The rating system is a shambles.
Judging the end of season rating system, there seems to be many indescrepencies, especially the open class and age goup catagories.
The review of nearly 4800 horses performances rated over 46, indicate a worrying sign of inconsistencies by the NZTR handicappers.
Firstly, the open class (100+) has only 16 horses in the classification. Very worrying.
The NZTR handicappers seem to drop points too quickly. Especially from horses that run un-suitable distances, shows that they dont take this into consideration.
eg. Miss Three Stars lost 2 points running midfield in the NZ Cup (3200m) when second topweight.
Another annoyance is the handicappers not re-rating horses straight after races, especially Group races.
Three-year-old's Gingernuts and Jon Snow seem far too highly rated at 105 and 104 and NZ and ATC Oaks winner Bonneval is the next three year old at 100.
These three were rated after returning from Australia, so we dont know how the NZTR handicappers rated their domestic Group wins individually.
Saracino is another example of this. In his last start in NZ, Saracino won the Group Two Wellington Guineas back in March, but the NZTR handicappers haven't rated his Guineas win; and remains on 92. He raced once in Randwick after his Trentham win.
While there is no disagreement that Bonneval was last season's top three-year-old filly, being rated 100 does seem abit high in comparison to other fillies of her year. Her stablemate Nicolleta, rated as low as 73 - 13.5kgs inferior. Nicolleta beat Bonneval (3rd) in a Group 3 at Hastings, then Bonneval got the better at their next start by a head. Bonneval then beat Nicolleta by 2.5 lengths in the NZ Oaks (then won the ATC Oaks), but does this equate to a 13.5kg?
Again, we dont know how many points Bonneval got from winning the NZ Oaks, she was re-rated after she returned from Australia.
2000 Guineas winner Ugo Foscolo is another that wasn't re-rated after his feature win at Riccarton.
There are far too many other indescrepencies to mention.