So I\'ve done a bunch of figures over the last few weeks for horses going from synthetics to dirt, and here\'s what I know-- nothing.
The horses have mostly been coming from California (that and Turfway are the only ones running over synth over the winter). Several of the ones switching to dirt have jumped way up. Some have not.
The ones going from Cal synth or turf to Kee synth or turf have run right to their figures-- if there has been a jump-up I\'ve missed it. That\'s one reason I don\'t think it\'s the California figures in general-- the other is the horses that have gone the other way over the last few years, some of which I\'ve been responsible for (Even The Score, Super Frolic, Student Couincil, Pinata) have run to their numbers in California. Also, lots of Calder horses have run much faster once they got to California.
All of which means that what we have on our hands is a guessing game, as Beyer points out in a column in Wednesday\'s DRF. A lot of people here have posted a lot of theories, and for all I know one or more could be right. But I\'m pretty convinced that a) the figures themselves are right, and b) that by itself is of limited usefulness in dealing with the surface switches.
JB, I think Limestone Edge popped from about a 10 to what I would guess was about a 5 going from SA to Keenland over the weekend in the Nx1 prior to the Blue Grass on Sat.
I know one race doesn\'t mean much and there could have been other factors but that was one horse that I noticed jumped up.
Guys,
Determining which horses will or won\'t move up on surface changes is not as big a mystery as you think. Without insulting anyone\'s intelligence, distances, race types, surfaces all change, but the one thing that never changes is a horse\'s pedigree. I think many handicappers have had it handed to them on the Poly, Cushion, Pro Ride and Tapeta because of a variety of reasons, but the #1 reason is simply \"assuming\" certain high profile sires will throw good runners on any type surface. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Let me profile some \"high profile\" sires with some statistics and then you can draw your own conclusions.
Honour and Glory on Cushion at Santa Anita (Oak Tree) meet 1 for 10;
Cee\'s Tizzy 0 for 20; Tribal Rule 0 for 18.
At Hollywood, Devil His Due 0 for 14; Touch Gold 1 for 24; Menifee 1 for 21;
On Poly, Deputy Minister 9 for 127; Unreal Zeal 2 for 74.
On Cushion only, Cryptoclearance 0 for 19; Devil His Due (repeater) 0 for 17; Dixieland Band 0 for 15; Menifee (repeater) 1 for 21; Real Quiet 0 for 16; Touch Gold (repeater) 1 for 28.
Let me illustrate one sire in particular. Relaunch. He has son\'s like Cee\'s Tizzy, Honour and Glory, Skywalker, Bertrando and Bright Launch. Most of this group are well respected, in most cases, guys are gonna assume they can run a little based on their pedigree. The grandsons of Relaunch (Tiznow, Put It Back, Officer) are terrific Poly running producers. They stink on Cushion.
The sons of Relaunch are very good at Cushion, and the grandsons of Relaunch are especially good at producing Poly runners.
Generally, you will find that mares out of Bertrando and Skywalker are excellent on all artificial surfaces, but especially on Cushion.
For those who are unwilling to recognize the differences, it\'s gonna be impossible for them to ever get a \"handle\" on how a horse \"might\" run first time on a different artificial surface.
As I indicated earlier, most of the high profile sires are gonna eat your lunch when you are playing them on the assumption they produce a runner on all artificial surfaces.
Then you come to the Tapeta surface. Now, in my opinion, this one is pretty easy to figure because, with all due respect, your having to outrun horses at the Tapeta track on the east and Golden Gate on the west, without question, a lesser quality group of animals than you\'re going to see at Keeneland or Arlington or Southern California.
There are a handful of spectacular sires for the Tapeta surface, but I\'d rather not disclose who they are in an open forum or my advantage takes a huge hit.
I would be willing to disclose a couple of them to Mr. Brown, if he were willing to consider my suggestion regarding artificials.
I decided a couple years ago rather than to try to fight this unknown monster, i.e. artificial surfaces, I would dedicate 12 hours a day for several months and really get a handle on it. At this point, I\'m very confident in which horses are subject to liking the surfaces. Yet, as we all know, the advantage of a particular pedigree goes out the window without the proper intent of the connections. A well-bred Poly horse may not have any talent, and that\'s out of our control.
Please, please understand that Cushion, Tapeta and Pro Ride are \"similar\" in the types sires that produce those type runners. Polytrack is a completely different surface from any other type. Comparing Polytrack to the other artificial surfaces is like trying to compare regular dirt to turf, there is little resemblance, although, there are many horses that can crossover and have success. There will always be exceptions, as horseplayers, we all accept that premise. There is no assurance a horse moving from Cushion to Tapeta will run better, or vise versa. There is no assurance a horse moving from Cushion will run good on Poly. It is ALL in the pedigree.
Sorry for the long post. I\'ll be happy to elaborate further, if there\'s interest.
JB,
We had a rather lively exchange on this subject several monthe ago. Without knowing, perhaps, you seem to confirm some of what I feel, i.e some dirt horses are not running as fast on Cali synth, and I am not speaking about surface preference.If a true dirt horse cannot run it\'s normal PERFORMANCE fig on turf, then why can a true dirt horse run his normal fig on synt? Synth is an entirely different surface, different shoes, kick back, landing, planting very different, much like turf.Does is make sense that a dirt horse just overcomes all that and runs his normal fig.
I believe that true dirt horses run slower on synth, as they mostly do on turf, from a PERFORMANCE FIGURE standpoint.No science, just my opinion.I\'m not as certain as you that the horses are running just as fast on synth as they do on dirt, notwithstanding your comments on the horses you manage.I do not have confidence that figs are transerable from synth/poly to dirt and vice versa.Toughest game in the world made tougher.
Not questioning your fig making prowess but I believe this is a deeper problem than originally thought.
Mike
Smalltimer,
Nice post, Jim Quinn and others have some good data on this angle as does TG on the sheets. Of equal importance is running styles, i.e. early speed horses vs say deep closers.On normal dirt tracks, a high percentage of all races are won by horses within 3-5 lenghts at the pace call, app 76% last time I checked.
On poly especially(lesser on synth) early speed is generally a disadvantage. Bias report data re running styles pre and post poly/synth shows an enormous shift to late runners on the non dirt tracks.
I believe there is something to the breeding angle but I am certain that almighty early speed is \"ill\" on artificial surfaces for the most part.
Mike
hey miff i agree with what your are saying with tha performance of how the horse does from dirt to synthetic and how normal dirt horses usually run worse on synthetic but would an effort from dirt lets say an \"8\" to synthetic lets say a \"12\" back to dirt effort...wouldnt that horses pattern going into that dirt race from synthetic to dirt be effected?
Let me repeat earlier posts, which may confirm you are on to something.
First of all, all mammals inherit the dominant aspect of their skeletal structure from one of their father\'s parents.
Second, the Equix folks have determined that stability on sloppy surfaces is negatively affected by the length of the hind leg tibias (inherited from the sire.) The longer, the less stable. Stability on grass is likely to be affected similarly.
There is, thinking along these lines, a distinct possibility that some sires will pass along a structure that excels on synth surfaces. We already suspect that grass type runners do well on synth surfaces. Why not believe there are differences from one synth to another?
There are no guarantees of anything and, if you stop and think about it, every sire has two parents, so he may possibly have two types of offspring in this regard. Anomalies will be noticed in ANY sample.
Nevertheless, the patterns you have determined are likely to be meaningful.
But, Miff, I never mentioned early speed in any part of the submission.
If you just want a \"random\" thought on artificials, would you assume that a horse moving from Delmar with a 919\' stretch will run as good as that same horse at Keeneland where the stretch is over 1200\'?
I\'ve made no mention of \"early speed\", but there are some artificial horses out there that can get on the front end and wire the field. But, that wasn\'t my point.
But, its all good. I\'m not on here to cause problems, only to offer suggestions.
smalltimer,
I\'m a bit confused on the sons and grandsons of Relaunch. do the sons produce good cushion runners? you listed the stats of two, and they don\'t seem to be doing so well. and the grandsons? how has Tiznow done as a cushion sire?
thanks for the post.
Small,
I understand you were only speaking about breeding, but remember some sires throw early gas and some do not. Would be nice to know what running styles these good poly sires are throwing.
Re stretch distances, I have found that longer stretches have little to do with horses wiring or not.
Mike
Alm, one need go no further than Monba for me to make my point. He is out of an Easy Goer mare. No doubt, this horse likes the Poly.
One of the top Poly sires anywhere is Unbridled Jet, out of Unbridled, by an Easy Goer Mare named Easy Summer.
I\'d have zero hesitation in playing a debut maiden with that bloodlines on Poly assuming the horse had good conformation and the connections had a decent percentage in debut maidens.
If its not hard for handicappers to imagine that Empire Maker would be a top flight horse because he was out of the mare Toussad, why would it be difficult to add that same significance to a proven Poly producer?
People just took for granted that Empire Maker would be good, and he was.
I\'m just throwing it out there. Nobody has to accept it.
Miff, apparently I am speaking Greek in the room.
My point was, if a handicapper \"assumes\" a high percentage of Poly races are won off the pace, then why wouldn\'t a horse jump up with an additional 300\' to work with?
For the record-- we supplied Bill Finley with a lot of data for a book he is writing (may even have come out already) about synth pedigrees.
All pedigree issues-- whether first turf, first synth (or even when buying a yearling), come down to a matter of percentages. From a betting point of view, first they have to handle it (percentages), then they have to be fast enough.
Small,
No need to assume, speed is death on poly, generally speaking. My point was that on dirt, stretch length is not meaningful. It\'s makes common sense that a longer poly/synt stretch would benefit late runners, but I don\'t know that to be a fact. At Delmar last year,for example, front runners were hooked by the quarter pole and left for dead in raw times 3 seconds slower than norm for most distances.
Mike
Michael D.
Thanks for the question. In the last couple years, I\'ve charted and researched thousands and thousands of artificial surface races. The conclusions that I\'ve arrived at are all documented from the beginning.
One of the strange things about artificial is the skipping a generation type thing where the son of a sire isn\'t below average on certain surfaces, but his offspring, rather it be fillies or colts, will jump up and be outstanding.
I\'d rather not get to involved today, because this is the first time I\'ve ever visited the room, and I don\'t wanna wear out my welcome the first day.
Having said that, if you are interested in pedigrees and the impact they have on race surface preferences, you can usually take a short cut and find either Secretariat, Buckpasser, Poker, or mares out of Clever Trick or Rahy and find a runner.
TGJB,
You can look at that a couple of different ways.
If you have a group of 10 horses, with good dirt speed, but with limited Poly ability, I\'ll take the proven Poly pedigree most of the time. Why? Because when the majority of the field can\'t stand up on Poly, and my debut runner is out of a high producing bloodlines, sometimes they don\'t have to be that good to take the purse. If he catches them on a regular dirt surface, he\'s apt to get it handed to him, but put him/her on their in-bred preferred surface and it sure brings \'em together.
Just a comment.
TGJB -
So, when you are making a set of figures for a race like the Blue Grass (in which many runners are moving from dirt to synthetic) or the Arkansas Derby (in which many runners are moving from synthetic to dirt), do you use all the horses, or rely primarily on those with experience over the surface?
There is no set answer on that-- I look at the race, the surrounding races, and do what makes the most sense overall. I\'ve attached the BG, which I got about the same as Andy (don\'t know about Len).
TGJB,
When you eventually get a large enough sample of horses moving back and forth between synth and dirt, it might make sense to chart the figures by the quality of horses.
1. Horses that typically run between -5 and 0
2. Horses that typically run between 1 and 5
3. Horses that typically run between 6 and 10
4. Horses that typically run between 11 and 16
etc....
In addition to trying to understand whether the figures are accurate on average, it might be interesting to see if there is any flattening at the extremes relative to dirt.
Thanks.
PS: I would be willing to pay for some specific studies of your database - assuming the price was reasonable and info I need is available. You might want to consider that as another source of income because I\'d be willing to bet you\'d get other customers.
TGJB -
I notice that there seem to be minor inconsistencies between your ground loss info for the Blue Grass and the Trakus data posted on the Keeneland site. For example, the Trakus data indicates that Monba ran more than 2 lengths further than Cowboy Cal. Since he also beat him by a neck, I\'d expect the difference in their figs to be at least one TG point and yet I see that the difference is only 0.75 points.
I assume that you would have to pay Trakus something for the right to incorporate their data in your figs. What has been your experience with respect to the reliability of the Trakus data in the places where it is available?
I apologize in advance if this has already come up and I don\'t remember it.
Trakus has approached us, and if they ever get going at a lot of tracks I\'ll take a close look at their data. No real opinion at this point.
Bit,
About two years ago a few of us looked at TG ground loss(checking replays) for about 100 races in NY.Honestly did not find one instance where we saw a major discrepancy from the TG track guy.For a non computer type trakus set up, TG seems to have ground nailed pretty good in NY.Of course, a good computer program trumps the naked eye in any endeavor.
Now I am not a plant, but the same exercise showed \"fig\" differences for the Rags. Since they do not show ground on the product, it was tough to tell if we were dealing with track speed differences or ground loss differences when comparing between the TG and Rag figs.
Mike
Miff-- the way to tell would be if there were discrepencies within a race.
JB,
The differnces we found were not in beaten lengths as on both sets the relationship was close. The figs were different scale to scale which means that either variant or ground was not agreed.
Mike
If the relationships within the races are close, the difference has to be in how we did the race as a whole, not ground loss.
Makes sense, it\'s track speed then.
Mike
TGJB –
Despite your protestations about learning nothing, you have (or have access to) more knowledge than your customers. Even if you can only guess which horses will jump up when moving from synthetic to dirt, one issue on which you might shed some light (perhaps in the context of your Derby/Oaks seminar) is how big the jump-ups of synthetic-to-dirt horses have been.
Without having seen the figs for the SA Derby, I\'m guessing that Colonel John still needs a big forward move (say, just for example, 4 points) to justify his status as probable second favorite. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the synthetic-to-dirt jump-ups have been 4 points or larger.
In general, I\'m surprised you haven\'t done more with quantifying the sizes of new tops. Tops seem like a huge part of TG handicapping. Even if ThoroPattern suggests that a new top could be forthcoming, the handicapper needs to guess at the probable size of the top in order to know whether it would make the horse a contender. From reading the ROTW, it\'s obvious that you have developed a feel for what size jumps are just too big to expect. For less experienced users, it would be useful to have some statistics (perhaps grouped by age, number of starts, or existing performance level) about what percentage of new tops are more than 4 points, more than 3 points, etc.
On the flip side, for horses who have just run new tops, it would be interesting to sort those horses by size of the jump-up, and ask how they perform in their next outing. What percentage pair the new top, run an off race, etc.?
On the narrower question, the sample size is way to small to do a study, but Heatseeker/Zenyatta and a couple of others going cushion/dirt have jumped about 3-4 points. It\'s more of an issue with the older horses, since spring 3yos jump forward pretty regularly.
We do studies something like the ones you mention for the Derby seminar every year, and will again this year.
Everything else aside (like our small staff and one programmer having to spend time on several other projects in the works that will actually produce revenue), the number of variables involved in the type of studies you mention (age, number of races, surface, trainer, spacing, etc.) is very high. We did what we could to give the inexperienced user something to work with.
TGJB –
Thanks for the info on synthetic-to-dirt jump-ups.
Regarding my other thoughts, I\'m sympathetic to your need to run a business. I\'ll share what I have regarding jump-up sizes in hopes that some others find it informative. I took a look at all the tops run on or before the first Saturday in May by 3yos who ran in a Triple Crown race in 2004 through 2007. I chose that sample because that\'s what I had access to through the TG archive. It\'s obviously biased because tops by horses who fell by the wayside during the spring were excluded. For a race to qualify as a top, the horse had to have run in at least two prior races.
Including all tops (n = 130), the jump-up sizes were:
1.25 to 2 – 32.3%
2.25 to 3 – 32.3%
3.25 to 4 – 20.0%
4.25 and up – 15.4%
Surprisingly to me, including only horses who had run at least 5 prior races (n = 69) did not seem to make much of a difference. The jump-up sizes were:
1.25 to 2 – 30.4%
2.25 to 3 – 34.8%
3.25 to 4 – 24.6%
4.25 and up – 10.2%
Including only horses with a prior top of 5 or better (n = 57) did reduce the percentage of big jump-ups. The jump-up sizes were:
1.25 to 2 – 42.1%
2.25 to 3 – 31.6%
3.25 to 4 – 17.5%
4.25 and up – 8.8%
Jimbo-- here\'s a post of mine from a few days ago (that was completely misunderstood by one person who thought I was talking about handicapping synthetic tracks, which I was not). It touches on your question only in that I don\'t know the answers at this point. The only thing I would add is that there have now also been a couple coming from cushion that jumped up on poly, although there is also the Pletcher-at-Keeneland issue to deal with in that regard.
This thing is a major pain in the butt. The good news is that with the keeneland handle drop and the articles that have been written recently, Santa Anita may go back to dirt, and others may gradually follow.
I don\'t know the answer to the compaction question, but I do know that the figure relationships within races hold up on all surfaces.
On your Pyro comment-- close to right about him, wrong about the seminar overall.
TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So I\'ve done a bunch of figures over the last few
> weeks for horses going from synthetics to dirt,
> and here\'s what I know-- nothing.
>
> The horses have mostly been coming from California
> (that and Turfway are the only ones running over
> synth over the winter). Several of the ones
> switching to dirt have jumped way up. Some have
> not.
>
> The ones going from Cal synth or turf to Kee synth
> or turf have run right to their figures-- if there
> has been a jump-up I\'ve missed it. That\'s one
> reason I don\'t think it\'s the California figures
> in general-- the other is the horses that have
> gone the other way over the last few years, some
> of which I\'ve been responsible for (Even The
> Score, Super Frolic, Student Couincil, Pinata)
> have run to their numbers in California. Also,
> lots of Calder horses have run much faster once
> they got to California.
>
> All of which means that what we have on our hands
> is a guessing game, as Beyer points out in a
> column in Wednesday\'s DRF. A lot of people here
> have posted a lot of theories, and for all I know
> one or more could be right. But I\'m pretty
> convinced that a) the figures themselves are
> right, and b) that by itself is of limited
> usefulness in dealing with the surface switches.