How the Rankings evolved – and who were the top points scorers on the way

John Moore: the Hong Kong champion trainer has fewer top-level prizes to aim at than if he were training in the U.S., but the mathematics behind the rankings recognise his influence in the sport. Photo: Frank Sorge/Racingfotos.com

The evolution of the TRC Global Rankings began on January 5, 2014. Since then we have produced and archived weekly rankings internally, providing us with a rich set of data for tracing the career trajectory of the world’s best jockeys, owners, trainers and sires over the last three years.

Right off the bat, it is important to state what the TRC Global Rankings do and do not imply. The points score at any one time is both an index of past performance and a projection of future success.

The underlying principle here is that of minimising future ranking violations – a mathematical term for trying to predict winners!

The points score drives the rankings we produce each week, which determines the optimal ranking that is likely to result in the fewest instances of lower-ranked competitors defeating higher-ranked ones in races over the next week (i.e. before the next set of TRC Global Rankings are published).

This is what makes TRC Global Rankings unique. They are testable and, indeed, test themselves and continually adapt to new results using machine-learning techniques.

The motivation of TRC Global Rankings is therefore NOT an exercise in playing with numbers. And it is NOT a subjective or biased arrangement of world leaders according to our prior beliefs. The numbers have been battle-tested millions and millions of times since our research began back in 2014.

If you have ever heard people say of rankings “How can individuals in different situations across the world possibly be compared?”, we believe we know the answer. TRC Global Rankings use robust mathematics and connect jockeys, owners, trainers and sires by common opponents, so that an order of merit emerges.

The TRC Global Rankings don’t measure the aggregate of success. Group races in some countries are better than others; they are rarer than one another; some are contested by horses within the country, others by a wider diaspora. All this is taken into account.  

To mark the start of the publication of TRC Global Rankings, here is a look at the competitors in each category who have produced the highest points totals since we began the project in January 2014. This should provide users with a framework of expectation in the forthcoming weeks.

JOCKEYS

NAME

MODAL COUNTRY

HIGH

HIGH DATE

LOW

LOW DATE

CURRENT

Ryan Moore

GB

1087

9 Oct 2016

1005

23 Mar 2014

1087

Joseph O’Brien**

Ireland

1072

5 Oct 2014

970

2 Oct 1016

970

Nash Rawiller

Australia

1061

5 Jan 2014

921

25 Sep 2016

922

John Velazquez

USA

1054

5 Jan 2014

994

14 Aug 2016

1000

Christophe Soumillon

France

1054

13 July 2014

1018

2 Mar 2014

1038

Frankie Dettori

GB

1051

9 Oct 2016

960

12 Apr 2015

1051

Hugh Bowman

Australia

1049

9 Oct 2016

990

9 Feb 2014

1049

Mike E Smith

USA

1039

5 Oct 2014

991

31 Jul 2016

994

Yasunari Iwata

Japan

1038

6 Sept 2015

968

2 Oct 2016

968

Javier Castellano

USA

1034

13 Sep 2015

1008

26 Apr 2015

1033

** inactive

Ryan Moore is often referred to as “the best jockey in the world” and many experienced judges concur. Let’s leave aside the word “best” for a moment because this is a highly subjective reference.

“Best” should mean that a rider makes the biggest difference to a horse at the margin, as would be defined in economics. To properly examine this conjecture requires control of the quality of Moore’s mounts in global Group races, but nobody is doing this. And TRC Global Rankings makes no implicit claim that Moore is the best in ranking him our current global #1.

Instead, we consider him the most successful currently, and indeed since our numbers began back in 2014. His partnership with trainer Aidan O’Brien, riding many horses owned by the CoolmorePartners and sired by Galileo give him a huge advantage, but the relationship is a four-way symbiosis.

Importantly, TRC Global Rankings are comparable across categories, however, and, for what it is worth, we consider Coolmore Partners are the most important link in the chain. John Magnier is one of the greatest stallion men of all time, and the racing and breeding organisation he has masterminded with others is the world leader.

But, make no mistake, Moore’s presence in the saddle is a big factor too.

Until his retirement, O’Brien’s son Joseph also enjoyed the No. 1 seat at Ballydoyle and put together a great career, which should be evaluated free of any charge of nepotism. That Joseph’s highest points score of 1072 (from October 2014) is less than Moore’s peak score indicates that he didn’t win major races – and defeat his contemporaries – with quite the same regularity of his predecessor, but he was also our #1 rider at the time.

 

OWNERS

NAME

MODAL COUNTRY

HIGH

HIGH DATE

LOW

LOW DATE

CURRENT

Coolmore Partners

Ireland

1107

9 Oct 2016

1054

26 Apr 2015

1107

Juddmonte Farms

GB

1090

9 Nov 2014

1032

17 Jul 2016

1046

Godolphin

Australia

1083

30 Mar 2014

1055

8 Feb 2015

1081

Al Shaqab Racing

France

1069

2 Oct 2016

1007

23 Feb 2014

1068

Sunday Racing Co.

Japan

1065

4 May 2014

1011

2 Oct 2016

1011

Hamdan Al Maktoum

GB

1056

11 Sep 2016

979

23 Mar 2014

1055

Qatar Racing

GB

1036

20 Sep 2015

996

14 Aug 2016

1004

HH Aga Khan

France

1034

4 Oct 2015

1005

22 Mar 2015

1029

U Carrot Farm

Japan

1033

26 Jun 2016

998

23 Feb 2014

1028

Niarchos Family

France

1019

2 Nov 2014

987

19 Jun 2016

991

As mentioned in above, Coolmore Partners are the dominant force in global horse racing, but there are times in the past when we have temporarily had Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation ranked #1. At present, Coolmore is out on its own at the head of affairs, thanks to a magical season in Europe by runners trained by O’Brien, ridden by Moore and sired by Galileo – all currently #1 in their respective categories.

But it should be clear that nationality is no barrier to a high points score and a #1 ranking wherever you operate. And that brings us to the concept of a competitor’s Modal Country – how we classify the centre of a competitor’s global influence.

Jockeys can ride all over the world, trainers can have satellite barns, sires can shuttle and owners can have pan-global reach; it all gets a bit confusing when trying to isolate one national identity. So, TRC Global Rankings simply use the most common (modal) country where a jockey, owner, trainer or sire has runners. This can sometimes result in an unusual classification, but so long as the definition is remembered, there should be no confusion.

TRAINERS

NAME

MODAL COUNTRY

HIGH

HIGH DATE

LOW

LOW DATE

CURRENT

Aidan O’Brien

Ireland

1071

9 Oct 2016

1011

26 Apr 2015

1071

Todd Pletcher

USA

1050

5 Jan 2014

1015

14 Aug 2016

1017

Chris Waller

Australia

1050

2 Nov 2014

1022

14 Aug 2016

1028

John Gosden

GB

1039

25 Oct 2015

993

6 Apr 2014

1023

Bob Baffert

USA

1031

19 Jan 2014

1001

19 Jun 2016

1018

Saeed bin Suroor

GB

1031

5 Oct 2014

980

21 Aug 2016

992

Chad Brown

USA

1027

9 Oct 2016

985

23 Feb 2014

1027

Andre Fabre

France

1023

11 Oct 2015

993

24 Apr 2016

1005

Gai Waterhouse

Australia

1018

27 Apr 2014

959

18 Sep 2016

966

John Moore

H Kong

1013

31 May 2015

977

23 Mar 2014

983


Some of the great trainers of a racehorse are listed in the above table, with disparate geographical locations, underlining the absence of any bias in TRC Global Rankings.

Once again, this is not the way we have drawn it up, for the algorithm is in control and seeks to identify the most likely winners of global Group and Graded races, not to maximise its international popularity.

John Moore is a very worthy inclusion because, for our money, the Hong Kong trainer is a superb operator. His presence shows off the fact that TRC Global Rankings aren’t just an aggregation of wins because Group races are not all equally common.

Moore has fewer top-level prizes to aim at than if he were training in the U.S., but the mathematics recognise his influence in the sport due to the connections with horses who ship to Hong Kong and their connections with other horses across the planet.

The same techniques are used in many other fields of machine learning nowadays, such as the optimisation of search engines.  

SIRES    

NAME

MODAL COUNTRY

HIGH

HIGH DATE

LOW

LOW DATE

CURRENT

Dubawi

GB

1065

27 Sep 2015

1026

2 Mar 2014

1045

Galileo

GB

1064

9 Oct 2016

1007

26 Apr 2014

1064

Deep Impact

Japan

1045

29 May 2016

1023

12 Oct 2014

1040

Shamardal

Australia

1032

4 Oct 2015

977

23 Feb 2014

1020

Dansili

GB

1031

5 Jan 2014

970

3 Apr 2016

975

Stay Gold

Japan

1023

5 Jan 2014

958

28 Aug 2016

958

Tapit

USA

1022

9 Oct 2016

973

16 Feb 2014

1022

Invincible Spirit

GB

1016

11 Oct 2015

981

24 Apr 2016

998

Heart’s Cry

Japan

1015

30 Nov 2014

964

9 Oct 2016

964

Medaglia d’Oro

USA

1012

2 Oct 2016

973

2 Feb 2014

1011


Take no notice that Dubawi is above Galileo in this table; we are not saying he is a “better” sire and the reach of our rankings is only a few years when the two sires have been at different stages of their careers. Galileo is an absolute phenomenon and is out on his own in the CURRENT standings.

Unlike our other three categories, there are global assessments of stallions using metrics like stakes-winners-to-foals or black-type percentage or whatever, and many of these are extremely worthy. They are simply focused on a different objective than TRC Global Rankings.

Yes, we want to reflect the world order among stallions at any given time, but our principle aim is to project who is going to sire the big winners next week. So, TRC World Rankings for sires emphasise the recency of a stallion’s achievements, as well as its efficiency, because our past research shows that the average rating of a sire’s offspring (captured by our metric tRPR in the main rankings tables) is a leading indicator of Group or Graded-race success.

So, we will have sires like Lope De Vega, Uncle Mo and the German Adlerflug higher than you might find them in conventional assessments by the aggregate because they are all good now and have numbers which suggest they are a force to be reckoned with.

Uncle Mo, incidentally, is the highest second-season sire in the rankings.

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