You see that's what I'm saying, in some cases they are. We have slippage (which ought to make them a little lower now), but working against that we have rating authorities (in some cases) slapping on extra pounds for ease of victory. So it is indeed become something less than an exact science.
Frankel WTR rating
- Thread starter SteveM
- Start date
You see that's what I'm saying, in some cases they are. We have slippage (which ought to make them a little lower now), but working against that we have rating authorities (in some cases) slapping on extra pounds for ease of victory. So it is indeed become something less than an exact science.
I don't think it's pointless, but it's certainly not easy. STS was an extremely consistent horse that also achieved a level of greatness, but there have been better absolute performances than his.
That's what I'm saying.
EC1
On a break
isn't it always the argument that absolute rating and consistent ratings clash when these discussions come up...
to me HW may have that big run on the sheet..but wasn't as consistent as such as STS the Brigadier etc
i prefer consistent and bigish rating..to a one trick pony rating
Frankel has both in spades
EC1
On a break
You may be right in that Frankel probably has the scope to improve at four. But on Hawk Wing's Lockinge vs what Frankel has done to date I'd be torn. I wouldn't like to call it (but I would like to see it).
On overall form Frankel is clearly best. But that't not what Luke was asking.
I remember Maurice (late of this forum) at the time had a huge rating for HW (I believe the highest he had recorded for any horse) in a letter to Raceform Update.
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Harbinger
At the Start
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Timeform say Frankel, by 7lbs.
Racing Post say Frankel, by 5lbs.
International handicappers say Frankel, by 3lbs (2003 ratings came after they changed their ratings level).
BHA/Irish Turf Club say Hawk Wing, by 1lb :blink: (Hawk Wing's 137 clearly didn't withstand the scrutiny of their international colleagues, hence the above).
That's right. They in fact downgraded his rating twice. Initially it was higher than 137, but downgraded within a handful of days and downgraded again at IC stage. They couldn't believe it was true.
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I talking about the provisional rating, which is not exactly speculation.
davidjohnson
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I'm happy for people to disagree with any Timeform rating, it's all about opinion and being able to back it up. But the one thing you can be sure about with the Timeform ratings is that 140 means 140. i.e the merit of Sea The Stars, Harbinger and Dubai Millennium were on a par. And Frankel in Timeform's opinion is 3 lb better than them.
My whole beef about the WTR is that a 140 to Dancing Brave and a 135 Frankel means nothing as Dancing Brave wouldn't be rated 140 today. Therefore they have no historical context whatsoever, they remain fine for comparing horses from the same era, but mean next to nothing in the grand scheme.
My whole beef about the WTR is that a 140 to Dancing Brave and a 135 Frankel means nothing as Dancing Brave wouldn't be rated 140 today. Therefore they have no historical context whatsoever, they remain fine for comparing horses from the same era, but mean next to nothing in the grand scheme.
Horses don't have it in their head to try and beat records the way human athletes do. Improved training techniques and facilities allow horses to arrive fitter at the races than they used to do following a break, and maybe to get fitter faster. They might also allow them to withstand training for longer for all I know. But I doubt that today's horses can run faster than they did 30 years ago.
For a start, their technique is no different. They haven't learned to use starting blocks, carry their arms that bit higher or tilt their heads that bit further back. They don't learn to do Fosbury flops over the obstacles or to use circular breathing, and they don't do altitude training or go on trips to salt mines.
I will allow that standards of jockeyship have improved, over jumps at least, and that racecourse maintenance is better, but the horses themselves are not inherently superior to their predecessors to any noticeable extent.
Zenyatta
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Now that is a good idea. Trainers should start training at altitude. It makes perfect sense, except for it might be tricky getting some gallops/getting the horses there/etc etc. If it helps humans it must help horses too.
As for the proper debate, I am one of the crew who think it is impossible to compare horses that are so different. It might be interesting and it might result in some tentative conclusions but nothing more.
For what it's worth (probably not very much) I would have Frankel a touch above Sea The Stars in terms of raw ability. Sea The Stars beat good horses Frankel has destroyed them.
If I was an owner/breeder which of their Classic campaigns would I choose? Sea The Stars, no question. However, I would have gone for the Leger. A Triple Crown winner would be epic.
So for me Frankel is the better horse but Sea The Stars achieved more (so far that is). If Frankel can come out and do what he did last season over 10f then he might well win on both scores.
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You can only compare past horses on the basis of known timings, draw positions, going, and weight. Track care has improved enormously over the past few years, let alone several decades, and you can't compare horses which broke from flag or tapes starts to those which are artificially lined up in stalls. Some horses had as much as a length's advantage or even more under the old systems, where many got a flying start and not one from static. If you compare a winner from decades ago who flew the start, the advantage could've been as much as five lengths over one from today's stalls.
Jockeyship has improved over time under both codes and there is also the issue of improvements in the horse's tack and bitting to assist their efforts, including breathing aids and ops which the old-timers lacked.
Thus, unless you compare like for like, it's a futile exercise.
Jockeyship has improved over time under both codes and there is also the issue of improvements in the horse's tack and bitting to assist their efforts, including breathing aids and ops which the old-timers lacked.
Thus, unless you compare like for like, it's a futile exercise.
Zenyatta
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:lol: And to think how much time so many people spend doing just that.
Euronymous
Senior Jockey
The main reason it was downgraded was surely that Where or When never recaptured his 3yo form.
Gareth: starting stalls were first used in the UK in July 1966, at Newmarket. It took a while for them to roll out to all courses and I don't know when Ireland began using them. So while you can compare some races from then, you can't compare any before then. You'd also need to be very sure that course work, such as dolling in or out of rails to smooth out sharp corners, filling-in of undulations, etc. hasn't taken place on the courses you're comparing and, for any NH results, the likelihood that since races even 10, 15 years ago, the water jumps haven't been removed and other obstacles relocated, as they have been changed at Cheltenham in the last couple of years.
Something else to take into account, and over which no-one has any control or can actually compute: Clerks of the Course, until 10 years ago, were relying on their walking sticks and their own 'feel' of their courses to determine the going. They now use the TurfTrax going stick which gives a standard reading based on penetration at dozens of specified places around every course, all of which are mapped out for the Clerks to follow, thus providing standardized testing over a period of several days. Years ago, Clerks didn't provide the amount of information to the public in the way they do now, and they certainly would not have gone round their entire course several times, testing in specific spots. They marched out a day or so before racing, pronged the ground here and there randomly, and decided on pretty much how it felt. Nowadays, they have specific places to probe three times in each place (giving an average for each designated area), meaning that some 180 probings might occur each of the days the Clerk examines the course, and then an average of the whole course, based on some parts being Soft and other being Good, for example, is arrived at by the stick. You can be damn sure that Clerks of the past didn't spend anything like the time now taken to probe the entire course not once, but from five days out to the morning of racing. What does this mean? It means that back in the 1970s and 80s, for example, you might've had any amount of Flat and NH Clerks who merely jabbed their sticks into two or three places on the straight, the turns, and the back straight and came back with 'Good', whereas if they'd examined a number of other spots on the course, they'd have come up with "Good, Soft in Places", which naturally has a bearing on, say, a 3m chase.
Another issue why horses "back then" had a lesser advantage over horses today is in the care of the tracks themselves. Today sees Clerks favour a mix of rye and other close-growing, sturdy grasses which can take a hammering. There is immediate divoting on the day and directly after. There is watering with boom irrigators or more sophisticated systems and there is far more emphasis on de-thatching, re-seeding, and making sure that tracks are grassed all over, without bald patches, which make the going uneven. Look back at some of the pictures from even the 70s, and there is plenty of thin, dry grass on summer racedays on the Flat (summer jumping not on the cards back then). So "Good" back then would've been closer to "Firm" today - not that any Clerk ever likes to call his going firm, as it frightens away too many trainers!
So, if horse A won in 1976 on turf, and you'd like to compare his performance on the same course today with horse B, you might find you have to figure in subtle changes to the lay-out of the track, the going surface as called is not assessed in the same way today (thus the calls would mean different things), and the actual grass surface is now different underfoot thanks to a different type of grass and a better watering programme, and, if you want to compare NH values, be sure that since the old horse's contest, a couple of jumps haven't been taken out since then - which obviously changes the race timing.
Something else to take into account, and over which no-one has any control or can actually compute: Clerks of the Course, until 10 years ago, were relying on their walking sticks and their own 'feel' of their courses to determine the going. They now use the TurfTrax going stick which gives a standard reading based on penetration at dozens of specified places around every course, all of which are mapped out for the Clerks to follow, thus providing standardized testing over a period of several days. Years ago, Clerks didn't provide the amount of information to the public in the way they do now, and they certainly would not have gone round their entire course several times, testing in specific spots. They marched out a day or so before racing, pronged the ground here and there randomly, and decided on pretty much how it felt. Nowadays, they have specific places to probe three times in each place (giving an average for each designated area), meaning that some 180 probings might occur each of the days the Clerk examines the course, and then an average of the whole course, based on some parts being Soft and other being Good, for example, is arrived at by the stick. You can be damn sure that Clerks of the past didn't spend anything like the time now taken to probe the entire course not once, but from five days out to the morning of racing. What does this mean? It means that back in the 1970s and 80s, for example, you might've had any amount of Flat and NH Clerks who merely jabbed their sticks into two or three places on the straight, the turns, and the back straight and came back with 'Good', whereas if they'd examined a number of other spots on the course, they'd have come up with "Good, Soft in Places", which naturally has a bearing on, say, a 3m chase.
Another issue why horses "back then" had a lesser advantage over horses today is in the care of the tracks themselves. Today sees Clerks favour a mix of rye and other close-growing, sturdy grasses which can take a hammering. There is immediate divoting on the day and directly after. There is watering with boom irrigators or more sophisticated systems and there is far more emphasis on de-thatching, re-seeding, and making sure that tracks are grassed all over, without bald patches, which make the going uneven. Look back at some of the pictures from even the 70s, and there is plenty of thin, dry grass on summer racedays on the Flat (summer jumping not on the cards back then). So "Good" back then would've been closer to "Firm" today - not that any Clerk ever likes to call his going firm, as it frightens away too many trainers!
So, if horse A won in 1976 on turf, and you'd like to compare his performance on the same course today with horse B, you might find you have to figure in subtle changes to the lay-out of the track, the going surface as called is not assessed in the same way today (thus the calls would mean different things), and the actual grass surface is now different underfoot thanks to a different type of grass and a better watering programme, and, if you want to compare NH values, be sure that since the old horse's contest, a couple of jumps haven't been taken out since then - which obviously changes the race timing.
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Bar the Bull
At the Start
Let us say that there the average college athlete (say ranked 500 in the US) can run 10.90 seconds over 100m.
That might have been 11.00 in 1990, and 11.10 in 1970 and 11.25 in 1930.
Usain Bolt might be 4L better than this “average” athlete. Lewis might have been 3L better. Jesse Owens might have been 5L better.
For me, this would show that Owens is the best athlete, even though he couldn’t run as fast as Bolt or Lewis. Effectively, you are normalising versus the contemporary average.
DJ will probably say that I am talking horse sh1t, but what Timeform is trying to do is similar to this.
I agree that Kauto of 2009 would beat Arkle of 196? in a straight race. However, I think Kauto would probably be beaten by Arkle if shot back to the 60s and trained by the Nicholls equivalent at the time, with the facilities and feed and training regime of the time.
Miesque
At the Start
Horses can effectively blood dope themselves - they have the ability to have splenic contractions which increase their RBC count by about 30%. That allows them to carry more oxygen around the body. Training at altitude doesn't affect them to a particularly noticeable degree due to that.
EC1
On a break
I have made a similar point mesen..each generation is compared to those it competes against..otherwise in a 100 years Frankel might just be a 90 horse
I would agree..that Owens is the best athlete in that scenario
Saying things have improved isn't relevant imo..its superiority against a mean at the time that counts
prince regent
Conditional
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BTB
does that mean if arkle was brought forward and trained by nichols u would prefer him in a straight race to kato
does that mean if arkle was brought forward and trained by nichols u would prefer him in a straight race to kato