The preamble to the G1 Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park tomorrow (Saturday) has been dominated by talk about the size of the field. Though it is common to see single-digit total runners for the ten-furlong test, just four are due to go to post on Saturday afternoon.
But what a quartet! This is one of the most intriguing top-level races for some time. Three of the four runners are among the highest-rated horses in the world in the TRC Global Rankings, and they carry form into the contest from races outside Britain.
The result will be very interesting for what it says about the relative strength of races in Australia, the Far East, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and France – not to mention the U.S. and Britain itself.
The Eclipse has stood the test of time as the proving ground of the Classic generation against senior foes, though older horses have dominated the race in the decade that TRC has been covering racing, leading by seven wins to three. Older horses have had greater representation, however, and there is no significance to be attached to this record in terms of predicting the result this year.
TRC Computer Race Ratings – which power the rankings you see on the site – has a clear view on who is the best on form entering the contest. But this is far from a unanimous verdict, as the comparison with the sport’s official ratings (provided by the British Horseracing Authority handicappers) here shows:
TRC Computer Race Ratings (TRC) and the sport’s official ratings (BHA) are on the same scale, by our design. It is worth pondering how the difference in arriving at a top-rated horse arrives here.
Firstly, both TRC ratings and BHA ratings have the 3-year-olds St Mark’s Basilica and El Drama rated similarly close to their respective marks. It would be a surprise if the latter won, but the former is an improving horse trained by Aidan O’Brien and he is a serious threat to the older horses because he has had fewer chances to earn a maximum figure.
Current TRC Global Rankings appear before a horse’s name. This reflects the quality of this contest, with three runners in the world’s Top 15 entering the contest. Our rankings reflect the entire array of a horse’s performance ratings – not just its best effort. And, in comparing horses of different ages, we also try to take into account the point made about St Mark’s Basilica above; lightly raced horses have potential improvement built into their rankings, which allows us to include the likes of Essential Quality and Poetic Flare in the world’s Top 15, as shown here:
Stepping outside the pure ratings and rankings framework, the concern over St Mark’s Basilica in the Eclipse is whether he can see out a stiff mile and a quarter as well as two rugged, battled-tested runners in Mishriff and Addeybb, who we know to be strong finishers at this distance.
MISHRIFF has to be our top choice entering the race because his form is super strong.
After beating the sadly retired Charlatan by a length on dirt in the G1 Saudi Cup, he got the better of a close finish with two top-class Japanese runners in the G1 Sheema Classic at Meydan. And both Chrono Genesis (Takarazuka Kinen at Hanshin, Japan) and Loves Only You (G1 QEII Cup at Sha Tin, Hong Kong) have underlined the strength of this form with G1 wins in the Far East since.
TRC Computer Race Ratings differs from all other form-based ratings in horse racing by its nonlinear conversion of winning distances to ratings points.
Our system is parameterised first to take into account the average winning distance under the conditions, so that when margins tend to be small we expand the scale used elsewhere and when margins tend to be extended we compress it. In this way, we hope to avoid the flattering ratings that horses can achieve in deep mud, for instance.
Secondly, no matter what the conditions, we increase the normal award made for low-valued distances behind the winner and shrink the normal award for long distances or those back in the field. All this is tuned by statistical learning to produce the greatest number of winners in future races.
When Mishriff won the Sheema Classic, our ratings for the first three were 122-120-119. The winning distance was a neck, which we translate to 2pts because our research shows this produces more winners when the horses run against others in future. Our rationale is this: The vagaries of pace in a race are such that the winner’s superiority is masked to some extent on average.
Notice also that TRC Computer Race Ratings makes no assumption about the effect of weight. In the Sheema Classic, the placed horses were receiving weight from Mishriff, but we know that it is a better policy to consider all results at Group and Graded levels as tests of class rather than weight-carrying ability. Again, our research encourages this belief.
Wherever you pin the relative ability of Mishriff and Addeybb, though, the latter must be highly respected. This is especially true as he seems likely to get the run of the race at Sandown out front. Jockey Tom Marquand will not want to dictate a slow pace because his mount takes a while to get going, as he showed once again when reversing G1 Ranvet Stakes placings with Verry Elleegant in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Randwick last time.
This latest epic clash was Addeybb’s fourth meeting with the best mare in Australia and took the score to 3-1 in his favour. In short, he has done enough to be ranked above Chris Waller’s superstar runner, as the rankings table above shows (Addeybb is #9 and Verry Elleegant #11), though the pair are close in terms of class.
What a race is in prospect here, and the likelihood of easy ground conditions should provide a level playing field which suits the main runners equally. It doesn’t get much better than this.