Simon Rowlands' Weekly Blog: Uncovering the truth behind Ascot's supposed Polytrack bias...

General / Simon Rowlands / 07 July 2009 / Leave a Comment

With the Betfair King George meeting and Shergar Cup on the horizon, Simon Rowlands questions the legitimacy of this popular theory.

Anyone reading this column last week will have noticed that One Way Or Another did not run at Haydock on Thursday after all. The horse was one of 22 withdrawn at the course (40% of those originally declared) after the ground turned firm.

It would be easy to be critical of Haydock's Clerk of The Course, Kirkland Tellwright, and at least one forumite was calling for the man's head. But this is one instance in which it pays to pause for thought. Clerks are being damned if they do and damned if they don't - water, that is - which cannot be right.

Weather forecasting is an imprecise science but is the best guide we have to what may happen. The forecast was for considerable rain in the Haydock area in the 24 hours leading up to the meeting. That forecast proved to be inaccurate.

Imagine, however, the outcry there would have been had the rain arrived but Tellwright had watered nonetheless. It could well have resulted in soft going and a similar spate of withdrawals. Given the information available, Tellwright was right not to water and merely unfortunate that the rain did not arrive as predicted.

Situations like last Thursday's come at a significant cost to the track - not least in terms of reduced gate receipts - and need to be avoided if possible. Watering, within reason, is justified; as is not watering, again within reason. The vagaries of the weather will ensure that Clerks do not always get it right. Cut them a bit of slack, please.

That said, this is entirely separate from the real problems with watering, which are that its precise nature is often not publicised and that Clerks have been known to water in order to alter biases that may otherwise occur at a track. This remains unacceptable.

* * *

One Way Or Another is likely to run at Ascot on Friday - fit and fancied - but given recent experiences I will not take that for granted until he gets down to the start!

With this meeting, the Betfair King George VI meeting and the DDF Shergar Cup all just round the corner, I decided to take a look at a popular theory about racing at Ascot, namely that it suits horses with proven Polytrack form.

I looked at all handicaps at the track in the last year (handicaps theoretically normalise for differences in ability) and categorised runners in them according to whether they previously had: won on Polytrack; finished second or third on Polytrack without winning; finished no closer than fourth on Polytrack; and not run on Polytrack. There were 50 races and 736 runners in total.

The joy of analysis usually lies in discovering effects (having typed that phrase, I realise I should get out more). But it can also come in discovering that there is little or no effect when received wisdom states otherwise. That seems to be the case here.

Winners on Polytrack accounted for 47.6% of their rivals, when 50% is par; first-three finishers on Polytrack beat 50.2% of their rivals; previous runners on Polytrack did worse (49.6%) than runners that had no Polytrack experience whatsoever. None of these differences is significant to the 95% level of probability that science usually requires, however. There is little or nothing in it, in other words.

Similar results were obtained by comparing strike-rate with representation, for both wins and places. The latter produces an impact value of 1.01 (almost exactly the same as random) for horses with first-3 Polytrack form already to their name.

The one area in which there may be some mileage in this "theory" is in opposing it. Only one of the categories produced a profit at SP to level stakes, and that was the category of horses that had not run on Polytrack previously. It could just be that Polytrack form is being overvalued at the track.

* * *

The Coral-Eclipse at Sandown on Saturday was a terrific race which saw a top-class performance from Sea The Stars. Or, rather, that should be TWO top-class performances, from Sea The Stars and Rip Van Winkle.

The "greatness" debate is in full flow again. Greatness should surely take into account more than just the best rating a horse proves capable of achieving, though that rating needs to be high. It should be concerned with durability, consistency and versatility (in all of which areas Sea The Stars is shaping up very well) as well as raw talent. Or at least that is what I would argue.

That said, in terms of raw talent, Sea The Stars either needs to beat rivals by further than he has done to date or be judged in large part by what those rivals do otherwise. Defeats of Delegator and Fame And Glory by less than two lengths in, respectively, the 2,000 Guineas and The Derby look even better now than they did. It remains to be seen whether a one-length defeat of Rip Van Winkle in the Eclipse stands up to similar scrutiny.

The signs are encouraging though. If you apply race standardisation (a time-honoured and rigorous method of handicapping based on statistical precedent) to those three races then Sea The Stars' Sandown win is highly likely to have been another significant step forward. What's more, the time of Saturday's race looks exceptional compared to others on the card, at the same meeting and at the course on other days. A positive view of the form seems not so much justified as obligatory.

Timeform's form rating of 133p for Sea The Stars reflects that (with his timefigure a hugely impressive 132), and I would not disagree with that assessment. But let's not forget that Rip Van Winkle pushed Sea The Stars pretty hard and recorded an exceptional effort in terms of form and time himself.