LAST month, I expressed my disdain for BHA Head of Handicapping Phil Smith’s justification for the elimination system in important flat handicaps, in which horses are balloted out in order of weight carried rather than official rating.

Smith justified the policy on the basis of the Weight-For-Age (WFA) Scale, which he claimed was designed to compensate certain horses for lack of maturity, as well as lack of experience and ability. The WFA Scale does indeed cater for expected physical maturity, affording concessions to three-year-olds and occasionally four-year-olds against fully mature racehorses to produce a level playing field, with the weight received decreasing over time, but increasing with race distances; it certainly makes no claim to equalise the claims of horses of different levels of ability or experience, a task very much in the hands of the BHA’s own assessors.