Hello on a great morning in Paradise! I'm feeling fantastic and went for a beach run (soft going today: firm last time out!!) carrying an extra 250g in my singlet (fruit and nut) to put this all to a real life test. Must say there appeared to be an unexpected IMPROVEMENT despite the weight increase. Could this be because on Saturday morning (previous start) I was feeling a bit rough and didn't let on (to my trainer or the stewards) that a barking dog had kept me awake all night? If only the horses later in the day had let me know how THEY were feeling I could've eliminated quite a few of them.
Anyway,what really illustrates the "fallacy" inherant in miniscule weight variations is that the TOP weight wins most often (in Hcps of course!!) followed by the second toppie,then the third etc. Remember that the Handicapper has,basically, decided that as horse X is the "best",it should carry the most and be No1. After deciding which is 2nd best (and so on) and all the weights are assigned, OVER TIME, the handicapper is proven right in his assessment of the "class" of the animals BUT his weights haven't stopped em!! You might say the toppie should've been more highly weighted but in that case we're back to where we started from:when is enough enough? How much weight DOES it take to stop a train???