everyone should take a look at rags & jerry\'s figs for the derby, the scale is about 3.5 points, on about 10 horses there are 6-7 pt differences between the two.
to me that means someone got the groundloss wrong, honestly one of you guys should hang it up if you can\'t get the derby correct.
On average we are about 3.5 points faster. They had the race a couple of points slower than we did, so the average difference should be 5-6 points or so. Haven\'t looked to see what they did for all the individual horses, but I would be REAL surprised if we had any horse significantly wrong-- as with the BC, we have multiple people look at it.
But jerry, these are drastic differences, they have street sense essentially pairing his prior race, you have a strong forward move, you have curlin backing up a 1/4 pt, they have him backing up 2 1/4 pts.
this goes far beyond the scale difference, its totally different reads from the 2 best services in the country, IT DOESN\'T PASS THE SMELL TEST, one of you guys is dead wrong.
I looked at the numbers for the Top 10 finishers. The differences are generally in the 5 to 6 point range with a few exceptions.
Imawildandcrazyguy -- 4.25 points faster for TG
Hard Spun -- 4.75 points faster
Sam P -- 7.25 points faster
Nobiz -- 6.25 points faster
This means that TG had the race 1.5 to 2.5 points faster than Ragozin.
If you believe TG then SS ran back to his 2 y.o. top -- strong pattern and still faster than anything that will be running in the Preakness
If you believe Ragozin, SS is a little disappointing in that he has not yet run back to his 2 y.o. top but still a nice line with little chance of bouncing in the Preakness.
Hard Spun is a bounce candidate on both with his Ragozin line looking a little better.
Curlin looks stronger on his TG line than on Ragozin.
High and David-- as I said, we generally run about 3 1/2 points faster, so yes, one of us got it wrong. My point was that the difference should run the same for every horse, so if one or more is significantly out of line, one of us (ahem) also got the ground or beaten lengths wrong (again).
I\'ll save my analysis of the individual horses patterns for my Preakness comments. I don\'t agree with some of David\'s comments, especially since on Ragozin, Hard Spun\'s last is 5 points better than his 2yo top.
dpatent Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I looked at the numbers for the Top 10 finishers.
> The differences are generally in the 5 to 6 point
> range with a few exceptions.
>
> Imawildandcrazyguy -- 4.25 points faster for TG
> Hard Spun -- 4.75 points faster
> Sam P -- 7.25 points faster
> Nobiz -- 6.25 points faster
>
> This means that TG had the race 1.5 to 2.5 points
> faster than Ragozin.
>
> If you believe TG then SS ran back to his 2 y.o.
> top -- strong pattern and still faster than
> anything that will be running in the Preakness
>
> If you believe Ragozin, SS is a little
> disappointing in that he has not yet run back to
> his 2 y.o. top but still a nice line with little
> chance of bouncing in the Preakness.
>
> Hard Spun is a bounce candidate on both with his
> Ragozin line looking a little better.
>
> Curlin looks stronger on his TG line than on
> Ragozin.
Curlin looks better on Ragozin, imo. He has the Brother Derek TG sheet - just too many fast efforts in a row to be able to bounce back on two weeks. the Ragozin t \'6\' would give me more confidence in a decent Preakness run (more, not a lot). I liked SNS a lot more than BD last year off his slow \'t\' Derby race.
Jerry,
It does indeed look like 1) someone got the number \"wrong\" and 2) beaten lengths and/or wide paths or some \'x\' factor caused the numbers for a handful of other horses to be off.
I\'m not sure about the read on Hard Spun. Since he only had three 2 y.o. races and never really regressed, I don\'t think you can say that he had a \"top\". At some point he\'s going to hit the end of the line but I\'d be more willing to play him of the Ragozin line than yours.
That said I am sticking with my initial view that the Preakness is unplayable. Good luck to those searching for a way to find value.
David-- on the question of the differences on individual horses, it\'s easy enough to figure out who messed up if you have a tape of the race, and a chart with the beaten lengths. You\'ve made your own figures, but for those who have not, one path on one turn is worth one length, and two lengths is worth one point on both sets of figures. Since SS was rail/rail, it\'s easy to work off him to get figures. Take a look at the horses in question, and let us know what you find.
On Hard Spun-- once a horse pairs a top (as HS did as a 2yo on Ragozin) he has established a level, and at this point the horse has developed much more from his 2yo top on Ragozin than on TG, since we had him much faster last year. The 3yo patterns are very similar on both, so purely on the basis of patterns he is probably more likely to bounce on Ragozin. HOWEVER-- the last figure was very big on TG, which on that basis alone could cause a bounce. (I\'ll be getting into this in my Preakness comments, as I did last year about Barbaro). So overall it\'s a tough call as to which sheets have him looking better now.
And yes, one of us blew the Derby.
Jerry,
I\'m not playing the race absent some bizarre spasm by the bettors. I don\'t do figures any more and don\'t have tapes of the race, other than the NBC broadcast, and it is impossible to track the path of each horse around both turns on that video. I am sure that the CD cameras capture it better.
As for Hard Spun, this is a great chance to sit back and watch a race since he\'ll be no value. I think he bounces regardless of whose line you use though for different reasons.