Forum Replies Created
- Posts
KCC, there won’t be a further increase in the number of AW meetings because the ones allocated to Great Leighs have simply been staged at the other tracks for the past 18 months.
marb,
Not a cop-out, but it is inaccurate to say that Streets Of Gold was raised 16lb for his Leopardstown run.
The Irish handicapper has him on 124, but the GB jump handicap and the IRE jump handicap are different scales and we (the GB handicapper) keep our own ratings for all Irish jumpers.
Roman Villa (who was pulled up yesterday) is an interesting example. He was a good second to Jack The Giant off 123 at Cheltenham in December. The pair were well clear and the winner went on to frank the form.
Roman Villa then ran a fair fourth in the Pierse Hurdle at Leopardstown off 118 and the Irish handicapper now has him on 121.
quote from Fist:
The BHA wouldn’t have a clue what they should be like as not one of them has ever worked in a yard in their lives.
Just goes to show, even handicappers aren’t averse to taking their boss for a ride and spending ‘overtime’ down the pub!
This shocking allegation should be of course be refuted. Sorry I couldn’t reply earlier, but they don’t have a wireless network at my local.
I have found rule 94 (iv) which states that any horse rated below 46 entered in a Flat Race handicap shall be allocated a weight which corresponds with a handicap rating of 45. So, If you are entered in a 46-60 handicap and the top rated horse is only 57, it effectively becomes a 45-57, not a 43-57.
The penalty is then added to your allocated weight.
The purpose of publishing ratings below 45 is for elimination sequences in oversubscribed 0-45s, sellers, claimers and maidens. Plus, of course, if you have an oversubscribed 46-50 handicap, the horse rated 44 and the horse rated 32 will obviously both compete off 46 (or 45 if the topweight is below 50, as above), but the horse rated 44 has more chance of securing a run.
In this way talent is duly rewarded!
I am going to stay firmly planted on the fence as befits one in my position but would just like to say what a cracking thread this is. Excellent points on both sides.
It also helps me further my argument that surfing the internet in working hours is productive. Cheers! Happy New Year.
Vince Slattery is definitely still riding under both codes.
Has PJ McDonald switched entirely to the Flat or is he going to ride over jumps this winter?
Davidjohnson is correct, the BHA jumps handicappers assess all races run in Ireland and take no notice of the Irish ratings.
Carvillshill – that is the current official policy.
Why a one size fits all approach isn’t used, i.e. give all horses their Irish mark +10 in British handicaps isn’t adopted,I’m not really sure,
That’s certainly what the Irish Turf Club and the Irish trainers would like us to do.
At present the Irish handicap suffers from slippage as ours used to. The Irish jump handicapper corrects the slippage by having a universal raise in the ratings once or twice a year. The problem with a one size fits all approach is that the effect of the standardised +10 would vary depending on which point in the ‘slippage cycle’ the Irish handicap was at.
The question the officials are allowed to ask is: To what do you attribute the improvement in this horse’s form?
In this case there were two obvious answers – new trip, and the fitting of a tongue-tie. The horse started 66/1 at Wolverhampton and it would therefore seem that no great coup was landed. Would the stewards have looked more competent, or less, if they had called an enquiry and been told that the improvement was due to the two above factors?
Genuinely interested in your response.
To add some context:
Commander Wish did race exclusively at six and seven furlongs when trained by Featherstone in 2005, but he was a two-year-old at the time. He was third at Doncaster over 6f but finished last on his three other attempts at that trip. That was his best run by some way. The only other occasion on which he showed any ability at all was when 7th of 12 over 7f.
Featherstone relinquished her license in April 2006 and was relicensed in June 2007 from new premises, which goes some way to explaining why the horse was trained by Howling in 2006.
Reading between the lines it sounds like you do make individual ratings for all runs by all horses.
Yes, we do. I forgot to answer that one – it’s not a secret. I beg your pardon.
Given that this is publically funded why ought they not be made available for public use.
Dunno. One of the advantages of being a lowly member of the team is that I can say ‘dunno’ to questions of policy like this one. It’s worth discussing, though. We don’t have many meetings as a team but we will have one next month and one in the New Year. (I don’t think that’s a secret either).
You have put the case very eloquently and I suggest that write to the Head of Handicapping or Director of Racing, making the points that you have made in this thread. PM me if you need any more information.
Could you not make them available to the stewards aswell!
Funnily enough this has been discussed recently, and looks like it is going to happen in some form. We also do have a handicapper present at about 40% of meetings (probably less this year due to increased fixture list and not having a full team all year round).
Probably shouldn’t get involved in this one, but just a quick observation.
Performance ratings in some races are all but meaningless without context. I’m thinking small-field conditions races, most claimers – any type of contest that regularly produces a result that makes little sense in terms of the ratings.
I wouldn’t want some of the performance comments I make for the benefit of my colleagues to be put into the public arena.
Danish Blues is a good one to mention in this context.
Given an official mark of 10 after his three qualifying runs (which grossly flattered him) and went up 53lb after his fourth run!
I once gave a horse a rating of 15 after three runs and was phoned by an irate trainer who demanded "What am I going to tell the owner?".
Replying to the replies:
marb – post 1; a very good question, which is what politicians always say when they don’t have an answer. There are certainly horses that move up and down in the ratings without winning or improving, and sometimes you feel that you should be leaving their rating alone. However, there are two other factors here: 1) the necessity to relate their new rating to the new ratings of the winner and the other horses around them (3rd, 4th etc.). 2) the fact that we are constantly scrutinised by trainers and the media, and to take a different approach is a high-risk strategy, especially if it were to backfire with an easy short-priced winner next time out.
At the end of the day I would rather be hung for being unimaginative and one-dimensional in my approach than for being inconsistent. The one thing that would genuinely destroy me personally, as well as confidence in ‘the handicapper’ generally, is the allegation of favouritism which might arise from trying to give a particular horse a break.
I hope that answers your (very good) question
post 2 – all Irish-trained jumpers that run here are now handicapped by the British handicapper with no reference to their Irish rating. This has been facilitated by ATR televising all Irish racing. The jumps handicappers (of which I am not one) are producing ratings for every Jump race in Ireland and are using their own judgment when an Irish-trained horse is entered to run here. We use the Irish ratings for Flat races as we believe that we have parity under that code.
dave jay – the new style of handicapping was originally introduced with the primary aim of addressing the situation whereby a universal raise in the ratings was necessary in the middle of each NH (Jump) season. The NH handicappers at the time were too lenient and were dropping more ratings than they were raising, and the average (median) rating was declining. Therefore, at some point in the middle of the year it was necessary to increase every rating by a standardised amount so that a rating of, say, 130, represented the same level of ability as a 130 horse in previous years.
A new team of Jump handicappers were appointed and were instructed to do their job with one eye on the median rating i.e. to put horses up more for running well, and drop horses less for running badly. This had the side-effect of making it harder to run up a 11111 sequence in handicaps which is no bad thing IMO. I was not employed by BHB / BHA at the time, but I believe that increasing the levy was not the primary issue of the day – the plan at that time was that the levy system would not be needed in the future …
BSB – we have a policy of handicapping horses based on the ability they have displayed. It is the only way to be fair. Like every other system, it has loopholes.
If we were to totally revisit the handicapping system in this country it would also involve a change in the qualification rules, because the problem you have alluded to with the well-bred Newmarket trainer is to do with the original rating at which the horse is qualified, which is based on the ability it displays at six furlongs.
To make it harder for horses to qualify for a handicap rating would seem to go against our brief which is to produce competitive racing.
I really could go on all night with this one, so perhaps I should stop there and just add that if there were to be a handicapping Q&A, there are others far more qualified than me to be the subject of it.
Hi, have read this forum for a while without contributing but feel the ‘official handicapper’ (of which I am 1/12th) should have right of reply here.
The section about the handicapping came from a quote from Len Lungo who has long argued that jump handicappers are too hard on northern-trained horses in general.
Len is an eloquent critic of the new style of handicapping that has been introduced in the last 3-4 years to combat slippage in the ratings. However I feel that he is misguided in saying that harsher handicapping serves to drive owners out of racing. I am not sure what evidence he has for this (possibly he is alluding to the fact that his patrons the Edinburgh Woollen Mill – edit, Ashleybank Investments? – seem to have cut back their racing interests) but I would take the opposite view – surely the ‘average owner’ feels they have more chance of picking up a bit of (meagre) prizemoney if we produce more competitive and open handicaps?
I know a few owners from my previous life, and I think there is a feeling among them that although you will often lose nearly 100% of the money you spend on a particular animal, but if you get a nice progressive one (which will hopefully happen at some point before you have to sell the house, the car etc.) it may run up a sequence and recoup some of the losses you have incurred on the slowboats, and you can make money backing it, and you might be able to sell it on. The changes in handicapping and race planning have made it harder to do this especially with certain types of horses with which it used to be relatively common e.g. novice chasers and two-year-olds.
We see ourselves as politically neutral though – our job is to produce competitive racing and that’s what we try to do. If you hear a handicapper saying that it was ‘good’ that a 100-1 shot won this or that high-profile handicap, it just means that we are pleased to have set a puzzle which not many were able to solve.
