As I looked through the Ragozin B.C. sheets, there were lots of things that I could see were wrong. But the trick is to find ones that you don\'t have to be a figure maker to see-- ones where any common sense at all tells you there\'s a problem. I want to make clear that none of these examples are intended to offer a prediction about what will happen in the B.C.
Shakespeare prepped for the Turf by running in the Turf Classic, a GI for older horses at Belmont. In that race he was wide both turns, and won a photo over English Channel, Ace, etc.
Gun Salute had his prep in the Hawthorne Derby, a GIII for straight 3yos, which drew a 5 horse field. GS went off 1/5, and was life and death to win by a neck over Cosmic Kris, while bearing out twice in the stretch.
On Ragozin \"SHEETS\":
a) Shakespeare earned 4 points the better figure, as he did on Thoro-Graph.
b) Shakespeare and Gun Salute earned the same figure.
c) Gun Salute ran 2 points better than Shakespeare.
Guess what. Ragozin gave Gun Salute a 2 point better figure.
Now, you need to think about this a minute. If Gun Salute had been in the Turf Classic he would have gotten 5 pounds at weight for age, worth another point. So Ragozin is saying that GS would have beaten Shakespeare by 7 lengths (3 points at 1 1/2 miles) in that race, given equal trips. Cosmic Kris would have beaten Shakespeare too, of course, though not by as much, since he was getting weight from GS that day-- he just would have won the Turf Classic by 4 or 5 lengths.
Somebody say Amen!
Hell just looking at the beyers for those two races. Not even adding in weight or ground loss. Beyer had GS running a 95 and Shake running a 106. I guess it was a fast time for that HAW race uh? Looks like the DRF gave it a 102 meaning it was a new record within the past 3 years. Why do you think they came up with those fig\'s??
Kev-- it\'s because, as I said before, with Ragozin \"correct\" does not mean correct. It means that they ran the data through their process, and whatever came out, came out, and is \"correct\" by definition. Their process is an extremely dogmatic one built on lots of assumptions (for example that the track stays the same speed no matter what is done to it-- like on 7/27 at Saratoga), and has nothing at all to do with real world considerations, or common sense.
In the case of the 2 grass figures, they got BOTH wrong by about 3 points-- Shakespeare should be 3 faster, Gun Salute 3 slower. Don\'t know what they did to get there in each case, could be almost anything.
But I do know they will keep talking about \"condition\" plays based on fractional forward moves.