Racehorse TALK

DD factors such as headwind,tailwind ,crosswind.......rail placements ( vary distance !}........showery  rain etc make this assignment fairly speculative.....

 I think you would have less variables over 1400m if the rail was consistent...which in brisbane racing it may well be

Race-caller David FOWLER is the latest to join the band of voices against the 10-point track rating scale.

He wrote on letsgohorseracing.com.au



Track ratings are a hobby horse of mine, so here we go.

Bouquets to the Randwick track and its staff for presenting such an effective surface after the week's deluge.

Brickbats to those who rated it a heavy eight. Even the first couple of races showed the track was nowhere near heavy. It was a slow 6 to a dead 5 track and the times proved it.

Rating a track is not a perfect science and these graded ratings (i.e slow 6, slow 7 etc etc) are putting more pressure on the track raters and giving more mileage to critics like me.

Drop the numbers and go back to fast, good, dead, slow and heavy for everyone's sake.



Sadly, the circumstances that occurred at Randwick on Saturday perpetuate the notion that there's validity in the 10-point nonsense.  Stewards change the track rating, step-by-step, from HEAVY ( 8 ) down to DEAD (5) - or whatever.  There is absolutely NO evidence that these "ratings" are any more than guesswork.

One doesn't have to be even half-smart to know that on a fine day, the condition of a wet track will be improving.  To suggest it changes a 1-pt rating in 40 minutes is laughable.

The reality is that the track was nowhere near HEAVY to begin the day.

Mr Fowler and others are 100 percent correct. Defining track ratings 1-10 is crazy. I think last week in Sydney we went from 8 to 5...I could be corrected. The old stance of Fast..Good..Slow..dead...Heavy is much easier to manage if betting in early stages of the day...I feel for the track managers currently...

How can the current system be managed in human form ..??..Like how could I be rated 1 to 10...that would be difficult...

I would prefer to have  been known as Fast at times, good many times,,,slow...I think it was wished many times...never had a dead or heavy

The four word rating should go back to be the standard.  

Whether they had a number or not they would have had the wrong rating. They would have still posted a heavy track at the start of the day.

The numbering system hurts nobody and inconveniences even less.

I can't stand the directive to produce dead tracks - so especially in Vic the 1st race is graded a dead although it's obvious it will be upgraded after

There is no directive to produce dead tracks !!!

http://www.racingvictoria.net.au/p_Track_Preparation.aspx

As it is - it's pouring in Melbourne with more to come - no upgrades tomorrow surely 

 The policy of Racing Victoria Limited requires Clubs to provide a racing surface that is:

1.conducive to safe, good and fair racing;
2.of uniform and reliable footing; and
3.Is not likely to injure horses that are in good racing condition.


Tracks should be prepared with sufficient “give”, the aim being to present a track with a rating no firmer than a GOOD 3 for the majority of the meeting.

Limitations

It is recognised that the preparation of a race track is not always capable of precise control, particularly (but not only) having regard to:

Weather conditions leading up to a race day;
The unpredictability of weather conditions on race day, both before and after the scheduled starting time of the first race; and
The particular characteristics of the track and supporting infrastructure (e.g. soil type, soil density, soil moisture, grass cover and quality of irrigation system).
It is not reasonably practical to water race tracks during or immediately prior to the conduct of a race meeting.
For the above reasons, it is recognised and understood that due to the unpredictability of weather conditions, track managers should NOT rely solely on weather forecasts to assist in achieving the desired track condition/rating, and as a result:

It will not always be possible to ensure that a track will be rated as a GOOD 3 for the majority of the meeting, and
Track managers will not be criticised if they have prepared a track in line with the objectives of the policy and due to elements outside of their control the track is rated softer than a GOOD 3 at the time of the first race

With ya' DD. 

Measurement itself is a mathematical science and has an outcome that tries to reflect a real world situation.

The measurements may be exceedingly accurate, especially these days with GPS satellites in the sky. Everyone is amazed at how modern technology can determine where you are standing with an accuracy of a few metres.

Sometimes it is inaccurate, but sufficiently accurate to reflect a real world situation. Some people have problems accepting this, and I think this applies to track ratings. Fast, Good, Dead, Slow and Heavy are meant as a guide to punters, nothing more. Anyone who treats them as a "declaration" and then tries to blame them on their punting losses is drawing a long bow in my humble opinion.

It is hard to come up with a single qualitative value of a track rating when different parts of the track have different characteristics. This should be intuitively obvious. So I think the 5 values they used to use were accurate enough for a general description of the track condition.


At this point we could go off topic and mention that in Climate Science they are using measurements obtained by "ice cores" to quantify the size of the Arctic Ice Shelf some 400,000 years ago - and you can imagine how accurate that is - and comparing them to modern measurements of the Arctic Ice Shelf gained by satellite equipment. They then graph this information and wonder why there is volatility (or noise) in the right hand side of the graph and conclude that the sky is falling.

But we would never go off topic.

The 10 point system versus the old 5 point system has two advantages.

They will never post 'Fast' again on the Eastern seaboard, no matter how hard it is. Instead they post 'Good 2'. They use Good 2 as a proxy for the old fast tracks so everybody doesn't whinge about it being a fast track. If they went back to the old system, we'd still never see a fast track posted but we wouldn't know if it was rock hard because they'd post good anyway. 

The second advantage is knowing that a track is bottomless 'Heavy 10'. IMO there is more difference between a 'Heavy 10' and a 'Heavy 8' than between a good and dead track. 

I couldn't care less if they did away with everything in between.

Hmmm,

Isn't this much ado about nothing?

Even before the numerical rating system, tracks wee routinely referred to as being" on the better/worse side of good/dead/slow".  All the numerical ratings did was to some extent clarify that situation.  I find, as long as those numerical descriptions don't end up in the formguide, that knowing where on the dead scale the track is helps me to look for horses who are Good/Dead horses for a Dead 4, Dead/Slow horses for a Dead 5.  Randwick was a good example, a heavy 8 mean you can give credence to slow track form, a heavy 10 pretty much means look for heavy only.

DD, how would you go in the UK, where track ratings are routinely given out as "Good, Dead in places on the straight course, Fast in places on the round course"?

I think the 1-10 scale has shown the rubbish that the traditional scale perpetuates and the thought that you pretty much cannot change a rating throughout the day.  If I walk into a TAB halfway through the day I want to know as much up to date information as is available.

It was interesting to hear Ray Murrihy on 4TAB indicate they put two of JBC's horses over the track Saturday morning (fence, 6 out from memory) and they got into it and it was heavy at that stage.  I would love to hear JBC's or Reg Fleming's thoughts on the track rating.  There is no evidence ever presented around the accuracy of the previous scale (other than track managers under the pump whinging) although racing dinosaurs continue to attack an attempt to modernise the rating scale.  These are the same people that cannot cope with race name changes to appeal to a changing demographic.

There are a couple of tracks that have had their drainage modenised in Flenington, Randwick and Doomben and us punters are reaping the benefits in less meetings lost and better surfaces.  Perhaps that is where some of the 'windfall' dollars from the NSW court case could also be spent.