There is no doubt the Japanese superstar was the best horse seen on the planet in 2023 – but where does his form entitle him to rank among modern greats? Don’t miss our TRC Ratings Review of 2023
When the next edition of the Thoroughbred Racing Commentary Global Rankings are published on Tuesday [Jan 23], Japanese superstar Equinox will sit at the top for a 44th consecutive week.
This is the second-longest streak since our rankings began in 2014 – the Australian great Winx’s 176 weeks will probably never be beaten (and certainly not by Equinox, now retired to Shadai Stallion Station and destined to exit the charts at the automatic 118-day cut-off point following his most recent outing).
Be that as it may, there is no doubt that Equinox was the best horse seen on the planet in 2023. It is less obvious where his form entitles him to rank among modern greats like Frankel and Winx.
Table 1 is our attempt to answer this question using TRC Computer Race Ratings – the fully automated, pan-global measure of racehorse achievement which covers all Group and Graded racing since 2011.
Table 1: TRC top-ranked horses (since 2011)
The TRC rating system evaluates the single-race merit of all qualifying performances objectively, before the portfolio of a horse’s ratings are combined to form a ranking which drives the classifications of horses, sires, jockeys, owners and trainers updated on the site each week. The current horse ranking can be found here, for example.
Like the rankings, the ratings use machine learning to evaluate and improve themselves constantly using future results. There is no bias here against surface or continent, sprint or marathon – except that which the computer thinks is justified by the data.
Equinox slots in fourth behind Frankel, Flightline and Winx in terms of accomplishment. Frankel is a nonpareil among modern horses because of the breadth and depth of his 14-race career, which started in 2010, the year before TRC began collating horse rankings. However, our data encompasses Frankel’s three-year-old career onwards, which means 10 of his 12 Group-race victories – more than enough for him to come out on top overall.
Frankel’s best two performances on TRC figures were his seven-length defeat of the top-class Farhh in the G1 Juddmonte International of 2012, and his 11-length demolition of the G1 Queen Anne field at the same season’s Royal Ascot. Frankel’s form was constantly franked by the horses he defeated winning G1 races when he was not around.
For his part, Equinox’s best performance of TRC 135 was seven points less than Frankel at his best, but the now-retired Japanese horse might have done even better, if kept in training.
Nobody can say that the three horses, including Frankel, who were rated above him were better than him; neither, for that matter, were the next three in the list, Baaeed, American Pharoah and Black Caviar, definitively worse. All we can say is that they scored higher on our system.
What is satisfying, though not deliberate, is that the top seven horses mentioned above incorporate two runners trained in Great Britain, two in the US, two in the Australia and one in Japan; they excelled on both turf and dirt, and were specialised over both short and long distances.
Nothing better exemplifies the notion that great horses are found across the globe and on all surfaces and distances. Surely the fully appreciate the sport of Thoroughbred racing, it is necessary to embrace this reality.
Equinox was not the only horse to breach the 130 barrier in 2023. Ace Impact, winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, reached TRC 131 in the autumn spectacular at Longchamp, entitling him to the crown of European champion.
As Table 2 shows, there were a ton of other top-class performances around the world also, with Hong Kong ace Golden Sixty, the repeat Breeders’ Cup winners Elite Power and Cody’s Wish joining Ace Impact’s rival Big Rock by achieving a peak figure of 127 on the TRC ratings scale.
Table 2: TRC Top 100-ranked horses for 2023
The Top 100 performances clearly show the march of Japanese racehorses which must surely now be apparent to everyone taking an interest, but whose veracity as expressed clearly by TRC Global Rankings was questioned by some experts even until recently.
The US still leads the way with 24 horses in the Top 100, but Japan will soon take over, if current trends persist. There are 22 Japanese-trained horses in the list – the same number as in Britain, which is moving in the opposite direction numbers-wise.
The Hundred is made up by 10 Australian-trained horses, eight from France, seven from Ireland, five from Hong Kong – a vintage year for the region – and one each from Germany and New Zealand.
The downward trend in the quality of British races, according to our numbers, is most clearly exemplified by Juddmonte International winner Mostahdaf. This John Gosden-trained horse is likely to rate highly when the consolidated list of single-performance ratings is revealed by the IFHA later this week at their Longines-sponsored ceremony in London – but the computer has him well lower down our own classifications with a peak TRC figure of 124 from his career which yielded six wins from 13 tries.
Ratings should explain defeats as well as wins, and attaching big numbers to his wins at York and in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot probably flatters him somewhat.
It will be a while until the best European horses of 2024 hit home soil, but the campaign is already in full swing globally and you can follow the numbers which explain it best every week right here.
View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses / jockeys / trainers / sires
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