Two weeks of revisions in one this time, and that was deliberate. We held last Tuesday's edition back so that our Ebor coverage had the room it deserved. Run the two together and one simply buries the other: the handicap marks get lost behind the festival, or the festival analysis gets crowded out by a list of numbers, and neither ends up being read properly. So each got its own space.
Nothing was lost by waiting, either. Last Tuesday fell before the festival had even started, so there were no York runs to report on then anyway. Every one of them is in this piece instead, which is why it is a bumper edition. This is our Handicap Analysis, picking up from the Shergar Cup edition, where we go through the new official marks alongside our own ratings.
Why a handicap mark on its own is worth nothing
Plenty of places will tell you a horse has been rated 112 this week. So what? On its own that number is noise. It has no reference point, it tells you nothing about whether the horse is well treated, and it does not tell you a single thing about what the horse can now go and do.
Take the most obvious case. Publishing a horse's new handicap mark when its next race is a Group 1 is completely pointless, because in a Group race the mark plays no part whatsoever. The weights are set by the conditions of the race, by age and by sex. Nobody carries an extra pound because a handicapper moved a number last Tuesday. You could publish that horse's mark every week of the season and it would never once matter.
A mark only means something when you put it next to something else: the mark the horse has won off before, the races it now gets into or is shut out of, and whether the run that earned it was a true reflection of the horse. That is the whole job, and this fortnight gives us as clean an example of it as we could ask for.
Hopewell Rock: second in the Ebor, and now 109
Three weeks ago Hopewell Rock won the Summer Handicap at Goodwood and the handicapper put him up 5lb to 106. Published on its own, that number would have told you nothing.
What it actually meant was this: 106 locked him out of the 0-105 handicaps that had been his bread and butter. So we wrote that the rise forced a bolder answer, and named it: the Ebor itself, where 106 is right in the range that gets a run.
He went to the Ebor off 105, was sent off at 13/2, and finished second of twenty two. He is now rated 109. That is what the number was worth, and the only way to see it was to read the mark against the racing programme rather than read it on its own.
This fortnight's movers at a glance
- Hopewell Rock: raised 3lb, 106 to 109, second in the Ebor.
- Small Fry: raised 7lb, 96 to 103, after winning the Stayers at York.
- Addison Grey: raised 4lb, 93 to 97, after winning at Newbury.
- Supreme King: raised 4lb, 78 to 82, after winning at Salisbury.
- Mithaaly: raised 4lb, 82 to 86, after winning at Windsor.
- Loriko: still 125 over hurdles, with a rise to come, after winning at Market Rasen.
- Toca Madera: dropped 1lb, 96 to 95, third of twenty one at York.
- Castle Stuart: dropped 1lb, 90 to 89, fifth in the Finale at York.
- Regal Envoy: dropped 2lb, 91 to 89.
- Andesite: dropped 2lb, 82 to 80.
- Frankies Dream: dropped 3lb, 80 to 77.
- Stooked: dropped 3lb, 78 to 75, on the first revision after her opening mark.
- Shimmering Sun: dropped 1lb, 95 to 94, after the Lowther.
- Likealot: dropped 1lb, 103 to 102, without running.
- Lion's House: dropped 1lb, 68 to 67.
Those are the numbers, and they are a matter of public record. What they are worth, and where each horse goes next, is the part below for Premium and Pro members.