We hear it at most meetings i.e “This horse has come down in the ratings and must have a good chance if he bounces back to his best.”
The statistics show they should be looking for the opposite i.e. horses who are going up in the ratings.
The more weight carried in handicaps the better the horse’s chances, according to those statistics.
The conclusion that experts have drawn from this year on year outcome is that while ratings increase, a progressive horse’s talent increases more.
British horse racing guru James Willoughby has made sense of the graph which proves that the more weight carried in handicaps the greater the chances of winning.
The graph not only pertains to British racing.
South African racing intellect Jay August has pored through our results and the concluding charts show that the same weight to strike-rate relationship exists in SA racing.
There is the saying lies, dam lies and statistics which refers to the ability to use statistics to mislead.
The weight to strike-rate graph in handicaps provides a classic example.
Those who do not understand racing could be misled into asking the handicapper to give their horse more weight.
When asked why, the reply would be because the statistics shows that the more weight a horse has in a handicap the more chance he or she has of winning.
All racing people know that would be preposterous.
An extra variable has to be factored into the equation to find out the truth about this graph.
The extra variable is called class or talent.
The statistics simply show that talent is a more important factor in finding winners in handicaps than weight for the reason that the talented horses are invariably ahead of the handicapper.
The weight a horse carries is determined by its handicap mark (merit rating).
However, Willoughby says the scale used by the BHA does not describe the distribution of talent.
Willoughby said he had had his own method of proving this for over 20 years, but that was usurped by the methodology of Peter Bebbington and Julius Bonart in 2016, who showed that racing talent is not linear but exponential.
In other words, as official ratings increase, the true talent possessed by the horse owning that handicap mark increases more.
The graph shown below proves that weight carried in handicaps is positively correlated with its chances of winning. In other words an association exists between the two variables that is beyond random chance.
The red line goes up from left to right and begins to flatten out towards the right. This illustrates that higher-weighted horses win handicaps more often than lower-weighted horses, but there are diminishing returns at work. Strike rate tends to level off as it goes beyond 14%.
This information goes against normal thinking in SA which will have it that talented young horses horses are punished too much by the handicapper.
Willoughby’s statements cannot be construed to be accurate to our racing until the statistical graph on South African handicaps is seen.
The weight to strike rate relationship from a South African perspective will be shown next week.
