Striving for constant improvement and setting ever higher benchmarks for excellence is a familiar catch cry from Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, and the race planning department will hopefully embrace the philosophy. The name of the game must surely be giving the customers the best-possible racing-wagering product, but you might think otherwise if you studied the make-up of the Chiu Lung Handicap at Happy Valley last Sunday. The race was advertised on a 25-point rating band, from 110 to 85. The nominal topweight was Noble Conqueror, whose seven wins have all been at the city venue and five of them over Sunday's 1,650-metre circuit. In the illustrated dictionary under the category 'horses for courses', Noble Conqueror's picture appears. Noble Conqueror boasts a rating of 110 and was therefore an automatic allocation for 133 pounds. But he didn't make the field, effectively balloted out while six of the 12 runners were 'out of the handicap' - in other words, they had ratings more than 20 pounds below Noble Conqueror. Nigel Gray's department says Noble Conqueror's trainer, Caspar Fownes (pictured), has no one to blame but himself, because he could have used one of his two 'trump cards' (the trainer's preference) per meeting to ensure the gelding got a start. But surely that's too simplistic - the purpose of a trump card shouldn't be to shield oneself from stupidity. Is it really appropriate to say that all horses have equal rights to a place in the field, even those whose ratings are 25 pounds below the best horse in the race? As a Happy Valley specialist on a rating of 110, opportunities for Noble Conqueror are becoming very thin on the ground. For the balance of the season, there is only one suitable race remaining for the Danehill gelding - a 1,650m Class One (for ratings 110-90) on June 7. For the six horses 'out of the handicap' that gained a start ahead of Noble Conqueror on ratings from 89-86, there are a significantly greater number of options. And let's face it, the race was measurably inferior by not having Noble Conqueror there. We must also agree this is not about Noble Conqueror specifically. It's about the principle, that we shouldn't be programming a Class One race and then populate it with horses from the lower half of Class Two when a proper Class One horse is there, fit and ready for competition. Handicapping and race planning should never be about eliminating the best-performed horse from the race at nomination time and then filling it up with fringe dwellers. The path to securing a run for a horse is already quite convoluted, with trainer preferences, protections and even 'double protections' for horses that have been balloted out from their previous intended race. But surely the core value of providing the best-possible field for the sake of the sport, and the business of racing, cannot be dismissed so cheaply. Squeezed out Noble Conqueror boasted the highest rating but still couldn't make the field at Happy Valley on Sunday: 110
