Experimental Free Handicap discontinued due to 'waning relevance'

The Experimental Free Handicap, an annual ranking of 2-year-old horses by a theoretical assigned weight, has been discontinued due to “waning relevance and interest,” according to the organization that oversaw the compilation of the list, The Jockey Club.

The decision to discontinue the Experimental Free Handicap may be mourned by some in the racing industry, but the annual list had become increasingly anachronistic as horses race less and less often as 2-year-olds and the relevance of handicap racing continues to wane. The rankings were compiled by committees of racing secretaries who spent hours poring over the past-performance data of hundreds of juvenile horses.

The Experimental Free Handicap was first published in the U.S. in 1933, modeled on a similar ranking produced in England (the list has been produced every year since 1935, as no official list was produced in 1934). In 2017, The Jockey Club renamed the list the “Annual Top 2-Year-Old Rankings.”

All 2-year-olds regardless of sex were initially ranked on the same list. In 1985, the lists were split into male and female rankings. The top male was expected to be assigned 126 pounds unless extraordinarily impressive or uninspiring, while the top female was expected to be assigned 123 pounds. The weight was based on a theoretical race at 1 1/16 miles on dirt.

While the list usually predicted the top 3-year-old horses of the following year, its “waning relevance” was most starkly illustrated by the 2018 list of the top 2-year-olds of 2017. The list does not include Justify, who won the 2018 Triple Crown, because the horse did not run as a juvenile.