ADJUSTMENTS OF FORM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26747, 16 April 1948, Page 8

ADJUSTMENTS OF FORM

Handicappers’ Onerous Task

MORE THAN FIGURE JUGGLING

Probably no official connected with racing has more shafts of criticism and complaint shot at him than the handicapper, whose position is one of the hardest to fill and calls for something more than mere juggling with figures. Some time ago a writer in the Encyclopedia of Sport expressed the opinion that the handicapper is an altogther absurd institution, because the result simply shows how far wrong the handicapper is in his estimate of the ability of the horses he weights. The winner comes in two lengths ahead of his field, he says, and thereby demonstrates either that the adjuster of weights regarded him as a 71b or 101 b worse animal than he is or else that he accepted the second as a 71b or 101 b better horse. A horse wins by a neck; the handicapper is shown to be only a couple of pounds or so wrong; but that is all the race has proved. Handicaps, however, are indispensable, for the reason that it takes more than the general scale of penalties and allowances to give the moderate animal a chance, and if racing were confined to the comparatively few good horses the sport would be enormously circumscribed. That a handicapper should give general satisfaction is, of course, not for the moment to be expected, as there are many owners who do not really want a handicap with which no fault can be found, but a compilation of weights which gives their horses an advantage. Mistakes in handicapping do occur at times. They sometimes arise from trusting to recollection, instead of looking up form; sometimes they are due to haste, and not seldom they are a consequence of two close adherence to book form. Thus a horse may win by a neck and have 31b in hand or 3st, and unless the handicapper is a judge of riding, he is likely to go far astray.