NEWS
A prep becomes a Grade 1
Posted: Saturday, December 09, 2000
How the Jim Dandy gets equivalent recognition with the Travers is evidence of a flaw in the system
A traditional prep race for a Grade 1 event has been upgraded to Grade 1 status itself for 2001. This piece of nonsense was one of the changes announced by the American Graded Stakes Committee when it released its list of graded races for next year. The upgrade illustrates an inherent problem in the grading system-an inward-looking procedure that inevitably leads to incongruities because of the statistical way it evaluates races.
On December 30, the committee released the results of its work pertaining to grades of races in 2001, which will be used in catalogs, by publications, and in the permanent database maintained by the Jockey Club.
The committee awarded Grade 1 status to the Jim Dandy Stakes, which is being upgraded from Grade 2. The stakes is a prep race for the $1-million Travers Stakes (G1), which is run three weeks afterward. The 2000 Jim Dandy was won by Graeme Hall, with Curule second and eventual Travers winner Unshaded third. Also in the field was last-of-seven Albert the Great, who came back to finish second in the Travers.
The job of grading races is undertaken by a committee of 18 that culls through data to determine which races are the best races in the United States. The committee evaluates all open stakes worth $75,000 or more. From a potential pool of 779 races, a total of 478, or 61%, will be graded events in 2001. The challenge is being able to divine the quality of a race before it is run.
To look into the future, the committee relies on data of past races, using five criteria from the last five runnings of an individual race: 1) points assigned for best performance in unrestricted black-type stakes (points are assigned by best lifetime performance in a graded stakes); 2) percentage of graded stakes winners in the field; 3) quality points (based on the number of runners in a race for each renewal that eventually win a graded race); 4) official charts of the race; and 5) North American Rating Committee ratings (a subjective rating of individual runners assigned by members of the committee based on past performances).
Three of the five criteria are clearly based on the graded race system itself. As a result, the graded system becomes self-fulfilling. A race gets graded because it has a lot of highly rated horses in its field because those horses had raced in other graded races. Horses that compete in the best races reflect glory on secondary races.
Since horses being pointed for major races invariably run in prep races, prep races attract good horses. Which brings us back to the Jim Dandy.
The Jim Dandy, a prep race for the Travers since 1964, has traditionally been used by trainers pointing their horses toward the Travers for a variety of reasons: Their horse needs a race over the Saratoga track; their horse needs another race to get fit; their horse is coming off a layoff and needs one race before the Travers; they need to find out if their horse is good enough to run in the Travers.
When the graded system came into existence in North America in 1973, that first committee awarded the Jim Dandy Grade 3 status. For 11 years, it was a Grade 3 event.
Then grade creep came into play. The Jim Dandy attracted horses that eventually competed in the Travers, some of which won the Travers, thus becoming Grade 1 winners. Since three of the five criteria are based on career performance in graded races, races such as the Jim Dandy look good in hindsight if you are only looking at numbers. In 1984, the Jim Dandy was elevated to Grade 2 status.
Sixteen years later, further grade creep has made the Travers prep a Grade 1 event. While the Jim Dandy does attract good horses, it is not a final goal for a trainer or an owner. It is not the equivalent of the Travers.
You can put all the numbers that you want into an equation, but it does not add up to the Jim Dandy being a Grade 1 event. Sometimes you have to disregard numbers and use common sense.
Mark Simon is editor of Thoroughbred Times.
