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I’d have to say that Irish horses seem to do Ok in the UK though despite being rated higher- if anything I’d say they have a better strike rate than local runners in valuable handicap hurdles.
Just wanted to bump this one to say that James Pyman’s article in the Racing Post yesterday seems to bear out the above assertion, and support the stance taken by the BHA handicapping team.
Of course, I may be slightly biased.
Cheers for the plug Carvills.
I have occasionally appeared on here to help members out with handicapping queries, but have recently switched to another job within the BHA so won’t continue to do so.
There are a couple of folk around this place that know plenty about handicapping anyway.
New ratings are published on Tuesdays every week (on the internet). They are first available on the Weatherbys / BHA racingadmin site at 8.30am. That site is subscription-based and used mostly by owners, trainers and jockey’s agents.
The handicappers’ working week runs Sunday – Saturday, so a horse that ran, say, on Sunday January 11th will be reassessed tomorrow but a horse that ran on Sunday January 18th (yesterday) won’t be.
Those new ratings apply to all races for which the weights have not already been set. For normal-closing races, the weights are set approximately 24 hours after time of entry with that delay allowing for checks to be made. So, a race on Saturday which closed at 12 noon today (Monday) will have the new ratings applied, as the weights won’t be set until Tuesday afternoon.
The situation in Ireland is somewhat different with ratings adjusted the morning after the race (as opposed to GB, where it can be over a week later as above), and discretionary penalties for horses in early-closing handicaps.
My God, I’m totally amazed. I cast my vote, and then looked at the figures. I’d have thought Vincent O’Brien would have got over 80%. Could we please exclude people under the age of 35 from voting, as they are ignorant.
I voted for Pipe (and I would have been excluded under your criteria) but I found the decision really difficult. I would justify my selection by arguing that I don’t really see Vincent O’Brien as a jumps trainer, and it would be impossible to vote for him and categorically state that I wasn’t swayed by his achievements on the Flat.
dj,
My observation would be that Fibresand specialists go on Fibresand and the rest don’t, but on the rare occasions when a horse runs right up to form when trying the surface for the first time, said creature has usually shown the ability to handle very soft or heavy turf.
If I was a punter, I wouldn’t even consider a horse making its Fibresand debut without such evidence. [edit – I mean an exposed horse]
It does also seem that horses can get used to the surface if persisted with.
The grapevine (and I stress this is only the rumour) suggests that C4 would like some alternative action in the event of Sandown being off.
Kempton and Sandown are only 6 or 7 miles apart. Join the dots …
The pedantic point is correct, I’m sure, but the chap who posed the question was a spectator wanting to visit a point-to-point course in South-Eastern England, not someone who specifically wanted to attend a point-to-point at a course that was designated part of the South-East administrative ‘area’.
Tweseldown is about two miles outside Aldershot and the same distance from Fleet. I wouldn’t bank on buses on a Sunday, but at either destination (particularly Aldershot) it should be easy enough to get a cab.
I know that Godstone and Penshurst have stations, but you would have to check the distance from the actual course, as they are country stations in small settlements where you could be waiting a while for a taxi.
A South-East area point-to-point list and you missed Tweezers! I know it’s in Hampshire officially, but literally only a couple of miles from the Surrey border.
Tweseldown – Dec 7th, Jan 4th, Feb 8th.
Graysons, I’m sure you meant no offence, but those of us in North-East Hampshire do still consider ourselves part of the South-East / commuter belt. We tend to catch trains rather than stand and wave at them as they steam past.
Have Kempton actially staged any other 9f races there this season? I think that is the only one.
There was a 9f conditions race won by Campanologist in March this year.
It is possible to give general information about the horse and its racing style, which will aid the jockey in the decisions that they will have to make during the race, without giving specific instructions
Those RPRs in the card are weight-adjusted.
I think they take the highest RPR in the last x runs (x=6? possibly) for each horse, then adjust them to ten stone (for Flat races), which gives you ratings that you should be able to directly apply to the race.
Example: a horse with a highest recent RPR of 80, carrying 9-00, should beat a horse with a highest recent RPR of 85, carrying 9-07. The adjusted RPRs will be 94 and 92 respectively.
One of the Timeform lot, or another private handicapper, will be able to answer your question in much more detail. I should change the title of the thread if I were you!
In France, a rider may only be substituted for one of comparable stature – so a 7lb claimer would have to be replaced by someone similar.
It didn’t really work in Ralph Beckett’s favour a few years ago when Nelson de Souza (then claiming 5lb) got injured the day before he was supposed to fly to France for a Listed contest. The local stewards insisted that he had to be replaced by someone who had only ridden a handful of winners, as de Souza’s 30-odd winners in Brazil apparently did not count.
All Irish races are assessed by the GB jumps handicapping team and each horse entered is effectively given a ‘GB’ mark, which has no direct relationship to its Irish mark.
The Irish handicappers and GB handicappers work on different scales and in a different way.
