IT is a myth that racing on artificial surfaces involves a negligible variation in the speed of that surface, and nowhere is that more apparent than at Southwell, where the difference between the fastest and slowest going allowances may be around 75lbs. That is equivalent to the difference in times between soft going and good to firm or between Frankel and a run-of-the-mill handicapper.

The surface at Southwell has been riding fast lately, but the course management has persisted in describing it as “standard”.

Handsome Dude was just 0.22s outside the six-furlong course record last Thursday while achieving a 103 timefigure in my book: that is useful, but no better.

Foolaad ran the near five-furlong this Tuesday in 57.49s, which is 0.10s faster than Battaash clocked when winning the Abbaye at Chantilly last year. Because of the speed of the Southwell surface, that is worth a timefigure of 102 and does not suddenly identify the seven-year-old gelding as a major player on the world stage!

Surface speed varies far less at Lingfield, where there was a time performance of rare merit last Friday week.

Kachy had failed to win since the first half of 2016, but it should not be forgotten that he was second in the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot that year and had shown sparkling speed on occasions since.

That he could win an ordinary sprint handicap at the course, albeit under top weight, might be no surprise, but that he could win it so clearly and in a time just 0.44s outside the course record was, for me at least terrific.

COUNTRY MILE

That time stands out a country mile compared to others on the card, and Timeform has gone for a 123 timefigure, one surpassed by only seven other horses in Britain and Ireland in the whole of last year. I make it a slightly more modest 119, but that is still high-level stuff. In this form, Kachy should be winning a group race or two this year.

Top of that Timeform list in 2017 was Battaash on 130 for his sensational win in the King George Stakes at Goodwood, though there is every chance he ran similarly fast when streaking away with the Abbaye at Chantilly later on.

Remarkably, Battaash was only joint-12th in this week’s Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings, with a figure of just 123, which is a travesty.

Without getting too technical, the problem is that the official handicappers in Britain (and quite possibly elsewhere) are using both an outdated and insufficient method for converting margins into pounds, and this is particularly acute when dealing with sprinters.

Margins in Britain are a direct conversion of times, and have been for over 20 years now, so that “pounds per length” should really be viewed as “pounds per second” in the first instance. But the BHA Handicapping Guide cites methods that are a relic from some time in the last century.

One manifestation of these flaws is that last-time winners in handicaps win far more often than they should if the offset in pounds were sufficient (and last-time seconds win more often than last-time thirds, and so on).

It is also far from clear that official handicappers use overall time and sectional analysis in anything like a consistent and robust manner. Some do it seems – and they are right to – and some don’t.

So, they are ignoring time in one absolutely fundamental way and paying too little regard to it in another. No wonder that super-fast sprinters like Battaash suffer as a result!