There are no Australian horses in the world’s top 30 horses, while every other major jurisdiction is represented in the latest World’s Best Racehorse Rankings published this week.
In a remarkable rebuke to Tempted, which beat the world’s best Ka Ying Rising in The Everest, and Autumn Glow, the winner of 15 of 16 starts including four races ranked in the top 100 in the world in 2026, that the international handicapping panel couldn’t get an Australian horse to a 122 rating or higher.
The rankings have a glass ceiling when it comes to Australia, where the international panel don’t allow the middle to upper class horses to get to ratings that can help the top horses into their rightful positions.
Australian racing is treated differently to Europe, the US and Japan, which have stronger ratings across the board.
There has to be a group of horses around the 117 to 119 marks to allow the better horses to extend their ratings to get to 122 to be in the top 30 in the world and it is here that Australia is let down by the panel.
Autumn Glow is rated 121, the top Australian, but with the mares’ allowance it would be the equivalent of being rated 125, but it also illustrates a big weakness in the ranking.
There was only one mare in the top 30, Kalpana, the winner of the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Yorkshire Oaks. Her 124 rating would be 128, placing her above Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Daryz, who is on a mark of 127.
The ratings are done on the actual weight carried in races, so mares are given a four-point allowance when races are rated to get in the world’s top 100.
So with the majority of our stars being fillies and mares, they start with a four-point disadvantage.
However, The Everest offers an example of why the rankings don’t work when the handicappers look to anchor the rating for the race on the fourth horse, Headwall.
Instead of using the incredible 135 Ka Ying Rising brought to Australia and saying that our sprinters, who gave him a contest he has never experienced in Hong Kong, didn’t rise to his level. They went off the rating of Headwall, which they didn’t want to get too high, even though he has been one of the most consistent performers in Group 1 sprints.
The fact they knocked about 13 to 15 points off Ka Ying Rising’s peak rating, or 10 percent of his rating, to make the race fit they model is a fundamental flaw.
It meant the horses that finished around him stayed at their level and didn’t allow Tempted or Joliestar to get into the early 120s, where they belong.
The other element to the ratings is that if Tempted and Joliestar got to around 123, the Everest would be close to the best race in the world as the rating of the race is determined by the peak figure of the first four over the line. It is not seen as Arc De Triomphe, Sussex Stakes, Japan Cup or Breeders’ Cup.
Autumn Glow suffers from the lack of quality ratings around her and that she wins comfortably, rather than by big spaces. You need to race in fields that have high rating horses to get to the 124-125 mark. These don’t exist in Australia.
Unfortunately, the King Charles III Stakes where she beat Ceolwulf, around a 118 rating, didn’t have that depth. The remainder of the field was left struggling well away from the winner, but they were expected to be there because their ratings were in the low 100s.
Meanwhile in Europe there is a solid band of horses around the 120 mark, which allows their best horses to extend to the high marks.
The jurisdictions are treated completely differently. The fact that Joliestar went to England and raced outside her usual pattern down the Royal Ascot straight and was given a mark close to her best is a concern. Joliestar dropped a couple of points where Ka Ying Rising dropped was well into the teens when he hopped on a plane.
It allowed the winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, Almeraq, to get to a mark of 123 by the end of 2026, the second best sprinter in the world after a couple of other Group 1 sprints wins. That’s around the same mark as Tempted when her mares’ allowance is taken into account.
No one is going to argue that English sprinters are in the same class as Australian speedsters, as Australians would concede that English middle-distance horses are better than those here.
It is wrong that Australia doesn’t have a horse in the top 30 in a year where there are stars in the ranks, but until the overall vision of Australian racing by the international handicapping panel it will be a racing’s backwater.
