6 minute read
The world’s best
Simon Rowlands casts his eye o ver the World Best Racehorse Rankings and compares the assessments to his own calculations
THE IDEA THAT RATINGS ARE “just a matter of opinion”, as gets trotted out regularly by those who have never bothered to rate horses themselves, has a limited amount of mileage to it.
The reality is that handicappers have tried-and-tested approaches to assigning figures to performances, and to individual horses, and the scope for disagreement is usually only a couple of pounds either way, not a couple of stones as some would have you imagine.
As a result, any critique of the Longines-backed World’s Best Racehorse Rankings – the annual assessment of the leading horses around the globe by various countries’ official handicappers – may come across as a modern-day equivalent of gauging how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
The latest WBRRs were unveiled towards the end of January, as is usual now behind closed doors, and contained few surprises.
Doubtless, some will argue that Ghaiyyath (Dubawi) should not have been top-rated, on 130, but I am not one of them.
The Godolphin-owned five-year-old won four out of five races in 2020, with the WBRRs identifying his Juddmonte International Stakes win at York as his best effort of all, but also having his Coronation Cup win at Newmarket ahead of any other effort of the year on 127.
My own figures have Ghaiyyath top on 129, courtesy of that emphatic York win over Magical (Galileo) (122 with both me and WBRRs), Lord North (Dubawi) (121 with me and 123 with WBRRs) and a non-staying Kameko (Kitten’s Joy) (121 and 122).
What is a pound or two between friends?!
There is little to quibble about regarding the 126 rating of the Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Authentic (Into Mischief) (I have him on 125), whom the WBRRs have a clear second and therefore the best three-year-old of 2020, nor with the majority of the seven who figure jointly on 125, among them the British-trained trio of Addeybb (Pivotal), Palace Pier (Kingman) and Stradivarius (Sea The Stars).
However, I would take issue with the assessment of the French-trained Persian King (Kingman) on 125.
That figure assumes his Prix du Moulin defeat of Pinatubo (Shamardal) (122 WBRRs, 121 with me) and Circus Maximus (Galileo) (120 both) should be taken at face value when even a cursory inspection of the sectionals show that the fast-finishing runner-up had been significantly disadvantaged.
Persian King is more like a 120-rated horse on his other form – which is what I have him rated – and includes his 2l defeat of Stormy Antarctic (not good enough to make the WBRRs list this year) in a weak Prix d’Ispahan at Chantilly and a third to Sottsass (Siyouni) (123 WBRRs, 125 with me) and In Swoop (122, 124) in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe over a longer distance at ParisLongchamp.
My biggest disagreement with the WBRRs in the opposite direction among the leading horses concerns the US filly Gamine (Into Mischief) (122 WBRRs, 126 with me), who ran a couple of astonishing times when winning the Acorn Stakes (G1) at Belmont and the Test Stakes (G1) at Saratoga by wide margins, even before she accounted for Serengeti Empress by over 6l in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint.
At past WBRRs unveilings, the panel has claimed that they consider times and sectionals in their assessments, but it is crystal clear they do not do this in a consistent and formalised manner.
One performance about which there is more than usual scope for “opinion” is that Derby win by Serpentine (Galileo) at Epsom.
Derby winners are usually quite easy to assess, but what to make of one who got clear mid-race to win by a wide margin, but was beaten twice under contrasting circumstances after? The WBRRs have Serpentine on 120 and I have him on 117, but either or both of us could be quite some way out!
Simon says that Derby winners are usually easy to rate, but last year’s winner Serpentine has proved a difficult horse to assess
One thing that the WBRRs do help to shine light on is the ebb and flow of racing in different jurisdictions, at least as gauged by the ratings of the leading horses.
Seven countries have provided the vast majority of the 115-plus-rated horses over time, and did so for 216 of the 252 (a reduced number, probably in part due to the disruption of COVID-19) in 2020. Their percentage share within that cohort is shown in the table below.
The US has always had the highest percentage of representatives, justifiably so, with Australia and Britain, joined since 2014, by Japan for second, third and fourth spots.
Where the latter was the fourth-best country in the world by such a measure a decade ago it has dropped to seventh, and is in danger of being passed by South Africa.
One final observation is that I suspect those figures for Australia are now a little high. There is a negligible difference between my ratings and the WBRRs for the major racing nations on average, with the exception of Australia, which I have 1.7 lower.
The performances of European and ex- European raiders Down Under in 2020, which included high-level wins for such as Addeybb and Twilight Payment, suggest the ratings there may need to be dropped slightly.
St Mark’s Basilica tops the two-year-olds, but Simon reckons maybe the spot should have gone to Sealiway.
(And isn’t it time, he asks, that juvenile ratings were made across all the major racing nations?)
THE EUROPEAN 2YO CLASSIFICATIONS were unveiled with a bit less fanfare the day after the WBRRs and also contained few surprises.
St Mark’s Basilica (Siyouni) gained top spot on 120 by virtue of his win in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket, and was the seventh successive winner of that race to be awarded that honour. However, that rating makes him the lowest such since Belardo (119) in 2014 and fully eight points behind Pinatubo 12 months earlier.
While the official assessment of the Dewhurst looks justified, it can certainly be argued that Sealiway (Galiway) – the toprated French juvenile on 116 – should be higher than St Mark’s Basilica (I have them on 121 and 120 respectively).
Sealiway’s 8l victory over 111-rated Nando Parrado in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère at Longchamp on Arc Day came in a faster time than six-year-old One Master’s win in the Group 1 Prix de la Forêt later on. Sealiway’s subsequent defeat at the Breeders’ Cup came under very different conditions.
The Breeders’ Cup and juvenile racing in the US remain the elephant in the room where these classifications are concerned.
The best juveniles in the US in 2020 were probably better than the same in Europe – I have Breeders’ Cup winner Declaration Of War colt Fire At Will (122) and Breeders’ Cup beaten favourite Jackie’s Warrior (Maclean’s Music) (125) ahead of St Mark’s Basilica – but, unlike older horses from outside Europe, they have not been rated.
It really should not be beyond the relevant authorities to assess leading two-year-old form in all the major racing nations, and the failure to do so continues to make the Classifications more parochial than they need to be.
The best juvenile in the US, Fire At Will
