Tingle Creek Chase

1 Bottle of red wine + 2 Sambuca shots

"If you have two theories that both explain the observed facts, then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along.
The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations.
If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, choose the simplest.
The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."

Moving on to a JD and Coke.
 
davidjohnson said:
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.
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Wholeheartedly agree with the above post. Excellent analysis and raises a number of pertinent points.

sorry for the other post...i forgot to log out as David:blink::)
 
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chroniclandlord said:
Handicapper has raised Sprinter Sacre 10lbs to 179.
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Which seems a damn sight more sensible than rating his performance around the hapless moke he allowed to finish within 15l of him.
As a young chaser having just his 6th race over fences, and a free-running sort getting the tow of his life, it's not unreasonable to assume that he put in a career best performance and - given his overall profile - it would surprise if it wasn't worth at least 7lb more than anything previous.
He's probably still worth a large "P" on that as he's yet to be tested, but even the bare handicap rise is surely a better reflection of his merit than any rating that suggests his form might even be regressive - because of what he beat, and how far?
 
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Well Grassy you can make as many silly laughter faces as you want . I reckoned it was a 185 performance and Timeform 183 with a P is more or less them saying he won that easily with so much in hand we have no idea how highly we should rate him.

As far as the BHA go they must be as red faced as it gets suddenly the penny has dropped that this is no ordinary horse they are dealing with.

You my friend say I am talking nonsense about handicaps and reckon giving weight is the be all and end all.

That is simply garbage. You stick 12st 7lbs on Sprinter Sacre's back and 9st7lbs on a horse like Kumbashwar 6st7lbs and you know what?.......the latter won't go any faster all you will achieve is slowing down Sprinter Sacre a bit but he'd still beat him by 10 lengths or whatever. You simply can't make a slow horse go any faster than he is capable of by taking weight off his back.


You think I am wrong then go look at this years Hennessy and the fully exposed horses who carried 10st and less not one of them all off a sudden took off like a rocker and found the speed to even get into the race.

I said along time ago Sprinter Sacre would break the 200 mark he is that good and what finishes second to him is meaningless. Like Frankel if he keeps doing it Timeform will put his rating through the roof not just because of what he beats but because he just keeps doing it no matter what the opposition is.

For me it is far more difficult to see off a horse like Sizing Europe eg at levels than it is to beat a bunch of monkeys carrying 2 or even 3 stone less than you. Most of those Denman beat at Newbury wouldn't have got near the tank with 2 stone on their backs. Arkle's main rival Mill House was a classic example of a horse who had a top speed that simply did not improve by taking weight off his back......he jumped brilliantly at Sandown maybe better than he had ever jumped in his life and even at one point a gentelman said to Fulke Walwyn he won't beat your fellow today but he simply could not go any faster and Arkle shot past him like a tree. Had you put a stone less on the giant Mill House's back he still couldn't have beaten Arkle at that time because the speed required was never there in the first place.


As far as I am concerned the best performance goes hand in hand with the best horse and the handicapper failed to take that into consideration when he rated Sprinter lower than Finians.....I was far more impressed with Sprinter beating the very talented Cue Card than I was watching Finians all out win over Sizing Europe.

Sizing Europe looks as good as ever so hopefully we'll see something really special as I am sure everyone is hoping we do.
 
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No-one is doubting it was a superlative performance, Tanlic.

But.....if you think it was a 185 performance, tell me what mark you would have Kumbeshwar on coming out of the race.
 
EC! Quote 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.


I got him on 211 so stop exaggerating:lol:

The handicapper can easily explain why he said there was 26lbs between them..........."I messed up in the first place" is the correct answer.

It's fine and well Grassy saying 15 lengths in 15 lengths and he's right but are we to ignore the obvious every time we rate a horse and treat distances like they were the word of God?

I never did get Master Minded's rating I still don't. To my eye he was a 178 horse maybe slightly more but he was never a 186 horse.

He blew everyone away at Cheltenham with the best visually impressive perfomance I had seen since Arkle won his second Gold Cup.

However that's what it tuned out to be imo. NO one seemed to consider at the time that he had beaten the poorest winner of a QMCC ever seen and that he was grossly overrated for his win in the race.

He actually got his 167 mark for beating a horse who lost his next 17 races:blink: Won that dreadful QMCC and went up to 169 loses 4 of next 5 races and he's still on 168.

Then he meets a real horse who absolute slams him so the handicapper has no choice but give him a crazy rating he never ran to again IMO

It is so easy to be fooled when a horses is beating nothing you thought was something he was not. VPU was a far better horse over 2m4f as we found out when he beat master Minded and ran a brilliant 2nd to Imperial Commander but he achieved bog all by championship standards at 2 miles. Badsworth Boy, Sizing Europe, Barnbrook Again Remittance Man or Moscow Flyer would have done exactly the same thing to VPU that day.

Master Minded's perfomance was similar to that of Grand Crus when that nutter of a handicapper gave him a massive 156 for beating a 6 mile plodder in Knockara Beau and looked like he was flying up the hill when the sectionals said he really wasn't.

The biggest fault the handicapper has is he will not drop horses as much as he should when it becomes apparent he messed up.....It takes months if not years to get them back on to their proper mark and as a result he boards himself in and comes up with some real corkers

I have no idea what he did with Kumbushwar but I wouldn't have raised him an ounce because if he met Sanctuaire in the absence of Sprinter Sacre he wouldn't get within 10 lengths of him as the result was misleading. Put him up and anything that beats him goes up more than they should and so it goes on.
 
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Grasshopper said:
No-one is doubting it was a superlative performance, Tanlic.

But.....if you think it was a 185 performance, tell me what mark you would have Kumbeshwar on coming out of the race.
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I posted the above before I read your question.

As I was just saying.... not an ounce. For more reasons than 1.

Firstly as I say these types of races where a good horse finishes exhausted because he was in the battle are very seldom upheld.

Kauto Star and Neptune Collonges? Hardly think the latter was within a stone of Kauto but he ran him to a neck.

Secondly more than a few years ago I was speaking to a well known trainer and suggested he run a horse of his in a race I thought was going to cut up badly which it did. He was a decnt horse but not in the class he could possibly have won and the trainer said he wasn't going to enter him because if he did and he finished anywhere near the front 2 his career was over because the handicapper would murder him.

That is the main reason these Group races end up with 5 runners and usually 3 of them are a pile of manure because trainers simply don't want to ruin a horses chances of winning several races;

The handicapper knows this but gets out his slide rule and put horses on stupid marks.
 
I just looked he's put him up 7lbs 1lb higher than the likes of Invictus


He might have to become a Sprinter Sacre groupie and follow him round the track to try and pick up place money off that mark....Way too high IMO.
 
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I don't have any issues with anything you've said, Tanlic - other than your apparent dismissal of handicappign as a concept. :p

Here's my point.

The OH can raise both Sprinter Sacre and kumbeshwar to whatever he wants. I can't influence his decision, but I'm entitled to question his decision (that's why we're all here on a forum, right?).

Clearly, a 29lbs difference between these horses, is hard to explain on any kind of lbs-per-length measure on the back of the Tingle Creek. If the OH had chosen to articulate why he has this difference, then that's a different matter. But he has not really justified it on any level, as far as I've been able to establish.

if he comes out tomorrow and says "I've added a stone for the effortless nature of the run", then at least he's provided some reasoning that would go some way to explaning the disparity between the lb-age difference he has between the pair, and the actual distance which separated them on Saturday.

But he has given no such explanation - at least not one that I've seen. Until he does so, then I personally have to consider his allocation for SS to be based largely on the mark he expects a 'really good' Tingle Creek runner to hit, rather than any considered view of the actual performance displayed.

Strictly on the numbers, I'd have Sprinter Sacre at 169 on Saturday, but with any amount of P's and +'s added to reflect the level of superiority. That's just me though. :cool:
 
GH, I don't disagree with you, nor do I disagree with DJ. I think this question comes down to how should handicapping be done.

How much would have raised the OR of, for example, Aegean Dawn that time he won on the bridle, or Grand Crus in the fixed brush race at Haydock? Would it be just the pounds/lengths amount, or would you have factored in ease of win so as not to have egg on your face when the horse would inevitably dot up next time as OR based on pounds/lengths calculation clearly didn't reflect ability/performance of said horse?
 
Hamm, as DJ has said, the handicapper must be extended the latitude to award a mark that accounts for ease of win. I've no issue with that.

But when we're talking about a mark of 179 - which by any definition is in the 'extraordinary' bracket - then I'd expect him to provide at least some justification for it. Especially so when the variance in lb-age and lengths-beaten, is so great.

Again, in the absence of any other rationale forthcoming, I can only conclude that the OH appears to have measured Sprinter Sacre against previous Tingle Creek winners, rather than against his performance on Saturday.
 
It's not beyond possibility that Kumbeshwar did show improvement in this race.
He was progressive last year, and early signs were he'd maintain that progression this. Add to that he was only ridden for 3rd place, and consequently the only question he was asked was to pass a weakening Sanctuaire, and it's entirely feasible that he ran a personal best. Wouldn't have it as much as 7lbs myself, but can certainly see some justification.
Sanctuaire's a different case, & that he ran within 4 secs of his Game Spirit time (on slightly softer ground) suggests he ran his race, albeit not lasting home. He's nowhere near a 166 horse, nor ever will be ( He's touted elsewhere as a solid e.w bet for the Champion Chase; yet both his form and his trainer indicate he won't go near the race:)).
Having said all the above, it's pretty damn pointless using either to judge a horse that was in a different stratosphere entirely.
 
Grasshopper said:
Hamm, as DJ has said, the handicapper must be extended the latitude to award a mark that accounts for ease of win. I've no issue with that.

But when we're talking about a mark of 179 - which by any definition is in the 'extraordinary' bracket - then I'd expect him to provide at least some justification for it. Especially so when the variance in lb-age and lengths-beaten, is so great.

Again, in the absence of any other rationale forthcoming, I can only conclude that the OH appears to have measured Sprinter Sacre against previous Tingle Creek winners, rather than against his performance on Saturday.
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I agree the lack of justification is bizarre.

But, if he said that he added x pounds for ease of win, how would you feel about that? (assuming, say, he rated Kumbeshwar 145 - 150)
 
Grasshopper said:
I can't agree, reet. He'd had 11 chase starts prior to the Tingle Creek, and had found his level in the low-140's, imo.
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His ratings suggest differently, Grass.
His RPR's show a steady rise through last season (until his last 2 races), and he ran within 1lb of his previous best on only his 2nd start (proper) this. His t/s figures show similar progression.
 
Just a question so don't bite my head off if it's a silly question.

Could it be the handicapper thought a blind man running for a bus could see that Sprinter won without batting an eyelid and felt he didn't have to say why he did what he did?
 
reet hard said:
His ratings suggest differently, Grass.
His RPR's show a steady rise through last season (until his last 2 races), and he ran within 1lb of his previous best on only his 2nd start (proper) this. His t/s figures show similar progression.
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Maybe so, reet, but his OR's for his last half-dozen races vary between 141 and 144 (give ot take a lb either way).

If it's any help, I think RPR are even more useless than the OH! :D
 
Tanlic said:
Just a question so don't bite my head off if it's a silly question.

Could it be the handicapper thought a blind man running for a bus could see that Sprinter won without batting an eyelid and felt he didn't have to say why he did what he did?
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Every chance, Tanlic. But it still begs the question; why 179, and not 174, 188 or 213??
 
I am reminded of the approach the handicappers took with Frankel at the end of his 3yo season:

Having reviewed Frankel's season, particularly his victories in the Sussex Stakes and the QEII, and considered the treatment the rankings committee had given to other "superstars" such as Sea The Stars and Zenyatta, I submitted a figure of 136 for discussion and it went through unopposed.

Given that both he and Sea The Stars showed very similar levels of form I felt it appropriate that he should be credited with the same mark as the Irish colt.
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It seems to me that, as with Frankel, an eye is being had to the commercial opportunities for British racing when it comes to rating Sprinter Sacre. I think he is probably a monster and he is already the highest rated novice ever. But I agree with those who doubt whether Saturday's race was much of an advance on last season.

I have a general rule that when young horses win by big margins I take a few pounds off their rating rather than pile more on. I do this because once a horse breaks clear of its field additional lengths seem to be more easily gained. The couple of lengths that they can eke out in a battle count for much more than the difference between say ten lengths and twelve.

Mind you, I'm not ruling out the possibility that this horse will never have to eyeball an opponent, but there are better rivals out there than those he met on Saturday, and his performances against those horses will count for more with me than what he did on Saturday.
 
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Grey said:
I am reminded of the approach the handicappers took with Frankel at the end of his 3yo season:



It seems to me that, as with Frankel, an eye is being had to the commercial opportunities for British racing when it comes to rating Sprinter Sacre. I think he is probably a monster and he is already the highest rated novice ever. But I agree with those who doubt whether Saturday's race was much of an advance on last season.

I have a general rule that when young horses win by big margins I take a few pounds off their rating rather than pile more on. I do this because once a horse breaks clear of its field additional lengths seem to be more easily gained. The couple of lengths that they can eke out in a battle count for much more than the difference between say ten lengths and twelve.

Mind you, I'm not ruling out the possibility that this horse will never have to eyeball an opponent, but there are better rivals out there than those he met on Saturday, and his performances against those horses will count for more with me than what he did on Saturday.
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The depressing thing is that even de Bromhead seems to be scared of one horse . At this rate potentially one of the very greatest 2 mile chasers will be facing the worst opposition in a generation .
 
I predict that Sprinter Sacre will meet with a "minor setback", probably mid/late February, and that he is reported as "50/50 to make it" maybe a week before final decs.

Reports will gradually get warmer over the next 2-3 days, with Sprinter Sacre ultimately confirmed an intended runner at final decs; by which stage, the yard will have filled their boots full of the Evens nailed-up on Betfair, and other connections will have been encouraged to take him on.

Job done.
 
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