OVERNIGHT HANDICAPS

In overnight handicaps the racing secretary weights the combatants according to his estimate of their relative abilities, as indicated by recent records. The best horses carry the highest weights, purportedly to afford the low weights a fairer chance.

The same procedure, and principle, applies in stakes races programmed under handicap conditions. The relative weights are supposed to bring them all together, which they do not.

Handicappers differ from horsemen curiously regarding a number of basic influences on race outcomes, including the relative importance of speed, jockey, and post position, but nowhere can the disagreements be trumpeted as loudly as on the relevance of the weights. Horsemen respond to extra pounds as petulantly as the vainest starlets. Handicappers abandon the factor as next to meaningless.

The scientific evidence supports the handicappers, and without qualification or exception.

Probability studies have revealed irrefutably that high-weighted horses in stakes win a fantastically disproportionate share of the titles. Low weights get virtually nothing. Moreover, high-weights in overnight races win significantly more races than probabilities would expect. And weight shifts do not alter prior results, however close.

Finally, in a provocative sample of stakes races programmed under handicap conditions, the winners triumphed by safer margins than did the winners of similar stakes where weight differentials were not as gross. The highest-weighted horses, in fact, won by the largest margins.

So biased is the evidence in favor of the high-weights, mathematician Bill Quirin has suggested that if racegoers had access to no other information about the horses, they would do best by playing the top-weighted horses every time.

The handicapping of overnight handicaps is straightforward, provided handicappers know what to do with the legitimate stakes stars in the lineup. Find the horse with the highest numerical rating, or final figure, based upon its latest two starts.

That's the probable winner, irrespective of weights.