Are Timeform being fair?

Gareth Flynn said:
Why? He wouldn't have had to do anything different.
Click to expand...

He lost a shoe as well.....always used as an excuse when they get beat. Visually, form wise and time wise - exceptional - he is a beautiful beast and takes my breath away every time he moves.....we will never witness his likes again.
 
Desert Orchid said:
Canford Cliffs wasn't at his very best the day Frankel beat him.
Immortal Verse's Coronation is one peak in an otherwise ordinary form wave.
Click to expand...

CC wasn't at his best because Frankel took him out of his comfort zone
IV also won the Marois.

I'd not heard of many of the horses BG had beat - Ballyhok, Faraway Son, Gold Rod and Pembroke Castle etc. But who knows if they were at their best the days they took on the Brigadier? And were they any good - could they not have been Excellent Art/Ramonti types (Group 2 beasts who were hella fortunate to come up in awful years)?
Maybe Frankel will meet Most Improved in the Sussex and give him a 10 length beating and thirty years down the line it'll be used as part of the evidence to suggest that the next great one can't be as good as Frankel.
Mill Reef and Sea Bird and Brigadier Gerard are like Gods to Racing fans of a certain vintage. So trying to persuade the people who worship them that evolution has provided us with a better model isn't going to go down smoothly with a lot of them.
 
Gareth Flynn said:
Why? He wouldn't have had to do anything different.
Click to expand...
It's the perverse calculation that says it would be 12 lengths at another time, nothing to do with the horse. Taking it to its logical conclusion, if it was faster again, he'd have won by 13. Faster again and he'd have won by 14? How fast would it need to have been for him to win by 20 lengths?
 
Last edited:
1) Ground is officially declared Good To Soft.

2) Queen Anne is run. Frankel wins by 2 seconds. Using the BHA's standard of 5.5 lengths per second for Good To Soft ground, this is officially called 11 lengths.

3) King's Stand is run, again the standard of 5.5 lengths per second is used to calculate the winning distances.

4) Clerk of the course sees the times of the first two races. Decides the ground must be Good and announces the change.

5) Coventry Stakes is run. The BHA's standard of 6 lengths per second for Good ground is now used to calculate the winning distances.

6) No change is made to the calculation of the winning distances in the Queen Anne or King's Stand even though it was presumably because of these races that the going change was made in the first place.

7) Watching from somewhere in Korea, Hawk Wing sniffs and mutters something about how 11 lengths ain't what it used to be.
 
Gareth Flynn said:
1) Ground is officially declared Good To Soft.

2) Queen Anne is run. Frankel wins by 2 seconds. Using the BHA's standard of 5.5 lengths per second for Good To Soft ground, this is officially called 11 lengths.

3) King's Stand is run, again the standard of 5.5 lengths per second is used to calculate the winning distances.

4) Clerk of the course sees the times of the first two races. Decides the ground must be Good and announces the change.

5) Coventry Stakes is run. The BHA's standard of 6 lengths per second for Good ground is now used to calculate the winning distances.

6) No change is made to the calculation of the winning distances in the Queen Anne or King's Stand even though it was presumably because of these races that the going change was made in the first place.

7) Watching from somewhere in Korea, Hawk Wing sniffs and mutters something about how 11 lengths ain't what it used to be.
Click to expand...
:lol:

Thanks for spelling it out.

I'd be interested in seeing the old photofinish strip and measuring the winning distance in terms of units of distance rather than time. If that proved to be twelve lengths I shall rate Frankel accordingly. I trust the official handicapper will address the matter in his blog.

This suggests we cannot trust the official distances.
 
Last edited:
You just need to adjust them to whatever you're used to. Since '97 (I think) they used 5 lengths per second across the board on the flat, so you could convert everything back to that without having to change the rest of your methodology. Bit of a chore, though.

This is the official scale in use:

http://www.britishhorseracing.com/resources/media/Lengths_Per_Second_Scale_Tables.pdf

Note that this was in place from June 15th 2008 to present. Between 25th February 2008 and June 14th 2008, they used:

National Hunt
4 lengths per second when the going is good to soft or worse
5 lengths per second when the going is good or better

Flat
5 lengths per second for AW Fibresand and when the going is soft or worse
6 lengths per second for AW Polytrack and when the going is good to soft or better
Click to expand...

(http://www.britishhorseracing.com/resources/media/releaseDetail.asp?item=085716)
 
Hmmm.

Assuming a length is 3 yards, at 60s for 5f on good ground it works out at 6.1spl. Even at 65s for the same 5f (soft ground) it's 5.64spl. Best to round it up to 6 lengths regardless of the ground, I reckon.

As I said before, I accept that soft ground exaggerates distances and I adjust the poundage for soft ground but I see no reason to adjust it for particularly fast ground.

It looks like my big difference with Timeform is in the poundage. I have 2.6lbs per length at 7f and 2.25 at a mile. I'd really like to know what Timeform's poundage was in 1970.
 
DO

going back to the standards

another check i do at big meetings is take medians for the last 20 odd runnings of each race

queen anne = median time 99.60...this year 97.85...1.75 FAST
king stand = median time 60.33..this year 59.69...0.64 FAST
sjp = median time 99.81..this year 100.14...0.33 SLOW
coventry = median time 74.55..this year 73.64...0.91 FAST

if you say some of the fast is down to the ground being faster than it usually is [GS some years]..which we know it was ...its clear that Frankel is probably a full second faster than the average winner of the QA

1 second is about 15lbs...that is some superiority over past winners
 
Last edited:
EC1 said:
DO

going back to the standards

another check i do at big meetings is take medians for the last 20 odd runnings of each race

queen anne = median time 99.60...this year 97.85...1.75 FAST
king stand = median time 60.33..this year 59.69...0.64 FAST
sjp = median time 99.81..this year 100.14...0.33 SLOW
coventry = median time 74.55..this year 73.64...0.91 FAST

if you say some of the fast is down to the ground being faster than it usually is [GS some years]..which we know it was ...its clear that Frankel is probably a full second faster than the average winner of the QA

1 second is about 15lbs...that is some superiority over past winners
Click to expand...
At the risk of sounding patronising, if that works for you fine but I prefer to take each race on what I perceive as its own merits.

I could probably go a long way towards agreeing that Frankel is 15lbs better than the average winner but that would still keep in the 130s I reckon.

Can I reitierate: I really want Frankel to be the beast. I just want the evidence to back it up and I'm not seeing it.
 
i'm not trying to convince you he is a 14x horse with that..just trying to demonstrate that it was a fast time..certainly a lot more than a 120

its just a back up check really
 
Euronymous said:
CC wasn't at his best because Frankel took him out of his comfort zone
IV also won the Marois.

I'd not heard of many of the horses BG had beat - Ballyhok, Faraway Son, Gold Rod and Pembroke Castle etc. But who knows if they were at their best the days they took on the Brigadier? And were they any good - could they not have been Excellent Art/Ramonti types (Group 2 beasts who were hella fortunate to come up in awful years)?
Maybe Frankel will meet Most Improved in the Sussex and give him a 10 length beating and thirty years down the line it'll be used as part of the evidence to suggest that the next great one can't be as good as Frankel.
Mill Reef and Sea Bird and Brigadier Gerard are like Gods to Racing fans of a certain vintage. So trying to persuade the people who worship them that evolution has provided us with a better model isn't going to go down smoothly with a lot of them.
Click to expand...

I was first introduced to racing when Brigadier Gerard was running and had never seen anything better until Frankel. In the 1971 Sussex as a 3yo he faced 4 horses. They had all won their previous starts in what would now be pattern company (How often do you get a group one now where all the contestants are last time out winners?)
The result was
1. Brigadier Gerard
2. Faraway Son 5l
3. Joshua 2.5l
4. Ashleigh 3l
5. King’s Company 6l
Faraway Son won the Moulin next time out. Joshua and Ashleigh were placed in pattern company next time out. Kings Company did not run again that season. So BG stuffed a group one field, of which every horse was on form. I would love to see Frankel in that field. I think he would just take it by a length.
 
I'd agree that BG (and Tudor Minstrel and for that matter Hawk Wing in the Lockinge) were about as good as anything we've seen at a mile, although overall I've a preference for the likes of Sea-Bird and Mill Reef. Several have taken the eye since including Shergar, Dancing Brave, Montjeu, etc, but Frankel does look as good as these at a mile and may actually improve at 10 furlongs. So we do live in exciting times.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top