Open Race Handicaps

[Smiffy@VeronnaV]

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What do you think is the best handicap to be fair to all?

How does a handicap make a system fair? A contradiction in terms to my mind!! A dog is handicapped to give the other dogs a chance of winning - in theory anyway. But unless they are graded the handicap is a paper exercise. (That they are graded in an unofficial way by the Mains/Cons groups is open to debate). If one uses the arguements of Sundance for Supremes, and by default Mains racing, then determining the best of the breed for stud/breeding has to be determined by equal opportunity surely? Handicappping doesn't make it equal does it? It does quite the opposite.

One of the posts mentioned smaller weight groups off scratch. Why not? That would seem a good way to go!

 

[IanGerman]

The best dog unarguably, is the one with the fastest time. However as some clubs use hand timing - which is fallible, and some clubs don't have timing at all, then finding the best dog is pretty futile in most cases.

At our open last week (Harvel) I believe the fastest time came from a medium weight dog (can't be categoric about it as I didn't keep my programme up to date!) which in itself blows a huge hole in the "weight = speed" theory that our current handicap system is based on.

 

[Smiffy@VeronnaV]

Well, I would dispute that the best dog is the one with the fastest time, - they DON'T ALWAYS WIN THE MAIN!!!!

The fastest time on the day can be in round 1, and that dog gets knocked out in round 2! Now, speaking for only myself, should I find myself in a position of needing a dog to hunt for my dinner or I starved, I would look for one which would run fast more than once because if the rabbit got away the first time, I would want the dog to be able to go hunting again on the same day and hopefully catch something!! So I would not use the fastest time of the day as a guide to the best on the field that day. But I would use unbeaten all day as a guide to consistent performance. Were one to use times, then it would have to be the best overall average of the day for each group, and how would one build into the system the four rounds that some weight groups have? I suppose you could have a system where all weight groups that only have 3 rounds have to run a '99' (for want of a better word), between the semi and main final! I can't see owners agreeing to that either!

 

[SUNDANCE]

The argument that the best dog on the day is a dog which remains unbeaten, doesn't really narrow things down much, because more often than not the goup winners will be unbeaten in all rounds. It also doesn't change the fact that a dog could win a group with a low entry and win 3 x 3 dog races, whereas a miiddleweight may have a couple of 5 dog races followed by a couple of 4 dog races.

To say that the best dog is the fastest, unfairly discriminates against the best of the lightweights who can't realistically run as fast as dogs twice their size. We don't want to start driving up the size and weight of whippets any more, or we'll soon be hearing calls for increasing the maximum weight to 34lb or maybe more.

The current system of supremes does allow a variety of weights to be able to win, with half yard per pound favouring the heavier dogs and yard per pound favouring the lightweights. Any owner with ambitions to win the whippet news top ten will need to contest and win supremes to gain the extra points offered. Most top ten winners will probably need to win a minimum of three supremes in a year.