Conditions races and top-end handicaps with no upper rating limit both have their place on the calendar, as they represent different kinds of tests. Both provide a framework to establish the best horse on the day, however only the latter attempts to 'equalise' the chances of the participants beforehand. The attraction of seeing top horses run in big-field handicaps, is precisely because the race has been framed to make life notionally more difficult for them. And because multiple measures can be taken, such races usually provide a decent bedrock from which to assess performance.....which isn't always the case in conditions races, which can often be poorly contested (in terms of numbers, at least).
Both types of races can, and should, co-exist comfortably on the calendar, but the programme is heavily loaded in favour of Conditions events, at the expense of valuable handicap opportunites.
Perhaps there's a bit of chicken-and-egg at play too. If top trainers won't run top horses in handicaps, then you have to make the races for them somehow. But if you don't put those races on at all, then they have to run their horses somewhere.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but for my money, I think it's a shame that more top-horses don't run in the better handicaps. In the case of the Chandler (and I aknowledge the sponsor himself engineered the change) it was an unnecessary step too far. The Tingle Creek and Game Spirit provide ample pre-Festival opportunities to see the top 2m chasers take each othere on at levels, and heaving a third identical event into the mix, at the espense of what was always a tremendous race, has had a de-facto detrimental affect on the 2m chase pattern.
The Chandler is now just another top-end 2m chase - accurately described as a poor-man's Tingle Creek earlier in the thread - and holds nothing like the fascination that it did years ago.
