Thanks osulldj,

In fact your posting could not be truer and your assessment of statistics and how you apply them more accurate!

You cannot apply statistics solely on strike rate with out considering at least a few other variables.

Each race, in my opinion has to be treated as an individual event, but apply statistics based on the "weight" (pardon the pun) you give to each one.

The impact of weight over various distances has to be considered as well. Weight over 1000m or 1200m is vastly different to the impact of weight over 1800 or 2400m. This is where statistics can guide you in the wrong direction.

The reason that many of the topweights fail is not because of weight.
It is because they are weighted based on their best form not on their recent form. So you get out of form horses being given top weights and performing poorly.

They are then assigned topweight because they drop down a little in grade and are not at their peak formwise.

The ones that do win are usually in good form but have had luckless runs or beaten by a smaller margin.

So the stats are not a good guide if you only consider the raw data.
If you were to consider topweights which were beaten by less than two lengths at their previous start, over various distances I think you'd be get a better guide to the impact of weight.

As always it's the bigger picture to consider.