Pun intended?
I suppose it depends on who is rating them... I think that they can be overrated because most people are familiar with them which can lead to people expecting too much from them. There was a time when speed figures and pace dynamics were essentially ignored universally until they weren't and the same can happen with any factor and approach. I am not a fan of ratings being taken as gospel and would only consider them in broad terms but they can still serve a function.
I was actually on my way to addressing this as a follow up to your post on Saturday. I would have gotten back sooner but it was suggested by a friend yesterday that I spend the day doing literally anything other than juvenile hurdling stuff...
My approach to compiling ratings has been freshly mined and is still entombed in all manner of crust. Consequently, these ratings should only be taken as unrefined guesswork.
121 Hiconic
120 Longclaw
120 Naizagai
115 Soldier On Parade
114 Global Agreement
114 Jeff Kidder
111 Orchestral Rain
105 Bannister
103 Pink Jazz
102 Calidus Mirabilis
The way I have arrived at these marks is through a combination of;-
- thirty-five pounds between flat and jumps ratings
- overall flat standard based on official ratings or a general measure of merit from collateral form and general improvement or regression
- the degree to which the principal horses maintained or improved on their flat standard based on general fluency
- supplementary pounds based on the working assumption that horses will improve on their debut marks more often than not
- the relationship between the horses in the race and their attributed factors
By this metric and my interpretation of same, the best performance of the season was by Hiconic when she won at Stratford. The runner up Bannister performed to somewhere around the low seventies despite being very inexperienced. A simple reproduction of a 73 rating would give him a mark of 108. He jumped well enough and the form horses came clear of the outsiders but he was quite fresh after a long lay-off and got tired towards the end which puts him down to 105. Pink Jazz in third is a capable of running to the low sixties but somewhat inconsistent. He was keen to begin with but settled quickly and jumped well so put into the context of splitting Bannister and Kings Creek could be given a rating of 103. Alan King's Kings Creek jumped and travelled like a professional so there was no reason to assume that he did not meet his flat rating which would justify a performance mark of 98. These factors along with the improvement in jumping and travelling, the distance and weight she had over her rivals and the manner of her victory would give Hiconic a rating of 121. Next time at Newton Abbot, Hiconic and Pink Jazz reopposed but on this occasion, the latter was drenched in sweat, pulled like a train and made numerous mistakes. They finished the same distance apart but while Hiconic carried a little more weight, she was not travelling as well and had to work hard to beat a stoutly bred racecourse debutant and sixty rated newcomer who played havoc at the start and put in an awful round of jumping. On this, I saw fit to drop Hiconic's performance rating by seven pounds and Pink Jazz's by twelve yet RPR saw Hiconic put up a seven pound improvement and kept Pink Jazz on the same mark which makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Naizagai was a mid-high seventies performer on the flat but he raced with great relish for a yard that is in outstanding form and the front two pulled a long way clear from a French horse who jumped well. The runner up was exposed and lowly rated but was also well backed, jumped well and enjoyed the ground. Here, Naizagai's rating could either be dragged down by the runner up or boosted by the third. Even though a mark of 120 for Naizagai means that the runner up exceeded his flat best by a stone, on distances I would still be putting the French horse on a mark twenty-four pounds lower than her flat potential mark. Mick and Peat Moss were given regressive marks on account of their attempt and failure to match the much faster winner for early pace.
Longclaw had a lofty flat mark and had not ran to it this year but given his trainer and the manner of performance, the rating assumes that he matched his better two-year-old efforts. The runner up improved on his best flat form by half a stone first time out over hurdles but he was on a steep upward curve on the flat in any case and such improvement is not uncommon with his stable. Orchestral Rain is another whose rating took a leap forward but he only had a sole outing on the flat to improve upon and the fourth placed Calidus Mirabillis regressed from his best on the basis of less than fluent jumping and a tired finish but he still broadly matched his contemporary official rating.
The waffling nature of these explanations perhaps demonstrate why I would prefer to use words rather than numbers when evaluating juveniles! Nevertheless, I would be interested to learn more ideas about how such ratings might be compiled - even if they are only used to quantify a horse's ability in general terms.