Flatter: Comparing Flightline with Frankel is fraught with peril

We had to listen closely from this side of the pond. That faint noise in the distance this week was a full-blown rumble over there in London, where Flightline was honoured – yes, with a “u,” – as the world’s best racehorse of 2022.

Not just of 2022, really. Flightline was awarded 140 mythical pounds in the handicapping system used by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities to determine the best Thoroughbred on this here planet. That figure was five pounds better than No. 2 Baaeed.

It was not so much that Flightline was decreed the best in the world last year. There was no legitimate argument against that ranking. Once Baaeed lost in the British Champion Stakes (G1), all our horse over here had to do was show up and run away from everyone in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. As we say sometimes too soon but in this case right on cue, mission accomplished.

The problem came when it was noticed that Flightline’s 140 was the highest for any racehorse since Frankel a decade ago. For the uninitiated, Frankel started 14 races, won 14 races, 10 of them Group 1s, and was the undisputed world champion in 2011 and 2012. Racing exclusively in England, he might have been the best turf miler ever.

When a panel of international racing wonks handed out that golden ticket, that second 140, it barely raised an eyebrow over here. However, in Europe it was quite the opposite, especially for hackles in the Isles.

“Frankel’s equal? Why the handicappers have got it wrong over Flightline,” screamed one headline in Racing Post, the British bible for the sport of kings.

“The fact that Flightline is officially the equal of Frankel highlights the fatal flaw in the official ratings,” snorted John Randall, once a £500,000 winner over there on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and a self-described racing historian. “Official ratings ... are worthless when it comes to historical comparisons.”

“I don’t know how official any of these rankings really are,” sighed Jerry Seinfeld to Izzy Mandelbaum in 1997. That actually was about a comparison of dads, but the line works perfectly well here.

I felt obligated to clean up all the gauntlets that were flung all over the floor. Should I not defend the land of the free, the home of the brave and our horse of a generation?

Well, yes. Of course. But not on the strength of analytics. Because that is what these numbers are. Analytics. That is a word with the most appropriate first four letters in the English language.

In short, the IFHA ratings are a crock. They accidentally got it right this year, but do not forget what they really are. They do not rank the best racehorses but, instead, a horse’s best race.

Flightline did not get his score of 140 for his 3-for-3 year or his 6-for-6 body of work. Instead, a panel of international handicappers gave him that weight for his geared-down, 19 1/4-length win last summer in the Pacific Classic (G1).

Put this system in American terms. If we went simply by the Beyer Speed Figures published by Daily Racing Form, then Flightline was our horse of the year based solely on his 126 at Del Mar.

Using that same prism, Flightline also would have been horse of the year in 2021 on the basis of his 118 in the Malibu (G1). At least he would have been if the IFHA best-race template been used.

That system has been known to backfire in some embarrassing ways. There was no better, or worse, example of this than in 2016. That was when a horse named A Shin Hikari came out of Japan and showed up in Chantilly, France. On a miserably wet day that turned the grass into a marsh, he made like a hydrofoil and won the Prix d’Ispahan (G1) at odds of 7-1.

There is an international panel of handicappers who are the equivalent of our morning-line writers. This group gathers every so often on a Zoom call to pronounce world rankings throughout the year. This was the group that gave A Shin Hikari a 123 that, at the time, made him No. 1 in the world. For three months. He astoundingly stayed there until California Chrome uncorked his own big number in the Pacific Classic.

After displaying his superior aquatic skills in France, A Shin Hikari got back on land and finished last in the Prince of Wales’s (G1) at Royal Ascot, 12th back home in the autumn Tenno Sho (G1) and finally 10th in the Hong Kong Cup (G1). That was it. The horse who broke serve in the rain at Chantilly lost 6-1, 6-0, 6-0. Game, set, career. Even so, at the end of the year, when Arrogate rose to No. 1 in the world, A Shin Hikari still ranked No. 5.

Making these honors even more dubious was the retrospective recalibration almost exactly 10 years ago of some old ratings. But not all of them. Champions from the ’70s and ’80s had their numbers reduced beneath Frankel, whose 140 was not altered. As one critic wrote 10 years ago in The Guardian, “it might be a coincidence that the handicappers chose to ‘grasp the nettle’ and revise all the ratings between 1977 and 1991 in the same year that Frankel retired unbeaten. ... Will anyone believe it?”

This tinkering with the numerical framework smacks of revisionist history. They did this with the decathlon in 1934 and 1950 and 1962 and 1984 and 1998. Football concocted and re-concocted its passer ratings, somehow making 158.3 the mark of perfection in the NFL and 1261.6 the same in college. Even gymnastics got rid of the perfect 10.

In short, the ratings are flawed. All ratings are flawed. Thankfully, we did not take some sleight of mathematical hand to realize that Flightline was the best of 2022.

The problem comes when we try to make a horse into something it is not. I do not remember John Sadler ever saying he was trying to train Flightline into a better horse than Frankel. The closest he might have gotten to that could have a story about Bobby Frankel, not the bay Frankel.

The morning after the Pacific Classic, I called William Haggas, the trainer of Baaeed. At the time both Baaeed and Flightline had unblemished career records. The first thing Haggas said after I identified myself was, “What am I supposed to say?” He already was gushing about what he saw on TV in the middle of a European night.

That same day Sadler said, “I’d be curious to see what the rankings are.” Well, who wouldn’t be? He just as quickly said, “That’s a hard comparison.”

That was just between two horses running on two different types of surfaces on two different continents – but in the same year. Try and draw that comparison between champions separated by surfaces and an ocean and a decade. That is difficult enough in conversation. To look at a pair of 140s thrown on the table and then declare the two of them were in lockstep was just silly.

John Gosden, who trained for years at Santa Anita before re-establishing himself as an icon in his native England, told Racing Post, “Flightline had an incredibly fluent stride, and if you watch him, it never falters. … That’s what he shares with Frankel. That incredible stride and the ability to make it look easy.”

That was more like it. Nothing more numerically to see here, folks. Appreciate them both, and stop trying so hard to say Spiderman was better than Batman.

The bottom line is this. Flightline was the horse of a generation. He set out to dominate America, and in so doing he happened to conquer the world. It was just like when Frankel set out to dominate England, and he happened to conquer the world.

Don’t tell me, though, that Flightline was as good as Frankel.

At the same time, don’t dare tell me that he was not.