PHIL Smith, the British Horseracing Authority’s senior handicapper, says his team will continue to assess their own handicap marks for Irish horses racing in Britain following a Cheltenham Festival which saw Irish-trained horses win seven handicaps.

Smith in particular was widely criticised in the lead-up to Cheltenham by a number of Irish jockeys, trainers, owners and journalists who felt that Irish horses had been unfairly treated in Festival handicaps.

Writing on the BHA website, Smith said: “It is important to realise that the BHA handicappers are a team who work together so the personal criticism that I received in the run up to Cheltenham was disappointing.

“We have been keeping Irish performance figures now for 12 years. We have regularly monitored their success rates which enabled us to tweak our methodology and ensure they are competitive. The reality is that we want close exciting finishes and we want to set handicap puzzles that people find intriguing to solve. Higher does not necessarily mean badly handicapped.”

Smith posted figures showing the marks the seven Irish Cheltenham handicap winners raced off, compared with their Irish marks when the weights were compiled. The table, reproduced here, shows that five of the seven Irish handicap winners raced off a BHA mark which was higher than their Turf Club rating.

Smith said: “You can see a real mixture of differences and one figure the same. This is because ... different form students place different interpretations on the same pieces of form.

“The results showed that Irish trained horses won 70% of the handicaps from 30% of the runners.”

As this is a small statistical sample, Smith published figures for placed horses (first four) over the past 12 years. His research found that 15.9% of the 2,246 British-trained horses to have run at the meeting in that period had been placed. Irish trainers had 609 runners during the same period but 24.6% of them reached the frame.

Smith continued: “As a result my team will be adopting the same policy next year. Although we work as a team we are very competitive and want our individual races to have the closest finishes.”

He finished by praising his colleague Dave Dickinson who handicapped both the Fred Winter and County Hurdle, two races which saw winning distances of a neck.

IRISH CHELTENHAM

HANDICAP WINNERS