Northumberland Plate 2022


Yes, it isn't too often that something wins a top handicap off 110+. It does happen more often in Meydan because there are more handicaps for that class of horse but the lower-rated ones in those races tend to be rated around 100.

Trueshan won off 120. I don't recall that happening in all the years I've been studying form.

I recall Sea Pigeon putting up some terrific handicapping performances and I've mentioned Roman Warrior's Ayr Gold Cup a couple of times.

But nothing like Trueshan.

It does make you wonder if it will start a new trend in handicaps that are worth the really big money now. Could we see a 120 horse taking in the Ebor?

It's a terrific result for racing.
 
Why do you think he was alloted 10st 8lbs? Could it be he was differnt class to a bunch of moderate animals.

There are horses who ran that are so slow the finished so far behind weight couldn't bring them together.

If for example Desert Crown 123 was pitched against yesterdays winner Bookmark 93 and you put Desert Crown on 10st8lbs and Bookmark on 8st 6lbs



which do you think would win...........IMO Desert Crown by half the track.

The point is we don't often see top class animals running in hamdicaps because the prize money is not good enough these days.

Arkle ran in many handicaps but back then even the King George was a handicap.

So when it does happen and the high class animal wins like a high class animal should it does not surprise me one bit.

I ask you to name the last horse on the flat to carry 10st 8lbs to victory in a big Saturday handicap and you reference Desert Orchid and Arkle -what a dummy.
 
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Was it Ocean Tempest that won a Chester handicap off top weight that got a big rating, (handicappers getting over-excited) Not sure he ever won a group race.
 
Bold Gait won the same race carrying 9st10lbs the second, 3rd and 4th were getting 28lbs to 31 lbs.

John Cherry won the Cesarewitch in a canter if I remember right with 10 stone on his back.

Sea Pigeon won the Ebor with 10 stone

There have been dozens of weight carrying performances on the flat but some won so easily they were quickly forgotten

Bold Gait 9st 10lbs off an official rating of 105 doesn't come within an asses roar of yesterdays performance -you don't have a clue.
 
Well remembered, HW:

Full Result 2.55 Chester | 30 August 2014 | Racing Post

There is a difference, though. OT carried 9-12 and put some of his rivals out of the weights.

I think it might have been results like that that brought about the change in conditions whereby the 'ceiling' for the handicap is set at 9-12 for 110 and anything rated higher has to carry correspondingly more. That way fewer horses are likely to end up out of the weights.

I'm a huge fan of the big handicaps and have said more than once that I couldn't understand why G1 horses don't go for them. The Gold Cup this year was worth £500k. The Ebor, pre-pandemic, went up to £1m. If I owned a G1 horse I'd want it to target the handicap.

Can you imagine an Ebor or a Cesarewitch, worth a theoretical £million, 110/9-12 as the 'ceiling' but also attracting the following off these weights (based on current ORs and assuming Trueshan goes up to 123):

Trueshan 10-13
Hurricane Lane 10-12
Kyprios 10-10
Broome 10-8
Mojo Star 10-8
Strad 10-8
Tashkhan 10-3
Princess Zoe 10-1

Would anyone back anything lower than 110 to beat them?
 
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From an RP item this afternoon (re Trueshan):

"He ran to a Racing Post rating of 128, which is the highest achieved by a stayer in the last decade and the best achieved in a British or Irish handicap in RPR history."
 
I ask you to name the last horse on the flat to carry 10st 8lbs to victory in a big Saturday handicap and you reference Desert Orchid and Arkle -what a dummy.

At least I know the difference between Desert Crown and Desert Orchid which seems to have a problem with.

While John Cherry only carried 9st13lbs his performan in the 1976 Cesarewitch left Trushans win in the N. Plate for dead.

Ridden by lester and giving away over 2 stone to most of his rivals he won in a common canter by 7 lengths and Lester sitting motionless
It would have taken alot more than 9lbs to have stopped John Cherry that day and I'd put his performance above that of Trueshans all day long.

But as advanced mathematics is for adults and not like a childish little troublemaker like you I don't expect all that computes with your pea brain
 
He was already 128 RPR before the Plate and 120 OR....who cares about RP ratings? I don't know anyone who uses them in preference to the OR used by the actual handicapper
 
John Cherry was before my time -I am impressed by your ability to compare handicap form from 1976 to 2022.How did John Cherry do in pattern races.
 
Also if you are going 46 years for a comparison, you are showing just how notable the achievement is.
 
John Cherry also finished 2nd as a 3yo in the Cesarewitch 1975 was rated 125.......5 lbs higher than Trueshan and won 18 races including the Chester Cup again ridden by Lester
He won a Group 3 in France but other than that I don't recall him winning any other Group Race.

He finished unplaced in the 1980 behind Popsi's Joy and I believe Jeremy Tree retired him shortly after
 
Also if you are going 46 years for a comparison, you are showing just how notable the achievement is.

Gezzus don't you guys know anything about racing?

That is because top class horses like Trueshan simply don't run in Northumberland Plates but he is an exception.

If you don't know he ran in the race before off 118 and was beaten less than 4 lengths.
This years race was much weaker and he'd only gone up 2lbs and King read it well.

You might have to wait till hell freezes over to see the likes of Kyprios running in a handicap

Incidently go check out the Goodwood Cup winners and find me one established one that ran in a handicap other than the Melbourse Cup
 
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Well remembered, HW:

Full Result 2.55 Chester | 30 August 2014 | Racing Post

There is a difference, though. OT carried 9-12 and put some of his rivals out of the weights.

I think it might have been results like that that brought about the change in conditions whereby the 'ceiling' for the handicap is set at 9-12 for 110 and anything rated higher has to carry correspondingly more. That way fewer horses are likely to end up out of the weights.

I'm a huge fan of the big handicaps and have said more than once that I couldn't understand why G1 horses don't go for them. The Gold Cup this year was worth £500k. The Ebor, pre-pandemic, went up to £1m. If I owned a G1 horse I'd want it to target the handicap.

Can you imagine an Ebor or a Cesarewitch, worth a theoretical £million, 110/9-12 as the 'ceiling' but also attracting the following off these weights (based on current ORs and assuming Trueshan goes up to 123):

Trueshan 10-13
Hurricane Lane 10-12
Kyprios 10-10
Broome 10-8
Mojo Star 10-8
Strad 10-8
Tashkhan 10-3
Princess Zoe 10-1

Would anyone back anything lower than 110 to beat them?

They could call it the Melbourne Cup Comes To England
 
Just checked up my trusty Haig Racehorse Annual of 1976.
Remembering John Cherry's Cesarewitch win from Belfalas giving away lumps of weight was enhanced by reading that the runner up had also finished second in Goodwood Cup that season.
John Cherry had run in Henry II Stakes behind Sea Anchor but fluffed his lines that day.
If memory recalls Sea Pigeon had plenty of handicap success carrying 10 stone plus in races like Vaux Gold Tankard before his Ebor victory.
In Ireland in 1989 Elementary , while with JSB won a 12 furlong Derby Day handicap off 10 stone by 4 lengths; the Golden Pages Handicap with 10-4 and was beaten just a length carrying 10-10 by Smoggy Spray, himself a ten race winner trying to concede 43 lbs.
Trueshan's win should be rightly celebrated as the flat performance of this season so far at the very least.
 
Gezzus don't you guys know anything about racing?

That is because top class horses like Trueshan simply don't run in Northumberland Plates but he is an exception.

If you don't know he ran in the race before off 118 and was beaten less than 4 lengths.
This years race was much weaker and he'd only gone up 2lbs and King read it well.

You might have to wait till hell freezes over to see the likes of Kyprios running in a handicap

Incidently go check out the Goodwood Cup winners and find me one established one that ran in a handicap other than the Melbourse Cup

Presumably they don’t run in handicaps because trainers don’t share your earlier proposition What you guys fail to understand is it a lot easier giving slow horses tons of weight than beating good horses in your own class.. If they did agree then they'd be all over the big handicaps like a rash with their Group 1 horses. After all, they do say weight stops anything and I suppose that’s the fundamental rationale behind handicapping. Whether it does, or not, to the accuracy demanded of it is another question, of course.
 
How many handicaps have prizes worth going for and how many are as uncompetive than the pile of shite Trueshan beat?
The 2nd had a win in a 7K race to his name.

Anyway the amount of group races available to run in these days are a lot more than there used to be.

BTW it is a known fact that additional weight stops horses it never has and never will make a slow horse into a fast one.
 
Just checked up my trusty Haig Racehorse Annual of 1976.
Remembering John Cherry's Cesarewitch win from Belfalas giving away lumps of weight was enhanced by reading that the runner up had also finished second in Goodwood Cup that season.
John Cherry had run in Henry II Stakes behind Sea Anchor but fluffed his lines that day.
If memory recalls Sea Pigeon had plenty of handicap success carrying 10 stone plus in races like Vaux Gold Tankard before his Ebor victory.
In Ireland in 1989 Elementary , while with JSB won a 12 furlong Derby Day handicap off 10 stone by 4 lengths; the Golden Pages Handicap with 10-4 and was beaten just a length carrying 10-10 by Smoggy Spray, himself a ten race winner trying to concede 43 lbs.
Trueshan's win should be rightly celebrated as the flat performance of this season so far at the very least.

Thanks for the info. I am not saying for one minute it was not a good performance but it was not unexpected either.

Considering the horse had ran well in the race before and this years renwal looked very poor Alan King very cleverly took the bull by the horns and it paid off.
 
Zero logic in your post. Par for the course.

Why don't you and your bum chum go and get a room..........talking to you guys is like washing a handkerchief.

You come on here with nothing concrete to add to a debate but childish ignorant comments you'd expect from 14 year old Hooligans
 
They could call it the Melbourne Cup Comes To England

It's the kind of race I've been advocating for years.

It's the kind of race that could conceivably happen if bookies didn't run UK racing.

We could have a £5m handicap for horses (trained anywhere in the world) rated 110+ with those rated 110 carrying 8-7, a weight most of the best jockeys can do, and the rest more than that so that a 130 horse would carry 9-13 but with no limit (so Frankel OR 140, for example, would have had 10-9).

But it's only 7:20am so maybe I'm still in bed dreaming.
 
"It's the kind of race that could conceivably happen if bookies didn't run UK racing."

Spot on, DO.

So much in racing would be so much better if the authorities didn't kow-tow to the big bookmakers.
 
"It's the kind of race that could conceivably happen if bookies didn't run UK racing."

Spot on, DO.

So much in racing would be so much better if the authorities didn't kow-tow to the big bookmakers.

Absolutely, bookmakers should hang on to the tail of racing, not the other way round.
 
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