Apr 16, 2018 -- 2:28PM, Bindaree wrote:
My personal opinion is that there are two main reasons for the situation, a) the prize money for 1st is ridiculously high, it's a handicap after all b) Phil Smith. His compressing the handicap in the past has been a disaster , why give better horses an unfair advantage? He's created a situation whereby horses more or less need to get a rating circa 142 or more to be guaranteed a run, higher some years. He's forced horses that can only win off about 138 to win a race and then get put 5 or 6 lbs for winning. These tend to be older horses with little improvement. They can then get in the race (a lot are then frightened to run because their rating will revert back to it's proper level and so be too low) but because they have a false rating they are getting maybe 5 or 6 lbs less from the better horses than they need to be competitive. What he has allowed is the big wealthy owners to monopolize the race. Others may disagree but I couldn't care less about getting Gold Cup class horses in the race , they already have plenty of races to go for.
good post