You have no doubt heard of the jockey they call ‘The Magic Man’. Now, perhaps, the world of racing has witnessed the arrival of ‘The Young Wizard’.
At the age of just 20, South African-born Callan Murray this week made the biggest leap in rankings points in the entire evolution of TRC Global Rankings – more than any fellow jockey, any trainer, any owner or any sire.
The lofty comparison with Joao Moreira – ranked third in our latest classifications – is not invoked stylistically or in any other way superficially but strictly numerically. For, as we will see shortly, Murray is one of the riders who profiles like Moreira by our numbers. (With Murray headed for a three-month stint in Hong Kong the two will meet head-on.)
Joao Moreira & Callan Murray
Murray goes up 31 rankings points and 160 places to 109 for his G1 treble on Champions Day at Turffontein. He landed the Premier’s Champions Challenge (2000m) on Deo Juvente, the South African Nursery (1200m) on Mustaaqeem, and the Computaform Sprint (1000m) on Rafeef. Two of the three came for trainer Mike De Kock and in the colours of Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum, while Deo Juvente is trained by Geoff Woodruff and owned by the increasingly influential Mayfair Speculators.
Of course, a rider does not come without his book of rides. And a small sample can always just be a fluke. So, even if you are not convinced by Murray’s languid, relaxed, uber-cool ride on Deo Juvente, for instance, precedent suggests that winning three Group 1 races is a notable achievement, particularly in one so young.
The history of TRC Global Rankings goes back to 2014. On that day, we formed the initial rankings internally using the previous three years of results in Group and Graded races around the world. That window has shifted forward 174 times to this week’s classifications, and the system moves the competitors in each category of jockeys, owners, trainers and sires up or down in an attempt to minimise the number of future changes it has to make.
In other words, TRC Global Rankings is equally forward- and backward-looking. It measures past accomplishment – like all world rankings systems try to do – but it is unique in doing so predictively. In the context of statistics, this means that the maths we use tries to strip out randomness from every competitor’s results, smoothing their change in rankings points by learning what each win or loss really means.
We sometimes get asked why not simply aggregate Group and Graded wins to produce the classifications? And how can we rank competitors with fewer wins above more prolific rivals? The answer is that Group and Graded race performances must be placed in their proper context – how rare was the achievement in that part of the world? How good was the race independent of its grading? How much evidence is there that it is repeatable? – before the rankings can serve as more than an exercise in playing with numbers.
Less sophisticated rankings could not capture the brilliance of Moreira, or trainers like John Moore, if they merely used aggregation. And the system is betting heavily on South African Murray becoming a global star in the next few years.
– Thoroughbredracing.com
