Tingle Creek Chase

Desert Orchid said:
No-one is saying Sprinter Sacre is no better than 169.

I think just about everybody on here believes he is either close to or better than 180. What we're saying is that a 15 length defeat of Kumbeshwar equates to a bare figure of about 169. It might have been a 30+ length defeat of Kumbeshwar but the horse wasn't ridden to do that.

Until he beats a 20lbs better horse than Kumbeshwar by 15 lengths he won't get a 185+ rating but it doesn't mean he isn't up to it or even well beyond it..
Click to expand...
Perhaps you are talking about a horse like say.....Sanctuaire for instance who he totally destroyed and beat by 19 1/2 lengths.

The fact that he finished behind Kumbushwar is meaningless because he never beat him Sprinter Sacre did if you get my point


To my mind Sprinter Sacre never beat Kumbashwar he did what Barry set out to do...... beat a 166 rated horse out of sight.

It was a 185 performance all day long imvho
 
Sanctuaire's 166-rating is all wrong in the first place though, Tanlic, hence why SS didn't put up anything like a 185 performance. To rate SS at 185, you basically have to award Kunbeshwar a mark in the late-160's and there is no way the horse is within a stone of that kind of mark.

Sanctuaire's rating needs to be ignored for the purposes on assessing Sprinter Sacre's performance, imo, and it makes much more sense to rate SS through Kumbeshwar.
 
So SS's mark is wrong, Sanctuaire's mark is wrong, and Kumbeshwar's is likely to be wrong when he's re-assessed..........this just gets better and better.:)
A sane and reasonable method might conclude that good, consistent and progressive horses like SS and Kumbeshwar might improve a little in the race; not so Sanctuaire, but the sane and reasonable approach wouldn't have him finding 23lbs or so in his previous 2 races.
But who needs common sense, when we can have ratings bouncing up and down all over the place.:D
 
Possibly one for a different thread, but there does seem to be an across-the-board reticence on the part of handicappers (official or otherwise) to award output ratings which show great variance from the input rating.

For me, I have no issue in determining that a particular performance can be several lbs below a horses official mark. That's not to say I would drastically revise an official-mark upwards/downwards - but I have no hesitation as regards putting a low/high mark on an isolated performance.

Generally speaking, handicappers prefer not to put great variance on individual performances; preferring (in my view) to award a figure that's only a lb or two either side of the official mark - regardless of the actual performance displayed.

I realise that they have to maintain a 'master rating' that accurately reflects a horse's capabilities - but I find that handicappers generally work around that rating for any given performance, whereas I feel it's more appropriate to award an isolated rating that is entirely seperate from the official mark.

In the case of Sprinter Sacre in the Tingle Creek, the bare performance merits no more than high-160's, imo, but because his OR is so high, he will undoubtedly be awarded something in the region of 10lbs higher......with the result that kumbeshwar will be dragged-up to a mark that he cannot possibly hope ever to win from. In effect, connections of Kumbeshwar will be taking it in the hoop, merely because the OH will view SS's run in a linear fashion, when it's self-evident - on the line through Kumbeshwar - that he has run nowhere near 179.

Edit: Hopefully not contradicting myself, but I do expect the OH to hammer Kumbeshwar's official mark......though this is principally because he won't accept that SS ran well below his official mark. Hope this makes sense.
 
Last edited:
Tanlic said:
Not at all Reet I believe the handicapper was spot on when he gave Master Minded a 186 rating in only his 4th chase win in the UK which was his first ever run in a Grade 1 chase.

I mean to say Denman had only won 13 of his 14 races at the time and Kauto had only won 2 King George's and a Gold Cup by then.:blink:

After all Voy Por Ustedes had beaten Dempsey a 20/1 shot and River City 33/1 after Well Chief fell and New Mill ran like a cow.

The fact the VPU had only won 1 race at 2/5 from 4 attempts prior to running like a dead fish in Master Minded's QMCC was totally irrelevant to the genius handicapper.

I mean the guys a brilliant judge currently according to him the best horses in training are or the best performances are

Finian's Rainbow 173
Long Run 172
Silvianno Conti 172
Tidal Bay 171
Bobsworth 171
Riverside Theatre 170
Sprinter Sacre 169

Perhaps you rating experts should pop into Seven Barrows and let Nicky and Barry know that Sprinter Sacre isn't the best they have ever had in their lives it's Finians Rainbow who wouldn't blow wind up the Black Aeroplanes ar$e.

Even Better tell Timeform that the 180P next to Sprinters name and the 174 against Finian's is a crock of sh!t.

Barry must look at these OR's of the handicappers and think the fooker is stone mad. He has 3 other Seven Barrows inmates ahead of Sprinter Sacre as well. A fact that not one single person in racing with half a brain would agree with

They must have a method of rating as you put it Reet but it is severely flawed and is only one man's opinion at the end of the day.

At least Timeform use their imagination. if they didn't would Frankel be the highest rated flat horse of all time?

The problem with ratings is the handicapper keeps puting himself in the sh!t by overrating horses and when something else thrashes them he has no choice but to give horses stupid meaningless ratings that simply don't stand up to scrutiny and are disproved way to many times or we'd all be rich. The reason he can is they very seldom if ever run in handicaps

The fact is Sprinter Sacre could beat the likes of Kumbeshwar by a fence plus if Barry set out to do it and if the Handicapper can't see that then he's an idiot. his 2 plus 2 = 4 IMO is a load of crap. Yes he has to work to rule as we have handicaps every day and it works pretty well but the ratings he gives top horse who never run in handicaps are totally unrealistic and without imagination.

Getting back to Master Minded VPU should have been dropped 10 lbs before MM beat him which would have had MM on a realistic mark of 176 because that's as near as dammit as he really was but the Handicapper couldn't drop VPU without dropping hundreds of others and that is where the system is severely flawed.

He did however mange to drop Master Minded back down to 178 in no time at all........how come if the method of rating is so perfect?

The answer is simple ''he didn't have to drop hundreds of horses in training to do so

It would seem the handicapper has one rule for horse "A" and another for horse "B"
Click to expand...

It would seem you are struggling with the difference between "best horse" and "best performance".
 
Timeform:

CHASERS
183p SPRINTER SACRE
175p BOBS WORTH
174§ TIDAL BAY
174 FINNIAN'S RAINBOW
173 FLEMENSTAR
173 LONG RUN
172 SIZING EUROPE
170 RIVERSIDE THEATRE
169p AL FEROF
169+ CUE CARD
169+ SILVINIACO CONTI
167 ALBERTAS RUN
167 MEDERMIT
167 SANCTUAIRE
167 SIR DES CHAMPS
166+ IMPERIAL COMMANDER
166 CHINA ROCK
166 SOMERSBY
165 CAPTAIN CHRIS
165 THE GIANT BOLSTER
 
I reckon I could enhance the size of my todger with the help of a BHA handicapper...

Its like inflation.
 
Last edited:
Grasshopper said:
Thanks, Col bach.

So.....the handicapper has 29lbs between them for 15L?

Hmmn.

I'm open to offers on this one. :cool:
Click to expand...

So if they met in a handicap with SS on 12st and Kumbeshwar on 10st you'd steam into the latter?

Sprinter Sacre has not been raised by the handicapper since his win at Aintree in April despite the form boost from Cue Card. Timeform had raised him 4lbs in that time.

Weights and measures form analysis is fine as far as it goes but often times it goes nowhere near to telling us the full story. Kumbeshwar was ridden to place rather than win on Saturday and SS won on the bridle.
 
Euronymous said:
So if they met in a handicap with SS on 12st and Kumbeshwar on 10st you'd steam into the latter?
Click to expand...

Don't be a daftie now, Euro. It's bleedin' obvious thank you very much that Sprinter Sacre is vastly superior to Kumbeshwar - much more so than a 15L gap would imply.

However, a 15L gap is a 15L gap, and it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask how this equates to a 29lb difference in the respective ratings.

Has the handicapper qualified these ratings in any way? Has he made any attempt to articulate how he has derived them? Because I'm f*cked if I can figure it out.

As for "weights-and-measures" that's essentially what ratings are, and what the thrust of the recent posts have been about, so I've no idea why you've offered a response which refuses to discuss the point!
 
Last edited:
to just give SS a figure out of the blue is a nonsense..you might as well just give him 210 if you don't say how you came about it

ask 100 people how much an easy winner has up his sleeve and you could have a 40lb spread

yes SS is loads better than K..shall we all just guess like the handicapper has here?..i'll go for 212 just to make him the equal of Arkle.
 
You're still swerving the point, Euro.

The handicapper hasn't waited. He's already awarded his marks; for both SS and Kumbeshwar. It's those marks, and how they've been derived, that we're discussing. What happens next is immaterial to this discussion.
 
But would you go with the weights and measures rating that a 15lb beating would indicate? They may have been better giving a lower figure with a + at the end.
 
Euronymous said:
We'll have a much better idea when he faces proper opposition over two miles/Flemenstar over two and a half.
Click to expand...

but do you need to beat the best oppo re ratings..many races that other top horses win are rated off lowly rated animals in 3rd & 4th

most GC's are rated of the 3rd & 4th horses who sometimes only rated similar to Kumbeshwar ..about 150/160 mark
 
To be fair to the handicappers, they are entitled to, actually they should, handicap the race using the same methodology if this were a handicap. If Sprinter Sacre were a 95-rated handicapper at Ludlow that gave a 15l beating to the runner-up in the same fashion, the handicapper would be entitled to put him up by more than the bare margins suggest.

Anyone that watched the Tingle Creek, and has an iota of racereading skill about them would treat that as more than 15l, so I'm not sure castigating the official assessor for doing the same is appropriate.

I would agree with Grasshopper though in that in a blog to explain it, it's poor he doesn't even attempt to justify how he's decided there was 29 lb between Sprinter Sacre and Kumbeshwar on Saturday.
 
Wholeheartedly agree with the above post. Excellent analysis and raises a number of pertinent points.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top