handicaps: IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE WAY?

​If watching a horse race with someone with no understanding of the nuances of the sport that casual viewer will emit astonishment and cries of ‘that isn’t fair’ when you explain that the winner of the race was receiving weight from the second, which was the main factor in the result and that the beaten horse is in fact a much better horse than one that beat it. No amount of explaining that handicapping horses in the same race with weights that reflect their known ability is a device for giving every horse a theoretical chance of winning will weaken your critic’s belief that somehow some form of official ignorance or mild cruelty is at play.
They used to handicap athletes – I think the foot race they stage annually at Musselburgh races on New Year’s Day is handicapped by distance, the faster sprinters starting in arrear of the slower athletes – though a similar system would be almost impossible to implement in horse racing due to technical reasons aligned to the inability of horses to comply with a procedure that would require multiple starting positions.
So, if one is to accept that the handicapping system is the best, some would say only, method of giving every horse a theoretical chance in any given horse race, is there a way to adapt the handicap to reflect the sort of criticism the O’Leary brothers have levelled at the handicapper of this year’s Grand National?
I rarely find myself on the side of the O’Leary brothers in their wining and moaning about whatever grievance they perceive is levelled directly at them. But with Tiger Roll and his allotted weight for the Grand National I thought they had a valid point. Tiger Roll’s official rating had him a horse of similar ability to Bristol de Mai and Santini, two horses with sound form in Grade 1 races. Yet Tiger Roll has not a shred of form to suggest he was or could be a Grade 1 horse, as I believe was proven at Aintree last week. In a Cross-Country chase no one could argue if Tiger Roll was asked to bear 12-st on his back; he is a force to be reckoned with around the Cheltenham Cross-Country course. But that does not make him a Gold Cup contender and to my mind he should have been receiving at least 10Ib in the weights from horses with Grade 1 form to have had a fair chance in the Grand National.
Tiger Roll is only relevant to the point I am labouring to make, or at least to the idea I put forward for debate, because he is far from alone in being allotted weight in handicaps that make it near-impossible for them to win another race due to bits and pieces of form they showed in the distant past, and all because the handicapper is reluctant to reduce their rating in case by some miracle they rise from the ashes and return to run to that level again.
‘In the grip of the handicapper’ is often heard by trainers explaining why a horse they train cannot win a race. Or ‘burdened by their consistency’ is another term for the same effect. The handicapper is culpable of souring some horses, and worst of all it is the honest horse that tries its guts out every race that is spoiled by the handicapper’s blind adherence to ratings.
To give but one example, an example that doesn’t exactly prove my point as he ran such a blinding race, though if you forget Balko des Flos’ epic run in the Grand National I am bang on the money. He had shown no worthwhile form for the best part of three seasons, not since he won the Ryanair under a blinding ride by Davy Russell. The point is, de Bromhead was forced (forced might be too strong a description) to run him in the Grand National as in every other handicap he was rated on his form in the distant past not on the form he was showing this or last season. If he were not bought with a Grand National entry, he would only have made half of the 100,000 he made at auction prior to Aintree. His 100/1 starting price told you everything you needed to know about his chance in the race given his known form.
In a previous blog an idea surfaced from the shallow depths of my intellect that caught me by surprise, and on immediate reflection I thought not worth further consideration. Yet I think it might be, even with its one major flaw.
Handicaps are here to stay; they are an integral part of racing and I have neither criticism of them or the handicappers who frame such races. My idea of ‘median handicaps’ are not meant as a replacement for the known handicap but as an addition to the type of race on offer to trainers and in addition to my belief that horses should only have their rating reassessed or adjusted after three races or after a period of seven-weeks.
In ‘Median Handicaps’ a horse would be given a weight that reflects its form during it previous three races, though I am prepared to concede that five or six races might be more workable due to the possibility, and here is the major flaw in this concept, of connections ‘pulling’ their horse over a period of time to get it ‘well-in’ for one of my median handicaps. An owner is less likely to want his or her horse ‘pulled’ five or six times than two or three. If this new type of handicap were to be established, to return to Balko des Flos for a moment, he would be assessed not by his overall form but by his latest starts, which I would argue better reflects his current ability. 
I am not convinced by the argument that trainers would ‘pull’ horses to any greater degree, if indeed it happens at all, to get a lower weight in a median handicap. In fact, I accept as completely understandable if a trainer tried to get the rating of an ageing and greatly loved horse down to a winnable mark. In actuality, the advent of median handicaps would perhaps lessen the necessity for connections to try to hoodwink the handicapper.
No doubt the concept will have its critics – when handicaps were first proposed I suspect they were considered by many to be ‘the end of horse racing as we have come to know and love it – handicappers will think only of themselves and the heavier workload it might bring to bear and tipsters and professional pundits might think it the thin end of a wedge that might lead to all handicaps following the same pattern. 
I simply put forward the concept of ‘median handicaps’, if indeed that is the correct term to describe it, as I dislike seeing old and comparatively young horses toiling in races not due to a lack of effort but through being allotted weight that no longer reflects their ability. Racehorses should not be burdened throughout their lives due to one good run twenty or so races before. I believe in fairness, both to the human and the horse and at present there are horses, along with their connections, that are being treated disgracefully unfairly.