HANDICAPS
HANDICAPS
An international perspective Owners and trainers have been skirmishing with race secretaries over weight assignments for their horses forever. This isn’t a battle confined to North America. In the United Kingdom, horsemen must deal with the handicappers of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) who give horses a rating after every single race on a weekly basis. Other countries in Europe do too. And in Hong Kong, racing secretaries from more than 20 countries gather every December to produce worldwide ratings, which they do after much squabbling. What’s a horseman to do?
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WORDS: BILL HELLER PHOTOS: HORSEPHOTOS, VICTORIA RACING CLUB
FTER Sam Riddle’s threeyear-old Man o’ War won the 1920 Potomac Handicap by a length and a half carrying 138 pounds – spotting secondplace finisher Wildair 30 pounds – Riddle asked Racing Secretary Walter Vosburgh what weight he would assign Man o’ War if he returned to race as a four-year-old. Vosburgh said since Man o’ War had already won with 138, he’d have to give Man o’ War more weight than he’d ever assigned. Riddle responded by retiring his great champion, with a final record of 20 victories and one second in 21 starts. Nearly a century later, handicaps are an endangered species in North America. You can almost hear Kelso and Forego snickering at the winning horse’s weight in many of racing’s most prestigious and historic handicaps. This year, Melatonin won the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap carrying 115 pounds. Seven prior Santa Anita Big Cap winners carried 130 pounds to victory: Seabiscuit (1940), Thumbs Up (1945), Mark-Ye-Well (1953), Round Table (1958), Ack Ack (1971), Spectacular Bid (1980), and John Henry (1982). Since John Henry, 18 Big Cap winners carried 120 pounds or less. Frosted won this year’s Grade 1 Met Mile in spectacular fashion carrying 120. Thirteen different horses carried 130 or more to win the Met, including Forego, who won the ’76 Mile carrying 130 and the ’77 Mile toting 133. Devil Diver won three consecutive Miles from 1943-45. In ’44, he won with 134. Kelso won in 1961 with 130. Last year, Green Gratto won the Grade 3 Fall Highweight Handicap at Aqueduct carrying 124 pounds. First run at Belmont Park in 1914, the Fall Highweight Handicap was devised to test accomplished horses with the racing secretary assigning the highweight at least 140 pounds. That, of course, didn’t mean the highweight always competed in the
stakes. Ironically, the first Fall Highweight Handicap winner carried 110 pounds: the two-year-old filly Comely. She is one of four Fall Highweight Handicap winners who have a graded New York stakes named for them, along with True North, King’s Bishop, and Honorable Miss. Before the Breeders’ Cup Sprint was first run in 1984, the Fall Highweight Handicap had a major influence on the Sprint Championship. Four Fall Highweight Handicap winners, all fillies, accounted for five championships: Ta Wee (1969 and 1970), Chou Croute (1972), What a Summer (1977), and Gold Beauty (1982). Ta Wee won carrying 130 and 140 pounds. The days of horses carrying 140 pounds or even more than 130 seem long gone. “Handicaps are really a thing of the past,” said Santa Anita’s director of racing Mike Lakow, who also worked for the New York Racing Association (NYRA) for 15 years.
“I do miss the old days. The foal crop was 50 percent larger then. There were stronger high-end horses. Now we’re struggling. Some of the Grade 1s appear to be weak.” But Lakow is also a realist. “Things always seem great in the past,” he said. “It’s just a new ballgame.” Martin Panza, who was the racing secretary at Hollywood Park before becoming the NYRA’s senior vice president of racing operations in October, 2013, couldn’t agree more. “It’s just a completely different game than it was 30 or 40 years ago,” he said. “There weren’t that many races, that many opportunities. They had no choice but to put the grandstand on Kelso. We don’t live in that world anymore. Now, Kelso would run five times a year and point to the Breeders’ Cup and the Dubai World Cup. He wouldn’t run carrying a ton of weight and he wouldn’t need to. Back then, those opportunities didn’t exist. It was a different world.”
Frosted and Joel Rosario after the Metropolitan Handicap ISSUE 41 TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM
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