I just noticed that Friedman posted that Victory Encounter\'s connections are Ragozin customers. In the same post he says that she was 4-5 points short of being competitive in yesterday\'s Milady (our Race Of The Week).
Which leads to the obvious question-- why did your clients run in the race?
Did wesly ward mispeak when he said that Pesci paired 2\'s on the ragozin sheets? I dont follow them, and they may use the same number format as you do, but she paired 2\'s on the your sheets as well?
On another note, if Pesci ends up with a better figure then Quero Quero cause she lost slightly more ground then something is wrong, Quero Quero had the much more difficult trip, and showed guts hugging the rail on the turn. Its that aspect that groudn loss is very overrated. In fact I would say Pesci has had two perfect trips in a row, with two losses.
Don\'t know what Ragozin gave Pesci, ours can be found in ROTW. Your gut-feel opinion of what constitutes a tough trip is unprovable, and we only measure those things that can be measured, like distance travelled. Everyone is entitled to qualify the numbers any way they want, but those who have worked with truly accurate figures incorporating ground loss find out really quickly how tight the figures become when you adjust for how far the horses actually travelled (leaving aside the question of dead rails, which we have the computer search for, and which we mark).
I will also add that my share of the Gold Cup purse would be a whole lot more if Even The Score and Total Impact reversed trips.
Total Impact had more horse than Even the Score the entire way, you could see Smith standing up on him from the 5/8 pole to the quarter pole. I think it was the distance that beat ETS and not the trip.
If distance lost was the key (which it did play a part in this race, I agree)it must have been equally difficult to watch Smith beat you with a ground saving ride having read your opinions of his ability in the past ( :
Post Edited (07-12-04 16:17)
Ruffian Fan-- I agree the connections have done a good job, I\'m just questioning who they are, and how they\'ve done it. Either--
1) The Ragozin office is advising them, and advised them to run in a spot Friedman himself said was hopeless, or
2) The \"client\" is making decisions on their own.
The point being this-- when Len and Jake make those congratulatory posts they phrase them very carefully. Don\'t know what the real degree of participation was with VE or Ramsey\'s horse, but for the most part Ragozin \"clients\" are like DRF clients-- they sell them bulk data, at a very low price (you can get a sheet on a million dollar horse you are considering buying for, I believe, $15), and those guys use \"the number\" the same way DRF buyers use the Beyers. I can\'t tell you how many times (most recently last week) we have tried to buy a horse and had the owner tell us the Rag numbers, which they got for the price of a week\'s worth of DRF\'s.
I get somewhere between 50 to 100 calls a year asking us whether we offer the same service. We don\'t, because while lots of people can bet on a horse, only one can own it, so we feel service to horsemen is worth a lot more, and should be charged for accordingly.
Our record indicates we are right-- ask Ro Parra (owner of Even The Score) whether he agrees. And if the Ragozin office\'s record was as good as they try to make it appear, they could charge what I do.
Saddlecloth--
I let your previous posts on Smith go because it\'s no big deal, and I don\'t want to spend a lot of time on this, but
1) he had no choice with Total Impact, but it was a good ride
2) 17% (by memory) is no big deal when the average field is 6 horses and you are usually on one of the 3 favorites
3) he is white, speaks English well, and is personable. This has always been a big deal-- it is much tougher for the latin jocks to break in, and
4) the jockey colony out there is very weak, especially now that Pincay and Stevens (and most of the time Valenzuela) aren\'t there. You will almost never see anyone try to come through inside-- and it seemed to work pretty well this weekend with the two races we are discussing. That\'s why Smith and Julie ended up there, and did well-- everybody plays it safe, and only has to deal with 6 horse fields. There is a limit to how wide you can be.
\"If you call it luck lets do it again\"
I dont believe in luck, and I dont believe you get lucky and win as much as he has. Kent D is winning at 13% at this watered down meet, so its not as easy as you suggest (did you see some of kents ground saving losses this weekend on 3/5 shots). And ground loss is a bit overrated, as you can see from Smiths 1000 wins, and a whole bunch of graded stakes wins since the accident.
About the racial suggestion, he aint the only white jockey out there.
I am just messing with you a bit, jockeys are pretty irrelevent to handicapping in my book.
Post Edited (07-12-04 16:55)
Many Rags users swear that those numbers are far more accurate than TG.They claim that the TG numbers seem too heavily weighted by ground loss thus creating \"fake\" fast numbers as opposed to fast horses.Having used TG #\'s for over 15 yrs(with good success), I only wonder why there are occasions where the normal 2-3 points difference between TG and Rags goes out to 5-6 points. Obviously, someone is getting it wrong, fairly frequently.
JB, I know that you are only interested in your business, but would you be willing to look into some of these 5-6 point variations.As a long time customer,that comparison is of much greater interest to me than some of the latest statistical info being put out.
Any differences are not based on ground loss unless the differences are variable within the same race. In other words, if we have a whole race faster (or slower) than the usual 3-4 points on our respective scales, the reason has nothing to do with ground loss-- it could be 1 to 2 turn differentials, a changing variant throughout the day, or just making a different variant decision if the track stays the same speed. It may also have something to do with the tendencies of the individual doing the figures for a patricular circuit-- whether they are conservative, aggressive, or neither.
Those are the theoretical answers. In practical terms, the Ragozin system of applying one variant to both sprints and routes, and throughout whole days when the track is changing, means they are using what amounts to an average variant for the day. This will result in some races being too fast and some too slow. Ragozin by nature is very conservative-- which means he would rather have a couple of horses run back to tops and other races collapse than give out new tops (the place you really see this is when he\'s dealing with off tracks and windy days). That means that on those days the track is changing speed he will give some races much slower than they deserve, which is probably what you\'re seeing.
Look, I\'m always interested in drawing people\'s attention to comparisons between us and Ragozin, for the same reason they don\'t want to. I\'ll look at examples if you give them to me, and I can show you what we did to give the figures we assigned. But I may not be able to tell you why Ragozin did what he did.
JB, your explanation seems logical.I have taken my track buddies Rags home with me to try to figure this out, with some success. I will say that the 2-4point spread was more consistent for speed horses(1w) than say for wide runners.I mean the 5-6 point variations were more in the wide runner category. All of the races in question were run on BIG SANDY which may account for this.
The next time I run into this,I\'ll bring the data to your attention for your analysis/comments.Thanks
Mike
I would be very interested in seeing examples of this, but remember you need to find at least 2 horses coming out of the same race.
>Its that aspect that ground loss is very overrated. <
I think there's another scenario where ground loss can be either overrated or underrated.
Imagine me in a 1 mile race on a quarter mile track setting the pace for one of our Olympic hopefuls. Imagine that world-class runner stalking me all the way running 2 lanes wider than me. When we reach the top of the stretch, he let's loose his best effort and draws off.
IMO, with that trip he will finish just as well (fast) off my snail pace despite losing ground as he would if he had sucked in behind me all the way and then opened up without any ground loss.
Now imagine the same scenario except he is stalking a world class pace 2 lanes out. IMO, he is not only losing important ground, but he is probably exerting himself above the level he should just to maintain his stalking position.
IMO, fractions (and thus energey used) should also be adjusted for ground loss.
I think you have to look at when a horse is wide (how fast they were going) to judge the full impact of the ground loss.
The most obvious example of this is the first turn in routes.
You will typically see closing contenders lose several lengths jogging along in the back of the pack and still run a huge race despite the ground loss. Compare that to what happens to speed horses that are hung 3-4 wide pressing to get the lead. Huge favorites with that trip often wind up well out of the money from the exertion.
I think this is even an issue on the second turn when it comes to closers and pace pressers.
In the typical race, a closer will begin to really exert itself to get into position on the second turn. If that fraction happens to be particularly fast or slow relative to the norm the position improvement could have either a negative or positive impact on his total performance over and above the ground loss.
IMO, that\'s why you also occasionally see closers run huge figures off very fast fractions. The late middle part of the race tends to be slow. So the point in the race where a closer is typically really pushing and sapping important energy to get in position is a little easier and less contested than normal.
A lot of people disagree with the above. It's very tough to prove because of the complexities of making pace and speed figures. But I have seen enough evidence to convince me that's the case.