Immediately after the running of the Hawthorne Gold Cup, I am certain I heard the track announcer call the finishing time in 2.03 and change. I can recall thinking to myself: \"Not bad at all on that track\"
Thereafter I obtained the charts at Equibase and the final time is listed as 2.04.66, which doesn\'t appear to be especially snappy, though the track at that point was drying from a short deluge and was hard to gauge, factoring the front runners skated over it:
http://www.equibase.com/premium/eqbChartResultsDisplay.cfm?TRK=HAW&CY=USA&DATE=09/24/2005&STYLE=EQB
Heres a story from The Blood Horse quoting the 2.03.3 I swore I heard or saw:
http://news.bloodhorse.com//viewstory.asp?id=30160
Which was it? I think it may matter. Lord of the Game was bred well enough to be inclined for the distance. Halo had 2 Kentucky Derby winners and but for fate it could have been more. A.P.Indy in there too. What can you say:
http://www.pedigreequery.com/lord+of+the+game
Non Related Story upon naming a horse. Can\'t believe this guy got in trouble over this horses name:
http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=30186
I was wondering whether anyone was going to catch that. They showed 2:03:3 right after the race. Equibase shows a second slower. Our guy got 2:03:3, now Ragozin will as well.
But it didn\'t matter, really. Between the rain during the card and slop, and unusual distance, you really had to go by the horses anyway, especially since they are consistent stake horses. And I defy anyone who looks at these figures to show me any other reasonable way of doing the race-- keeping in mind you would have to add or subtract from all of them.
TGJB -
Okay, I\'ll bite. What\'s wrong with adding a point, or maybe two? This board is replete with posts about horses no longer being bred to get 10 furlongs (also known in some circles as marks), and yet you have the top three pairing tops earned at shorter distances. You also have Perfect Drift running as well as he did in his last two races despite Guidry saying he didn\'t handle the track (which, admittedly, should probably be taken with a grain of salt).
Respectfully,
BitPlayer
The short answer to this is that it is much more likely those horses ran to their level of ability than that all chose the same day to run exactly the same amount worse than that level. What would be the point of the projection method-- using previous figures-- if you were going to arbitrarily decide to ignore the previous figures? The perfect scenario in figure making would be to have a whole field pair up its previous figure, or their tops.
Any other way of doing the race-- which would take the WHOLE field in one way or another-- is much less likely. And I certainly would not create figures based on the theory that horses as a whole are getting worse at longer distances-- it may or may not be true overall, but it has nothing to do with a specific case, or with how you make figures-- if I did that I would be doing exactly what Miff mistakenly keeps accusing me of doing to \"make\" horses run faster.
The bigeest problem with making figures on very wet tracks is that there\'s a tendency for the margins between horses to be larger than average. That leaves you in a bind. You can either give the horses that finished up front (often just the winner) their usual figure and get stuck giving terrible figures to everyone else or you can give the winner a huge figure in order to give at least some of the rest of the field a figure that makes some sense. When it gets very bad and the margins are more than 2x average, IMO all the figures are gibberish.
The thing here though is the horses that figured ran relatively close to each other and had a pretty solid history to go by. I\'m a little surprised the wide and weight factored out to a neg 1.2
If That accurately represents the actual effort Super may not be sitting on his best one for the coming race. He was dropped about a point or so on his starts after tops and this would be essentially equalling past tops.
Theres reason for optimism though. I\'m not sure he\'s been in as good of hands in the past, though I respect Milton Wolfson. The other guy I didnt\' know. On paper, he does recover well from efforts. He did look a little loose on the slop to me and he did seem to wait a bit once he headed Lord. Lastly its possible Tgraph may have gotten a little enthusiastic in calculating the Hawthorne effort. Say they did, by about a point in their enthusiasm for paying for the horse and his entire future daily rate in one race and he may have a real nice one coming up. He\'d have to carry the weight of course, but he\'s a gamer and the real McCoy.
classhandicapper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The bigeest problem with making figures on very
> wet tracks is that there\'s a tendency for the
> margins between horses to be larger than average.
> That leaves you in a bind. You can either give the
> horses that finished up front (often just the
> winner) their usual figure and get stuck giving
> terrible figures to everyone else or you can give
> the winner a huge figure in order to give at least
> some of the rest of the field a figure that makes
> some sense. When it gets very bad and the margins
> are more than 2x average, IMO all the figures are
> gibberish.
TGJB -
Point well taken about arbitrarily adding some number to adjust for the fact that it was 10 furlongs.
The troubling part about your response is your statement that the \"perfect scenario in figure making would be to have a whole field pair up its previous figure, or their tops.\" Going back to a point I made early in my days of posting here, my greatest doubt about your methodology is the focus on tops, rather than on some other measure of ability (some kind of median, for example). When I made the point earlier, I was discussing handicapping with your figures, but I now see that the issue also affects your figuremaking. To me, it\'s more likely that the entire field had an average day than that they all repeated their lifetime best.
Respectfully,
BitPlayer
Jerry,
I won\'t suggest any number that could or should be added or subtracted to the figures, because frankly, I don\'t know.
But a couple of questions.
1. Would you agree that results are morely likely to be skewed on very sloppy tracks? I remember you had some maiden that had run 8 losing races, running a negative 5 early this year at Keenland on a sloppy track. It \"seems\" that sloppy tracks create disparate results, a lot of the time.
2. If point #1 is \"true\", don\'t you find it very coincidental that the top three finishers all paired their tops and the 4th place finisher ran the exact same race as he has the previous 3 races this year?
I know I am using the word \"seem\" again, but it seems unlikely to me that the top 4 finishers all ran their \"exact\" expected race, going 1 1/4 miles over a sloppy track. Your horse seemed neutral at best over slop. The second place finisher probably moves up over slop. The third place finisher was questionable at 1 1/4 and it did not appear that Perfect Drift ran his race on Saturday.
Bit-- That \"median\"idea is what I was referring to in a post a ways back when I was talking about a range that horses run in-- if you have too many who run new tops, or too many who run \"X\"s, something is probably wrong. But you CAN\'T just have them all in a medium range-- their relative figures are fixed by lengths etc. Some run better on the day relative to their tops than others do.
But it\'s a whole different thing to give horses NEW tops than to PAIR tops, or recent good efforts. Sure, you could make a case on an individual basis that those first 6 horses would still look okay if you add a point or so. But it really is strong that all 6 ran back almost exactly to their most recent best, and it would be some coincidence if all 6 ran about a point (or some other number) off it on the same day. Why all choose the same day to be at 98.13 percent?
And by the way, in this case these are stake horses, running for 750k. With the exception of the Derby (and we could spend a lot of time on discussing that), stake horses run an awful high percentage of tops. Take a look at the stakes races this weekend, going in-- see how often those horses run at least their previous tops.
You said it Perfect Drift didn\'t run one of his better efforts so a 0.2 for him is good to go. You have to look at Super F. other races where he earned those neg. numbers. Last year at Crc, this year at Crc, and Del. Looks like to me he should have ran the -1.2 or neg something. Desert Boom didn\'t fire his best either. I don\'t think 10F has to do anything with this. Question is now, what number will some of these run next. SF seems to have some problems running back2back big efforts and D.Boom looks like the one to run his top next out more than some of these others. Wonder where he is going next??
Jimbo-- There are horses who like off tracks, and they will run better on them than they will on other tracks. There are horses who don\'t run as well, and will run worse. And there are horses who are looking for an excuse to run a bad one, and an off track will often suffice. This all leads to the phenomenon that CH was talking about, where the field gets strung out all over the world. It also used to happen on the old TP track, and happens at Kee-- horses love it or hate it. (They can burn Kee down as far as I\'m concerned, by the way. Just leave the grass course).
That horse you mention ran that race at Kee. In making that figure I looked at that race (all the horses), and the surrounding races. There have always been horses that came out of nowhere for one big one, it\'s just more glaring now because a \"big one\" is so big. But there have been lots, and they seldom get back to the figure.
As for number two-- no. If the horses did not fall into their usual ranges (let alone pair up), there would be much more of a case to be made the numbers were wrong. That so many did is strong evidence the numbers are right-- that\'s what we have to go on when we make these things. This was not a case where you had to choose between giving one horse a big one and several what they usually run, or one what he usually runs and several \"X\"s. (This is what CTC\'s \"not stringing out\" means in figure terms).
And by the way, this was not a case where I broke the race out, not that it matters, because it couldn\'t have come out any tighter. Depending on which time you use, I either added or subtracted a little over a point compared to the other off-track route, which is nothing on any day, let alone with those kind of conditions.
TGJB,
Since you have people at the track, on those very sloppy days when the horses get strung out (which was not the case in the race in question), do you have someone check how much mud some of the well beaten horses are coming back with?
\"When it gets very bad and the margins are more than 2x average, IMO all the figures are gibberish.\"
As Ronald Reagan said, \"there you go again.\"
All the figures are gibberish? Can you read? When you see a figure and it says 15-sy, that\'s gibberish to you? When you look at a horse\'s sheet, and you see he runs 6\'s, and then there\'s a 15-sy on there, you can\'t tell that maybe the horse didn\'t like a wet track? When the horse runs 8\'s and then you see 4-sy, you can\'t tell that the horse LIKED the wet track? You can\'t distinguish between the \'sy\' numbers and the numbers that aren\'t indicated with an \'sy?\'
If you have an older horse that\'s run enough, you can see VERY CLEARLY on TG how they are likely to run in various conditions, including slop. If they haven\'t run a lot, there are sire stats and other things you can look at. It\'s hardly gibberish. And I guess you don\'t see anything wrong with weighing in on someone else\'s work and calling it \"gibberish.\" You\'re aware that that is INCREDIBLY insulting, right? I never thought I\'d make this comparison, but Jerry is a regular Mahatma Ghandi putting up with you.
I thought you would take a break after the \"asshandicapper\" posts but you are obviously impervious to criticism. Originally I thought that stuff was out of line, but after reading your posts, and how they are just so ROUTINELY oblivious and insulting, I guess they have their place.
HP
HP,
If I thought you had the capacity to understand the problem I was describing without insulting me 20 times on the assumption I don\'t know what I am talking about, I would get into further and you\'d learn something new. But I don\'t think you can so you\'ll keep misinterpreting data from time to time.
I understand it. The resulting numbers aren\'t \"gibberish.\" I think I have enough to digest in what you\'ve posted already.
CH-- not only do we keep track of how much mud is on each horse and jockey, we have a guy go out, scrape it off, put it in a separate pail for each horse, and weigh it. But only at the major tracks. You\'ve never noticed that after a race?
I\'ve made both the specific point (that horses behind the frontrunners can pick up dirt/mud which weighs something) and the general one (that figures are inherently limited in accuracy because the underlying information is not perfect) before. Other examples are:
Wind (speed and direction estimated by humans, usually before and after the race, because they are doing ground loss during it),
The effects of wind (there\'s a really big building there),
The effects of weight (which would vary depending on the weights of the horses, which we can\'t get),
Weight itself (see \"Elliott Spitzer\"),
Ground loss (paths estimated by humans, and invariably rounded off-- 2-3, rather than 1.75-2-2.3-2.9), and
\"Beaten lengths\" (see, \"teletimer companies\").
Believe it or not, there is a speed figure company that for many years claimed quarter point accuracy.
\"Now I am ready to change the variant to fine-tune the numbers based on an analytical look at each horse\'s development-- but if I change one figure, I must equally change them all. If I want to change Holy Bull\'s provisional rating for a 1 1/4 mile race from 5 1/4 to the more likely 4, I must subtract 1 1/4 from every other horse -- including sprinters-- running on the dirt that day\".
--- The Odds Must Be Crazy, by Len Ragozin, \"with Len Friedman\".
That might be the least true statement about making figures ever made.
Unrelated-- you will probably be surprised to learn that a guy who is in the running for best active professional horseplayer (and an occasional poster here) asked me yesterday why I go so easy on you.
TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I\'ve made both the specific point (that horses
> behind the frontrunners can pick up dirt/mud which
> weighs something) and the general one (that
> figures are inherently limited in accuracy because
> the underlying information is not perfect) before.
> Other examples are:
>
>
> The effects of weight (which would vary depending
> on the weights of the horses, which we can\'t get),
>
>
> Weight itself (see \"Elliott Spitzer\"),
I\'m the last guy in the world that should clarify someone elses spelling, but with Elliott Spitzer its, One L, One T, Lots of Spit.
TGJB,
This is a second of that emotion!!!
This is becomming more of a Blog than a forum. It seems to me that this has become the CH and CtC show. Occasionally they come with pearls of wisdom, (I\'ll give CtC his pedigree data and CH the betting dicipline of Methusala), but they two gentlemen remind me of persistent children who scream in the mall (or worse Katie Couric) for more Ice Cream.
I am dreading their laborious posts as we lead up to the BC.
NC Tony
Jimbo said:
\"The third place finisher was questionable at 1 1/4 and it did not appear that Perfect Drift ran his race on Saturday\"
Jimbo,
You,me, and many others know nothing about racing and what you saw was really a pair.The idea that Perfect Drift ran as well on Sun as his previous three races, figure wise, or in any mannner, is another joke, which is becoming NOT funny.It doesn\'t matter what the jockey(Guidry) said or that you saw like me that PD never lifted a hoof (compared to his prior effort especially). It\'s another \"ugly\" pair. File it with Kansas City Boy and the host of others.
Just an example, it doesnt get any more figure oriented than this:
NoCarolinaTony Wrote
\"Just to help those who don\'t have it in their dictionary:
Omphaloskepsis is a word you won\'t find in all dictionaries.
It refers to the practice of meditating while contemplating one\'s navel. I would venture to say there aren\'t many omphaloskeptics in your county or parish, unless of course there\'s some subculture you\'re not aware of.
Well Done Richie\"
\" [news.bloodhorse.com]
The Famous Dr. Allday also re-appears in this article.
This horse may also miss the Turf Classic
NC Tony\"
\"I\'ve hit him last year at Monmouth. I thought Tap Day retired? ....I\'m Kidding.
Would be intersting to see if he shows up.
NC Tony\"
I\'m pretty sure my Leroid, Super Frolic and Scrappy T threads are inherently figure oriented. Maybe its just that more questions and ideas pop into my head than the average poster. But I promise to keep the better ones to myself. The only B.C. races I\'ll be discussing will be the Classic and Mile primarily because I am not as certain about them.
NoCarolinaTony Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TGJB,
>
> This is a second of that emotion!!!
>
> This is becomming more of a Blog than a forum. It
> seems to me that this has become the CH and CtC
> show. Occasionally they come with pearls of
> wisdom, (I\'ll give CtC his pedigree data and CH
> the betting dicipline of Methusala), but they two
> gentlemen remind me of persistent children who
> scream in the mall (or worse Katie Couric) for
> more Ice Cream.
>
> I am dreading their laborious posts as we lead up
> to the BC.
>
> NC Tony
>
>
Chuckles,
You are an \"above average\" poster in every way. You have nothing left to prove. You can stop anytime.
HP
Miff-- that\'s an interesting approach, given the position and numbers that appeared here, in ROTW, BEFORE the race. In fact, the same guy who wrote ROTW (yours truly) did not have PD ON A TICKET, based on what his figures looked like, AT THE WEIGHTS, relative to-- drum roll-- the three horses who beat him. I boxed those 3 in exactas and tris, so you are going to have a hell of a time convincing me that a result I predicted, based on those figures, shows those figures to be wrong. In fact, I MANAGED SF with those figures, telling the owner two weeks out that the Gold Cup was the right idea BECAUSE PD was going, would scare others out, and was way overrated based on THIS years form.
But what do I know.
TGJB,
Can you comprehend anything beyond your self serving opinion? What you JUST posted makes sense.Congrats on the score and the purchase.
My ONLY point was that PD did NOT(imo and many others) run as well on Sunday as in his previous race. Two other sources (fig makers) agree with what I felt and saw that PD regressed, not paired. I\'m waiting for Beyer and Rags figs for PD and I\'ll post them all.
All I said was another \"UGLY\" pair.
I concur, HP! He even cares about spelling now! He\'s reached nirvana!
Miff--
1-- PD\'s figure is set in stone, relative to those run by the first 3 finishers (and everybody else), because of the relationships of weight, ground loss, and beaten lengths. If I give him worse, I have to give all the others worse. That would mean you have a 750k stake with no one running as well as their previous best. (Keep in mind that I gave none of them a new top).
2-- The evidence (not proof) that we were right, regardless of what Beyer and Ragozin do, is the result of the race, AND HOW THE FIGURES CAME OUT. You miss this point regularly-- I don\'t start with some theory of how PD ran, and work towards it-- I can\'t give him that figure and the others their figures unless the relationships hold up. Get it? Just like I don\'t start with a theory that horses are getting faster-- you make the variants based on the older, proven horses, and if the younger ones are getting faster, they\'re getting faster.
3-- I hope Beyer and Ragozin got it \"different\". I live for that.
4-- There is a reason people started making speed figures-- they enable you to as objectively as possible compare performances, and without them people draw the kinds of conclusions you have. Also, other figure makers, who either don\'t use or don\'t have the proper relationships of ground loss, weight, and CIRCUITS, can come up with anything.
All of which is good, because those two things are the reason I have had success with buying and managing horses-- if the public perception (even the reasonably educated one of guys at your level) was accurate, there would be no possible edge. If you and others could tell just by looking how well horses ran, I\'d be out of business-- but I have continually found horses whose ability is concealed, and have succeeded with them, because both the figures and the analysis have held up, in a very tough game.
Jerry,
\"That would mean you have a 750g stake with no one running as well as their previous best.\" Using purse as a factor when giving out figs? Please explain why you included the amount of the purse when defending your figure for the race. No reason to doubt the figure, but I would feel better about it if it was based on how fast they ran around the track, and not on the class of the race.
Jerry,
1. I\'m well aware.That was a \"common\" group for 750k with only one declining legit stake runner, PD, in the field.
2. It is apparent that one of your personal \"prejudice\" that stake horses runs lots of tops and pairs is on display here. Your prejudice is correct SOMETIMES, not always, but seemingly always used regardless.
There is no evidence that horses are 10 lenghts faster than before, but a couple of lengths seems far more logical, all things considered.Your figures are much faster, by 4-5 tg points imo.
3. No comment.
4. The only propositions being pushed here are yours. After 17 years with your produc my conclusion is that present figs are not as reliable as they were for the better part of the previous 14 years. I firmly believe that you have a few misconceptions about what happens on the track every day(RACING STUFF) and such misconceptions have crept in the figs.
With regard to the art of making figs, I have given you props for many years but there seems to be profound changes to the methodology which I have serious issues with and PD\'s fig is yet another one.
Michael D said:
Jerry,
\"That would mean you have a 750g stake with no one running as well as their previous best.\" Using purse as a factor when giving out figs? Please explain why you included the amount of the purse when defending your figure for the race. No reason to doubt the figure, but I would feel better about it if it was based on how fast they ran around the track, and not on the class of the race.
Mike,
When it suits Jerry there is no such thing as \"class\" but as you stated whats the difference what the purse is. Hmmm, maybe it suits in this case for \"class\" to exist.
Michael-- I don\'t adjust the figures for the purse or use pars of any kind. What I meant was, stake horses are treated differently than other horses-- more time between races, given time off between campaigns, not run with problems most of the time. As a result, they run their race a much higher percentage of the time than other horses-- when you look at this weekend\'s stakes, count the times the stake horses have either run their previous tops or new ones, this year. You won\'t find too many (or probably any) situations where nobody runs at least their previous top-- and in this case, if you did it any other way, not only would that have been true, but 6 horses would have run exactly or almost exactly the same AMOUNT off their previous (or recent) top, which is beyond unlikely.
Chuck-
Results 1 - of 1416 of your laborious posts for the past year.
In my defense, You have edited my comments, have been selective in choosing them to be out of context to serve your purpose. That\'s all fine. Kind of expected it from you. Your tenacious get in your face style is, well, what it is.
I\'ve said enough on this subject.
Have a Great day.
NC Tony
OK, thanks for the response Jerry. By the way, do you have any fractions for the race?
TGJB,
>CH-- not only do we keep track of how much mud is on each horse and jockey, we have a guy go out, scrape it off, put it in a separate pail for each horse, and weigh it. But only at the major tracks. You\'ve never noticed that after a race? <
The point wasn\'t that these things can be measured perfectly. The point was that when the margins double or triple relative to the norm on CERTAIN extremely sloppy tracks, one of several things that could account for it is the amount of mud that\'s getting kicked up onto the horses. So when that kind of thing distorts the figure making process, it may not always mean that certain horses hated the mud just because they finished 3rd beaten 20 lengths. Nor does it mean the 10 length winner loved it and ran a brand new top. I remember you bringing up mud kicked up as an issue in the past. However, I make special note of the sloppy days where the margins were huge vs. the sloppy tracks that produced more typical results. I\'m not sure it helps a lot, but I think it helps occasionally in the interpetation.
>Unrelated-- you will probably be surprised to learn that a guy who is in the running for best active professional horseplayer (and an occasional poster here) asked me yesterday why I go so easy on you.<
I wouldn\'t be surprised at all, though I\'d love to know which poster it is because I\'d like to re-read any insights he had to offer.
I understand I take the discussion of horses, races and performances off TG
and you\'ve asked me not to do that. I think you understand that I can\'t discuss a horse\'s performance within the confines of a TG figure. I need to bring up subjective areas outside the TG scope. I also understand that most of the people \"here\" don\'t agree with me on these subjective things, but I can\'t see how they conflict with the need for high quality figures.
TGJB and MIFF,
I believe you guys may be arguing past each other.
Without expressing an opinion....
I believe several figure makers made the Pacific Classic faster than TG. On those figures it probably looks more like Super Frolic paired (or close - you get the point) and Perfect Drift then ran slower in the Hawthrone. The figure that is probably in dispute is the Pacific Classic because the pace was lively and there were only 2 routes that day late in the card that could be used for making the variant.
I was impressed with Jerry\'s post where he stated he left Perfect Dread out of the top three spots. That was extremely bold from my perspective, but he had weight and wide considerations factored and was right.
Handicapped that race for Dry track and when it went wet I wasn\'t prepared from a wet track handicapping perspective or to bet Super who prior to the rain and fat Espinoza was my key.
Checked Perfect Drifts lifetime slop starts with the TFigs. In the past he had been on improving trends when he ran on slop and the slop efforts were positive. Still, overall, he doesn\'t have a slop effort that is within 2 points of top and TGraph didn\'t score him unreasonably in regard to his slop history.
Still, visually, he was spinning his wheels a little and maybe the track impacted him. You can say the same for Super though.
Jerry on the Results Sheets you posted for the Hawthorne Gold Cup, what is that little notation next to the sloppy designation for the horse\'s efforts. Its slightly elevated and to the right.
Despite its proximity I don\'t bet Hawthorne often, did anyone think the inside might have carried a little better Saturday?
classhandicapper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TGJB and MIFF,
>
> I believe you guys may be arguing past each other.
>
>
> Without expressing an opinion....
>
> I believe several figure makers made the Pacific
> Classic faster than TG. On those figures it
> probably looks more like Super Frolic paired (or
> close - you get the point) and Perfect Drift then
> ran slower in the Hawthrone. The figure that is
> probably in dispute is the Pacific Classic because
> the pace was lively and there were only 2 routes
> that day late in the card that could be used for
> making the variant.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/29/05 09:13AM by
> classhandicapper.
CH-- at a mile, an extra 10 lengths would require 30 pounds of mud, or about 25% of the weight of the rider. Pretty unlikely. Lesser distances-- a length or two-- do not cause huge fluctuations in the figures, just a point or so.
\"I think you understand that I can\'t discuss a horse\'s performance within the confines of a Thoro-Graph figure\".
Then don\'t discuss it here. There are lots of other horseracing sites.
CTC-- the notation you are referring to is probably the \"sealed\" designation, which Equibase started putting in a couple of months ago. Probably more fallout from the DRF Expo panel, thank you very much.
\"CH-- at a mile, an extra 10 lengths would require 30 pounds of mud, or about 25% of the weight of the rider. Pretty unlikely. Lesser distances-- a length or two-- do not cause huge fluctuations in the figures, just a point or so. \"
Understood. I doubt the impact is limited to the weight of the mud. There are probably other things going on also (including a like or dislike of the surface in some cases). I doubt it\'s a pleasureable experience for horses to have piles of goopy mud kicked at them. I\'ve also noticed that some jockeys ease their horses through the stretch once it gets ridiculous. There are probably other things too.
In any event, I can\'t see the downside of noting the difference between a sloppy surface that was producing reasonable outcomes and one where the margins were much larger than usual. I am much more apt to totally ignore the latter even if the horse has a history of running well in the slop. I am also much more apt to be very skeptical of an extremely fast figure earned on a surface like that because it\'s difficult to guage how much was him being good and how much was the others being bad (for whatever reason).
<<\"I think you understand that I can\'t discuss a horse\'s performance within the confines of a Thoro-Graph figure\".
Then don\'t discuss it here. There are lots of other horseracing sites.>>
That\'s an understandable perspective coming from someone that believes that a figure tells you everything you need to know about a perfomance. It\'s just a difficult perspective for me to believe coming from someone that has been around the game a very long time unless there is another motive.