Question Of Faith is shown scraping home in a Maiden Juvenile Plate over 1200m in June last year. He has finished unplaced in all five of his handicap starts since (Candiese Lenferna Photography)
Paul Lafferty has expressed concerns about certain aspects of the handicapping system in South Africa.
He said, “If you win early with a two-year-old you get a massive merit rating. Our filly Calling All Angels won first time out and she got a 90 and is now 87. Question of Faith won second time out and was given a 90 and a year later after dropping him down and down (now 72) he still can’t win. So it is best to give your two-year-old an educational run rather than win with it … and that’s not good for racing. What they should do is like they do overseas, only handicap races for winners, not maidens. You win a maiden you should be given a 72. You win again like Tony Peter’s Pistol Pete, then you make it a 90.”
He explained he believed the latter system was how they did it in Australia.
There is an argument for a young three-year-old winning a maiden early in SA and getting a high merit rating. i.e. If a 3yo was receiving only 2kg from a 70 rated 4yo at a time of year when he would have been getting 10kg in a wfa race and he then beat him by one length, he would have to be given two points for the length plus 16 points for the weight for age disadvantage he was at. In that case an argument could be made that the three-year-old earned an 88 merit rating, although a counter argument could possibly be that a four-year-old maiden shouldn’t be rated 70 (depending on the particular horse).
However, the same argument can’t be applied to a Maiden Juvenile Plate, because here all of the runners are of the same age.
In the case of Question Of Faith, he beat a horse called Gorgeous Guy by half-a-length and nine months later the latter is still a maiden.
It seems the reason Question of Faith was given a 90 is because of the old weight for age improvement argument, which is a false argument because a horse with an inherent ability of, for argument’s sake 72, is a 72 whether he or she is two, three or older.
A 72 rated three-year-old running in August over 1600m should be 9kg worse than a 72 rated four-year-old running in the same race … by the end of the season he should be only 1.5kg worse … that is what weight for age improvement is and the racing program caters for it.
It seems there is an obligation to give a young maiden winner a higher merit rating than an older maiden winner. This has never made sense and it only seems to be done in South Africa.
A horse running at Kempton today called Suffrajet won second time out as a juvenile and next time out, now as a three-year-old, she ran third in a Novice Stakes race at Ascot. The latter centre attracts strong horses and in fact the horse that ran second in that Novice race is today rated 108. However, Suffrajet was given only a 79 OR (official rating) on her handicap bow in her fourth career start and even that proved too high because it was only when dropped to a 74 that she won.
Question Of Faith, in the Maiden Juvenile Plate that he won, was one of only three horses in a 12 horse field who had been placed before. It was clearly a weak race – how did he achieve a 90?
Lafferty is also against the big raises meted out for unplaced horses in feature races.
This is a problem area in SA racing, because the obvious solution is for trainers and owners not to put horses in these races unless they know for sure they are up to it. If everybody adheres to that, the level weights three-year-old features and the weight for age features will have very small fields, which is not the best scenario for racing.
However, not handicapping unplaced horses in features is also fraught with problems … for example a horse who places sixth in the Met a short-head behind the fifth-placed horse, could end up unfairly well- in with the latter if they meet again in a handicap.
