Racehorse TALK

That can't be right or Dealer's Principal would be rated higher, you can't weight a horse on one career high rating, he could get that in a Group 2 and another could win a string of group Ones over a couple of years and be in career high form when the other is a 15 year old who rated high 10 years ago, just can't be on one "best ever" performance and that stays the same for the rest of it's career! there must be some discretion

Do you know what rating Dealer Principal earn't for his Rosehil Guineas win ?

He went into that race with a rating of about 75

He now has a rating of 103.

I am pretty sure they are based on a last start performance, with obvious smoothing out so horses don't jump up too much for one big performance, of drop too far for a couple of poor one's etc.

Danewin, you are confusing a handicap with a set weights and penalties race.  Under the latter, your points would be valid, under the latter, none of your points are at all valid.  The handicapper rates the horses performances based on the quality of the horses it raced against.  Just because horse A won a weak group 1 doesn't mean it was a better performance than horse B which ran fourth in a strong group 2.  As an example, what do you think is a better performance, running fourth in the Feehan or winning the Toorak with 51kg?

Authorised a lot of that increase would be due to WFA improvement

WFA improvement would not be much more than about 8-10 lbs.

I reckon his rating would have come down about 7 or 8 lbs since his Guineas victory.

I don't think ratings take into account WFA do they?  That is, if you don't race as an Autumn 3yo, when you return at 4 your rating doesn't suddenly shoot up, you just don't get the allowance when the weights are released.

To be quite truthful with you I haven't got a clue about the ratings, I was just using a little common sense and summising as to how they would arrive at that figure, to be quite truthful I don't care that much as it is what it is,
If you think something is badly weighted, then conversely it stands to reason that something must be well weighted, right?? make money out of it, back the one that is in light?? Like complaining about leader biased tracks, while others complained and backed back markers I backed leaders! who was happier?? don't complain when something is wrong  if there is an opportunity to take advantage of the situation!

Their ratings are not their best performance, but more likely to be an averaging out of all of their ratings, to put it roughly I think.

A horse that keeps racing well, will keep increasing in ratings, even if his best rating was his first for the prep, and the same as when they are racing terrible, they will slowly creep down the rating scale, and down in weight.

That is the way it has been in Australia for 200 years, only instead of saying they are going up and down in the weights they are saying up and down in the ratings, which equates to the same thing!!
I don't know of any horse who has noticed that he is carrying ratings instead of weight!!
I think if you use the word "ratings" it makes you feel a lot more up to date and professional, You don't have tips or selections any more you have "ratings" that makes your selections go a lot faster than if they are just tips?

I know what he asked but to say it's ratings instead of weight it begs the same question, how do you work out the ratings/weight, it didn't give him any idea of how they work out the weight/ratings, I just tried to explain how each horse queried would get the weight/ratings that they had which was the crux of the question,
I didn't infer you were in any way wrong, you explained where anyone who already had a grasp of the handicappers thinking would understand, I took the view that it was asked by a novice and tried to explain why I thought the weights were allotted accordingly
I really don't care that much, the weights are the weights, people have been complaining about the handicapper since Adam wore short pants and on every occassion the handicapper has been proven correct, they usually do their homework

There is a difference between ratings and weights, whereas before a handicapper would be given a field of horses and he would give top weight in his opinion to the best horse and weight the others to him but now ratings are determined in part by an outside source  and the handicapper has to give a predetermined weight to that horses rating so really the handicapper has no say in it.

whether it's the "handicapper" or an "outside" source it still comes down to the same thing, you are talking semantics, the reason the horse gets the weight it is allotted is it's racetrack performances and the period between peak runs and recent form etc., it is someones opinion and assessment of that form, whether it is a single person or a committee is irrelevant,
I remember asking my son in law how a camera works?? I meant how do you get it to take a photo, what button do I press is all I wanted to Know!! he commenced telling me how the camera actually worked, all the inside information, enough to enable me to build my own camera if I wanted, it was all greek to me!!

 

Backing MJ today but will more than likely be on Rothesay in every thing he contests thereafter.  Just a nice blackbooker flash home for 2nd type run will do today 

Sounds good to me Elvis so long as the mighty mare holds on!