Constitution Hill raised 7lb.

Handicap ratings are a crock of ****
Back in 1999 Henry Cecil ran Killer Instinct in the St James Palace Stakes (G1) and the horse was 4th, never in the race with a chance.
Killer Instinct's rating got a big jump (was it to 111?) because he was slammed by highly rated horses.
Instead of reducing the ratings of the top horses (unforgivable and would upset many important people) they raise the ratings of the duds.

An interesting feature of French flat racing is as far as I can see they do not raise the rating of a beaten horse.
My horse (sold last week) was 2nd, beaten one centimeter.
The winner was raised 5.5 pounds, my horse was unchanged.
When my horse won twice earlier he was raised 9 pounds and 8 pounds.
He was 3rd five times, earning fair money each time, and was once raised two pounds, nothing the other four times.
I think this is a good betting angle in French handicaps, horses that place many times and are not penalised.

....handicappers, politicians...........much of a muchness.

Congrats on your sale and the horse who beat him in that race ran with great credit in a group next time.

Nicky had already stated it was a race he could not win and the purpose was to get a mark qualifying him to run in Heritage Handicaps, his new mark may even be lower than it could have been as he was not given a hard time and certainly would improve fitness wise, perhaps the handicapper has used common sense by ignoring these facts?

As for the French system, how does it make sense not to re-assess a horse who is beaten by a whisker?

CagliariG
As for the French system, how does it make sense not to re-assess a horse who is beaten by a whisker?

As I said above
Handicap ratings are a crock of ****

Horse ratings are diplomacy trying to satisfy (1) people who want their horses to carry small weights (2) people who want their horses highly rated.
I compared 159,200 rated horses against the inbreeding trying to find the connection (I did).
The strange thing to me was there were few horses rated 99 and many horses rated 100. Why? Vanity?
If correctly rated there should be slightly more rated 99 than rated 100 (i.e. closer to the mean).

(Fwiw Nick Mordin proved that below 8-5 horses do not run faster. There is a limit to how fast a horse can run.)

I thought a horse rated 100 was a horse that ran standard time on good going carrying 9 stone 0 pounds.
A horse rated above 100 should beat standard time on good going.
It seems not to be the case.

It seems that a horse rated, say 105, is a horse that beat a horse rated 100 or so, even if the 100 rating had no substance.
It is a house of cards.


Every time Frankel ran his rating increased but as far as I remember he beat standard time twice in 14 races (one of those by about 0.2 seconds).
It could never be the case that Frankel was only a good horse and the three horses he beat almost every race (Excalebration; Farhh; Bullet Train) were moderate? Could it?

When Dancing Brave ran his final rating was 141.
It was said the official handicapper was retiring and they wanted him to go out on a big horse.

It is all about money.
If you can find a weak Group 3 and win it with a filly she will by worth a million plus.
The race might be as weak as a moderate handicap.

Kincsem, clearly all about your own opinion which is fine but without realising that ground described as good per se is not an exact science between all the tracks. Neither are standard times derived from horses with a certain rating, the handicapper give his opinion based on multiple factors but it is still just a personal opinion.

Most can form their own opinion whether to use ORs and what lies behind them without surveying a million horses, fwiw I am a sceptic on handicappers being any more informed than punters who use form analysis, a bit like data and stats.

Does that mean he can run in The Melbourne Cup?

He could acey but seems they have decided against it and 105 handicaps are out of the window with the new rating, NH talking about going on turf and possibly non handicap route.

Fair enough Glen.

Fair enough Glen.

Nicky apparently thought the horse would get a drop in his handicap mark after the race..

Sep 8, 2026 -- 11:17AM, CagliariG wrote:

Nicky had already stated it was a race he could not win and the purpose was to get a mark qualifying him to run in Heritage Handicaps, his new mark may even be lower than it could have been as he was not given a hard time and certainly would improve fitness wise, perhaps the handicapper has used common sense by ignoring these facts?As for the French system, how does it make sense not to re-assess a horse who is beaten by a whisker?

Rubbish. Handicappers are supposed to handicap on what they have just seen, not on what they want to see OR WHAT THEY MIGHT SEE IN THE FUTURE!

As for the 'to get a mark' nonsense, they could have run him in another novice race to get a mark and I very much doubt he would now be 108.

And on top of all that Nicky has now come out and said because of his stupidly high mark he now won't be running in handicaps, so that blows your 'to get a mark' excuse out of the water because the mark he has now got is too high. And that is because, as I said above and before the race in the September Stakes thread, THEY RAN HIM IN THE WRONG RACE!!!

You are a genius like so many on here Coneygree and know better than the trainer. Had you kept up you would know he ran at Kempton as the trainer wanted to know where they stood in the bigger picture and they would learn something they would not have by running in another Novice!! hth

rated 101 its beaten 5 3/4L by a OR 114.. beaten 2 3/4L by a OR 111

that entitles it to be rated 1.05 ish imo..108 hash.

Excelebration and Farrh moderate ?  They won 5 Group Ones between them.  It would have been 11 if Frankel wasn't around.

Frankel "just a good horse" ?  Good horses in any era do not win Group Ones routinely by 5, 6, 7 and even 11 lengths do they ?
You have to be exceptional to do that.

That's why a lot of owners are reluctant to run their horses in G2 and G3 races because you get hammered afterwards if you finish in the same parish as the winner.


Thought it ran well until the button was pushed but I suppose a 164 day break is going to leave some sort of mark.

Yes I'm not convinced at all that the two Kempton efforts matched Southwell. That was a real turn of foot, backed up by the clock. Who knows if Southwell is as good as it's going to get. I'm pretty sure he is capable of doing better, but the indications are that he wasn't felt to need to race on Saturday. However that's exactly how it looked.

it won 2 micky mouse novices on the snaf..big step up to a gr3.

He left Square Necker for dust and he is a horse not far off 100. Yes there was a lot of old boats in the Southwell race, making up the numbers, but that line of form, and the time suggests it wasn't a micky mouse performance. With OM barely nudging him out. Technically, as in rating wise people could make Saturday's run superior. Not for me it wasn't.

DixieDean
Excelebration and Farrh moderate ?  They won 5 Group Ones between them.  It would have been 11 if Frankel wasn't around.

Frankel "just a good horse" ?  Good horses in any era do not win Group Ones routinely by 5, 6, 7 and even 11 lengths do they ?
You have to be exceptional to do that.

Frankel did not run good times and he beat the same horses in most of his races.

By chance I looked at who Excelebration beat and the first race I looked at was the Gladness Stakes (G3) at The Curragh.
In that race Excelebration beat Criosultan.
Then Croisultan ran 4th/4; 10th/10; 10th/11; was then sold for 15,000 pounds, the ran for his new trainer unplaced; unplaced; 8th/8; unplaced; unplaced; unplaced; unplaced.

Excelebration beat Cityscape twice in Group 1s (he won three).
Cityscape was a Group 3 horse who won a Group 1 in Meydan with the dodgy 2/1 fav Ambitious Dragon in 7th (I never heard of him and that fav never won again in 5 races)

Farhh won his last two races (G1s) and retired to stud - the placed opposition (111, 110, 108) in the first, and then a neck ahead of Cirrus des Aigles.
His other wins were a maiden and two handicaps.

the time suggests it wasn't a micky mouse performance

i said the race was micky mouse yfdsc..not its performance.

The deadwood that took part is therefore irrelevant. He beat a progressive 4yo virtually 10 lengths only nudged out, and that 4yo is now rated 97. I personally feel that was a much stronger performance than Saturday, but the handicapper only rates on what has happened. He obviously raced much higher rated horses on Saturday, hence the rating hike. But for me, Southwell was a superior run. The open question is will that ever be replicated. Clearly, the next step is turf and well away from Kempton.

kincsem - you have a different take to that of Timeform, the RP, the BHA Handicapper and the majority of racing experts .

HRAC himself, a man not prone to hyperbole, said he had never seen a better racehorse.

Do you not think Frankel could have put up better times in just about every one of his races ? How often was he all out ?

So he often came up against the same horses, who'd a thought it? IF you are a Group performer you will regularly come up against horses you have already raced against.

There's only so many top level races at each distance each year. Any superstar of the past could have holes picked in their form if you look hard enough. Sometimes you just have to believe the evidence of your own eyes rather than stats.

You can only beat the opposition you are up against. In virtually every one of those races Frankel mullered the opposition.

Farhh was a very good horse - only touched off in the Eclipse & Moulin as well as his two Group 1 victories. He went straight to Group 1 from handicaps, not many can do that (Halling being a notable exception ). Excelebration was a top horse as well, he won his Group 1's very comfortably .

His times in his Guineas, Queen Anne and Juddmonte were very fast.