Ruby Walsh: There's nothing 'absurd' about Tiger Roll's rating
STILL GOT IT: Tiger Roll powers to a third Cross Country Chase victory at the Cheltenham Festival last March, a dominant performance that made it difficult for handicapper Martin Greenwood to give him an overly lenient weight for this year’s Aintree Grand National.
This week, the headlines in the world of racing have centred around Tiger Roll’s weight in the Aintree Grand National. The problem for racing is there is nothing simple about explaining handicap ratings, how they are acquired or what they even mean. So, simplifying the explanation is the first port of call and then people can judge for themselves.
Handicapping is supposed to give everybody a fair chance. However, like golf, we all know that to be a myth, so the hard part for people to grasp with none of the players on the PGA, LPGA or any other professional golfing tour playing with a handicap is why does racing have one? Why is it not divisional like all other sports?
When you reach the top of a division or grade, you move up to the next one until you get to the top division, where the best come together. Likewise, you drop grades, divisions, and tours as you decline. To an extent, racing has that system but for the masses and, just as in golf, it tries to handicap the rest for competition.
Golf gives you shots per round, and racing uses the weight you carry. To do so, it has fully employed people to try and figure out what standard each horse is capable of competing at.Then they adjust the individual’s rating after each race to try and create the scenario where they all finish together. Not simple, and with so many variables at play, it is a task based chiefly on maths and carried out by people who give no favour nor fortune.
So, back to the Grand National and using a simple explanation. Conflated, the Irish Gold Cup winner, and Galvin, the Savills Chase winner, have both been ranked the number one seeds in the Grand National. Burrow Saint, who was fourth last year and won the Irish Grand National in 2019, is joint 16th seed, with the former star novice Samcro falling to joint-24th seed.
Willie Mullins’ Stones And Roses is ranked 98th, along with Alpha Des Obeaux, who would have been the 10th seed on his best days. It is three years and two months since the latter won a race, and the fall in the ratings coincided with his decline in form.
Likewise, the rise in rankings of last year’s winner, Minella Times, and third-placed Any Second Now have occurred because of what they achieved at Aintree last year. Some may feel too much, but Martin Greenwood, who is the man in charge, feels he has them in a position to make the race competitive. His task is not to entice people to run their horses but to try and make the race hard to win.
He gives the number-one-ranked horses a figure based on how far he thinks they are behind what he believes to be best the horse in training at this distance range. At the moment, those horses are Minella Indo and A Plus Tard, who have rating figures of 173.
Martin believes Galvin and Conflated require a 6lb weight concession on those horses to finish beside them, so they are allocated 167. Thus, the standard of this year’s Grand National is based on his belief of how good the number one seeds are. Handicapping is an opinion, and the Cheltenham Gold Cup could prove the estimation wrong, but hindsight is not afforded to handicapping. Every other horse is then ranked according to how much weight they would need to receive from the ‘top horses’ to finish beside them over the trip, on this track, jumping 30 fences. This is where the Grand National is unique. Every other handicap chase in Britain is treated as equal. The variants or differences of tracks are not considered, whereas they are for the Grand National.
Hence, Minella Times and Any Second Now, with recent course form, have been ranked higher than they would be in a similar race run on a traditional racecourse.
That brings us to the horse which this week’s debate has been about: Tiger Roll. In 2018, when he won his first National, he ranked 13th, some 11 pounds below the number-one-ranked horses. They were rated 161, which meant he raced that day off a rating of 150.
In 2019, having won two races in the interim, he won again, by two lengths further but as the number three ranked horse in the line-up. His rating was 159, only 5lbs below the number-one horses.
Covid caused the cancellation of the race in 2020, and in 2021 Tiger Roll sidestepped the race as connections felt his rating/ranking was too high — 166 was his rating figure 12 months ago.
That was three weeks after he had run his rivals ragged at the Cheltenham Festival, winning a third Cross Country Chase in what was mathematically the best performance of his three victories.
Therefore, some 11 months after his Cheltenham romp, it is easy to see how Martin Greenwood ranks him number seven in this year’s Grand National. He is six pounds lower than the top-ranked horses, five pounds below last year and only 2lbs higher than his 2019 victory.
It would also be easy to argue that at 12 years of age, Tiger Roll could be given more grace for his advancing years, but the maths for a handicapper don’t allow that. Form binds their opinion, and course form counteracted whatever leniency he should have received for age. Balance. I don’t believe it to be “absurd” or “ridiculous handicapping”, but you can judge for yourself.
