Next week sees the publication of the annual Longines-sponsored World Best Racehorse Rankings. Here’s how they would have looked according to TRC race ratings …

The highest-rated performances of 2024 according to Thoroughbred Racehorse Commentary’s exclusive Race Ratings were achieved by former City Of Troy and Sierra Leone.

Both horses, three-year-olds representing the Coolmore team in 2024, hit the mark of TRC131 in their respective victories in the Juddmonte International at York in August and the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar in November.

Now retired to Coolmore’s Irish base after a dismal display in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Aidan O’Brien-trained City Of Troy produced the highest-rated performance of his high-profile career when he held runaway Royal Ascot winner Calandagan by a length in the York highlight.

After a string of consistent efforts in defeat in top company, Sierra Leone benefited from an ideal setup to beat Fierceness by a length and a half at Del Mar.

However, neither horse is our current world #1, because their body of work does not match that of the Hong Kong superstar Romantic Warrior, who led our weekly rankings for the 26th week as of January 14.

Romantic Warrior, who is set to run at the Dubai Carnival on Jan 24 in the G1 Jebel Hatta, achieved a career-high of TRC130 when completing a hat-trick in the Hong Kong Cup last month at Sha Tin.

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City Of Troy was #1 for an eight-week spell after the Juddmonte International, but Sierra Leone will have a chance to improve on his current #12 status in the Saudi Cup.For the purposes of this article, however, we are considering individual performances – which reflects the modus operandi of next week’s Longines World Racing Awards, featuring the annual World Best Racehorse Rankings, due to be unveiled on Tuesday Jan 21 in London.

Full list of top performances of 2024 on TRC race ratings

Our accompanying table (compiled by TRC Global Rankings guru James Willoughby) lists the best performances of 2024 according to TRC Race Ratings – no more, no less – ranked in descending order by individual horses. This is therefore the same method as that employed by the IFHA team.

Yet with that in mind, surely everybody knows by now that these so-called World Best Racehorse Rankings are a complete misnomer. That is not to disparage the diligent work of the accomplished team of handicapping experts who compile these IFHA (International Federation of Horseracing Authorities) lists. But they do not identify the ‘world’s best racehorse’ – or at least, despite their title, that is not their primary function.

Of course, they may sometimes alight on the world’s best racehorse, but it is no more than a snappy title because what they actually do is to list the merit of individual performances as per the cogitations of their esteemed body of international of handicappers representing various major racing jurisdictions.

As such, self-trumpeted claims that these end-of-year rankings offer “horse racing’s equivalent” to ATP Tennis Rankings, World Golf Rankings, FIFA World Rankings for football and IRB Rugby World Rankings are misleading, if not entirely bogus.

Those other sports offer rolling rankings, updated on a regular basis so that whoever tops the list in any given week can be regarded as the current #1. (Jannik Sinner, Scottie Scheffler, Argentina and South Africa for men; Aryana Sabalenka, Nelly Korda, the USA and England for women).

As such, a much closer approximation to other sports’ rankings is offered by the weekly TRC Global Rankings for horses, jockeys, trainers, owners and sires.

Unlike traditional methods of racehorse rankings, TRC Global Rankings are a measure of an individual’s level of achievement over a rolling three-year period, providing a principled hierarchy of the leading horses, jockeys, trainers, owners and sires using statistical learning techniques.

They are formulated from the last three years of races we consider Group or Graded class all over the world and update automatically each week according to the quality of a horse’s performances and their recency, taking into account how races work out.

Be that as it may, the most recent world #1 according to the IFHA list was the spectacular Dubai World Cup winner Laurel River, who was given an official rating of 127 for his 8½-length Meydan romp under Tadhg O’Shea on March 30. On the most recent official list, published to include races up to and including November 10, this remained the highest-rated performance of 2024.

Laurel River’s display was a pound ahead of City Of Troy and Via Sistina’s Cox Plate – and  three pounds ahead of Sierra Leone.

If they stick to their guns, Laurel River will duly be crowned the ‘best racehorse’ of 2024 … but was he really? Even if we allow for differences of opinion between the IFHA experts and TRC race ratings – was he any more than a one-shot deal in 2024?

Our computer rated Laurel River’s Dubai World Cup at TRC128 – as the accompanying table shows – but his name does not even appear in current TRC Global Rankings lists because he hasn’t run for nine months and therefore automatically drops out until he runs again and confirms his merit.

For comparative purposes, the highest-rated performance of 2024 according to the much respected Racing Post Ratings system – similarly, strictly referring to individual performances – is City Of Troy’s 129 in the Juddmonte International. Sierra Leone (128) comes next, intriguingly on similar mark as top miler Charyn (Queen Elizabeth Stakes). Laurel River is on 126.

They official assessors might pull a rabbit from the hat, of course, though in the past it has sometimes been hard to resist the suggestion that politicking and gerrymandering have been known to affect the IFHA outcome.

It is not only Japanese racing enthusiasts who still find it questionable that the great Deep Impact never get to the top in 2006 (before TRC Global Rankings existed). 

Maybe something was lost in translation from the Japanese handicapper, or perhaps the Japanese horse’s brilliant Arima Kinen success on December 24 came a little late in the calendar year – after the Hong Kong International meeting (sponsored by Longines) when the handicappers meet to discuss their figures. In According to Racing Post Ratings, Deep Impact’s performance was the clear best that year – but Invasor topped the IFHA list, with both Bernardini and Discreet Cat also above the Japanese equinne idol.

Similarly, Australia’s mighty mare Winx holds the record for most number of weeks on top of the TRC Global Rankings with a total of 176 weeks between 2016 and 2019 as she established a legendary winning streak of 33 consecutive races including a world-record 25 G1 events.

Only once was she acclaimed as the ‘world’s best racehorse’ under the parameters of the official standings – in 2018, and even then, only jointly with Cracksman, whose peak form was achieved via runaway successes in the mud.

View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses / jockeys / trainers / sires

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