Going back to horses' 'ideal' weights and the occasional bleat to have them published. No.1, the cost of the weighbridges for horses is around £5,000 and they'd have to be calibrated after every meeting, to ensure the one or two who stomped about on them hadn't buggered-up the mechanisms. Most small-time courses just don't have the money to lash out that for their 16-22 meetings.
Then, No.2, there'd be the interpretation of the weight itself. A horse might ideally be (for sake of argument) 1,400 lbs. That's him really fit, toned, ready to rumble. But what if his weight on the day came up 1,410 lbs? Are you going to turn him down because he's a relatively small amount over the ideal? And a horse in the same race whose ideal weight is 1,410 lbs comes up at 1,420 lbs too? Does that make them even-Stevens, or are you now going to swerve both?
What if the 'ideal' weight shows up, but you think the horse looks unusually off-colour, has gone in his coat, seems to lack good muscle tone? Swerve again?
There's also the increasing difference as a horse grows from an often light and weedy 2 y.o. through growth spurts to 3 and 4. If we accept that horses don't actually stop growing until they're around 8, then you'd need to be re-establishing optimum weights all through its working life, particularly if one went from the Flat to NH, where they likes 'em big an' chunky. Perhaps using a veterinary benchmark, the BHA could draw up a band of optimal weights-by-age, and then individual horses' weights could be seen to be fitting within those ranges or not. But what to make of a horse which, just like a human, is naturally on the light or heavy side, but fit as a flea? Just as with humans - Bill's 12st 7lbs could be toned and fit, John's same weight could be a blob, both the same age - horses' weights per se could mean not a lot.
Can you honestly imagine a race card carrying every single bit of data that might assist you with your Exacta? So far, you have plain form, ratings, then C, D, CD, BF, and the usual vowels and consonants for NH racing, a brief analysis of latest effort/s, and varying amounts of tack declared: cheekpieces, tongue strap, visor, blinkers. You could now add in the latest timings and you could add in the horse's optimum weight and then have a board displayed on the day showing what he weighed in at that morning on arrival. You will probably be told in the r/c if he's trying a new trip, with a new trainer, etc. You'll have to reconfigure some of your data if he's now got a conditional on taking off X amount of lbs versus the pro last time, where he carried the allotted weight. You'll also be noting if he's first-time at the track or knows it well, and you'll also be figuring in any track bias and draw bias, plus the horse's preference (if any) for the going.
To make things even more helpful, maybe trainers should declare crossed nosebands, breathing ops since last race, change in bitting, and what medications their horses might've been on since last sighted. I'm not being entirely facetious, since some tack and definitely some treatments which affect the way a horse runs are not declared at present.
Isn't there sometimes too much information?
