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BLOGS
Welcome to our BHA blogs, where we give you the inside line on the racing industry, straight from the horse's mouth.
You can also view any of our other recent blogs, to get the word from all the different departments here at the Authority:
THIS WEEK'S FEATURE BLOG
A duo of entries from Head of Handicapping Phil Smith....
WHY WE ELIMINATE BY WEIGHT NOT RATING IN HANDICAPS
25th August 2010
There has been much discussion over the last week about the elimination of three year olds from the Tote Ebor Handicap at York. Perhaps I should again explain why we eliminate as we do at present.
I will again use the example of the John Smith’s Cup also run at York earlier in the year.
The core reason is the weight for age scale and how horses are allocated ratings. In early April over 10 furlongs a 3 year old receives 19lbs from an older horse. If they dead heat and the older horse is rated 95, the 3 year old is rated 95 but is intrinsically a 19lbs inferior animal. He has been given the weight for age to compensate him for a lack of maturity, experience and ability.
If they were then both entered for the John Smith’s Cup in early July at York the 3 year old would only receive 11lbs because of the assumption that he has made “normal” improvement of 8lbs in the intervening time. However, the older horse is still his superior by 11lbs.
If the 95 rated 3 year old was given priority over say a 94 rated older horse then you would be including a horse that was 10lbs inferior to the older horse.
The only way that this could change would be if the connections of the 3 year olds were happy to carry 11lbs more. They cannot have it both ways, on the one hand to be given a weight allowance and on the other to get priority into the race.
Owners and trainers of 3 year olds complained for many years that they didn’t want to take on older horses early in the year as they (incorrectly) considered the weight for age scale didn’t compensate them enough against the older horses.
As a result BHB (BHA) introduced a raft of three year old only handicaps early in the year. Surely a quid pro quo of changing the system of elimination in big handicaps in July and August would be to take away 3 year old only handicaps early in the year. Very few owners and trainers would buy into that.
A further way of ensuring a 3 year old gets into races like the John Smith’s Cup and the Ebor would be if connections campaigned them more aggressively and got their ratings up. This would be in accordance with the BHA principle of meritocracy. There is no reason why a 3 year old rated 106+ couldn’t have entered last week’s Ebor and got a run.
The reality, of course, is that some people want to give the three year olds an advantage either because they own them, train them or find them easier to select if they wish to back in the race. However from a competitive racing point of view the current system should remain.
One of the strengths of British racing over the last five years has been that more and more older horses are being kept in training, particularly fillies. If we changed the system then what incentive would there be for the connections of the older horses to take on unexposed, progressive 3 year olds AND give them weight for age?
Some pundits have said that in the Ebor there was "cluttering up of the weights by exposed older horses”. This could be rephrased to say “high quality older horses honestly campaigned and fairly handicapped made the race as hugely competitive as usual”.
However, I admit that finding the winner would, for a punter, have involved hours of study comparing form lines, assessing going and trip requirements. The inclusion of an improving unexposed three year old would have made selecting the winner a lot easier.
Owing to the popularity of the big handicaps there has to be an elimination process and there will be winners and losers whatever the process might be. It is the view of the BHA and their Handicapping team that the current system is the correct one.
DEAD HEAT DILEMMA
17th August 2010
As the BHA announces the official launch of its Photofinishes page, Head of Handicapping Phil Smith discusses a very timely incident involving a Dead Heat call...
Last Wednesday I was watching the racing from Beverley live on the excellent Racing UK Channel. This is unusual as normally I watch recordings or the review as I am too busy in the afternoon to watch live. However I had two races within a quarter of an hour as I was also responsible for the Listed Upavon Stakes at Salisbury along with this Class 3 handicap.
The five year old filly Alsace Lorraine had won the Upavon in a cracking finish and I was musing that I would be happy with a result like that to my Beverley handicap. They were betting 13/8 Gritstone, the favourite in my Beverley handicap which was unpromising in a 13 runner handicap, but he was the only 3 year old in the field and an obvious improver.
As I looked down the field I recognised some old favourites that I had dealt with this season and in the past but there were also a few that I had never heard of which were stepping up in trip or in class. As you would expect at Beverley in a field of this size there were a number of horses that were unlucky in running but the whole field still flashed past the winning post in slightly more than 2 seconds.
The afore mentioned Gritstone looked particularly unlucky as on first viewing I thought he hadn’t quite got up, but the two horses with him were very close together. Could it be at last my first dead heat of 2010? Everybody in my handicapping team had had dead heat this year apart from me. Why had it been that the judges in my races had always managed to find a pixel to differentiate the horses when I had a close finish?
After a long wait and a number of replays on RUK I was getting more confident, but I had been down this route a few times this year only to be disappointed by the expertise of the judges. Then the announcement. A dead heat. Hooray for Brian Goodwill the best judge in Britain by far! Not only a dead heat but only a neck back to Gritstone and less than 0.5 of a second back to the eighth horse Mirrored who looked mighty unlucky as he was flying at the finish having been stopped in his run more than once.
The Dead Heat from Beverley. Thanks to our new Photofinishes page you can now view all the photos from recent photofinishes online!
I started looking up the horses on my computer. Bencoolen I know well but it had been four runs since I had dealt with him. Jonny Lesters Hair, I had never dealt with at all. It began to dawn on me. It wasn’t my dead heat at all. The two dead heaters had been assessed last time by Greg Pearson our Australian Handicapper. It was his dead heat not mine after all. Gritstone had been dealt with by Dominic Gardiner Hill. I hadn’t actually done any of the first three.
The fourth horse at least was mine. Fastnet Storm. He had bashed himself on the stalls last time and finished tailed off at Doncaster and I had left him on 87. Why hadn’t I dropped him a pound or two so he could have contributed to “my” dead heat! Snow Dancer, the fifth, was also Greg Pearson’s horse. He was beginning to irritate me. Norwegian Dancer the sixth had been dealt with by Chris Nash last time. Follow The Flag (7th) by me thank goodness and the eighth, Mirrored only beaten 2.5 lengths by Mark Olley.
My euphoria which had turned to a hit to my ego had now turned to pride. We have always said Handicapping is a team game and here was the classic example. A terrific finish and five different Handicappers had dealt with the first eight home. Well done the “Beverley Five” my boys!
Every Monday we spend hours sending E mails and phoning our colleagues because of one simple rule that we always adhere to. You cannot change a horse’s rating after it has run for you without the permission of the Handicapper it ran for last time if it wasn’t you. This week there were 71 horses that I had to discuss as I wanted to change their rating and they didn’t run for me last time. I had to contact 6 of my colleagues to get their approval. This is how we get a commonality of approach and hopefully provide consistency for trainers and competitive handicaps for British racing.
The Beverley dead heat was one example of the system working perfectly. I am more proud of the race being as the result of joint expertise than if it had all been my own work. I think!
You can now view all recent photofinishes on our exclusive Photofinishes page
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