An­dre E Bap­tiste

It is said that in the quest for the Holy Grail, the hero must prove him­self wor­thy to be in its pres­ence.As a re­sult, though many have tried, none have been suc­cess­ful. In horse rac­ing in T&T, we have what could be likened to our Holy Grail. It is called the pro­posed rat­ing sys­tem. The in­tro­duc­tion of this new rat­ing-based-hand­i­cap­ping sys­tem has been de­signed to pro­duce com­pet­i­tive rac­ing and there­by reignite flail­ing in­ter­est in the in­dus­try, which is at its low­est ever. The guide­lines to this sys­tem were re­cent­ly pub­lished by the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) and we will ex­am­ine these guide­lines and as­sess the abil­i­ty of the new sys­tem to achieve its ob­jec­tives, de­spite the ob­vi­ous op­po­si­tion from with­in the ARC.

As with the in­tro­duc­tion of any new sys­tem, we have to be­gin by ask­ing the ques­tion as to whether the prob­lem has been ad­e­quate­ly di­ag­nosed. In the ear­ly 1990s, the claim­ing sys­tem was in­tro­duced to pro­duce com­pet­i­tive rac­ing. It was felt that the old class-based-hand­i­cap­ping sys­tem was sub­ject to ma­nip­u­la­tion by own­ers/train­ers who would race their hors­es in a man­ner which re­sult­ed in their de­mo­tion so as to se­cure low­er weights and sub­se­quent­ly land a gam­ble (win a race at a large price like 16-1 or 25-1 and walk away with thou­sands of dol­lars). It was felt that by al­low­ing the own­ers/train­ers to hand­i­cap their own hors­es, more com­pet­i­tive rac­ing would re­sult (com­pet­i­tive be­ing de­fined as hors­es rac­ing each oth­er on their re­spec­tive mer­it). The re­luc­tance of some con­nec­tions to race their hors­es for a Claim re­sult­ed in the dual sys­tem of op­tion­al claim­ing races be­ing de­signed-these races had stan­dard en­try cri­te­ria. Along­side the claim­ing and op­tion­al claim­ing races, there were re­strict­ed hand­i­cap, starter al­lowance, al­lowance, stakes and hand­i­caps.

The lat­ter in­volved sub­jec­tive as­sess­ments of hors­es-al­though the en­try con­di­tions for the var­i­ous hand­i­caps tend­ed to mir­ror op­tion­al claim­ing races to which they could be di­rect­ly cor­re­lat­ed. The re­al­i­ty is that the qual­i­ty of the races was and is poor. The claim­ing sys­tem did not work be­cause there were very few own­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the claim­ing game es­pe­cial­ly with the in­crease in claim­ing costs charged by the Ari­ma Race Club and so an own­er could safe­ly "take the chance" of rac­ing their horse for a claim at a lev­el well be­low its ca­pa­bil­i­ties (as is hap­pen­ing cur­rent­ly). The con­di­tions for the op­tion­al claim­ing and starter al­lowance and hand­i­caps were con­fus­ing and did not noth­ing to pre­vent the abus­es that were present in the old sys­tem. There can be lit­tle ar­gu­ment that the cur­rent sys­tem is not work­ing and in its present form will nev­er work to de­vel­op and save horserac­ing. Where the dis­putes be­gin, is whether the new sys­tem rep­re­sents the Holy Grail.

The guide­line be­gins by iden­ti­fy­ing the var­i­ous coun­tries in which the sys­tem is used-most no­tably the Unit­ed King­dom, many of its ex-colonies, and Eu­ro­pean coun­tries such as France and Ger­many.

One thing all of these coun­tries have in com­mon is their rac­ing sur­face-turf. In con­trast, the US, a coun­try whose rac­ing is based on dirt/ar­ti­fi­cial sur­faces, us­es the sys­tem now be­ing cast aside by the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties. The ob­vi­ous ques­tion there­fore is whether there is po­ten­tial­ly a sur­face bias to the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of this sys­tem? On the sur­face, no pun in­tend­ed, there is no ob­vi­ous rea­son why there should be any im­pli­ca­tions but, as in life, it of­ten pays to dig a lit­tle deep­er. Rac­ing on dirt is much more de­mand­ing than turf where the race ac­tu­al­ly un­folds to­wards the end. On dirt, the ac­tion tends to be more con­sis­tent through­out. As a con­se­quence, dis­tances be­tween fin­ish­ers on the dirt tend to be more ex­ag­ger­at­ed than dis­tances be­tween fin­ish­ers on the turf. If you are, there­fore, go­ing to use mar­gins be­tween fin­ish­ers as a ba­sis for re­vis­ing rat­ings, you could end up over-stat­ing the dif­fer­en­tial on dirt vs turf.

The guide­lines state that a num­ber of fac­tors will be used to re-as­sess an an­i­mal "in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to, pre­vi­ous form, ease of the win, strength of the field, go­ing con­di­tions, the win­ning mar­gin and the sur­face."This reads like some­thing tak­en out of the UK hand­i­cap­ping book be­cause go­ing con­di­tions re­al­ly on­ly af­fect turf. The chal­lenge is that the guide­line does not state ex­act­ly how these fac­tors will be in­ter­pret­ed which ob­vi­ous­ly means that there will re­main a sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty on the part of the "hand­i­cap­pers" in de­cid­ing how to re­vise a horse's rat­ing. Not that it would ever be ad­vis­able to be too pre­cise be­cause the more pre­ci­sion you pro­vide, the greater the risk of ma­nip­u­la­tion. The guide­line iden­ti­fies min­i­mum and max­i­mum amounts for changes (up or down) in the rat­ing of most hors­es (ex­cept for the win­ners of the high­est rat­ed hand­i­caps). While this is good in the­o­ry, one of our chal­lenges is that sev­er­al hors­es will be rac­ing "out of the hand­i­cap" be­cause most of our jock­eys are un­able to catch light weights.

The guide­line states that the over­weight will be fac­tored in­to the re­vised rat­ing of the horse. In fact, "the rat­ing as­sess­ment if over­weight is car­ried is in ad­di­tion to the max­i­mum and min­i­mum in­creas­es in rat­ing points." This could be a recipe for con­fu­sion when the hand­i­cap­pers have to de­cide on rat­ing re­vi­sions and would prob­a­bly mean a whole new crop of math­e­mat­i­cal mind­ed hand­i­cap­pers with an­a­lyt­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty. In all of this, let us care­ful­ly un­der­stand that we have one of the hand­i­cap­pers al­so em­ployed as rac­ing sec­re­tary and there­fore in­volved in the fram­ing of rac­ing, and if this is al­lowed to con­tin­ue, there is a def­i­nite con­flict of in­ter­est. But alas, con­flict of in­ter­est is the or­der of the day in the ARC, be­cause as it stands, one of the lead­ing train­ers in the coun­try John O'Brien who is a mem­ber of the ARC man­age­ment team is re­port­ed­ly against the rat­ings sys­tem, if in­deed this re­port is ac­cu­rate, then clear­ly, there are di­vi­sions in the ARC, and the rat­ings sys­tem will not re­ceive a fair tri­al.

If O'Brien has been wrong­ful­ly ac­cused, he must clear the air.

An­oth­er con­cern has to be the role of the Irish con­sul­tant in all of this and how much will he cost? Im­por­tant ques­tions that have to be ad­dressed as well along­side the fact that he will have to based his opin­ions in a lot of cas­es on what oth­ers tell him, hav­ing not been able to wit­ness the events in T&T. Of course a pro ac­tive ARC can en­sure via com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy that the dai­ly Sat­ur­day rac­ing is sent to him elec­tron­i­cal­ly by Sun­day.

Again, this would pre sup­pose that the ARC is ful­ly sup­port­ing this ini­tia­tive. The more any­one reads of this new sys­tem, the more is seems anal­o­gous to the old grad­ing sys­tem that was re­placed in the 1990s. A to G class­es have been re­placed by Class­es 1 to 6. Own­ers have the op­tion of run­ning their hors­es for a claim in a hand­i­cap but that is un­like­ly to be ap­peal­ing to any ex­cept the own­ers of an­i­mals with is­sues hop­ing to un­load the horse on some­one less in the know. The nu­ances of the fac­tors to be used to re­vise rat­ings will re­sult in some mys­ter­ies when the hand­i­cap­pers put out their new rat­ings on a week­ly ba­sis-no dif­fer­ent to the mys­ter­ies that sur­round­ed move­ments with­in the A to G class­es. The suc­cess or fail­ure of this re­vised sys­tem will boil down to the hu­man fac­tor-the skill, judge­ment and in­tegri­ty of the hand­i­cap­pers and the in­ten­tions of the ad­min­is­tra­tors/own­ers/train­ers. Some­how, I don't think we have any he­roes among this horserac­ing lot.