I could chunter on about this at length, but have taken a vow to avoid jumps racing for 12 months (already broken). In truth the same thing applies to the flat though and kind of revovles around snowballing errors of judgement.
To use a comparator;
If you elected to speed rate horses using class pars, any errors, misjudgements, or rogue ratings are confined to that race alone as the rating is based purely on a performance to performance basis that doesn't invoke collateral form of other horses. This is where projection and conventional handicapping can go wrong, as a decision taken to over-rate a horse, is then compounded if that horse is subsequently used as the benchmark to assess others through. For the most part it is reliable, but one error quickly multiplies and compounds others, which in turn can spiral out of control and lead to the generation of a whole family of incorrect ratings based on a false premise.
I think it's too much of coincidence that all these 180+ horses have suddenly appeared in the staying chase division within a matter of 3 weeks. I haven't stopped to try and work out what opponent they've been rated through, but I can't help but feel that 3 of them, (I'd leave Denman out of the equation as I think there's grounds to believe he genuinely is in this territory) have been rated on the back of mistakes from other more highly regarded benchmarks, who would have prevailed had they or their jockey (delete as applicable) not made a jumping error or two and thus lost the race.
