antons comments abt northern emperor

he says he is a numbers man and couldnt win at the ratings,,,does he not know that their is a cap on ratings and the handicaper has his hands tied...max on a handicap win is 8 and on a plate is 6

Impressive kick

Merit Ratings are only put in place to confuse us all....

Titch Wrote:

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> Merit Ratings are only put in place to confuse us
> all....

Except when they work, which is quite often. They'd work even better without the various guidelines and restrictions, methinks, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Magic - interesting comments. But are you not a supporter of the merit rating system? You form part of the appeal committee whenever there is an appeal by a trainer/owner.

I support it 200% in principle.

Perhaps we should remember that when MR handicapping was introduced, it was a foreign concept that only applied to about 1/10th of the program (hcps made up only 10% of the program, and about 20% of races for winners).

And handicaps at the B and A division level were proper races for proper horses, because we did not just drop horses till they won. When they stopped being competitive they left and made room for new.

IMHO, because the programming of races seems to have come under the influence of advisers who are trainers with moderate horses, most of there program offers a path for either maidens or handicaps for low MR horses.

So what? Well, if you take any non- hcp race and reframe the same field as a handicap, you find that most runners would be better off if it were a handicap, at the expenses of only one or two of the balance who were favoured. The result is that over time, no one nominates in other races except (good) horses with a high MR.

And to think how simple it would be to bring back the variety we had.

O

at the ratings he couldnt beat amanee(coming off a long rest)..winter mischief(brass,shark possibilly overated too) and joshuas crown who didnt run a race..and n emperor clearly improving..