Weight may stop a train but it’s rare that it will stop a horse.
Sure, there are plenty of examples of lighter weighted horses who have gotten the better of their more heavily weighted rivals, but on the whole, topweights are a very good bet and in a lot of cases do not carry enough weight.
If you care to cast your mind back to some of our topline horses from recent times, like Hay List and Black Caviar, they successfully carried heavy weights. Yet in the lead-up to races, most of the talk was about “the weight” and more value was on offer in the price they started.
Put simply, weight is one of the clearest indicators of class. The weight allocated by the handicapper is a response to the horse’s record – those carrying more weight have more ability.
I had a mate of mine in the game run a few numbers for me, which revealed some interesting results. He took a sample of 50,000 topweights, which produced a strike rate of 19 per cent winners. However, tweaking the sample slightly to just those allocated at least 3kgs more than the second-highest-weighted runner, increased the strike rate to 22 per cent.
A professional punter put it into perspective for me. The group of ‘all topweights’ returned 75 per cent at level stakes starting price, whereas the group allocated at least 3kgs more than their rivals returned 78 per cent.
Clearly, both groups are a long way from breaking even, but you’re always going to apply other form factors and filter rules to determine your selections.
There’s also a direct correlation between TAB numbers and strike rates. From a sample of half a million runners, TAB number 1 produced 15.6 per cent winners, and this gradually declined for each TAB number, down to a 5.4 per cent strike rate for those runners with TAB number 10 or above.
From a return on investment point of view, the number 1 TAB numbers in the sample returned 72 per cent at level stakes starting price, right down to the number 10 and above group, which only returned 55 per cent.
I’m not suggesting you simply back all topweights or all TAB number 1s, you still need to take into account the other prevailing form factors.
But the next time you are put off by a big weight, think twice.
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