Delighted to hear frankel has been crowned greatest ever by wtr, on 140 with dancing brave dropped to 138 and Shergar and generous(who incidentally passed away today) dropped to 136 in a shake up of the ratings. Thoughts anyone?

right decision

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........................always a tricky call to compare horses from different eras. This debate could roll and roll, but I'm keeping out.

Well the ratings were biased towards earlier horses, and when you take into account the fact that DBs rating was seen as a leaving present for the main handicapper...

I'm going to use this to highlight what I believe to be a flaw in the way the ratings are presented. Dancing brave is rated 138, 2lb below frankel, so what this implies is in a handicap if frankel were carrying 10 stone and dancing brave 9 12, they would cross the line together. However this wouldn't actually be the case, as dancing brave recorded his best at 3, and frankel at 4, so when dancing brave won the arc he was receiving 7lb from older horses as wfa, and so would receive 7pb from frankel, so actually would be carrying 9lb less, meaning frankel in pure handicap terms is actually at least 9lb better. Now I know people will say how weight for age is tried and tested and all that, but the simple fact is if two horses finished in a dead heat in a straight handicap and one was carrying 9lb more, that would be 9lb the better horse. The purpose of the weight for age system is to try and nullify age differences and the mares allowance gender differences, but what it means is that a fully developed three year old can win all the big races, and equally a well built mare can dominate. In fact its fair to say that if black caviar was a colt she would not be the horse she is, as she is built like a strong colt but recieves 3 lb from the other horses. zenyatta is another prime example of a well built mare to do well. An example of the perhaps distorted results WFA can sometimes lead to is if the king George of 2011 had been run a week later it's likely nathaniel would not have won, as the wfa had gone down by 3lb. So at the time of running, he was at the most mature he could be for that Wfa bracket, and this is why I didn't expect him to make the step up this year in the way he did. In fact workforce had got no worse, but had been a big three year old the year before and had probably been favoured by the wfa system. The WFA is a key reasons lot of the highest rated horses are all 3 year olds, as they are all fairly mature, and perhaps have less scope for improvement. Frankel as we all know improved from 3 to 4 and probably should have been rated more highly, but if you looked at the Sussex stakes win in 2011 in pure handicap terms and ignored wfa, candles cliffs will have put up a very similar performance to frankel, even though we know frankel to subsequently be the better horse. I will repeat again, I understand fully why they have wfa, to allow horses to supposedly run off a level playing field, but you can see an example in the wtr for last year where dawn approach and Camelot both are rated 124. Now anyone with common sense can tell if they were both to run off that mark it would be a no contest, but it is not indicated that in a straight handicap it would be necessary to apply wfa, and people seem to forget that when it comes to 3&4 year olds, wfa plays a huge part. I just want to put forward one more argument- the 1973 national, IMO the greatest handicap battle, Red rum beat crisp 3/4 lengths in receipt of 27lb or something similar. Now even though red rum won, crisp still put up a better performance, which is widely acknowledged. However if it had been a conditions race and the disparity in weights had been due to wfa, people would have been saying red rum had put up a better performance. Why?

As a demonstration, using timeforms wfa scale, assuming all highest rated performances were posted in late September early October, here is an amended ratings list if all horses were to run together with weight for age allowances they would receive for their optimum distances in October.
Frankel-147
Brigadier Gerard-144
Abernant, Ribot-142
Mill Reef-141
Tudor Minstrel,Harbinger,Dubai Millenium-140
Sea Bird-137
Windy City-133
Dancing Brave, Sea the Stars, Shergar, Vaguely Noble-132
These are the marks, wfa included, worked out from timeforms list, that they would run off in a handicap together in early October.

Sea the Stars v Frankel over 1m 2f. Sea the Stars recieving 15lbs? I know where my money would be going.

Yes, so do I, mine would be on Frankel. Sea the Stars would always have been in receipt of at least 7lb from any older horses anyway, so frankel would only have to have beaten Sea the Stars' best form over 1 mile 2 by 4 lengths, which he could do easily. If they were to race at level weights over 1 mile 2, theoretically Frankel would beat STS by 8 1/2 lengths, according to the BHA pounds per length system.

Hard call this one. Great horses in different eras. But Sea The Stars and Shergar should be higher. Sea The Stars would have won the triple crown if competed in the Leger and nobody will win a Derby as easily as Shergar did, but this is my opinion but ALL legendary horses.

Sea The Stars didn't have the impressive 10 length win or win on the bridle which would have boosted his rating and the fact he did not race past 3yo also effected his rating

Frankel by far the best IMO

Sea the stars never did any more than he had to though which also kept his rating down. Oxx/Kinane never wanted to push the horse to the maximum. Most horses are even better at 4 so a 15lb pull for Sea the Stars would be too much for Frankel imo.

But the point is sea the stars would be racing as a 3yo and frankel as a 4yo, as we only have ratings for when STS was a 3yo, so if STS was 4yonhe wouldn't be getting the wfa. Personally, I agree with a rather controversial statement that came up on c4 which is that a horse has to race at 4 to be considered a great, as to overcome the wfa is sometimes a big ask, especially if the horse is quite precocious.

I agree but owners retire horses at 3 when they is money to be made for stud fees, it's a greedy persons game unfortunately. Sea The Stars would have been a top 4 year old as well and in my opinion would have won the Arc again, his greatest win was in the Arc...the horse got better and better with every race and I still believe we hadn't seen the best of him when he retired to stud, but, that's life!! Look at poor Shergar he would have become even greater if he had run at 4 if he had been given the chance to, but, as we know Shergar's history as now gone into folklore. Frankel is a beast but at 1m 2f giving 15lb to Sea The Stars he would have suffered his first defeat..my opinion, but, we will never know and that is what makes racing great...it's full of unanswered questions that nobody can answer with a high degree of certainty WHAT WILL HAVE HAPPENED!!

I have to agree with Kev, giving Sea The Stars 15lbs over 10f would be too much of an ask, even for the mighty Frankel.