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I respect the confidentiality and proprietary nature of your rating system, Ian.
LD, well developed argument…
Now, after all is said and done, the cycle begins again next Spring. Can’t wait…
But still some unfinished business with the Japan Cup and the big international meet in Hong Kong in December.
BTW, Ian.
You’ve mentioned that you determine your own ratings. Just as a matter of interest, does your rating agree with Timeform’s 136?
“…I don’t think Flightline should even be in the same conversation as any of them…”
I beg to differ on that point, Miss Woodford.
Other than Secretariat’s 12F Belmont, Flightline belongs in the conversation with any North American dirt horse, past or present, over any distance from 6F to 10F.
I didn’t see Dr. Fager or Kelso run, that’s before my time. However, under Dr. Fager’s form you will note that he lost a couple of 10F races both to Damascus. Each time the 6F split was 1:09 and change. Where Dr. Fager won over 10F, the 6F split was around 1:10 to 1.11. He would have been anywhere from 5-12 lengths back of Flightline at that point of the race as in each of his two 10F races Flightline ran 6F splits in 1:09 and change, with ease.
I do appreciate we are comparing times spanning decades across different centuries, but that’s all that we have, raw data.
A lot of people whether its fans, sports journalists, pundits, bettors, etc., etc., have a difficult time of letting go of the past no matter the sport or situation. We choose to see things only with our eyes, and not with our mind. But our eyes can be very deceiving…
My last words on this issue: Flightline is that good, one of the best ever, in my view.
A couple of questions:
1. How many horse racing rating organizations are there in this world?
2. How many of them consistently come up with one equivalent rating assessment for any given race?Their exaggerated self-importance and existence is nothing more than pseudo-science, at the very best.
Until someone comes up with equine equivalent to something like the “law of gravity”, for instance, then people can have an intelligent conversation.
What does Frankel’s rating of 147 actually mean?
How was it determined?
By whom?
What is the empirical data to support this rating?
What were the conditions of the test?
How many people actually understand what this number represents?
Could the test (determination) be repeated by everyone consistently, time after time?On the last point above, we know that’s it’s a scientific fact that under test conditions two bodies (a feather and a tank) will fall 9.8 m per second per second, a thousand times out of a thousand.
Can we say that about rating a race horse?
And yet, so many people world-wide believe in such rating numbers as if they were cast in stone.
Instead, people should be more challenging. Challenge the assumptions. Challenge the process. But challenge it. Don’t just accept it as gospel just because so and so said this, therefore, it’s the truth!
Yesterday at auction in Keeneland a 2.5% share in Flightline sold for $4.6 million, which implies 100% valuation (i.e. stud value) of $184 million (~£160 million). Just mind boggling!!!…
“…you couldn’t help but be very impressed with the performance although a special shoutout to Life Is Good who made the race by sacrificing himself in trying to actually win the race rather than ride for a place,..”
Totally agree with your assessment, LD.
But this is what has made Fightline’s performance that much more incredible as he was closely tracking LIG, then he just ran by him effortlessly. There’s a great overhead replay capturing the moment when he passed LIG and you could see Flightline’s tremendous extension, only great ones have such ability notwithstanding the number of races they had won…
If Mike Smith, who’s been riding for a couple of decades and has ridden some of the “all-time” greats in North America, said with total conviction that he’s “never seen anything like it”, that’s good enough for me. He received the highest speed rating in the history of the BC Classic! And there have been some “great” winners in the previous 38 years! He’s no “one-hit-wonder”, I’m sure of it. Many people, including some “expert” media-types, were predicting a “bounce” following his win at Del Mar. It didn’t happen. It was a historic performance…
Looking back at this year’s flat season, to be honest, I was not very optimistic early on. I didn’t see any stars being born following the Classics on both sides of the Atlantic. Then Baaeed came along. Then a couple of two-year-olds (LBB and Blackbeard) caught everyone’s attention. Suddenly, Flightline appeared with a tremendous performance in the Met Mile, and the “buzz” got louder. Things started to look very promising.
As the year progressed, Baeed gave us a performance of a lifetime in the Juddmonte International. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t Baaeed’s best performance as he lost his final race. However, Flightline kept the momentum, kept people’s attention and focus on the BC Classic. The rest is history..
All-in-all, I’m so glad for this year’s flat racing as it gave me some great moments and memories…
Now, I look forward to 2023 with plenty of optimism especially having witnessed some great performance by two-year-olds.
Good luck, everyone!
Not sure if this is the proper place for this, but Ryan Moore has won the Shoemaker Award for an outstanding jockey during the meet. Congrats, Ryan! Great riding…
“The one thing we can probably agree on is that he could have transcended the sport…”
I agree with that, SHL. Unfortunately, $$$ talk the loudest. It was estimated during the program that he could fetch about $40 million in stud fees during the first year alone. Not sure whether or not he could even be insured for that much if they decided to keep him in training. What would you do?..Personally, I don’t know what I would do under the circumstances.
ap, yes that’s the article, thank you for posting. I hope many here would take the time and read it, if anything they will find it most entertaining…
“$13.5 million taken from punters to fund wealthy people’s hobby. Looks like a classic redistribution of wealth from the less well off to the rich to me.”
CAS, yes there maybe some redistribution of wealth under such a system but a lot of money still goes for the purses so the horsemen and their employees are direct beneficiaries…
But, it’s still a trade-off between the two wagering systems . How many times on this Forum punters have complained about having their accounts closed by the bookies for even having a small winning streak? So what good is it to have a small take system if you can’t even make a wager?
On the other hand, I have yet to hear of a single bettor who was denied betting privileges because he/she was on a winning streak or have won too much money. In fact, a couple of years ago I’ve read a story in a reputable magazine of a punter who developed a rather complicated algorithm and won about $1 billion betting on Hong Kong races over a span of ten years. I will try to track it down, it’s a very interesting read. `Now, how many bookies with their low take out would allow this to happen?
Ian,
But that’s the thing. Do we need to always debate about who/what is the greatest/best of any sport/endeavor, movie, book, etc.? In almost all cases it’s a purely subjective exercise. For instance, how do we determine what is the best ice cream flavor? Impossible to conclude. Similarly, it’s impossible to determine who is the greatest ever horse? Or a football team? Or a tennis player, or golfer, and so on. For starters, what criteria do we use? Who are the experts? What are their credentials to make such a determination? etc., etc.,
So it boils down to personal tastes and preferences. And psychologists and economists have been studying these traits for decades, even some winning Nobel prizes but still nothing proven conclusively as to what makes us make the choices/judgements that we do..
I prefer to enjoy the moment, the current experience what is and having fond memories what was. Above I’ve said was I consider to be greatest performance since Secretariat. But that’s only on dirt. To be fair one has to consider Dancing Brave’s Arc win and Frankel’s 2000G and Queen Anne on turf for total completeness, but that’s just me. Other than that, in the words of Henry Cecil who refused to get into the media frenzy and compare Frankel to Sea the Stars said: let champions be champions, let them rest, no need to compare…
“Overall I think that was the most enjoyable Breeders Cup for a long time. A lot of British and Irish wins and culminating in a great performance from Flightline…”
Totally agree with that…
I have seen every Breeders’ Cup, every race since its inception in 1984 at Hollywood Park. Finally traveled to Santa Anita in 2016 to see it in person. Its success thus far is, in my view, largely due to European participation and support. Without them, who knows if it would have survived but certainly it would not have had the world recognition and viewership that it now has. The original planners got the concept right, I think.
But, most importantly, as a fan, admirer and supporter of this sport I have been greatly enriched with memories of some of the greatest horses, jockeys and races that I have ever seen, like All Along, Pebbles, Miesque, Dancing Brave, Dajur, Goldikova, Enable, etc. Will never forget Safely Kept vs. Dayjur in the 1990 BC Sprint, and my personal favorite is that epic battle between Giant’s Causeway and Tiznow in the 2000 BC Classic. So I hope that this event continues and, perhaps, re-invents to appeal to a future generation of fans world-wide. Maybe even staging a meeting or two outside of North America?
Moreover, yesterday was special. Not because of certain individual on-track performances whether equine or human but because of an extremely moving story we witnessed about a deep bond and love that exists between a young boy named Cody and Cody’s Wish, a horse named after him who had won the BC Dirt Mile. I tip my hat to all the connections for making this story possible.
The world that we live in today has problems which we still are not able to solve; COVID pandemic, continued wars, economic woes, hunger, starvation, and so on. But despite all that, that story told us that there are good and kind acts going on everyday in our world, we just don’t hear about them as often as we should. And it takes a horse with a special “human sense” to put things in the right perspective for us all…
Some very thought provoking and informed comments here. They echo Mike Smith’s (Taiba’s rider) comments he made during the post-race interview when asked by O. Bell to give his thoughts. He basically said that he couldn’t believe what he had just seen. In his opinion, Flightline is the best horse he’s ever seen, and he rode some greats himself. Moreover, he said that he was so far back because Life is Good and Flightline both were traveling very fast that there’s absolutely no way that Flightline should have kept going. He expected him to come back to the field. And that’s coming from a world-class jockey…
As to comments that Flightline needs to race more in order to prove himself, I don’t agree with that. Tiger Woods showed his greatness after only winning his first major the Masters. The rest is history. You either have it or you don’t…
I said following Flightline’s 19+ length win in the Pacific Classic that it was the best performance since Spectacular Bid, well after today, in my view, that’s the best performance since Secretariat’s Belmont Stakes win…
BTW, the 6F fractional was the winning time of the dirt sprint race, going absolutely all out. Put that into perspective…
