Neg 3 or 4? Curious what Moore was thinking the last 100 yards, with Ky on the radar.
How souped up is that track today?
2nd time Lasix in Louisville. This one will definitely take a lot of money after that effort, as a sibling to Beholder, the $3 million price tag, and shipping in for European high profile overbet O\'Brien/Coolmore connections.
Tavasco might finally have a year to find some foreign flavor that impacts the Derby.
He looked as good as anthing else your gonna see. Worh everyone on seemingly a one or two race prep schedule. January or December first career starts....etc etc ignore this at your own peril!!!
Anybody get Mendelsohn\'s fractions? Thought I heard race caller say he went first quarter in 25.
Go to their results. Trakus splits are there.
Did the last 100m in 6.18, which looks really good against the world cup. Will get a better figure than West Coast, I think
Obviously he was riding to instructions. Get position, save ground, take a breather, open up, and finish with authority. Seriously though... serious horse, with a serious developing pattern, and serious doesn\'t describe Moore/O\'Brien. I hear the symphony playing at the TG Seminar at Siro\'s!
Jeff, thanks for cultivating that relationship with NYRA. Xpressbet give me $$, and TG/NYRA gives me winners.
106 Beyer Figure.
It’s gonna be better than that.
That\'s what Randy Moss posted. Do you mean the Beyer will be revised upward or that the race will look faster on TG as you suggested at the top of this thread?
I meant the latter, the former is possible. The second and third horses make it pretty clear where this one ends up. Timeform figure will be nuts, since they adjust for age.
Copied and pasted from Craig Milkowski\'s twitter feed:
These are the raw (unadjusted for track speed) pace and speed figures on the @TimeformUS scale:
UAE Derby
1/2 157
3/4 156
Fin 144
World Cup
1/2 117
3/4 132
1m 146
Fin 148
I think they gave Audible a 122.
Interesting listen on Steve Byk\'s podcast w/ Andy Beyer re how they came up with what they believe is an accurate BSF. I know little about making figures, but his explanation doesnt seem plausible. Since they had back figures from the World Cup horses they take the position that those horses ran \"their race\" so they just based their figures off of that? And because Beyer and Moss arrived at the same figure independently it must be accurate? I\'m lost. Any insight would be helpful. Beyer mentioned that in the past, one should take Dubai figures with a grain of salt, but thinks that these are dead on accurate. Ahhhh
They sound lost.
Re Mendelssohn I have him running about a neg 2.5 on the TG-scale. I guess TG will have him running about a point faster than that, which one absolutely could make a good case for. But we\'ll see.
IMHO the right question going forward isn\'t if he\"ll bounce or not, it is if he could run as well in a real race where he\'ll be taking dirt, navigating traffic, working out a trip and not getting anything for free. That\'s some pretty huge ifs.
I would think this is how TG would do it. You have a bunch of figs on West Coast, Gunny, Pavel, etc. You pick a number that has most of them running a representative race, give or take. And then look at time and ground loss to make a number for Mendelssohn. Not sure how else you\'d do it.
I also think that two people working independently coming up with the same result is some reason to think you did it right, if no definitive. There are, of course, the inherent failings of Beyers.
It makes no sense to make figures for Mendelssohn by assuming that horses in another race ran their race, it wasn\'t even ran at the same distance. For anyone following Dubai racing it is obvious that noone ran their race in there either, it was a strong inside bias and Thunder Snow got away with a pretty soft lead. TG is in better shape because they at least have figures on Rayya, Reride and Gold Town to go by. If they really said something like that on air I find it pretty shocking, to be admitting such incompetence in public. As I said, they sound lost.
BTW, what\'s the reason for not using ground from Meydan anymore? Hawkbill would have looked a great bet on the sheets by still including it.
FWIW, Moore has a mount in the Blue Grass and in the Shakertown. I guess they are serious about getting him some experience. Also, this horse is a late foal. May 17th. Will run on Lasix and not the 1st time. Whats that worth? To me it all adds intrigue because he has to be considered, where in the past the overseas horses were tosses. Yeah, lots of questions but dont they all?
Obviously, they should use those figures too. But the older horses have, for the most part, a greater body of work and have probably done the bulk of their improving. Most are just going to run what they typically run. Further, the back figures are probably more reliable on US based horses than those running a handful of races at Meydan or in Europe - that means relying on Reride\'s sheet for making the number, and that seems risky.
Those Ifs are for every horse
Sure is. That\'s the puzzle. But it isn\'t just a bounce that could produce off efforts from good ones.
I encourage all of you to get on Twitter or Facebook and search DEREK SIMON, who\'s a very astute capper and wrote a profile yesterday for US RACING on Mendelssohn. Derek created his own measurement of energy in a race known as EARLY SPEED RATION, which looks at the amount of energy a horse used early in a race. Same scale as Thorograph (the lower the better --- a -15 is superior to a 0). Mendelssohn received a 0 in the UAE Derby and Derek stated that horses that had only a 0 in their final prep before the Derby are just 6 for 182 since 1992 with an ugly 0.61 impact value. What say you, Ask The Thorograph Experts???
I don\'t know if there\'s anything to make of Simon\'s numbers. Doing the math, on average over 7 horses a year are zeros. Only one horse can win the Derby each year, so in 25 years, 6 horses with 0s have won, a pretty good 24% of Derby winners in the last 25 years are horses with zeros.
I don\'t know what the .61 impact value means, please explain that one.
Niall, I\'ll chime in my two cents here regarding figure making. Not sure if this will help or not but here goes.
One way to make figures is to come up with a set of pars for different race levels. You then take a look at the times the horses ran for the day and calculate the figures for all of the winners and compare what those raw numbers look like to your par charts to try to measure how much the speed of the track affected final times. You want to come up with a track variant for the day. So using Beyer numbers, assuming you\'ve got 5 races all run one turn on the dirt, lets say you get this:
Race 1 Par 80, Fig 87 = 7pts fast
Race 2 Par 65, Fig 75 = 10pts fast
Race 3 Par 80, Fig 84 = 4pts fast
Race 4 Par 75, Fig 82 = 7pts fast
Race 5 Par 90, Fig 93 = 3pts fast
Average = about 6pts fast
So your variant in this case would be 6pts fast. That\'s the speed of the race track that day. So you would adjust all of those winning figures down by 6 pts, giving those horses an 81, 69, 78, 76, 87 respectively. And you would then give the figures to the horses who finished behind the winners their associated figures based on the number of beaten lengths they were behind the winner.
Some of the inherent problems with doing it that way (among others but to keep it simple) is you are assuming that the track speed didn\'t change at all during the day, you are also assuming that the field was an average field for that racing level, you are assuming the teletimer was accurate for each race, and you are letting each race potentially impact the figures earned in the races before and after it. Those are very big assumptions that often turn out to be wrong.
Another problem is that you often won\'t have enough data to support a variant (you may only have 1 race at two turns on the dirt that day and everything else is run 1 turn on the dirt or on the turf).
Another problem is that very often you will find days where your variants would look like this, +10, +9, +17, -4, +8. So if you average those you get 8pts fast. But when you apply the variant of +8 to all the winners and then the horses that ran behind them, in that 3rd race it turns out that every single horse in that race now gets a figure that is about 10pts faster than they have ever run before. Is that very likely?
So instead, what most figure makers have realized is that using par charts is a bad way to go. So instead they go off of the horses. What I mean by that is if you have 3 horses in a one turn dirt race who last ran 85, 80, 80, and your winning figure for today\'s race based off the raw time gives them 95, 90, 88, (all 8-10 pts fast) you would make an assumption that if you adjust each horse\'s figure down by about 9 pts that probably was the variant for that race that day because its very unlikely that all 3 of those horses improved by 8-10 pts at the same time. And by adjusting them down by 9 Points you get figures of 86, 81, 79 for each - which would seem to line up pretty well with what they have run before and make sense. So in this case you are using all of the horses in the race to come up with the figure for that race to see if it makes sense. So what you do is you do the entire day, assign the figures for each race, and then take a look at all of your data to see if it all seems to make sense. You aren\'t necessarily concerned if the variants for each race seem to be similar because you aren\'t coupling the races together. You are going off the horses established form. But its even better when they all seem to line up because it can give you an ever higher degree of confidence that your figures are correct. But even if not, lets say you have that one race that seems to make sense internally to the horses who were in it, but does not make sense externally to other races that were run that day, you probably leave your figures as they are and schedule the race for review at a later time by flagging those horses and seeing what they run next time out.
So what Beyer and assoc. are saying is they have established figures for some of the horses that ran in the Mendelssohn race, and if they use those figures to help figure out the variant for that race they come up with a beyer fig they are pretty confident in because by assigning him that figure the figures for the other horses who ran behind him seem to line up, and that two people used that same method independently and arrived at the same figure.
You can still have some problems no matter which way you do it because you either wind up with bad assumptions or some \"art.\" But going off the horses is the far better way to do it IMO.
When a horse freaks and wins by the length of the stretch like Mendelssohn did, I mean he ran off the screen first time on dirt, you don\'t have anything to really go by in his own pp other than what he has run on turf and synthetic. You\'ve got the teletimer and the horses who ran behind him that you have figures for. He massacred all of them and it\'s probably wrong to assume they all bounced and ran OFF races. So you have to assume a few of them still ran their race. And if you do that you have to give Mendelssohn close to a negative 5. So come Derby day, we are going to be looking at a TG sheet where the UAE Derby winner is probably the fastest horse in the race by a fair margin, and this is a fast group of 3 year olds this year. If he repeats that race he is probably gone, but his sheet will scream bounce.
This game is never, ever easy.
I\'d say Derek Simon should probably think about opening up his own forum. Sounds like he\'d have one member at least.
This is a good explanation. Mind you my response was to the proposed method of making figures on Mendelssohn by assuming that the horses in another race, the world cup, ran their race which would be insane. But I have not heard the actual episode so this might not have been what they meant (in fact, probably not, reading back I think I misunderstood. The assumption that the american world Cup horses all ran their races is flawed, though).
However I have a question regarding this that could prove useful to discuss, and that is: when you have a horse that clearly is so superior to the rest in the field, and they all try to chase him/challenge for the lead, is it still fair to assume that they ran their race? How much better must a horse be for it to be more likely that all the horses trying to follow, runs off races as a consequence. It\'s very hard to prove/quantify, but those runaway winners does seem to produce some odd numbers that never replicates.
Agreed. I\'ve made that point before. When a jock knows he\'s hopelessly beaten, is he really going to persevere with his mount or is he going to try to save something for the next one?
But when you watch the replay, the jocks behind Mendelssohn still rode hard. 2nd place purse was pretty fat. And speaking of that, why the hell was Moore whipping Mendelssohn the final 200 yards of that race when he was already 15 in front?
That is true and certainly one aspect of this \"problem\", the other one is that it seems plausible that chasing a superior horse might make one go too fast for the horses liking. In this race the jockeys didn\'t even know that the horse they were chasing could be so superior.
As for Moore I wouldn\'t know, but it sure got them some extra publicity.. That could possibly add value to the stud fee down the road, especially if he were to win the Kentucky Derby too.
Impact value: 1.00 is the average. Anything less than 1.00 means you\'re winning at less than the average and anything greater than 1.00 you\'re winning more than average. In short, you want to see numbers above 1.00 and not see numbers less than 1.00. On the last page of every Brisnet past performance, they give impact values for which running style and post positions are doing best for the race being conducted.
I think of you got to know Derek, you\'d really like him and maybe appreciate his work. Maybe not. To his his own. But he\'s a good dude and good for our industry. Big guy too. Someone you\'d want having your back if things got bad for you in a bar one night :)
At first glance early speed ration smacks of %E. A well worn concept. Converting it to an integer confuses me some. I\'ll guess that his zero is a high %E say something close to 60%.
I use pace factors routinely and IMO @ a 1+1/4 distance I\'m looking for a horse whose %E is 50%. @ 1+1/2 48% @ 5F 55-57%.
Of course the %E is irrelevant if a horses speed figure isn\'t competitive. A really good example is the recent Florida Derby where the two pacesetters probably earned %E ratios above 60% and consequently could not approach equaling their good race final time performance figure.
In the case of Mendelssohn (sp?) and I haven\'t looked at the fractions I\'m suspecting your guy uses pars and the souped up track distorted his ration #. The field was not strung out instead rather well bunched early and that suggests a slower pace rather than a faster one. Secondly Mendelson the winner ran away from the field in the second half of the race suggesting late speed.
For me, and I have a Euro Centric Bias, the only important # is what the horse will pay on a win bet. i.e., I can hope you and the crowd play against him for whatever reason but he is obviously fast enough to compete for the win spot.
I\'ve never met him or heard anything positive or negative about him, but I\'m sure he\'s as nice a guy as you say (and you\'ll note I didn\'t say anything to the contrary), and as able in a bar fight, for whatever that could possibly be worth.
I was only trying to point out that I thought it was poor form to discuss what sounds like a competing product on a forum hosted (read: paid for) by Thorograph.
So does e=mc2?
It relative!
I actually don\'t mind discussions of other handicapping theories. But I wouldn\'t mind seeing the HANDICAPPING DISCUSSIONS HERE BEING (mostly) TG BASED. Lack of intercession re this issue on my part is due to business and laziness.
Hard to make any judgement about the figure in question if you didn\'t actually listen to Beyer on ATR. And figures are always made taking other races on the card into consideration. Using the 10f World Cup, with a glut of know-quantity American horses, as part of the basis for Mendelssohn\'s number in the 9.5f UAE Derby, makes complete sense. You\'re really standing on the belief that not one horse among West Coast, Mubtaahij, Pavel & Forever Unbridled ~ who finished 2nd-5th ~ ran their representative race?
Last three TG figs.... -4.2, 5.2, 9. Has this been seen by anyone before? Is there anyone who believes he won\'t regress? I guess argument could be made that even if he regresses slightly, he\'s still a major contender.
Thank you mjellish for your explanation, really appreciate it. Especially in this context as the performance is an anamoly, except perhaps when you figure the breeding/connections. This is a situation we havent seen before. I\'m so tired just got back juice after 36 hours without. Even still I know that the greatest bargain in years is to bet $50 on who you will think wins the Wood and get back $25 for th e Derby. We all win! Thanks NYRABETS/TG!
To JB\'s point though about the convo being somewhat TG related, without seeing the figure, we have to surmise that its a knockout and wager accordingly. But we have no idea whats going on at Ballydoyle right now. Whirlpool, massage, hyperbaric chamber, magnetic blanket and so on... catching up on the Masters, Later fellas
You didnt understand what i said, or i didnt make it clear. Either way, My only reply to your comment that i can make is to say read what i posted again please. I made no comment about the World Cup race or the runners in it.
Pretty sure Byk (Kasept) was referring to this comment by Pete:
\"Mind you my response was to the proposed method of making figures on Mendelssohn by assuming that the horses in another race, the world cup, ran their race which would be insane. But I have not heard the actual episode so this might not have been what they meant (in fact, probably not, reading back I think I misunderstood. The assumption that the american world Cup horses all ran their races is flawed, though).\"
And, Byk is correct.
Here\'s the problem with just looking at the numbers without context: the numbers are on 3 different surfaces. Many times a horse will be a totally different animal on a different surface. All we can tell from these 3 numbers in order are he was a slower animal on turf in the USA after a trip where he regressed 1.75 points off his 2 year old top and still won the Breeder\'s Cup race with the 9. Then he moved to poly and aged a little and ran a new top 1st time poly. Then he goes to dirt which is expected to be his best surface, being a half to Beholder and Into Mischief. Now he exploded to an amazing # So the big question is, is he a monster on dirt, or did he just freak this one time in what will be a knockout performance? We won\'t know until after the Derby, but with about 3 points leeway from the next best top and a Thoro-Pattern that has him almost exactly 50/50 to run just as fast or better, I\'m willing to go out on the limb and think he\'s a monster on dirt and until proven otherwise, I am not expecting a regression although it he\'s comfortably in front the jockey may not ride him as strenuously to the wire in the Derby, producing a higher number without any real regression. Also,you say you\'ve never seen a number pattern like this,but what about -.5,9.25,9.25 That\'s what last year\'s winner was & I was totally against him because of it.
I have tried to listen to that podcast a few times, but poor content and audio quality puts me off.
Yes I agree that I should not have been making comments about my interpretation about what another one says someone said, and I admitted that my interpretation was probably wrong.
I do know how one make figures (and also, how one shouldn\'t make figures).
Of those mentioned it\'s fair to say that Pavel, Mubtaahij and Forever Unbridled probably ran their race (as per TG - ground is crucial for those assessments), West Coast not even close. I still can\'t really see how it is normal to use projection for one race, for another race, specially when the race wasn\'t even ran at the same distance. It must be a lot of voodoing involved in that process. The best way to do it would be to know how racing at Meydan works, how racing times works out over the different distances, how the track plays out, and to go off the local horses and those that have visited before, rather than 1st time invadors from the other side of the world. If you still insist on making numbers on that, at least be prepared to admit that you really don\'t have a clue on what you are doing (and I\'m not saying Andy Beyer didn\'t do just that, he is a very likable man that I respect a lot).
But the discussion is fruitless: Mendelssohn was fast. Period. Incredible fast, and more than fast enough. Even when one are considering the bias that undoubtedly helped that display. Now, will he repeat? I guess no figures could give one the answer to that.
Edit: On seeing that you are in fact Steve Byk, the host of ATR, here are some constructive suggestions for improving your podcast. First, the audio quality really must be better for it to be a \"good place to be\" for the listener, and that does not need to be hard/expensive to do in 2018. I listen to podcasts every day so I know that it\'s possible, also over telephone/skype. As for the content, I guess many people will be satisfied with what is, so no beef really there - it\'s just a matter of personal taste. I for one would love it if you could make episodes, maybe specials?, where one could have the discussions spinning around different themes. E.G. a \"Bias special\", where you could call around to different trainers, jockeys, track maintenance personal, bettors etc to get their input on the subject, you could do the same with \"figure making special\", \"pace special\" and \"workouts special\" (I see Mstrlucky74 would be following...). There are a lot of knowledge out there that would be interesting for those of us that don\'t already possess all the answers, and there really is an open spot in the market for someone that can gather the diversity of beliefs, theories, experiences etc that exists about different aspects of horse racing, and maybe even challenge them against each other. I believe this could fit well with your podcast profile.
Good point, how big of a new top is too big, maybe with this one we don\'t know. Also if Justify, Good Magic and Enticed win big this weekend we might be talking about the 4th or 5th betting choice! Easy toss if he was 2nd choice at 5/1 but harder decision at 12/1 or higher.
Bellamy Road Part Duex?
My decision will be guided by his appearance when he arrives at Churchill. If the experts are saying he looks gaunt & has lost weight since Dubai, I\'ll consider the Dubai race a knockout performance. If on the other hand, he arrives and is looking in top shape, I\'ll be all in on him. I look at it similar to when American Pharoah was going through the Triple Crown. He ran a big # in the Derby. Many thought he was going to bounce off the big Derby #. However, all reports from the tracks indicated that he looked fine and was not showing signs that horses who have been knocked out show. The difference is AP had a 1 as a 2YO and his -3 in the Derby wasn\'t the huge development that Mendelssohn has shown.
I think it will be interesting to see what happens if Mendelssohn wins the Derby. Will he run in all 3 Triple Crown races? Have his connections given any indication of their plans for him through June? If he continues on, then it gets interesting since I\'ve seen many an analysis that said a horse who runs a knockout performance may hold it together for a next race, but eventually it will take its toll.
IMO this is a game of percentages. The horse racing landscape is littered with examples like Mendelssohn where a horse runs off the screen and produces a huge fig relative to what they have historically run, arguably aided by the racing conditions. We generally only talk about them when they occur by big names in big races (see Frosted, Dreaming of Julia, Quality Road, et al). But this type of stuff happens in claiming races too. These horses almost never reproduce that big fig in their next effort. They usually back up. And I would argue that on an absolute scale, huge negative numbers on huge jump ups are even less likely to repeat (yes that is an assertion but I am pretty sure I could support it with data).
So from a pure sheets point of view, regardless of how this colt looks, I would say you have to play Mendel to regress. Sight unseen, right here, right now I would put those percentages at about 90% or maybe even better. The question is how much will he regress, where will that put him relative to the field he will face in the KY Derby (if he even makes it to the race), and what type of odds are you getting associated with that unknown risk. At 30-1 this would be a no brainer to still use the colt. But we aren\'t likely going to see that. So at what odds would you take him as a win candidate. 12-1? 8-1? 6-1? 4-1?
And if you like a different horse to win the Derby that is one of the favorites, would you use Mendel underneath, as a saver, or would you just let him beat you? What about if you like a bomber?
Those are all things to consider IMO. Some other things to consider are that he is impeccably bred, he is handled by an ace, he has already shipped over here and won, dirt may be his preferred surface, etc.
Probably too soon for most of this.
Lots of really good posts here recently, I guess the wackos are waiting for warmer weather before they bloom.
I shouldn’t be scooping my own Derby seminar, but the Archives contain several who came in off big negs, results vary, hence the percentage issue is dead on.
None bigger than Sinister Minister...
Would like to see OBriens training stats.
Does TG keep those for Euro trainers?
Great Posts Mike TY
TG would you consider Always Dreaming in that catagory?
Keep in mind AD\'s Derby was on a conveyor belt of a track, No Dosing should have proved that during the day. Unless like me your were drinking, way too much.
I know I did. A 9 pt jump up, a colt that wasn\'t listening to his jock in the AM leading up to the race and had to be put in draw reins, trained by Pletcher coming out of Florida. He wasn\'t even the fastest horse in the race and was sent off as the 9/2 favorite. That was an easy play against. I decided to let him beat me. And he did - that day. But I would play it the same way all over again, and he hasn\'t done anything since. IMO the 2nd big effort fried him for good.
I played Irish War Cry last year. Meh...
But what was really tough for me, and a few people on this board can verify this, was that I really liked Lookin at Lee to hit the board along with IWC last year. I even considered structuring my whole bet around keying LAL.
There was no way I was going to play an AD/IWC exacta. But knowing how much I liked LAL, what I should have done is at least covered that AD/LAL Exacta. I was getting over 150-1 on that. That\'s better than the percentage chance I gave AD of being able to pair or move forward off his big jump up top, and I thought LAL had a shot to even win the race.
It would have been worth playing.
But I\'m stubborn and not that smart I guess.
Freakin Stubborn epidemic has hit epic proportions !!!
I’m on a 45 year roll of it with the 4 legged beastsðŸŽ
Last decade, TG did a a few studies of horses (not just Derby horses) that had run negative 1 or better prior to July of their 3yo year and run back within 42 days. The last version I have (from 2009, covering 2000 through 2008, n=58) shows 15.5% ran a pair or better in the next start. 32.8% ran an off race and 51.7% X\'d. The percentages were a little uglier if Smarty Jones was excluded.
One other Mendelssohn-related thought: My recollection is that, back when there were more synthetic surfaces, people used to play horses going synth-to-dirt for a \"poly pop.\" If memory serves, the poly pop was usually followed by a bounce.
I’ve moved to the acceptance phase.
It’s a contagion for us all or nothing types. Guess its a good thing, for us, that people dont walk around carrying swords anymore.
Michael,
Breaking News:
Swords are out, haven’t you heard? It’s our 2nd amendment right to be able to fire 200 rounds per minute....... Our forefathers with their single load muskets said so.
Sorry guys we have to sneak in common sense today whenever we can! It’s certainly not in abundance. Back to ðŸ˜ðŸ¦"🎠wagering on 4 legged beasts. After all Santa Anita is now running Arabians.... Miff texted me the 10 is a lock tomorrow pairing his top running 7f in 1:32.
We AKL do it... might be ______(winner of the 1984 Flamingo)...
All do it!!
So the strategy should be to play him to react, right? Given his development, what is a realistic regression and where does that leave him? Does the turf-synth-dirt change the equation at all? Timeform has him going to 127 from 116. Is that a lot for them? The early future odds say there’s value created. Hey, enjoy the racing tomorrow, and good luck
As for two people coming up with the same result, that only proves reliability. What you need is validity.