Handicapping in South Africa

If you do away with the merit rating system you will in effect retire 70 percent or more of the horse population and the owners of these horses as they wont be competitive and hence wont earn stakes also this will lead to smaller fields which leads to smaller turnover which ultimately affects the stakes pot ..

Pirates You are 100% correct So many horses leave Cape Town because they are not catered for
and as a result the fields do not fill These horses then win elsewhere

one I'm not sure of - Last Winter - Is he under or overated at 83 -

Bob Brogan wrote: Or a case there are more Dynasty's, Silvano and Captain Al's running elsewhere and KZN are full of Crusades, Over lords and King Bests !

Lots of Dynasty's, Silvano and Captain Al's running in PE in the green and black

pirates wrote: If you do away with the merit rating system you will in effect retire 70 percent or more of the horse population and the owners of these horses as they wont be competitive and hence wont earn stakes also this will lead to smaller fields which leads to smaller turnover which ultimately affects the stakes pot ..

70% :lol: You belong in comedy or Zuma's spin doctoring team he he he

In my opinion, we could lose a large number of slow-moving roadblocks during a race and be better off for it. Smaller more competitive fields should be no problem, unless of course you happen to be a Phumelela employee.

Well at least 70% of runners are not that good - so imo a RF system will definitely have an even more serious impact on the owner ranks I still think a MR system applied without restriction are the best way to keep horses in training longer leading to bigger fields and pools - a win/win ?

merit ratings is the biggest f*ck up

from sporting post

"Each horse has a Merit Rating (MR), an assessment of the ability shown on the track"

example
every time a horse is given a poor ride, the MR drops

just because a jockey can't ride properly how does the horse lose ability ?

if Mr is the assessment of ability

S.A. got a history of prepping . every time its prepping it loses ability ?

Horses do not drop their MR's "every time"

Mac wrote: Horses do not drop their MR's "every time"

But they sure get them raised "every time".

This is one of the problems with this shit system

No, MR's are not raised "every time"


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Mac wrote: No, MR's are not raised "every time"


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When a horse is deemed to have performed above its MR it IS raised every time. The converse is not true.

Similarly a horse can be raised multiple points on a single run. The raises are always far higher than the falls and the single raise can take many "poor" runs to get back to where it started.

I do not get the protection of the MR system. We are in Africa, trying to conform to International ratings. A measure of the confidence that foreign jurisdictions have in the accuracy of our system is shown every time a horse is exported to Dubai. Our official MR is discarded. There can be no clearer indication that this is a failed system. The fact that we can not get it right between provinces should show even a blind man this has become an ego thing among fools who call themselves handicappers. Handicapped = disabled and that is an accurate summation of this flawed system