Quote from Karel Meidema

If it was always the case I would say Bravo

"Many sports, impossible to quantify performance. Racing different. Past performance can be reliably used to predict future"

Sorry meant to say this was today at some conference

The word "reliably" seems out of place when used in the context of horse-racing !!

The comment is accurate in theory .....................however in practice ,the way the system is operated locally,ability ratings are contaminated by all sorts of competency discounts and manipulations.

Factor in in-and-out running and things become as clear as mud...

I think that when you factor in the past performance of the "humans" involved you can sometimes predict failures as accurately as you can predict successes.

In recent years, the most predictable and consistent sport where past performance has been a reliable predictor is men's tennis. There are the occasional upsets, but Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have been dominant for years.
5 set matches are a key reason- the best player can recover from a few poor shots, or a bad patch to prevail.
Unlike golf, where a couple of bad holes will mess up your end score, a dropped set or even two can be overcome.
The impact of external variables like weather, court conditions, umpiring are all relatively easy ( Eg Nadal likes clay) or are not that impactful. There are only 2 players to consider.
Team sports are tricky because of selection, morale, coaching and tactics. Subjective decisions by officials in rugby and soccer are unpredictable, and outdoor weather can cause havoc.
Horse racing has lots of variables, which makes it tricky, but horse ability is paramount and is reasonably well predictable from past performance in WFA and conditions races. Handicap races, however, explicitly seek to negate any difference in horse ability, and apart from some obvious situations where the handicap is wrong, make form subservient to random variables.

Very well put PeterD

A couple of years back a local sports journalist wrote an article listing the most dominant sportsmen of modern times in their respective fields but he omitted the probable most dominant of all time. Any guesses?

Give us a clue with which sport ?

Jordan, Ali, Pele, ?

mccoy ?

Edwin Moses 400m hurdles