That's what the Timeform rep said, not me.
I accept Phil Bull 'invented' ratings. I accept the idea has been copied and modified by other bodies. My understanding - and I'm open to being proved wrong since I'm more interested in what is right than whether I am right - is that Timeform originally equated 140 (10-0 in their handicap) to a top class horse. Modern handicapping tends to equate 126 (9-0) to a top class horse. Perhaps that is where the difference originated but the dividing lines have become obscured by the greater modern availability of official ratings. Peope assume a 100-rated horse is a 100-rated horse. so when Timeform say it's rated 110 people are entitled to wonder.
It doesn't help that other ratings bodies present their figures in such a way as to allow people to interpret them as being on the same scale as Timeform. Indeed, the use of the word 'scale' itself seems to be at the root of the problem. As far as I can see, Timeform, Raceform (RPRs) and the BHB (ORs) all talk about ratings as though they are to the same scale. Perhaps one or other or all should make it clearer to the betting public that we aren't comparing apples with apples.
The problem I have with this is the premise that there isn't going to be a difference in the horse population year on year. We all know we have good crops and poor crops. The difficulty is that poor crops and good crops alike may end up being rated average to suit a mathematical premise, namely that applied in race standardisation. Presumably, Timeform historically corrected this at the end of the season and if they do not do so nowadays (am I understanding dj correctly?) then presumably they are responding more quickly to how subsequent form works out, which is desirable in my opinion. It's certainly something I strive to do all through the season.
I'm not sure if that is what I said or meant. I was trying to reconcile the idea that methods hadn't changed since day one (as said by the TF rep) with the idea that ratings used to be revised at the end of the year but aren't now. This sounds very much to me like a pretty big change in methods.
I too apologise if I'm coming across in a way that gives the impression I'm being ignorant or pig-headed. I just need to be clear whether there's any point in referring to Timeform's ratings when discussing ORs.
Gareth did an excellent job in investigating how Timeform might have arrived at Brigadier Gerard's ratings. What is now needed is an investigation into what a retrospective examination of the form based around the BHA scale would put him on. (I'm not volunteering.)
If BG's form, for example is rated around Sparkler on 129 and the general level of Sparkler's g1 wins would equate to, say, 126 on the BHA scale, then we will have unearthed the root of the problem. We might be able to say in retrospect that BG was really only 141 horse.
I think the message all forumites should take from this is that we simply cannot make any true correlation between Timeform's figures and official ratings.
That in itself would render TF's ratings as meaningless (to me personally and not per se, which was what I was trying to say) other than in comparing one horse's TF rating with another's.
