, I didn’t have money on the horse!
As far as I’m aware stewards at the moment are briefed beforehand by the BHB handicappers about any potential bad behaviour by jockeys/trainers on the card (i.e. they get told to look out for horses who might not have been trying too hard in recent races), so in a way stewards are already more on the ball than the general betting public might give them credit for. But personally I don’t see that the outcome of the Black Oval case would have been any different.
All I can say is I’m glad you aren’t a steward! It was an appalling case and for me 28 days is not enough of a ban.
28 years would be more appropriate…
Black Oval’s past record is irrelevant in this case. Nobody can watch the race and say that Black Oval would not have been fighting out the finish if Mernagh had not been trying to pull its head off all the way up the straight.
The horse would have gone very close in a bad race yesterday (four maidens and only 14 wins between all the other runners from 187 starts) if it had been ridden to do so.
And that much can be made of the race without even knowing that the horse more than tripled in price in the minutes leading up to the off!
Mark Johnston certainly weighs his horses and sets plenty of stall by it. When Bandari was sent down to Sandown as a two-year-old for the Solario Stakes he didn’t live up to expectations. He was later found to have lost plenty of weight after the long round trip.
When Bandari was three, Johnston was so concerned that his fancied Derby runner might not cope with the long journey to Epsom that he purposely sent him to Lingfield for the Derby Trial to see if he would be affected by a long journey a second time. He wasn’t on that occasion, winning by 13 lengths, and was deemed fit enough to take in the Derby.
Fair enough, Bandari got stuffed in the Derby, but that’s besides the point! The point is that he knew his horse had lost lots of weight, which would explain away a poor run. It surely wouldn’t hurt for punters to have this information too.
This is nothing to do with rudeness. It’s about logic. My point is that all the evidence points to Deep Impact being, at best, a mid 130’s horse. It’s good, but not great. Why consistently talk the horse up as being something he isn’t? He’s good, very good, but he’s not great, and he’s certainly not good enough to be spoken of in the same breath as Dancing Brave.
DJ
Yeats and High Action versus Deep Impact… a mouthwatering proposition!
In all seriousness though, where do these people who think Deep Impact and other horses like him are the best they’ve ever seen? How do they come to this conclusion? They don’t seem to use ratings because they decry them when the ratings don’t tell them what they want to hear. Where Deep Impact is concerned, all this nonsense about him being one of the greats would be amusing if it wasn’t so innaccurate.
Take the Japan Cup – even if the race is rated through Ouija Board running to her best Deep Impact cannot have run to a figure higher than 134. That is fact. And that would be his best performance from all his races. Ouija Board, admirable though she is, is thoroughly exposed as being no better than a rating of 125. She isn’t even as good as Pride at her best (who incidently finished ahead of Deep Impact in the Arc, albeit 2 lb worse at the weights). Deep Impact is top-class, but not outstanding. It’s as simple as that. Get over it Zorro!
Doesn’t it all depend on what you want from ratings? Are ratings to be compiled only for historical purposes, therefore being worked out only on what actually happened in a race and not taking into account factors such as ease of victory, jumping errors, trouble in running etc, or are they to predict what the horse will be capable of producing in the future, in which case all these things need to be taken into account.
Further to all this Deep Impact talk, it would be good if connections could reconsider their retirement of the horse and instead bring him back to Europe again next year.
He’d be an ideal type for the Doncaster Cup.
I appreciate that everybody has their own way of doing things, and that what works for one person might not neccessarily work for another, but there seems to be a distinct lack of logic at times on this thread.
Firstly, Arkle: is it not the case that subsequent handicapping philosophies have stopped horses being rated as high as him? The fashion in recent times has been to discredit, to not take ratings at face value, and generally rate races lower because folk are wary of giving praise, for whatever reason. That’s a stone-cold fact in my view. It applies to all walks of life – we are a cynical nation! Yet in racing this attitude prevails despite all evidence strongly suggesting that horses are better and faster than ever before. If the general level of the handicap is lower than it was forty years ago (let alone thirty, twenty or ten) how on Earth can latter-day racehorses be rated on the same level as those from the past?
Secondly, there seems to be an acceptance that a horse cannot achieve a big rating unless all other horses in the race have shown very high levels of form previously. Otherwise, the winner ‘hasn’t beaten anything’. This relates in a way back to the point I made about Arkle. The Market Man himself summed up this general attitude by saying something along the lines of ‘most developed horses are consistent and run to about the same figure every time they run’ before using this year’s 12f horses as an example. While there is clearly some truth in this, it surely isn’t the whole story. The effect this attitude has is that races cannot be rated highly, as the assumption is that most horses fall into a ratings band that they cannot ever rise out of.
If it’s green, falls from a tree and can be turned into cider I would assume it to be an apple. If more people adopted a similar apprach to horseracing – the rationale, not the supping of cider – instead of allowing themselves to be carried away to the Land of Irrational Hyperbole by the likes of Mottershead, the world of horse racing appreciation would be a better place. But somehow I don’t see it happening…<br>
(Edited by Bosra Shambles at 9:29 am on Dec. 12, 2006)
Wallace, that is not much of an answer. Most of what you say is misinformation by cartload. I smell an agenda…
If your ratings (and I presume you compile ratings for every race) perform better than Timeform I will first subscribe here and now, and then secondly I will eat my fedora.
Try getting some hard facts on the performance of Timeform ratings. If you are lucky you’ll see how poor they are.
—————————————————————————–<br>Interesting, Wallace. So if, for example, you were to put top-rated horses on Timeform ratings in the National Press Challenge box in th RP, where would Timeform be placed? Near the bottom, or near the top?
You clearly have an extensive knowledge of the performance of Timeform ratings for you to be able to tell us they perform so poorly. It would be good if you could enlighten us.
