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Thanks
Would be interested to know exactly why Band Of Outlaws comes out so high, however.
Romney
Let’s get one thing straight – Ralph Topping comes in way ahead of Paul Roy or Paul Dixon.
the darknight,
I’d be very disappointed if he shied away from answering any of them, tricky or not…….it’s not as if, with 12 assistants, he has any amount of significant handicapping to do himself.
Horse racing analysis is a blindingy simple game on occasions, with the right tools at your disposal, as Simon has just eloquently demonstrated.
Hello Phil, and thanks for putting your head on the block.
When discussing the rating awarded to Harbinger in the King George, you said you based his rating on Cape Blanco ‘running to form’. What do you look for when trying to interpret which horses have ‘run to form’ and what, if any, do you think the shortcomings of this approach are?
In handicaps three-year-olds are shown by results year after year to be favoured by the weight-for-age scale at certain times of the year at certain trips, while at other distances at other times of year are disadvantaged. You seem to refuse continually to refuse to accept that these inequalities exist and frequently say you have no plans to amend the scale. Why is this?
Looking back at the handicapping of Tusculum who landed a gamble for Curley Leisure in 2009 in a 0-45 classified event at Kempton, why was it that this horse was allowed to drop 50lb in four runs prior to that race? Was it because the handicapper was swayed by the distances the horse had been beaten, and took the view that because the horse was beaten 58l, 44l, 53l and 89l in those races, his performances were worse and merited more of a drop in his mark than if he had been beaten 43l, 25l, 36l and 73l in the same races, for example?http://www.britishhorseracing.com/goracing/blogs/head_of_handicapping.asp
Following on from that last question, do handicappers ever undergo retraining, and if not, why not?
How much attention do your handicappers pay to time compared to form?It is particularly useful in maidens when horses can be flattered by a slowly run race or in Group races if you are going to give a horse a particularly high rating. We all often use time comparisons when there is little form evidence to go on.
It is commonly acknowledged that over 5f, a length roughly equals 3lb. Are there any circumstances in which that length might equal 6lb or 7lb, and if so, what are they?
Why are your handicappers content almost without exception to allot a horse a handicap mark after three runs, virtually irrespective of circumstance, even if that mark has a good element of guesswork about it? When these situations occur, how heavily are your handicappers encouraged to err on the side of caution?Why are nursery marks not published for the first month or so after the first nursery has been run?
Why is it that the BHA needs 13 domestic handicappers when the Racing Post or Timeform have traditionally needed only 4 or 5? What do the other 8 or 9 handicappers offer that the much smaller number employed by the Racing Post and Timeform don’t?
And finally, and on a related question, what justification can you give for spending a month compiling a handicap for the Grand National when it is just another race in the Calendar for which ratings are already available? Is this a consequence of having 13 handicappers?
Thanks very much
Hang on…. 51 million went into prize money for that year and 9 million went into BHA pension provision????
Have I got that right?
2 lengths perhaps, 3 lengths maybe……… could be anything betwen a short head and 10 lengths without raising too many eyebrows
Exactly when does the new jumps season get into swing?
It seems it never does.
Hardly any meetings in September and just the odd one in October…fair enough it might step up a bit in November but as soon as it does Cheltenham is mentioned and horses start to be put away…a quick blaze of action around Boxing Day/New Year and that’s basically it bar the odd decent race on a Saturday (assuming it’s not frozen off) through January/February before the Cheltenham/Aintree/Punchestown festivals….. all crammed into 6 weeks. No ‘narrative’ there.6 races per card is ideal – an afternoon/evening racing or punting is meant to be an enjoyable relaxation, not a test of stamina.
Interesting that Phil Smith evidently considers that he has the time available to do justice to a project that isn’t his to address anyway, remembering the month he will also spend ‘fine tuning’ the Grand National weights.
How astoundingly arrogant.
In other words, just goes to show how much the ROA, Fabricius or Goodwood’s ‘bigger than thou’ Buckley know about times and how their merits work out in relation to all the other races run the same day.
Not unlike the RUK crew back in the studio, to be honest.
Of course DJ won’t pay…he gets his Timeform database free, so why should he need the RP?
For some of the others on here, though, it might be a bit like giving up cigarettes…the resolve is there to abstain initially but 4 months down the line and all the alternatives have been exhausted and you’re desperate for a fag….
