JOHN Moore is the new leader in the trainers' championship and if he does happen to take the title by just one winner, he could well send a thank you card to the handicapping department of the Jockey Club.
This, however, is not a frontal attack on Martyn Stewart and his merry men. It is a condemnation of one part of the system under which they operate and one long overdue a change. Outerwear is a game Class Three campaigner endowed with enough ability to win in that grade and, given a weaker Class Two event, possibly in that company, too.
He is trained by Moore, thus the reference to the Australian mentor in the opening paragraph. Outerwear ran last Wednesday at Sha Tin and was described by any number of observers as a 'handicapped certainty'. And so it turned out. Outerwear became a Class Three winner last midweek because of a ridiculous kink in the handicapping system which does not permit a horse to be promoted out of whatever grade he is in unless he wins in that class.
When there was a strict system of classification racing, this may well have been quite logical and, indeed, largely beneficial to the owner and trainer. But for years now we have had ratings in Hong Kong racing and, throughout the classes, an overlap system whereby horses on a certain rating can race in a class higher or a class lower.
That, naturally, has totally emasculated the previously rigid class system but, dinosaur-like, this particular piece of racing legislation still remains: you must win to be promoted out of a class. Every season an example of this inherently unfair practice comes around and last Wednesday it was Outerwear. On March 22 Outerwear finished a short head second to Lifo in Class Three over 1,800 metres, carrying 134 lb. They came almost four lengths clear of third-placed Dragon Jet.
Outerwear was on a rating of 72 and given the excellence of his run, the margin of defeat and the distance back to the third horse, it would not have been unfair to expect a three or four point penalty which would, of course, have seen him promoted to Class Two. But that could not happen as he was a short head away from winning this Class Three race off a rating mark at the top of the grade.
When Outerwear ran again on Wednesday night he was meeting Nansen, Face The Odds, Laureate and Intermac Joker all on the same or marginally worse terms for having beaten them soundly at that previous start. There was nothing, under present rules, that could be done about it by the handicapper. The Jockey Club refuse to bite the bullet and move to ratings racing although we have it now in virtually all but name.
