Happy Christmas Everyone (but who would have been happiest ?)

Now here's an interesting scenario.....go to You Tube and run Kauto Star 2009 Gold Cup from the 3rd last and Arkle V Mill House 1964 side by side and see which horse crosses the line first.

Kauto Star by 1 length............only change since the 60's is the death fence was moved into the straight........I doubt if Kauto would even be the fastest.
 
But didn't Arkle also wallop horses, who were placed in subsequent GCs? I know Stalbridge C beat Arkle, receiving lumps, and placed in at least one GC. But you're right, Tanlic, that we don't have the handicaps these days to offer a meaningful comparison.
 
Tanlic said:
Arkle ended up with a bullshit mark of 212 which was due to the way the handicapping was in those days. The handicapping was a complete mess.
Click to expand...

The handicapper didn't give Arkle 212. It was Timeform. They would need to come out and say they got it wrong and they're unlikely to do that. The fundamentals of their processes probably won't have changed too much, just tweaked or enhanced by computer technology.

People seem to accept that Sea Bird's 145 wasn't a mistake, and that pre-dated Arkle. Only a handful of years later, nobody was arguing that Mill Reef and Brigadier Gerard were 140+ too.

Yet it took a generation for a chaser (Dessie) to get to within 20lbs of Arkle.

You might just as readily argue that Arkle was so far ahead he made the others look so bad they were artificially downrated*.

I do accept there is a difference between handicap form and non-handicap form but since Timeform introduced the method of assessment of ability that awarded horses a numerical figure to denote their ability rankings no one has found a better one.

The conclusion offered in doubting Arkle's rating is that Timeform's Flat ratings have been right for 50 years but their NH ratings haven't.

So Istabraq wasn't really that good either.

The 55lbs to Dessie remark has to be taken in the context in which it was presented. Arkle's best form against the Gold Cup in which Dessie's guts got him home only very narrowly from a 100/1 handicapper.

*Which is what the handicapper appears to have done with Cue Card.

Having done handicapping myself now for decades, it isn't hard to go back and check how accurate your old ratings were. I did it recently with old Galway Blaze who won his Hennessy the year they changed the scale from 0-100 to 0-175. You progress by accepting you got some wrong and work out why, and try not to make the same mistake again.

I'm in the middle of just such a scenario with Native River which I've backed at 20/1 for the RSA as I believe it is by miles the best novice on the scene this season so far and is already good enough to win 9 RSAs out of 10. If by mid-March I'm looking back and saying to myself, "Fvck me, I got that well wrong," I'll take it and move on. Timeform never felt the need to go back and say, "Ha ha, chaps, remember the day we gave Arkle 212? What the fvck were we on that day??!!"
 
Last edited:
Tanlic said:
Now here's an interesting scenario.....go to You Tube and run Kauto Star 2009 Gold Cup from the 3rd last and Arkle V Mill House 1964 side by side and see which horse crosses the line first.

Kauto Star by 1 length............only change since the 60's is the death fence was moved into the straight........I doubt if Kauto would even be the fastest.
Click to expand...

was the going the same both days?
 
Timeform were on drugs when they gave Arkle 212.

Let's not kid ourselves you only look as good as the horses around you are bad.

When Kauto won his King George was it anywhere near as good as this weeks race?

He won by a distance from MDB would anyone here back MDB to beat the top 3 in the betting this week? I doubt it.

Arkle was by Archive out of Bright Cherry but in his bloodline was one of the fastest horses of all time the unbeaten Nearco.

Mill House Stalbridge Colonist and What a Myth etcwere bred as old fashioned steeple chasers.

He was a sports car racing among family saloons. I doubt if any of those Family saloons would have won today's Ryanair or King George.

Mayne I am wrong but when I see a horse like Sprinter Sacre kicking a top class horse like Sizing Europe like he's a selling plater I refuse to believe he's 20lbs less of a horse than Arkle.

Or Kauto Star winning all those king George's leaving good animals fences behind that he wouldn't have given Arkle a much better race than Mill House ever did.

We all need heroes and Arkle is one of the biggest and it's sort of blasphemic to be knocking such a legend but why not questioning his position on the pedestal? Just because it's written don't make it correct
 
Two runs before the KG, Madison Du Berlais had beaten the 172-rated Exotic Dancer in the Bowl at Aintree with the the next three ORs 165, 163 and 165, beaten a further 17, 6 and 2 lengths. Before that he had beaten Denman over 20 lengths. On his day he was well into the 170s. Whether than would have him in the top 3 in the market for this is irrelevant. The Aintree race probably bottomed him for good.

He was well below form in the race before and in the King George itself but let's not kid ourselves on he wasn't as good as a lot of Grade 1 horses. RPRs gave KS 191 that day but they also deemed the non-stayer Barbers Shop who was struggling to put one foot in front of the other from three out to have run 3lbs higher than his OR??

It was a jaw-dropping race to watch on the day but every day throws up results that can be interpreted in either the most positive or negative of ways.

There's a perfect example right now with the different interpretations Euronymous and I have about Native River at Newbury. Given the form I'm in these days he's probably right and I'm probably wrong but I've already backed up my opinion with hard cash.

Phil Smith took some time out to try to arrive at the definitive (or as well-researched as possible) rating for Arkle and gave up after about a year.

I've made the offer before, if the BHA wish to pay me enough and allow me access to all the records, I reckon I could come up with a figure within 5lbs of accuracy for Arkle.

Timeform and the official handicappers often look at ten-year averages to arrive at ratings of non-handicaps which ultimately lead to ORs, which in turn inform their assessments of handicaps.

Back in the 1980s what are now RPRs were largely more generous than Timeform ratings with Superform very often even more generous. Timeform ratings back then, I repeat, were conservative, so their mark for Arkle might even have been stingy.

The horses Arkle beat in the big handicaps would otherwise have been top weights in modern-day Hennessys, SGBs, Mackesons, etc etc. You're then looking at horses in the 160-167 bracket. He was giving them 35lbs and beating them out of sight. Saphir Du Rheu was off 163 in this year's Hennessy and deemed by Nicholls to have "the speed of Kauto Star and the stamina of Denman" and went on record as saying he thought he could win. He clearly believed SDR was a 175 horse at least in the making. Arkle would have been asked to give him 35lbs and would probably have beaten him as far as Smad Place.
 
No idea DG but I imagine the BHA will have all the records of weights at the entry/forfeit stages and extended results.

I used to work out the ORs myself before they was made public but the OR system itself only goes back to some time in the 1970s. Before that, the handicappers just allocated weights, so if two horse were entered in a 2m race framed by one handicapper and a 2m4f race famed by a different one the weights differential might not have been the same.

Plus...

I'd want paid for all that work!
 
Last edited:
When youhave the BHA giving Master Minded a higher rating than Kauto Star because they overrated Voy Por Usredes then how can you come to any figure with accuracy.


Ratings when you get into Grade 1's these days are complete nonsense.......the reason being the handicapper be it the BHA or Timeform has a choice they can put horses up or another one down.

They do what fits in best and makes them look less stupid...............and ain't that the truth.

You came up with the craziest yet : Arkle 55lbs ahead of Desert Orchid...............by the powers invested in me...........you're fired LOL
 
Tanlic said:
You came up with the craziest yet : Arkle 55lbs ahead of Desert Orchid...............by the powers invested in me...........you're fired LOL
Click to expand...

Context... context... context.

I could give Usain Bolt 20 yards start and a beating if he was running with both legs tied together and his hands behind his back. Might be close, mind.
 
Anyway, time to switch off until Boxing Day.

Have a right good Christmas everyone and spare a thought for the family of that poor soul killed in the coffee shop incident today. :(
 
Tanlic said:
Ratings when you get into Grade 1's these days are complete nonsense.......the reason being the handicapper be it the BHA or Timeform has a choice they can put horses up or another one down.

They do what fits in best and makes them look less stupid...............and ain't that the truth.
Click to expand...

True, the ratings in the graded races are publicity stunts, nothing more. The afterthoughts that Timeform has is ridiculous, you look at one horse ratings this season and by the next year almost all ratings were downgraded or (rarely) upgraded, meaning they either had nothing right, or they had it right but because a horse that came 2nd in a major G1 lost his form the next season they downgrade the entire race. I am thinking about making a program to observe these changes at the pattern level.

The official handicappers can be excused because they only use a yardstick horse to decide ratings and they might get it wrong sometimes, only occasionally they use time to decide how good a performance was. But Timeform with their secret formula how can they have so many afterthoughts, the time and positions remain the same so if your ratings are wrong it either means your formula is wrong, either you give commercial views based either on future expectations from a horse(rating Vautour JLT higher than Coneygree GC) and/or based on opinion and sentiments of general public so they can match(making people feel safe buying their ratings). I only trust their ratings in handicap races because they have no commercial incentives of rigging those.

Anyway, Happy Christmas to anyone still around at this hour :) :ninja:
 
Back
Top