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Perhaps the current vogue for sectional timing in this country, at least, represents an attempt to over-complicate the issue; assessing overall race times at some courses, Goodwood for example, is difficult enough on it’s own. Surely, an appraisal of the winning race time, alone, together with an estimate of the level to which the winner should be capable of performing, provides the bettor with sufficient information?
‘Unforseen’ occurences may occur in any given race. However, doesn’t the fact that individuals, i.e., trainer, jockey, etc. have a degree of control over the outcome negate the idea that the result of a horse race can be regarded as a random event?
Dave / Prufrock
The errors inherent in a set of speed ratings, however carefully they are calculated, suggest to me that any effort to factor in the precise size or weight of individual horses, if that’s what you wanted to do and if it were possible, would not be a worthwhile exercise. That’s not to denigrate speed ratings – as a devoted user I find that they provide key information about individual races and the subsequent potential of particular horses, just don’t expect them to provide a quick fix. For my own ratings, I have a datbase of results from 1995 for the major courses and 2003 for ‘secondary’ courses. For each individual race at each course over that period this contains, amongst other things, age of & weight carried by the winner, distance / time of race, conversion of race time, raceform form rating & a final corrected race time that takes these factors into account. For the Newmarket Rowley course alone this means, for example, that over 800 races have been entered into the database, manually, and analysed to produce a set of standard times for the course, which are then used ‘live’ to calculate the speed ratings. Beyond this, the ratings and races in question are analysed to (hopefully) identify future winners and then it’s back to updating the standards – all of which takes a considerable amount of time! What does make me laugh are those (not directed at you) who hide their ignorance behind idotic statements about the worth of speed ratings. However, I guess that does at least allow me to take advantage of the likes of Ouija Board at 14/1 for the Oaks on the back of my speed rating of 111 for her ‘Pretty Polly’ win (Topspeed figure 81).
More thought given to:
a) The geographical spread of meetings on any given day (already referred to in an earlier post). No more Haydock & Chester on the same day, etc.
b) Races over a variety of distances on a given (flat) card, as opposed to packing them with races over less than 8 furlongs.
c) Value for money and improved facilities for the racegoer. Royal Ascot @ York was a particular disgrace in this respect.
d) Live TV coverage. The current situation is a mess.
e) Quality of racing. An end please to the tedium of cards packed with class 5 & 6 races, together with cards featuring, say, one class 2 race underpinned by tosh.It is more reliable to also watch the race or video and see whether the media opinions given concur. Others did, and Sandbuch was no longer favourite. No horse is ever "entitled to win or finish closer. "Conventional handicapping" proves its own failings every single day on the racecourse. No one takes machine like pounds and lengths difference predictions too seriously except the media, not even the BHB handicapper.
The improved race conditions were put forward by your justification argument – yes, 2 pounds carried is irrelevant if the horse body weight is 30-40 pounds less. "Conventional handicapping" ignores that vital point.
If you do not think race value effects the race planning and intentions of owners and trainers and the way races are run then you may be missing a vital clue.With respect to my original intent of discussing the calculation and interpretation of speed figures, your particular points re. weight carried and value of the race remain irrelevant. At the end of the day, I’ll stick to my guns and say that an obsession with bare figures / ratings and the following of beaten horses, purely on the basis of their time performance, is the way to the poor house!
Perhaps I’m not making myself clear but my perception is that there are numerous occasions where horses, who have posted their best speed rating when beaten, fail to go on and replicate that figure, or translate it into a winning effort, even when lowered in class.
Re. the Newmarket race, the comments for Malt Or Mash include ‘ridden 2 furlongs out’ & ‘stayed on well’ – hardly suggestive of a cosy win. From the point of conventional handicapping, Sanbuch was entitled to finish closer at Doncaster but was beaten a greater distance. Dealt with in isolation, the weight carried by Malt Or Mash at Doncaster, compared to that at Newmarket, is an irrelevance as, indeed, is the value of the race.
Sanbuch, 2nd at Newmarket to Malt Or Mash off a strong pace, meets the winner again at Doncaster on more favourable terms and yet finishes further behind. An example, perhaps, of a beaten horse being towed along (in the Newmarket race) and being unable to translate that into a winning performance?
Another blast from the past.
Ubedizzy – didn’t he take the top off a stable lad’s finger in the winner’s enclosure at Haydock?
Vincent O’Brien had one that ended up running in a net muzzle due to a tendency to bite other horses during a race. Might have been Mariinsky, but stand to be corrected on that. Think it died of a twisted gut at stud in the USA – no wonder he was such a vicious B!
Thanks – it’s nice when things work out well. Wouldn’t life be dull if that happened all the time?!
Re. the ‘towed-along’ idea, it’s just a personal viewpoint and not based on any hard facts. Even so, there must have been a good many horses that posted their best SR in a Derby or Oaks, for example, and failed to replicate that performance again.
What I was trying to say earlier was that it’s all too easy to become hung up on figures and you often have to look beyond them to derive the benefit of the hard work that goes into calculating the ratings in the first place.
Levaramoss, over hurdles, was a cracker – loads of ability but you never knew if he’d deign to jump off at the the start.
Seem to remember a horse of a similar ilk on the flat, by the name of Knockroe. A classy grey who, I think, came back from stud duties or retirement to run in the Amateur riders ‘Derby’ at Epsom.
Captain Christy, Birds Nest.
Dessie was definitely not my favourite – having backed Yahoo in the Gold Cup!
It’s not too surprising, perhaps, that the Topspeed speed ratings (SR’s) don’t perform too well on an ‘all selections’ basis. Additional to the problems that I’ve highlighted with Topspeed, I also belive that the use of any SR’s in the same ‘deterministic’ way that form ratings are used is fundementally flawed. Consider, for example, horses that post their best SR, without actually winning the race in question. It seems to me that such horses can often be ‘towed along’ by a strong pace and are incapable, subsequently, of translating their effort into a winning performance. What, then, might be the best way to use SR’s?
In the first instance, the concept of calculating SR’s on a 0 to 140 scale, for use with a comparable set of form ratings allows horses that may be better than their bare form rating to be readily indentfied, e.g., SR 97, form rating 93, suggesting that the horse may be a step ahead of the handicapper and represents a decent bet. In the same way, it also enables the user to quantify the overall pace at which a race has been run, i.e., fast, truly-run, slow, etc., and in this context it pays to ignore the blindingly obvious. For example, this season’s Dewhurst, yet again, threw up the best juvenile SR, the Racing Post Trophy wasn’t far behind and what about that cracking maiden win earlier in the year by Diamond Tycoon? Unfortunately, the world and his wife are well aware of these performances. Delve a little deeper, though, and the effort may unearth some hidden gems. From my own analysis earlier this year:York 16 May 3:50, 12F handicap won by TCHERINA. Comparison 59 / 84. Slow. Pace possibly not suiting lightly-raced and stoutly-bred MISSOULA (8th); worth watching.
The ‘comparison’ figures are my SR and the RP / Raceform form rating for the winner. Missoula, given a test of stamina, certainly was worth watching – 2nd at16/1, wins at 5/1 & 8/1.
Incidentally, Artemis, the 2m event won by Junior at Newbury in April was a modest contest but my SR of 80 for the winner, against the RP form rating (at the time) of 86, suggests it was run at a fair pace. Horses that ran well there won and / or performed creditably on subsequent occasions, suggesting that it perhaps wasn’t the soft race that Topspeed might have led you to believe.
Finally, for what it’s worth, Malt or Mash posted a (possibly conservative) SR of 109 on my figures – RP form rating 105 – for his latest win at Newmarket, suggesting that he has ability bordering on Group class; a 6lb rise in the OR’s looks lenient. Shame, then, about his price in today’s November Handicap, although it’s worth noting that, based on my assessment of ground conditions, the going at it’s fastest has only bordered on good to firm for any of his wins. Perhaps Hannon’s caution about the ground today is justified but I guess we’ll know more at about 3:15 this afternoon!My own speed ratings are based upon the ‘conventional’ use of standard times as a benchmark. When starting out, I used only courses for which electronically-recorded race times were available over a 10 year period and for which form ratings for the winning horses were also available. This restricted the number of courses but, I believe, helped produce more reliable results. More recently, electronic timing has become the norm and I’ve started to produce (in some cases tentative) standard times for other courses. In calculating the standard times, actual (past) race times were adjusted for age of and weight carried by the winner and it’s ability (form rating) in order to arrive at the familiar concept of the standard time representing that achievable by a horse rated 100 and carrying 9 stones. Races on extremes of going were discarded and accepted statistical techniques applied to arrive at an estimated standard. For some courses, the calculation of standard times at various distances is relatively straightforward. Others can present problems, according to variations in track confirmation – Goodwood being a prime example. I’ve not looked in any detail at the methodology employed by Topspeed, or the RP standard times.However, as discussed previously, they do seem to throw up some unreliable figures. Concerning the failure to consistently apply differing going allowances for straight & round courses, consider the meeting at Newbury on 21 April this year.
My own & Topspeed ratings for the card were as follows, the first figure being my time rating, the second Topspeed:Diamond Tycoon 107 102
Maraahel 64 31
Pinpoint 89 85
Majestic Roi 89 89
Major Cadeaux 89 89
Junior 80 29
Red Gala 86 38.Based on the race times on the day, there was a clear variation in conditions between the straight and round course. However Topspeed applied the same going allowance to both, resulting in ratings for races over the round course being suppressed – erroneously in my mind.
Whilst it may seem that I’m being hyper-critical of Topspeed’s effort’s, the ratings are at least presented with the intention of providing a set of ratings that can be helpful to the user and I don’t envy being in the position of having to rate every race. The scribings of some other so-called ‘time experts’, though, are complete and utter codswallop and should be consigned to the waste bin. As a new user of this forum, I’m unsure if it’s possible to communicate offline but if anyone is interested in having a look at some of some of my ratings and associated comments from earlier in the year as the basis for discussion, please let me know.Before attempting to reply in detail to this posting, please can I say that my comments here refer to the calculation of speed ratings for races that have already been run and not the ratings that appear alongside any given card in the Racing Post on a daily basis.
I compile my own speed ratings, using the same 0-140 scale as Topspeed (&others), which allows direct comparison to be made with a set of conventional form ratings. In assessing the results, there is no reason why, for a given performance, a winning horse cannot post a speed rating that is higher than the equivalent form rating. Such occurences do, however, call for close examination to ensure that a horse is not being overrated from a time perspective. The calculation of ‘raw’ speed figures, before any adjustments have been made for, say, the going is an objective exercise. However, calculation of the final adjusted figures does require an element of subjectivity and it is possible to assume that the compiler of the Topspeed ratings is filtering his results in some way that limits the speed / form rating differential – perhaps artificially so. If you look at the Topspeed figures for a given meeting that has occurred in the past, you will also note that on the majority of occassions there is at least one horse on the card that achieves a speed rating within 1 to 3lbs of its form rating for the same race, which suggests some deficiency in the methodology being used by Topspeed. There are also numerous occasions when the going allowances published by Topspeed for a given (past) meeting are identical for races taking places over straight and round tracks, when it is clear there are significant differences between the two due to ground conditions and / or wind speed / direction. Bearing, in particular, this latter point in mind it is clear that the Topspeed figures are unreliable and should be treated with substantial caution. The ‘standard times’ used by Topspeed also seem untrustworthy and can underestimate performances – for example a rating of 107 for Manduro in April’s Earl of Sefton at Newmarket. By comparison, my rating was 119 and the comment I made at the time was, ‘A smart performance by the clear-cut winner, who has Group 1 form and should continue to hold his own at the highest level’. Similarly, Mahler in the Queen’s Vase at Ascot, Topspeed 67, my rating 107 and comments at the time, ‘Fair staying performance from the winner; could go on to make his mark in this division’. The assessment of race times is fascinating and, in this country, difficult to deal with; it is a pity that so much rubbish is written on the subject.