Conditions Races this Season
I get the impression that level 2&3 conditions races (level 1s are a bit pointless anyway) are now being contested and won by horses with fairly moderate ratings. Seems to be less 110+ horses pot hunting these races.
So is this a result of:
A) Peter Wright's original vision coming to fruition after 5 seasons ( bearing in mind we lost the best part of 2 seasons due to Covid)?
B) The season upon season drop in horse numbers being primarily due to horses not returning from rules racing?
C) Better race framing by ptp organisers😜?
D)...... .............. ............?
210 Views
Think I can give a couple of thoughts to this debate:
Hellenic's stats are bang on. However, it is worth delving a bit deeper into numbers in races/age of winners etc. The real problem if there is one (as it has been in the past) is that young progressive horses walk all over Conditions horses once they have won v competitive Restricteds etc. This particular problem has been reduced by allowing them to run in Restricteds with a 5lb penalty.
The higher penalties are about total weight rather than handicap with few horses able to carry more than 12st7 plus 4lb allowance. Up to end of Feb I think I am right in saying 19 horses ran with 8lb+ pen and only one won with a 7lb mare's allowance. Several others were overtaken on run in. Up to Easter a further 7 have run with one winning. NB I thought there had been a one two by 10lb pen horses in a 3 horse race but I cannot find it.
Sadly there are fewer horses above Progressive level than in previous years meaning numbers of runners in Opens have been poor, as they have for some Conditions races, and so Open horses can happily compete at that level
The Level 1 (only allowed after 1 March) was brought in to allow horses which had won 3 poor end of season Conditions races the year before a chance to find something competitive and not be lost to p2p. Unfortunately, they have all too often been misused by some fixtures who prefer the purity of 'the old days'. That having been said a horse still cannot win more than 3 and it would be easy to exclude winners of Hunter chases if that was wanted.
Bottom line if anyone has been able to call the winners on all the Conditions races this year (or last), they should buy some lottery tickets.