Interesting that there's no Racing Post Rating up for the race yet.
Based on the poundage of 1.75 lbs per length that they use, and the best RPRs achieved by each horse prior to today's race, the race works out as follows:
[code]
[b]Horse Beaten Cumulative Pounds Best RPR Projection[/b]
Sea The Stars 0.00 0.00 0 124 [COLOR="Blue"]124[/COLOR]
Rip Van Winkle 1.00 1.00 2 120 [COLOR="blue"]122[/COLOR]
Conduit 4.50 5.50 10 127 [COLOR="Red"]137[/COLOR]
Cima De Triomphe 5.00 10.50 18 119 [COLOR="red"]137[/COLOR]
Steele Tango 3.75 14.25 25 113 [COLOR="red"]138[/COLOR]
Jukebox Jury 0.50 14.75 26 114 [COLOR="red"]140[/COLOR]
Twice Over 2.50 17.25 30 122 152
Malibu Bay 11.00 28.25 49 99 148
Lang Shining 6.00 34.25 60 110 170
Set Sail 1.50 35.75 63 108 171
[/code]
This is pretty similar to Desert Orchid's figures, I think, and presents the RPR guys with a fairly straightforward question:
a) Do you rate the form through the first two and essentially declare that nothing else has run it's race, keeping the rating down to the mid/low 120s?
b) Do you rate the form through the third, fourth, fifth and sixth horses, all of whose running suggests that the winner deserve a mark in a fairly narrow range between 137-140 (probably on the low end, as the first three of those are 137, 137, 138)? (Those numbers sound familiar, DO?).
c) Do you find another way; the most obvious being to use the time as a guide and rate the race close to the Topspeed rating (which they've provisionally set at 129 - so they'd probably give the winner that plus a couple of pounds).
It's a pretty interesting handicapping question.
As David Johnson mentioned earlier in the thread, it's got similarities to the King George last year. But whereas with that race we already knew plenty about Papal Bull to make the idea of him as a 130 horse troubling, it may be easier to live with the idea of the much more unexposed Rip Van Winkle (first time over this trip) as a mid-130s horse until he proves us otherwise.
Personally, I think the RP will go with option (c).
