mostly, disappointment is around every corner.

​Since Pinatubo caused the great and the good of the racing press to look to the past to make sense of the present, I have come to realise that I know very little about the former wonder horse by the name of Arazi, a two-year-old that achieved the quietly stupid official rating of 130. I wrote a piece a while ago on my thoughts about ratings, ‘Ratings are Bollocks’, and Arazi’s rating rather proves my point.
Arazi was by Blushing Groom, whose sire Red God was a sprinter who if my memory serves me adequately did not train on. Blushing Groom, too, was a horse that didn’t achieve heights prophesies about him. Join the dots for yourself. Although American owned, Arazi was trained in France by Francois Boutin. He won the Robert Papin, the Morny, the de la Salamandre and the Grand Criterium before crossing the Atlantic to win the 1971 Breeders Cup Juvenile with an ease that made Pinatubo and Mum’s Tipple’s most recent victories look hard-fought. He then developed chip fractures in the top joint of both knees and against the wishes of his trainer underwent arthroscopic surgery.
When recovered from the operation he was trained for the Kentucky Derby, winning a small race in France beforehand. He was greeted on arrival in the U.S. with the pomp of a returning hero, being described as ‘mystical and almost mythical’. As in the Breeders Cup, ridden by Steve Cauthen, he made swift progress at halfway in the Derby only to fade out of the picture in what was a very slowly run race.
When the racing press reference Arazi to a man and woman they only ever remind their readers of the Breeders Cup Juvenile. His good record in French two-year-old races is rarely recalled and certainly not his decline as that doubtless brings into focus that stupid rating of 130. Arazi, I am pleased to report, lived a long life, even if he was failure at stud, with Sheikh Mohammed who purchased him as a stallion sending him to all corners of the planet to find him a niche in the market place.
In a previous piece I mimicked the Q & A section of the Sunday edition of the Racing Post, answering the question ‘Give us a horse to Follow’, with the name of Pinatubo, so I am in no way knocking him but we will not get to know his place in the pantheon of great horses or even great two-year-olds, till the careers of the horses he has beaten are quantified in twelve or twenty-four months hence. Although the National Stakes looked on paper a top-quality race time might prove every horse that day to be ordinary. Pinatubo, too, might yet prove to be ‘disappointing’.
I do not know what rating Arazi had after his last race. I suspect it remained closer to 130 than 120 but he was not, ever, in the super league of racehorses and for Pinatubo to be compared to Frankel, even if the great horse is only being judged as a two-year-old and not by what he achieved as an older horse, is in alignment with the saying that pride comes before a fall. Having said that, for Sheikh Mohammed’s sake, I hope he has the champion his devotion to the sport deserves.
I will always stand by my damning criticism of ratings, official or Racing Post. Ratings are only someone’s opinion and are offered up to the public as if they have scientific basis. Enabled, as any racing enthusiast will tell you, has been the best horse in Europe for three-years, yet only in the past few weeks has she achieved a rating that comes close to matching the overriding opinion of her true worth. How can anyone justify a horse that has won only a single Group I being rated better than a horse that has won two Arcs, two classics and in unbeaten for the best part of three seasons?
And how can a two-year-old, the winner of a single Group 1, be rated on a par with a horse of Enable’s record? For that matter why are ‘the best horses in the world’ always middle-distance horses? Why can’t a sprinter or a stayer be the best horse in the world? Or even the best horse ever?
To finish, and to repeat myself once more, in a previous piece I analysed race-by-race the careers of Frankel and Brigadier Gerard only to find their victories and margins of victory to be similar, the distinguishing feature being the Brigadier was beaten on one occasion, while Frankel was remained invincible. Yet by a small fraction I came to the conclusion that Brigadier Gerard was superior to Frankel because he not only won over a greater variety of distance (6-furlongs to 1-mile 4) but in defeating Mill Reef in the 2,000 Guineas he beat a far better horse than Frankel ever beat. Frankel only won over 7-Furlongs, a mile and mile and a quarter. Obviously if tried over longer, given his progeny have an abundance of stamina, he would have remained unbeaten.
One final point, though for the future popularity of flat racing a point worth reiterating, owners should not be congratulated for keeping a horse in training as five-years-olds. Horses are not at their peak until they reach five-years and all the hype, praise, adulation and damn ratings applied to horses retired before they reach full maturity are nothing but pure speculation. For the betterment of the sport some kind of regulation should be initiated that places an embargo on any thoroughbred standing as a stallion until they have reached five-years-of- age, thereby giving owners an incentive to keep their horses in training until its true merit, and soundness, is