Speed Handicappers Food for Thought

As things are a little quiet at the moment on the AW front I thought I would throw something in to the mixer for you guys (or gals)

For those of you out there with an interest in compiling your own speed figures, in most cases your preliminary route will be to copy methods outlined in various publications. When you become more practised you will start to question the validity of some of what you have read. If you have read several authors on the subject you will mix and match their theories based upon your personally held values. During this process you will also realise that most of the decisions you have to make have been asked repeatedly by other nascent speed handicappers and deduce that there is no definitive answer. This is the stage where you use free thinking outside the box or simply conform. The latter being the most common. The most frequent topics are the use of weight, standard times and going allowances. I would like to add the infrequently discuss topic of rating adjustment for beaten horses and what I believe to be a fatal flaw in the conventional method of adjustment.

The most commonly used method is arrived at by dividing 15 by the distance.

5 furlongs 3
6 furlongs 2.5
7 furlongs 2.14
8 furlongs 1.88
9 furlongs 1.67
10 furlongs 1.5
12 furlongs 1.25

Most other methods fall in to the same category as the common denominator is always the length of the race.

So where is the flaw?

Using extremes as these two horses are never likely to meet

Let us suppose a horse is beaten 1 length by a horse we rate 90 in a 5f sprint. We give the horse in question a rating of 87.

Our next horse is beaten 1 length by a horse we rate 90 in a 10f race. We give this horse a rating of 88.5

Ask yourself which horse is travelling the fastest, therefore which horse has to make the least effort to make up the deficit and is this being reflected in your ratings?

The reason the above table is so widely respected is simply due to the fact it falls in line with the excepted lbs per length so we have cross pollination of two methods of handicapping. This has no value in speed handicapping. When adjusting ratings for beaten horses the mathematical relationship lies with the time in which the race was run NOT the distance of the race.