has the handicapper now caught up with HENRY HIGGINS ?

Jack Dash, I appreciate your feedback.

I firmly believe that the handicapper has been kind to HH of late.
His win on the 11 Jun was his 4th win in his last 5 starts on SAND. he was 2nd in the other start.

For that win on 11 Jun he was given a misely 3 pts. penalty ! only 3 - why ?

he then proceeded to HACK IN by about 6 L, with the jockey looking left & right for company - of course there was NONE.

only NOW has the handicapper given HH the full clout they can give by 8 pts up, but in my eyes far toooo late.

Jack it appears we agree to disagree.so be it.

Would like to contribute something about these 2 excellent sand performers and also other matters relative to Vaal Sand…maybe on another spread and hopefully before the next VS meeting

A speed rating perspective on these excellent Vaal Sand performers.

When Silver Specialist beat Henry Higgins by 3.75 lengths over the Vaal Sand 2000m on 20th Sept’12 it was a key race for these horses. SS hit his peak in a gradual rise to prominence, whilst HH gave an indication of his ability on the sand in what turned out to be a very ‘fast track’ rise to fame.

Whilst a correlation between the ‘handicappers’ merit ratings and these speed ratings has not been applied before, the consistency of these two sand performers facilitates a ‘rule-of-thumb’ comparison through a ‘line of best fit’ application. In this case (at these distances), the most appropriate variance between the MR and SR is 27 points.

When applying this variation to the most significant results (on spreadsheet) it looks as though SS was ‘fairly/reasonably’ treated within the confines of the handicappers merit rating parameters whilst HH was ‘leniently’ treated, starting with that race on the 20th September and generally throughout his incredible sand racing to date.

Has the handicapper got HH’s ‘number’ now…I think so!

However, I was wrong prior to his 9th May win, when I thought he may be going 'off', and may well be wrong again!
Either way, great horses, interesting exercise for me and maybe some insights for future developments/analysis.