Less than a week to go until Cheltenham and time to begin seriously thinking about our Festival bets. Over the next two articles I’ll take a look at all four days of next week’s meeting and try to pick out what I think are the best bets in each race. Today we’ll look at days 1 and 2 (Tuesday 16^th and Wednesday 17^th March) and this weekend we’ll cover the final two days.

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If you are sitting at home, watching the clock, waiting for every second to pass because it brings you one second nearer to the tapes going up for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle then don’t despair. I was feeling the same way until I got my hands on the new Weatherbys Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide by Paul Jones. Having read it through not once but twice over the last few days I feel that my festival has already started!

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Compiling ratings by which to provide objective assessments of the relative abilities of racehorses has generally been based on two fundamentals; collateral form and race times. The production of ratings or handicaps has relied almost exclusively on these two factors. Therefore the claim by Bob Wilkins, in his book ‘Bioenergetics and Racehorse Ratings’, that he has developed ‘an improved method of rating, based on metabolic power’ has every right to be greeted as a bit of a revelation.

Horse racing lags some way behind ‘elite human racing’ in terms of the quantity of scientific studies on physiological factors and their effect on performance. There is a wide body of work to draw upon in the human field and it is this that Wilkins draws from in Chapter 1 (of 6) to explain and validate the theory behind the ‘whole body metabolic model’ he has developed. He then applies these theories to horses and, more particularly, to horse racing.

The book has been written with a scientific rigour (Wilkins, according to the blurb on the back of the book, has a strong academic background and is a man with more than 60 technical papers to his name).  Not altogether surprising then that within no time at all (page 7 to be precise) it is clear that the reader falls into one of two camps. In the first camp will be those with an academic and mathematical knowledge or paradigm, while camp two houses those of us for whom our grasp of the technical theory relies not on our ability to understand the maths but our success or failure at getting our heads around the gist of the concepts being outlined through the text rather than the equations.

So, having been pre-warned by a fellow member of The Racing Forum that an in-depth understanding of the mathematics was not altogether necessary, I resolved not to get lost among the relatively complex equations (and there are some 34 of these in the main text plus, just when you thought you’d seen the last of them, another 7 in the appendices) and to try to take in the essence of the thinking.

In Chapter 1 physiological differences between sprint and distance events, energy sources, energy expenditure and energy balancing are all discussed. How these factors are measured and how they can be used to develop predictive models is examined as Wilkins begins to piece together the framework for the equation that will eventually lead to the creation of the ‘power rating’.

At this point, despite equations 13 and 14 bringing on a feeling akin to sea-sickness, I’d gone from ‘mildly interested’ to ‘quite intrigued’ as to how Wilkins was going to apply this theoretical explanation of aspects of human physiology to horse racing. How could the seemingly impossibly complex equations 13 and 14 have any prospect of helping me unravel a tricky handicap on the all-weather at Wolverhampton?

It quickly became clear, as we moved along in Chapter Two, that Wilkins not only understands complex mathematical theory, he also has a very good grasp of the fundamentals of racing. Quickly, without much fuss and again in a dispassionate, academic style, he highlights some of the key problems facing anyone attempting to evaluate racehorse performances based on time.

Course characteristics, ground variations, inaccuracy in race timings, inaccuracy in race distances, the challenges in utilising record times, the effect of weight and the effect of tactics. This will be an all too familiar list of imponderables to those who have spent any length of time trying to develop their own set of meaningful ratings.

But, highlighting these in just over a page and then immediately setting about finding solutions, Wilkins, somewhat admirably, seemed refreshingly unperturbed by the scale of the task.

For example, the use of standard times is neatly employed to mitigate the effect of differing course conformations and a couple of variables (W and w – W being the weight of the horse and w being the weight carried) are introduced to enable weight to be factored into the ‘Power Equation’, which forms the basis for the development of the ‘Power Ratings’.

Along the way there are some interesting snippets.  Horses, it seems, run roughly twice as fast as humans but, somewhat self-evidently, sustain their speed much longer than we can. A horse is airborne for 28% of its stride, much less than a human. Racehorses are aerodynamically more streamlined than humans, even allowing for the wide variation in the manner in which various jockeys perch themselves on their backs. And so on.

By page 34 we have dispensed with most of the basics and begin to get to the nitty-gritty with an examination of the effect of weight on time, within a few paragraphs coming to the rather eye-widening conclusion that ‘a little more weight is needed to slow a horse down than has generally been believed’. Now things are beginning to get interesting.

However, weight and distance = measurable, definable characteristics and relatively safe territory for scientific exploration.  How would the methodology cope with the relative imponderable that is ‘the going’?

Well, in typically pragmatic fashion, Wilkins deals with it fairly readily by introducing a co-efficient (a figure ranging between 0.9 and 1.1), the value of which varies with the conditions and serves to alter the ‘cost of running’ (one of the factors in the power equation). Keeping up? If not don’t worry as the book does explain it rather better than I could.

Wilkins then goes on to discuss the impact of pace, effect of the trip, gains in altitude and goes into some detail on jump racing and the effect of the longer distances involved.

The second half of the book describes how to create the actual ratings themselves. Here, Wilkins starts by describing how to create ratings based on time. Again there is quite a bit of theoretical explanation and a few more equations as Wilkins describes how the ‘Power rating’ equation works in relation to time based ratings.

It is at this point that we begin to hit slightly troubled waters as we encounter a problem which all who have worked with time based ratings will be familiar. Because of going changes and differences in the pace races are run at there can be wide variances in times achieved against the standard time which have nothing whatsoever to do with the ability of the horses.

 In Chapter 3 Wilkins states that ‘The determination of [variable]  [the going co-efficient] is the key to calculation of time based ratings’. He then explains how to calculate this and how to apply it to produce ratings but also states that ‘Subjective judgement is needed in choosing the final value of  to be used’.  The use of ‘subjective judgement’ seemed to be at odds with the generally scientific approach of the rest of the book and at this point I did wonder what the use of an elaborate equation was when a judgemental error on the part of the rater could upset the whole apple cart.

Wilkins, to his credit, is quite pragmatic on this point though, accepting it as a disadvantage, outlining that it (the subjective judgement)  becomes easier with experience and, by the end of the chapter, I’d come around to thinking that this perhaps wasn’t the drawback I thought it may be initially.

Chapter 4 deals with compiling ‘power ratings’ based on collateral form and again Wilkins encounters some familiar difficulties which are once again resolved in pragmatic fashion although he concedes that the judgement decisions required for compiling form ratings can be more complex than those for time-based ratings and can often require revisiting in the light of future events (i.e. you sometimes need to go back and revise past ratings as future events expose them as fundamentally incorrect).

There then follows an interesting section which outlines a method by which form based ratings are subjected to mathematical techniques in order to allow the complex interactions between the form of large numbers of horses to be examined and calibrated. This method allows constant evaluation and re-evaluation of large amounts of data.

Chapter 5 is a short chapter which discusses how to allow for weight in future races and illustrates how the power ratings could be applied to make selections in future races. Wilkins points out though that the ‘book is not primarily concerned with the way in which ratings are used, only with the way they are calculated and their relationship to a bioenergetics model of running’.

The exciting thing about the book is that it brings some fresh, and, in certain respects, radical thinking to the subject of ratings creation. It also outlines a fairly clear method for calculating these ratings, cleverly allowing ratings based on either time or form to be calculated using, roughly, the same method (and, one supposes, a ‘power rating’ could be calculated which combined both time and form without too much difficulty).

But there is nothing new under the sun and Wilkins’ method doesn’t magically eliminate some of the more familiar problems handicappers face. There remains an element of personal judgement, particularly when calculating power ratings based on form.

The question the book begs, of course, is whether the ratings are actually of any use or not. The theory can be as convincing or as plausible as it likes but I suspect most who read the book will be doing so from the viewpoint of establishing how the book will help select winners rather than as an academic exercise.

For anyone with an interest in handicapping and compiling ratings I’d suggest this book is likely to be required reading. However, unless you are particularly interested in compiling your own ratings, the theoretical explanations, numerous equations and discussion of the methodology may leave some casual readers cold. For those who do persevere there are enough challenging thoughts and ideas to make the exercise more than worthwhile.  

‘Bioenergetics and racehorse ratings’ by Bob Wilkins is published by Overdee Press (www.overdeepress.com) and retails at 15 pounds

Paul Nicholls uttered the words that rival Gold Cup trainers won’t have wanted to hear during a recent pre-Cheltenham press day at his Ditcheat yard when he claimed that Kauto Star would go to the Gold Cup in the ‘form of his life’.

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The highlight of last weekend for me was undoubtedly Monet’s Garden’s win in the Betfair Ascot Chase. This fantastic grey, now twelve years old and a veteran in any terms, rolled back the years and looked like a horse half his age as he put in an impeccable round of spring-heeled jumping and resolute galloping to see off Albertas Run.

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For those interested in racing, trying to escape the fervour surrounding the fast-approaching  Cheltenham Festival is nigh on impossible. Cheltenham dominates the National Hunt season, with discussion about the following year’s event commencing during the current one, and often before even that.  It is the Olympics of the jumping game and the good news for race-fans is that we don’t have to wait four years for it to come around, it arrives every March year in, year out, give or take the odd foot and mouth outbreak.

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The great debate around whether AP McCoy is the correct jockey for Gold Cup second favourite Denman was already alight and burning fiercely. Saturday’s Aon Chase at Newbury didn’t so much fan the flames as have the effect of driving a fully laden petrol tanker onto the fire.

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The Denman Show  rolls into town at Newbury this Saturday as Paul Nicholls chaser has his first outing since that remarkable Hennessey win and his last run before the clash of the titans when he takes on Kauto Star in the Gold Cup.

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Nicky Henderson, perhaps fearing the possibility that weather may interrupt the next few weeks racing, ran a few of his major festival hopes last weekend.

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Great to see some familiar names among the runners at the new Meydan racecourse in Dubai. With fantastic prize money on offer, it’s little wonder that some of the top trainers are targeting horses at the meeting and on Thursday night (Feb 4^th) one time Derby favourite Crowded House will be taking on former Irish Derby winner Frozen Fire, formerly trained by Aidan O’Brien but now trained by South African Mike De Kock, for whom he’ll be making his debut appearance.

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