Handicapping in India has evolved over the years and what we see today is the gratifying result of the intellectual evolution. The practices followed all over the world have been adapted to suit Indian conditions. The system has undergone sea change in the last two decades. The turf clubs in India have consciously worked towards having common handicapping system and today there is greater uniformity in the system followed in India. I can say without hesitation that being at the forefront of the change brigade, the first step of evolution of the system was the sense of solidarity shown by turf clubs despite different systems that were practiced. We believed that to improve was to change and change often in order to strive for perfection.

I am not suggesting that handicapping in India radically differs from the practices elsewhere in the world. In fact, it is the same as is practiced all over the world with minor changes. Though racing in India traces back to 18th century, it was only in the 20th century that the sport became an organized business. The classification system was introduced in India in 1916 by Calcutta Turf Club. Since horses which participated in racing were all imports from Europe, horses were classified into four classes namely Class I, II, III and IV. Horses were moved up or brought down in their classification based on their performances and they had to race amongst themselves within the class. In rare cases, they could meet horses of the next higher or lower class when races were setup for combined classes. Horses entered for any particular handicap race would be allotted to carry weight as per the judgment of the handicapper who would adjust weights to be carried by them so as to equalize their chances of winning based on his perception. These weights were allotted in stones and pounds in those days.


The exciting change that was brought about in handicapping in the last two decades was to demystify handicapping. Handicapping was shrouded in secrecy till the transparent rating system was introduced in 1995. The handicapper had to allot the ratings for horses which ran on a particular day soon after the completion of the race day. As a result, the professionals too could plan better the programme of their wards as the comparative merit of their wards as well as their competitors could be made out by pursuing the ratings awarded to other horses. In the process, the handicappers lost some of the freedom that they enjoyed in the past where they had the liberty to play around with the handicap of the horses since they were not officially published. The new system put at rest all speculation as to the probable weight that the handicapper would allot. This also helped race goers to understand the relative merits of horses better. To put it simply, by giving people the power of knowledge about handicapping, handicapping was sought to be simplified and racing made more transparent. Handicapping was a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma called the handicapper. This was how this particular branch of the sport was perceived. Before I elaborate, let me explain briefly what the system was all about and how the change has transformed the whole scenario.

With the advent of Indian thoroughbreds around 1940`s, these horses were separately classified into two classes namely class A and class B as these horses were generally inferior to their European counterparts. Races were framed separately for imported horses classified into four classes and Indian horses classified into two separate classes. With the breeding industry establishing itself over a period of time, the quality of Indian horses also started improving significantly. Initially many Indian horses were classified in class IV enabling them to race with the imported horses. Gradually they got promoted into higher classes. It paved the way for merging of two sets of classes into one classification system of horses, containing six classes namely class I, class II, class III, class IV, class VA and class VB. With the government of India discouraging the importing of thoroughbreds for the purpose of racing, racing was mainly confined to Indian horses post Indian independence.

The salient features of that classification system were as follows:
1. Bottom weight that the horses would carry was 45 kgs. and the minimum top weight was 59 kgs.
2. Each class had a range of 14.5 kgs. and the next class would start at the end of the previous class i.e. there was no overlapping between two consecutive classes.
3. With class I stretching up to 25 kgs from 45 to 70 kgs, the overall scale of weights was nearly 100kgs.
4. Every horse was assigned a class by the handicapper which was based on a rating given by the handicapper. But the rating was never disclosed.
5. Handicap weight of a horse was known only after it was entered in a race.



In hindsight, if one were to look back at the practices, one may feel that the scale of 100 kgs was unnatural or artificial, but it was not. At that time the number of horses in the country were too less and there was a big gap in their racing capabilities. Less number of horses participated in races and pedigrees of horses which were unknown or established were also allowed to participate. Many horses raced even after the age of 10 years even till 1980`s as compared to the present lot who retire even before they attain the age of six if they don`t make the cut.

With the formation of more Racing authorities in the country after independence in 1947, every race club had its own handicapper. The Handicappers of different clubs in India would handicap horses based on their ratings which was nothing but an arithmetical representation of their racing capability as perceived by them. These ratings were dynamic and were revised as and when the horses ran. But absolute secrecy was maintained by the handicappers as far as the ratings were concerned. However, the handicappers of different clubs used to exchange their rating list with each other at the end of every race meeting and no one else would know the official rating.

Handicaps used to be published at the designated time after Entries for a particular race day was closed. The Racing fraternity would eagerly wait in the premises of race club offices till the designated time to know the weights allotted by the handicapper. The scene one witnessed was quite similar to students waiting for the question paper in the exam hall. I remember those days when handicaps were kept in a sealed cover and distributed only at the scheduled time. After each race day, the handicapper would notify only the promotions and demotions. But nobody would know where exactly the horses stood in their new classification; nobody would know what penalty or drop was given; nobody would know what weights they would get in their next race. The whole process was shrouded in mystery and the system was totally opaque. Many Owners and Trainers would enter their horses, especially winners, for the very next week`s races only for the sake of knowing the penalty given by the handicapper. They had to spend entry money just to establish the handicap of their horses as they had understood that the handicapper would not change the rating once a horse was handicapped. They also knew that in the absence of such a scenario, the Handicapper had the opportunity of revising the rating till that time the horse was entered for a race. Quite often, in the case of horses whose handicap was not established, the handicappers would resort to changing the penalties and the drops depending on the subsequent performance of the horses with which they had participated earlier.

One other thing the handicappers would do was to keep changing the scale by alternating the top weight between 59 and 61 kgs. It was basically done by the handicappers depending upon the entrants in a race. If there were few or no bottom weighted horses (lowly rated horses) top weight would be kept at the minimum of 59 kgs. If there were more bottom weighted horses (lowly rated horses), the top weight would be kept above 60 kgs so that the bottom weights would go a little higher than 45 kgs. It was mainly done to avoid or reduce lowly weighted horses carrying over weights as there were very few jockeys who could make such low weights. But this constant change in the scale would lead to further confusion for a layman to calculate the penalty or a drop given to a horse after its last run even if the horse had remained in the same class. The worst part was that there used to be no notification as to whether the scale was lowered or raised. All these idiosyncrasies had made handicapping a hard nut to crack and gave the aura of a mystic to a handicapper.

At the end of each meeting the handicapper used to drop the ratings of horses uniformly within each class. Quite often the drop would vary from class to class. But the ultimate aim was to readjust each class to 14.5 kgs. which would become the starting point for the next race meeting. This process would happen twice or thrice a year as there used to be two or three meetings namely summer meeting, winter meeting, monsoon meeting etc., in a year.

To put it in a nutshell, classification system of handicapping was opaque and had many draw backs. It was probably outdated. In keeping with the demand for transparency in all walks of life in the country, the classification system was replaced by rating system in Bangalore. It took more than two years for the transition to be understood completely.

In the first stage, the bottom weight was increased from 45 to 47 kgs by gradually compressing the scale to about 85 kgs by reducing each class to 12 kgs. In the second stage each class was compressed to 11 kgs and the scale was further reduced to 75 kgs and horses rated up to 2 kgs at the top of a class and horses rated up to 2 kgs at the bottom of a class were permitted to run in the next higher and the next lower classes respectively as explained in the following table:-



Even during that period, nobody had any inkling of the rating. Horses were still classified and those eligible were permitted to run in higher or lower class as per their rating. Even though ratings were kept secret by the handicappers, this system helped everyone in the business to understand the connection between the classes.

In 1995, after the smooth and successful transition from the previous system to the above handicapping system, the scale was further compressed and the Rating System was introduced and “Rating” was made the basis for entering the horses in a race as compared to “Classification” as the criterion. The features of this transparent system were as follows:-


e. Each race catered to a scale of 15 kgs starting from 62 to 47 kgs.
f. There was an overlap of 5 kgs between two consecutive categories. Consequently, many of the horses were eligible to enter for more than one category.
g. A “Ready-Reckoner” of weights as related to ratings which assisted in finding out the handicap weight was introduced as shown below:-



h. Weights were strictly allotted as per the ready-reckoner. Weights were raised only if the top weight was less than 60 kgs (Minimum top weight) both at the time of handicaps and acceptances. The increase was duly notified in both the stages.
i. After every week`s races, the revised ratings for all the horses that ran are published the next day before the entry for the next week`s races closed.
j. Even the ratings of local horses who had participated at other centers and ratings of horses coming from outstation centers and ratings of new horses who were allotted ratings were also notified every week.


The most important change that happened was the elimination of the mystery surrounding the allocation of weights and the undeserved aura which had developed around the handicapper. In fact, I remember the expletives that the senior most handicapper at that time in India had used on the person who changed the system for taking away the aura of the handicapper.

Rating system became so popular that within two to three years, all the race clubs in the country adopted a similar system. These ratings were originally maintained in 1kg unit at Bangalore and in ½ kg unit at other places. In 2002, it was decided to maintain the ratings uniformly in ½ kg unit in all the race clubs in India for the sake of uniformity and convenience of racing fraternity. The system underwent some more changes in its structure with the bottom weight in a race going up from 47 to 50 kgs in the year 2007. The scale was restructured with each race reduced to 12.5 kgs and the overlapping coming down to 5 kgs i.e. 2.5 kgs each with the next higher and the next lower class. The ready-reckoner of weights related to ratings was revised as under:-



(In retrospect, if we see the peak rating allotted to champion horses in the country, it was 198 to SQUANDERER in 1982, 172 to ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL in 1996 and 144 to MYSTICAL in 2007 (rated 113 internationally in Dubai after its two wins). In my opinion there is not much of a difference in the racing capabilities of these three all time greats of Indian racing. But the vast difference in their rating was only an aberration of time and it indicates the compression of scale of weights that Indian racing underwent over the last 30 years. Probably, today in 2015 all these three would have been rated around 130 in India. This reflects the structural change that the rating system has undergone in the country in the last few decades).

Working of Handicappers:
There is only one rule in the rules of racing regarding handicapping - “A Handicap is a race in which the weights to be carried by the horses are adjusted by the Handicapper for the purpose of equalizing their chances of winning.” But no guideline or method or procedure was laid down in rules of racing or in the racing calendar. However, the present day handicappers have been trained to do it by their predecessors and they in turn are training the new ones. But the handicappers themselves followed certain guidelines to ensure uniformity, consistency and impartiality. These guidelines have been inherited from generations to generations.

1. A horse is allotted a rating according to the handicappers` opinion about the horse`s merit only after it wins once or runs thrice. Horses normally start their career in Terms races in India as 2-year olds in the month of October or November. However, if a horse doesn`t race even after July or August the following year, they would be allotted a rating of 30 (colts and geldings) and 27 (fillies) at the age of 3 years. The ratings will be changed only after a horse runs that too only if required. The Handicapper forms his opinion not on the basis of what a horse does in a race but on the basis what it could have done. The rating of a horse does not depend on the number of races it wins or the amount of stake money it earns.

2. Minimum or a maximum penalty for winning a race has not been prescribed and every case is treated on its merits. It is a co-incidence that the maximum and the minimum penalty for a win in a handicap race has been given to the same horse namely CALLIGRAPHY in Bangalore, 25 kgs on one occasion and 2 ½ kgs on another occasion.It is a different matter that CALLIGRAPHY won again in her next outing with the penalty of 25 kgs and failed to finish in the first four in its next outing with the penalty of 2 ½ kgs.

3. No hard and fast rule has been laid down for reducing the rating of a horse and each case is treated on its merits. Ratings of horses are generally not reduced in case they run too far below their ability or even if they are impeded from performing up to their ability.

4. In Handicap races, generally fourth placed horse is made the base in some races and third placed horse in some other races. Occasionally, the base could be between third and fourth placed horses. The handicapper is supposed to judge it based on the circumstances. The higher placed horses are penalized relatively and the lower placed horses are generally dropped. Very rarely second placed horse is made as the base when the fields are small.

5. In Terms races, the ratings are readjusted based on the actual weight carried by the horses which are not in conformity with the ratings.

Pattern races and Rating:
One more development that happened recently in Indian horse racing is the national pyramid for the pattern races in India in addition to many norms and guidelines for according a status of a group race or a graded race average rating of horses performing in such races has been added as one of the criterion.

Future:

The compression of scale from about 200 points which existed till 1995 to about 120 points in 2016 was possible because of the tremendous progress made during the period by the Indian thoroughbred breeding industry both in terms of quality and quantity. Even after this long and laborious journey the local rating of horses in India is at variance with their probable international ratings. In my estimate, it is about fifteen to sixteen rating points as compared to their probable international ratings. The task for the future is to compress the scale further so as to integrate the Indian rating with the international rating. I hope that we would be able to achieve the goal in the near future, possibly by 2020.