WEIGHT appears to be the theme of the week, and I’m not just saying that having tried on my good suit for the first time since early December.

On Wednesday, the BHA held a press conference to discuss the publication of the European Two-Year-Old Classification, in which Pinatubo was handed an end-of-season rating of 128, the highest given to a juvenile since Celtic Swing’s 130 in 1994.

Inevitably, ratings tend to come in for immediate criticism, even when they are as uncontroversial as this, and if anything Pinatubo’s rating could easily have been higher.

Those who can’t believe that Pinatubo is as good as Frankel tend to judge with a mixture of hindsight and ignorance.

Ratings do not define merit in absolute terms, but express actual achievement in a way which can be measured and compared from generation to generation.

Is Pinatubo the equal of Frankel? That cannot be determined until the full body of evidence has been amassed, and it’s probable that a 2010-vintage Frankel would rise to the challenge of meeting a two-year-old version of Pinatubo.

Misleading

The classifications, however, do not predict what might happen, but merely interpret what did happen and converts that into a bald number. It’s a limited, and potentially misleading, way of comparing the greats, but it’s the honest answer to an equation whose constituents are tangible.

Misleading may be a strong word, but one of the ways in which two-year-olds can be compared both to past generations and their immediate elders is the automatic addition of a standard weight-for-age (WFA) figure into that rating.

Not all horses improve at a standard rate, and Frankel stands apart in that he was (joint) champion at two, but then improved beyond normal bounds as a three-year-old, and repeated that feat at four.

Most juvenile champions set themselves apart by being ahead of the curve, meaning that they have got closer to full maturity earlier than their counterparts.

As a result, they tend to improve by less than the WFA scale would suggest, and the gap between them and others of their age group shrinks, or for the most precocious, disappears entirely.

Champions

To give a stark reminder that Pinatubo is not yet considered to be at Frankel’s girth in the quest for greatness, consider this. With WFA stripped out of his mark, Frankel’s was still rated 140 at his best. Pinatubo’s unadjusted rating, based on his National Stakes win and with the scale applied at that point, is 101.

How high he can go will be determined by how well he develops next year, but the bare numbers tell a fascinating story

Eddie O’Leary should appeal Dallas Des Pictons’ rating

ALSO angry about weight (I’m sure those trousers have shrunk), is Eddie O’Leary, who made some provocative comments when Samcro and Dallas Des Pictons were given big weights at Cheltenham on Saturday.

Samcro’s chase rating of 157 raised eyebrows, but it’s the 147 given to the latter which has caused the ruckus. A winner on his chase debut at Gowran Park despite almost refusing four out, Dallas Des Pictons has been well held in Grade 3 events subsequently, looking a shadow of the horse who was second in the Martin Pipe Hurdle at Cheltenham last March.

The Racing Post rate him 119, Timeform go 120, and his HRI rating is 135. That represents a middle ground between hurdle and chase form, while the BHA figure equals their performance rating for his Cheltenham Festival effort.

Someone is wrong here, but rather than engaging in a war of words, there is a better solution. Appeal. The independent Handicapping Appeal Panel works, and this is what it’s made for.