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Alan, I reckon these extended handicaps work a bit like some of our classified stakes – where, for instance, in a 0-90 classified, horses rated, say, 88, 89 and 90 would all carry 9-00, but horses rated 93 and 95 would be allowed to race, but would have to carry 9-03 and 9-05 respectively.
For instance, there was an extended handicap run on the flat at Dundalk on 27 November won by Copper Dock. Eventual top weight in this race was Mountain Coral, carrying 9-11, off 96, but at the overnight stage top weight was Kargali, rated 108 and allotted 10-06; he was declared but didn’t run.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that an extended handicap means that horses rated higher than the ratings threshold for the race can be entered, but their eventual weight depends on whether the remaining horses declared manage to get in the handicap; in other words, lower-rated horses don’t get pushed out of the handicap proper by the declaration of the high-rated horse. This is a bit like the upside-down handicap scenario, isn’t it?
Mind you, it still doesn’t explain why King John’s Castle’s mark was 145 rather than 146.
That’s right, on both counts. There were a couple of races Spinning Bailiwick could have run in under a double penalty in the second half of last week had connections so desired, but there would have been little point – the races available were better class ones (0-75 or 0-85) and under a double penalty Spinning Bailiwick would have effectively been running off 68 (2 x 6lb penalties), whereas by waiting for that weak 0-70 they got a few extra days to recover from the two previous runs and were only 2lb higher in a weaker race.
Regarding Spinning Bailiwick:
He was entered for today’s race on Monday. At the time he was entered, he had not yet been reassessed for his win two days earlier, on November 28th, so his official rating at the time was still 56. The handicapper publishes revised ratings every Tuesday, which take into account performances up to and including the previous Saturday. These new ratings come into effect the following Saturday. For trainers wishing to run horses under a penalty, the “best” day to win a race on is Sunday, because the horse is not reassessed until the Tuesday nine days later, and therefore has 12 days (up to and including the Friday) to run under a penalty.So…Spinning Bailiwick won off 56 last Saturday, 28 Nov (he had also won three days earlier). He was entered for today’s race on Monday, one day before his revised mark was published. Monday was the last day he could have been entered for a 0-60 handicap; once his revised rating of 70 was published the following day, he no longer became eligible to be entered for races with a banding of under 70.
From the Orders and Rules:
133.2 For the purpose of determining whether a horse qualifies for a race, a Handicap Rating which is published on Tuesday of a particular week shall, unless the Authority directs otherwise, apply for races closing on that Tuesday through to the following Monday.Hope this helps!
I imagine you know this, but the authority has long been in place to do this. But the BHA handicappers steadfastly refuse to use that authority in instances like this.
Prufrock – this used to be true but is definitely not the case this year. I rang Phil Smith about this subject a few weeks ago, having noticed a few horses running in maidens on their fourth start that seemed to have been denied marks, and was told the handicappers had a meeting in January about this very issue and made a decision they were going to be tougher in terms of awarding ratings this year, and there have been numerous examples of horses not being given marks when the handicappers decided there was insufficient information to award one.
Examples that I had noticed myself prior to contacting Phil Smith include Bernie The Bolt, Bomber Brown, Cheyenne Red, December, Brett Vale, Uncle Brit and the Stuart Williams-trained Ziggy Lee (though that didn’t stop the latter from landing a gamble on his handicap debut on his fifth start, having been given a mark after his fourth run in a maiden!).
It’s an interesting development, and the fact that they have refused marks to horses from such yards as Sir Mark Prescott and Sir Michael Stoute suggests that the BHA handicappers are not lacking in resolve in this matter, even if it’s perhaps a work in progress and some horses are still slipping through the net.
In fact I’m a bit surprised they gave Straboe a mark after three runs given how much tougher they have been this year overall, though I know from speaking to Phil Smith that the handicappers feel there has to be something "goes wrong" on one of the runs to deny a mark – a slow start, a bad draw, a jockey reporting the ground didn’t suit, the horse eased down, anything like that – and thinking off the top of my head, maybe the time is right to have a minimum mark (say 60) that a horse can have after only three runs.
Don’t know about transferring them to a PC, but I have a Panasonic 400 GB DVD recorder (think you can get similar ones for around £300 these days) and use it to record every Flat race; it’s just a question of doing the recording from the replay programmes each day, and then spending about ten minutes per day creating chapters to divide each meeting (I don’t create chapters at every race as that would be too time consuming), and naming the meetings. It’s then possible to access any race within about 20 seconds.
It’s usually possible to get between four months and about eight months worth of Flat racing on the HD, depending on recording mode; at the moment I have all this year’s Flat racing since Jan 1, plus last year’s Flat turf from late July onwards; my HD is nearly full and soon it will be time to delete January and maybe February’s all-weather stuff, and July/August from last season’s Flat turf.
Obviously, National Hunt meetings take up much more of the HD and I tend only to record the better class ones.
Funnily enough I did some research on this exact topic, right down to the 100-day specification, just over a year ago for atr. Obviously bear in mind this information is a year out of date as it was carried out in January 2008 but it does highlight ten trainers with excellent records in this sphere from 2000-2007 inclusive.
When I was Kerrin’s agent, I always used to tell him that if he ever found himself in front of the stewards, whether for whip/interference issues, to always point out his excellent record (he didn’t get a whip ban until his 4th year here) – because I wasn’t convinced that the stewards/stipes were always aware of riders’ disciplinary records, other than for the totting-up procedures. I came to this conclusion because “cautions” don’t seem to have any future impact; take these examples, noting the dates:
WARWICK
Published: Thursday 28 Jun 2007
The Stewards held an enquiry under Rule 153 into possible interference inside the final furlong. They found that the winner, CAVENDISH, ridden by Richard Hughes, had interfered with KEY PARTNERS (IRE), ridden by George Baker, placed second. They considered that the interference was caused by careless riding in that Hughes allowed his horse to drift right handed, away from the whip. They cautioned Hughes as to his future conduct in races.FOLKESTONE
Published: Friday 29 Jun 2007
The Stewards held an enquiry under Rule 153 into possible interference approaching the final furlong. They found that the winner, GYPSY BABY (IRE), ridden by Richard Hughes, had interfered with MIDNITE BLEWS (IRE), ridden by David Kinsella, placed second. They considered that the interference was caused by careless riding, in that Hughes had allowed his horse to drift to the right. They cautioned Hughes as to his future conduct in races.——————————————————————————
HEXHAM
Wednesday 19th November 2008
The Stewards called before them D. O’Regan, the rider of the winner LETTERPRESS (IRE), and enquired into his use of the whip from the final flight. Having heard his evidence and viewed the video recording of the race, the Stewards found the rider guilty of improper riding in the light of Instruction H9 of the Rules of Racing headed “Use of the Whip” in that he had used his whip with excessive frequency. They cautioned him as to the future use of his whip.KELSO
Friday 21st November 2008
The Stewards called before them Denis O’Regan, the rider of PRINCE DE BEAUCHENE (FR), placed second, and enquired into his use of the whip from the last hurdle. Having heard his evidence and viewed the video recording of the race, the Stewards found the rider guilty of improper riding in the light of British Horseracing Authority instruction H9 headed “Use of the Whip” in that he had used his whip with excessive frequency. They cautioned him as to the future use of his whip.———————————————————————————-
GREAT LEIGHS
Tuesday 13th January 2009The Stewards called before them Chris Catlin, the rider of LADY VIVIEN, which dead heated for first place, and enquired into his use of the whip in the final furlong. Having heard his evidence and viewed the video recording of the race, the Stewards found the rider guilty of improper riding in the light of Instruction H9 of the Rules of Racing headed “Use of the Whip” in that he had used his whip down the shoulder in the forehand position. They cautioned him as to the future use of his whip.
WOLVERHAMPTON
Friday 16th January 2009The Stewards called before them Chris Catlin, the rider of the winner DICHOH, and enquired into his use of the whip approaching the line. Having heard his evidence and viewed the video recording of the race, the Stewards found the rider guilty of improper riding in the light of Instruction H9 headed “Use of the Whip” in that he had used his whip without giving his mount time to respond and down the shoulder in the forehand position. They suspended him for two days as follows: Sunday 1st and Monday 2nd February 2009.
LINGFIELD
Saturday 17th January 2009The Stewards called before them Chris Catlin, the rider of SVINDAL (IRE), placed second, and enquired into his use of the whip from approximately three furlongs out. Having heard his evidence and viewed the video recording of the race, the Stewards found the rider guilty of improper riding in the light of Instruction H9 of the Rules of Racing, headed “Use of the Whip”, in that he had used his whip down the shoulder in the forehand position. They cautioned him as to the future use of his whip.
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I usually sift through the previous year’s record for each Flat course prior to the start of each new season (haven’t done so yet for last year), and I would advise caution with any advice that goes back a few years, as, like draw biases, pace biases change considerably over the years.
Around five years ago, the two courses that stood out, and by some way, were the round courses at Ripon and Hamilton. Unfortunately I think we gave the game away about Ripon on the original at the races channel; I remember being on the "Four Facts" shift and highlighting the % of front-runners that made all on the round track. This was on a high-profile Saturday (it might have been Great St Wilfrid day) and the winner made all in nearly every race on the round course. A couple of weeks later, a feature/interview on Sir Mark Prescott appeared in which he commented on media outlets giving away some of the information he used to exploit, and used the front-running at Ripon scenario as an example. The upshot of this was that in every race at 1m+ at Ripon thereafter, at least 2 or 3 jockeys seemed intent on making the running, and unsurprisingly hold-up horses started doing better than before.
Hamilton remains fairly advantageous for front-runners on the round course, and Sir Mark obviously still sees it as a signficant advantage to make the running there. Last year he saddled eight horses on the round course, and seven of them made the running, with the eighth sitting on the leader’s quarters early on (four of those eight won).
From memory, Folkestone had a very high percentage of winners making all last year, I think Leicester did so too (what these two have in common with Ripon are the undulations, which I always feel help handy types). Newbury always seems to be at the bottom of the list with regards to number of horses making all, though you have to take into account competitiveness of the racing and, especially, field size.
The direct link for this is http://www.chvideo.fr/homepage.aspx
In my experience it works very well.
For German videos, the site you need is the betting site http://www.pferdewetten-online.de/
This works slightly differently in that you need to deposit a certain amount into a betting account (I think it’s 25 euros) but then you can access past videos free of charge by using the calendar.
The At The Races website has a piece I did for them comparing the top 50 Flat trainers’ records with first-time-out and second-time-out two-year-olds in terms of strike rate and return of investment. It should be found at (sorry about immense link)
http://www.attheraces.com/article.aspx? … ds&day=Fri
If that link doesn’t work, click on Features, then Trendspotting and you should find it.
HTH.This is only a guess, but I suspect that the RP still have the white with the blue triangle as the default colours for Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum and thus at the six-day entry stage these are the ones that are automatically loaded against each of his entries; they will presumably be overwritten by the green colours when the 48-hour decs file arrives. The white colours were used in recent years in Britain (for instance by Excusez Moi), but seem to have been replaced by the green ones this year.
Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum is Sheikh Mohammed’s second son. In Dubai, his colours are like the famous maroon Sheikh Mohammed colours, but with a white sash.
Is there anything stopping you being agent for a few more jockeys, or is one high profile jock enough right now?
I know flat racing is pretty much all the year round now but what do you do when Kerrin is on holiday, serving a suspension etc?
Mike
No real interest in taking anyone else on at this stage – I like the fact that K only needs me from late April to late October as it leaves me time to spend with my family (have two young children). Kerrin doesn’t really do suspensions – he didn’t get his first whip ban until last season, and has never had a ban longer than 2 or 3 days. During the winter I do a column for the at the races website and the odd Spotlight shift for the RP to keep my eye in.
I really don’t know how the guys with multiple jockeys manage, and I certainly take my hat off to them. That said, they can kill several birds with one stone when they ring each trainer, and the advantage of having multipole jockeys on your books is that when you are offered a ride for a jockey who is unavailable, you can immediately offer one of the other riders on your books; most agents are particularly adept at getting one of their other boys onto a horse when the expected rider becomes unexpectedly (or perhaps not so unexpectedly!) unavailable. That said, there is also a school of thought that some jockeys lose out by being lower on the pecking order than others on the same agent’s books; last week I had an approach to take on a jockey with the comment that he was specifically looking for someone who didn’t have lots of riders on his books already.
The Jerry Maguire kind of relationship you might associate with NFL/soccer agents is totally different as the job of a jockey’s agent isn’t about negotiating money, it’s about negotiating rides. I might occasionally ask if travelling expenses will be paid for rides abroad, and you sometimes have to deal with press enquiries and that sort of thing, but that’s about as far as it goes.
The change to the internet-based system a few years ago meant that it is perfectly possible to do the job without being well connected or an "insider" in any way, and you don’t need to be a wheeler-dealer type of character either, though you do need to have a very thick skin. I am fortunate in that Kerrin has never put me under any kind of pressure in any respect and is an easy-going character, and unlike some jockeys, Kerrin’s ability to make a living doesn’t depend on me; my job really is to fill the gaps and try and get him on nice horses/winners when he’s not required by Godolphin. If I don’t think I can get him on a horse with a solid winning chance at a meeting, I just tell him to have a day off, and he’s always happy enough with that.
As an aside, there was a thread on here about stable second strings. In the case of Godolphin horses, there are definitely cases where the presumed second (or third) string on jockey bookings is value because of the market over-reacting to the retained riders’ choices. This is usually in conditions races or Listed events where Godolphin often run more than one (they have lots of horses in the 100-115 rating bracket). Often in such instances I get a call from the office asking which one Kerrin wants to ride, and sometimes it’s a very tough decision, but invariably the one we plump for starts significantly shorter than the reject(s). A good example of a horse we’ve got wrong more than once is Blue Ksar; three times in a row in 2006 Frankie and Kerrin overlooked him for one that started much shorter but finished behind him (Blue Ksar won two of those races), and the reverse happened last October when Frankie rode him in preference to Windsor Knot, who won! Choosing Winged Cupid over Stage Gift at York was the big gaff of last season for us; we had no idea if he’d handle the ground, but it was crazy he went off at 8-1 compared with 11-4 for Winged Cupid.
Hi Colin
Yes, Kerrin will be back for his usual stint, probably returning just before Guineas weekend.
Not sure I’m best qualified to give a "typical jockeys’ agent day" as I only do Kerrin whereas the average agent who does the job for a living will have anything from 3 or 4 up to, in a couple of cases, 30 or 40 riders on their books. There are a few other guys who just do the one jock (Ray Cochrane for Frankie, and Andrew Sheret for Jamie Spencer are the obvious ones) but most agents try and get several on their books, which must mean the phones never stop ringing.
I tend to be at my desk by 8am every morning, though I know plenty of other agents with bigger workloads start much earlier – I just find 8 is about the earliest you get calls coming in. With a high-profile jockey like Kerrin, you will probably already have most of your rides booked at this stage, at least in all the races you want rides in (we are not chasing riding fees and I try not to take rides for Kerrin that I think have no possible chance unless it’s for a stable he’s closely connected with).
The first couple of hours are pretty much spent monitoring the 48-hour decs, taking incoming calls from trainers (or more often, at least with the bigger yards, from their racing secretaries) who are making late plans to run or, in some instances, late plans not to run in races where they had earlier intended to.
You also need to keep a close eye on the declarations pages. For instance, sometimes a ride on a horse with a clear chance will become unexpectedly available because a jockey switches meetings, either through choice or because of his retainer. The Weatherby’s/BHA site not only shows which horses of the original entries are "jocked up", but also shows how many horses have been declared, updated every five minutes. Thus you can often more or less work out which horses have been declared; lots of trainers monitor this very closely before deciding whether or not to declare runners, often just a few minutes before the 10am deadline.
If you’re a jockey with a retaining stable, of course, your whole plans revolve around what your stable (or retaining owner) does, and if there’s a late change of plan, that can alter everything you’ve been working on for the last four days (i.e. since the six-day entries came out). And if your jockey is the stable’s second retained jockey, as is the case with Kerrin, your plans are also dependent on what the first jockey is doing (though Godolphin try really hard not to mess us around late, and if Kerrin had some good outside rides at, say, Newmarket and Godolphin made a late decision to run one in a Newmarket maiden, Simon Crisford would typically tell us to stay at HQ if we wanted, which not all retaining stables do).
About five or ten minutes after the 10am declaration deadline, the provisional declarations are published on the Weatherbys site. Usually, one or two of the declared horses will not be jocked up, so then it’s a free-for-all amongst the agents to try and secure those rides for any jockeys they have who are frere in that race. The provisional lists contain only the horses’ names, but you can work out the weights of each horse from the top horse declared, and there’s something wrong if you don’t know the trainers of each horse by this stage. The other things you’re looking for here is whether all your intended rides have made the cut, and whether maiden races have divided (though by this stage if you’re doing your job properly you have anticipated this and contacted trainers about possible plans if they do divide) About half an hour later, the final declarations are published, including any divided races, final weights and the draw.
In my case, the next hour or so is taken up looking at the races Kerrin is riding in today, as part of my job is to talk through each race with him in terms of where the pace is likely to come from and who the horses with the best chance are, in addition to any comments I have about the horse Kerrin is riding and any opinions I have about any track bias or anything like that, and any horses that may be worth being wary of (e.g. plays up at the start, or hangs during a race). Kerrin then usually rings me around midday (he will have been doing the same thing for the last hour) and we talk through each race. Sometimes that’s the only time we talk that day, other times we may chat multiple times, but we tend to communicate more by text unless it’s urgent, usually 10 or a dozen times a day, it’s easier all round especially as he’s often in the gym/getting ready for racing etc.
At around 1pm the six-day entries come out and you start sifting through them. I will already know what Godolphin have entered as their racing secretary emails the list of entries to Ray C and me, so I try and work out where Frankie might end up and work from there. If there is a horse Kerrin always rides, I’d tend to stick his name down on the horse (you just click next to it), but generally, it’s just guesswork for me where he might end up at this stage (unless Godolphin have entires at no more than one meeting). Again, the Weatherbys site gives only a limited amount of information at this stage – horse’s name, trainer, official rating and that’s about it.
Sometimes, if it’s an important ride that I know there will be competition for, I’ll ring up immediately, though really it depends on the stable concerned and their modus operandi; in most cases it can wait until first thing in the morning before ringing, as the trainers tend not to even look at the races until then. So in the afternoon you tend to sift your way through the runners whilst, obviously, watching the racing on RUK/ATR. Some agents do go to the races in the afternoons but I think most find, like me, that it’s so much easier having your PC with all the entries at hand, your main phone line(s) and the TV racing. I tend to go racing only to evening meetings and the occasional weekend one nowadays.
I try to "finish" for the day at the end of afternoon racing, although obviously I often need to watch the evening racing too; if Kerrin isn’t riding I’ll usually just tape it and watch it afterwards though. You don’t get too many calls after 5 or 5.30, unless it’s from some mad punter ringing you from Ireland at 1am to berate you about a ride Kerrin gave a horse he’d backed, as happened once last season. The only really sacrosanct time in this is on Sunday afternoons; it’s an unwritten rule that you wouldn’t phone a stable after about midday on Sundays, the one day that doesn’t have a six-day entry stage; used to be Tuesdays as well prior to six-day decs
Hope that answers your question! As I said, this is just my way of doing it, and others probably have totally different ways of working.
As the original poster suggests, the phrase "jockey booking looks significant" is overused, and many times it’s simply a case of a top jockey not having a ride booked in a particular race and it being the best available.
The trouble for punters is it’s impossible to work out the significance of a booking unless you have the following information:
1. Who made the phone call – the jockey’s agent or the trainer/secretary?Some trainers will invariably attempt to book the best jockey available regardless of the horse’s chance, but others are more selective and only ring agents up for a top rider if the ride is perceived to be worth it.
2. When was the booking made? Was it the morning after the six-day entries came out, or five minutes after the 48-hour decs were published? That’s not to say that an early booking is always significant (some stables like to have everything jocked up long before they actuallly decide whether they will run – Mark Johnston’s being an example) or that a late booking isn’t (some stables will only engage a jockey when they have carefully examined the likely declarations a few minutes before the 10am declaration deadline), but nearly all jockeys pick up a fair percentage of their rides on the morning of declarations, quite often because their intended mount is pulled out and their agent is left looking for the best remaining ride. Plenty of trainers have no qualms about pulling their horses out just a few minutes before declaration if they don’t like the look of a race, even if it’s the champion jockey that they have booked, so top jocks often become free at the last moment.
3. Is their any special relationship between a jockey and connections, especially owners (this happens more often that many would realise) – I’m not talking about anything dodgy here, just that the jockey might know or have a gentleman’s agreement with the owner, that sort of thing.
4. If the jockey has a good record for the trainer, is the trainer selective about when he puts the jockey up? Quite often you will see stats quoted such as "jockey has won 3 out of 5 for stable", but the natural consequence of a good early record like this is that both parties are happy for the relationship to progress, with the natural regression to the mean ensuing. The booking of a rider who has had 3 wins from 5 rides for a stable in the last 3 years is more likely to be significant than the booking of one who has 3 from 5 in the last three weeks.
One thing I would recommend for punters is to keep an eye on the early jockey bookings in the RP with respect to top jockeys engaged for stables they are not automatically associated with on unraced horses or those with few runs and not an obvious form choice. In such circumstances, there’s a fair chance the trainer has rung the agent (rather than vice-versa) and told him something positive about the horse.
Also, be aware that on Saturdays there is such a shortage of jockeys because of number of meetings (and overseas Group races) that unusual jockey bookings are the norm rather than the exception.
