Brigadier Gerard
- Thread starter Harbinger
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rorydelargy
At the Start
This is a pretty good thread, but to rate it 140+ after just a couple of pages is ridiculous. I mean, what's it actually beaten?
Edit: In fact, to think it's being compared with "Rooster Booster's chances in the Champion Hurdle" is nothing short of a travesty. That thread had it all, and kept coming back year after year. "Brigadier Gerard" has had an easy time of it so far, and has plenty to prove in my eyes.
Edit: In fact, to think it's being compared with "Rooster Booster's chances in the Champion Hurdle" is nothing short of a travesty. That thread had it all, and kept coming back year after year. "Brigadier Gerard" has had an easy time of it so far, and has plenty to prove in my eyes.
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Desert Orchid
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:lol::lol::lol:
If this post doesn't cement it in the mid 140s, we need to re-evaluate our methods.
Bar the Bull
At the Start
You can only judge a thread by its superiority over its contemporaries. This thread absolutely flew out of the traps, and when challenged by the Black Caviar thread and Euro 2012 thread at halfway, kicked clear to put the issue to bed swiftly once edgt found his old annuals.
What's more, I think opposition to the Rooster Booster thread was thin on the ground. Old farts like Rory do my head in with misty eyed views of the past. Was the Madeleine McCann thread that good?
What's more, I think opposition to the Rooster Booster thread was thin on the ground. Old farts like Rory do my head in with misty eyed views of the past. Was the Madeleine McCann thread that good?
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S
SlimChance
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:lol:
davidjohnson
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Isn't this the point though. The reason Gareth was able to do this is because of how long the Timeform ratings go back, and because they remain on a similar scale now as compared to the early 70's, mid 60's, whenever, they remain a constant.
Someone might know the answer to this, but when did BHA/BHB ratings actually begin to be published? One of the problems Phil Smith encountered when trying to rate Arkle was that handicaps in those says were simply a set of weights rather than a set of weights derived from a set of ratings.
uncle goober
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Around 1987/88 ish
Raceform used to run a guess the Lincoln weights competition. You had the entries for 2 weeks or so before the weights were published and the entrant nearest the correct set of weights won a prize. Then one year the competition was rendered redundant as the handicap ratings had become public knowledge. It was about that time.
Raceform used to run a guess the Lincoln weights competition. You had the entries for 2 weeks or so before the weights were published and the entrant nearest the correct set of weights won a prize. Then one year the competition was rendered redundant as the handicap ratings had become public knowledge. It was about that time.
EC1
On a break
he could have used TF ratings
the OHR sale has changed a bit through the years...in the early 80's it was 0 to best 95
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EC1
On a break
i've just found the booklet.1982...its by Turf publications - Rugeley..in it it says "the ratings we have used are similar to the Jockey Club scale of 0-95"
some of the top older ones from that year
master willie 85
marwell 85
moorestyle 90
pelerin 85
shergar 95
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Desert Orchid
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In the mid 1970s (I think) they also ran PTS-Laurels-sponsored competition to rate previous winners of the PTS Laurels h'cap at Glorious Goodwood (the big 10f one). They put up six previous winners with their winning weights and you had to say in what order they'd finish if the race was between them all at those weights, and to state the distances between them.
I won, getting all six in the right order and three of the five distances correct. The prize was two tickets to Goodwood for the race but I couldn't go as they didn't include travel or accomodation!
(Negus was the overall winner, by the way.)
Desert Orchid
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They did the same with NH racing but I'm sure they based a top-class horse at 100 (which became 126 for the flat and 168 for jumps a few years later).
I remember after Galway Blaze won the Hennessy, Raceform put his rating up from something like 78 (on the 0-100 scale) to something like 88 then as the beaten horses came out and won they pushed him up a few times more eventually rating him 100 (iirc) without him actually running.
I think Phil Smith has addressed the modern slippage problem.
edgt
Senior Jockey
DO, do you remember Free Handicap ratings at the end of season, a precurser of International ratings grouped into sprinters, 7 to 10 f and 11f plus for 3yo and older as well as the 2yo free handicaps? Did they also just automatically give in or about 10 stone to top rated and descend from there?
I came across ratings on a parer back "Winning Ways 1976" The editorial tells how the book began in 1968 and was published annually after. free handicap weights listed in all categories. Back to your PTS Laurel handicap, was the Extel handicap the same race renamed? Was 1974 winner Take A Reef assessed as top 3yo of 1974 in England?
I came across ratings on a parer back "Winning Ways 1976" The editorial tells how the book began in 1968 and was published annually after. free handicap weights listed in all categories. Back to your PTS Laurel handicap, was the Extel handicap the same race renamed? Was 1974 winner Take A Reef assessed as top 3yo of 1974 in England?
The ratings off which handicap winners on the Flat ran were first published in the official Form Book in 1989. I don't know about the NH ratings.
Certainly, the Handicap Book in the early nineties published the weekly changes to handicap ratings as the Weekender does now. However, the Handicap Book also published the ratings for horses being allocated a mark for the first time which the Weekender doesn't and for which you have to search the BHA site online.
My somewhat hazy recollection is that there was a time, probably in the mid to late eighties, when official ratings weren't widely available and there used to be adverts from a firm based in Hull selling a service which supplied these ratings together with some sort of commentary on them.
EC1
On a break
you would have to think that having TF ratings available to you in the 60's & 70's must have given you quite an edge
I wonder what levels stakes profit TF top rated's made in those decades compared to after official ratings became available to all.
I remember buying a TF black book in about 1980/81..as i remember the black book lasted you about a month..i'm sure they came out monthly and you then just rated each race from the A-Z in the black book.
I wonder what levels stakes profit TF top rated's made in those decades compared to after official ratings became available to all.
I remember buying a TF black book in about 1980/81..as i remember the black book lasted you about a month..i'm sure they came out monthly and you then just rated each race from the A-Z in the black book.
davidjohnson
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Thanks for all the answers. Really seems a different world, and not all that long ago.
The Black Book was definitely a weekly publication, certainly from the mid-seventies onwards. It's what got me into racing. My dad used to buy Timeform cards from a newsagents on Arundel Gate in Sheffield - and they did give him an edge, although he was too indisciplined in his approach to betting to make the most of it - but they were quite pricey and he got better value if he bought a Black Book and paid his teenage son a bit of pocket money to go through all the cards and work out the weight-adjusted ratings. Said teenage son gradually started betting himself on the apparent "good things" and the rest is history...
EC1
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Desert Orchid
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Lots of bells ringing there, edgt!
Desert Orchid
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I'd have thought it was earlier than that. I moved house in 1987 and I'm pretty sure I was working out ORs from the Handicap Book for a couple of years by then. I remember Mrs O complaining to mammy O that I spent all my evenings studying the form (mainly calculating ORs) to which mammy O - to her enormous credit - replied: Well, would you rather he was down the pub with the guys? At least he's there where you can see him!
Desert Orchid
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It was the black book that convinced me I was better than Timeform!
My father used to buy the form book which I think was called Raceform Up-To-Date, which was published weekly in book form and cost something like 10/6 and obviously it got bigger as the season wore on. If you have an old copy of the Raceform Annual, that's what it looked like, only on a weekly basis but I think my faither only bought it once a month or maybe ahead of the big meetings.
My eldest brother was the one who was into Timeform. He bought Racehorses for a number of years. I remember covering it in brown paper, as you do a school book, so that people in the uni library wouldn't know what I was reading. I wrote on the front a new title: The Way, the Truth and the Life. My father went bananas when he saw it! (Blasphemy and all that.)
I was off work for a few months starting in January 1990. Knowing I was going to be off, I saw it as an opporchancity to get wired into money making from backing horses so I shelled out for the Black Book. I was miles in profit when I started using it and was nearly wiped out within a couple of weeks so I wrote Timeform a strongly-worded letter telling them their ratings were rubbish and that I wouldn't be continuing. I recovered all losses by the summer using my own figures.
Maybe Timeform have improved since then
uncle goober
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That had been the case but I believe central handicapping was in place long before the late eighties.
It was only around that time that the 5-day entry system was introduced. Controversially it saw the end of the three week entry system which applied to all except the big early closers. Even the lowliest races were entered for three weeks in advance and the weights allotted shortly afterwards and set penalties would be applied to subsequent winners.
Racecard numbers were allotted at the five day stage. It was not uncommon to hear, first number 38, second nnnnnnumber 87, third number 4.
Maidens at closing were a common race type, for horses who had not won until entry point, as opposed to maidens on race day.
It was only around that time that the 5-day entry system was introduced. Controversially it saw the end of the three week entry system which applied to all except the big early closers. Even the lowliest races were entered for three weeks in advance and the weights allotted shortly afterwards and set penalties would be applied to subsequent winners.
Racecard numbers were allotted at the five day stage. It was not uncommon to hear, first number 38, second nnnnnnumber 87, third number 4.
Maidens at closing were a common race type, for horses who had not won until entry point, as opposed to maidens on race day.
Desert Orchid
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I'd say it was uncommon but not unheard of.
edgt
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Sir Mark Prescotts interview on Racing UK with Lydia last year was hilarious on those points, especially how he reinterpreted every rule to his advantage. He must have got his knighthood from Queen Mother!
