Friedman has made the mistake of posting again on the question of the errors the Ragozin office made with BC numbers, when he should have kept his mouth shut. This is reminiscent of last years BC, when I pointed out the dead rail-- he admitted that half the horses who raced outside ran tops that day while none of the horses who raced inside did, but insisted there was no dead rail. This year, he has gone into all kinds of ridiculous defenses, when he should have said we checked it, we blew it, we\'ll fix it. But that was never going to happen, was it-- and the ones who will bear the brunt are those who bet off their data.
1- Friedman has now attempted to make the discussion about the \"fan out\". The fan out takes place when the horses LEAVE the turn, and has nothing to do with the issues here. He also still seems to think that centrifugal force only exists at the end of the turn.
2- There is no issue of \"fan out\" with Touch Of The Blues. They have him on the rail, he was in the 4 path ON THE TURN, as anyone who watches can see.
3- Again, Composure was INSIDE SFF for the whole turn EXCEPT for the part Friedman says they don\'t count, yet they show her (and presumably did her figure) as WIDER than SFF. That alone should make clear that Friedman\'s explanation is a crock-- they don\'t even do what he is claiming they do.
4- I love Friedman\'s explanation of how they decided \"not\" to use fan out-- Ragozin noticed 1/4 point discrepencies. Forget the huge errors in methodology (and resultant huge errors in figures) that I have pointed out in the past, forget that the data we all use to make our figures is not 1/4 point accurate (see BC ground), forget that they are asking everyone to take Ragozin\'s judgement and Friedman\'s credibility on faith (see Touch Of The Blues)-- as has been pointed out here often, not that many horses pair up on Ragozin. Do you really think he did a study of the ones that did, and cross referenced it with \"fan out\"? And isn\'t this kind of fudging to pair up horses what they accuse me of doing?
5- I also love Friedman defending himself by citing good results he had using sheets in the 60\'s and 70\'s, when no-one had good figures, there were no Beyer figures, and less than 10 people used Ragozin. As we all know, there have been no advances in any field since then.
not really centrifugal force. however, i knew what you meant. here\'s a nice layman explanation:
http://www.miata.net/sport/Physics/04-No-Centrifugal.html
i\'m in the process of modeling the decision process during a race so i was reminded of the discussion here on turns.
Mike: When you say that you\'re in the process of modeling the decision process during a race, are you referring to some decision related to ground loss which a jockey must make, taking into consideration the speed he & his mount are travelling and the tightness of the turn in question?
initially, it is an intellectual pursuit. can you look at ten horses, each with their own performance characteristics, and determine their optimal path?
you have to start on the most superficial level and ignore a great deal of detail. however, once you have that piece done, you move in a layer. sort of an onion approach. for example, let\'s say you start with the assumption that you need to minimize the distance travelled. (it is probably wrong, but we have to start somewhere.) you model this. the only decision the \"horse\" has to make is how soon can i get to the one path. now you go in a level. what if i\'m in the two path and there is no horse inside me, but there is a horse in the one path in front of me. should i move to one path or stay in the two path?
you have to do these a little at a time or you will drown in the \"what-ifs.\" the saving grace is that it is fun. the computer generates a overhead animation of the race so i watch little races all day.
\"Centrifugal force\" was the term Friedman used in his defense of the bad Breeder\'s Cup ground. As HP pointed out to me, Friedman\'s original post ignored (among other things) that the turns are banked for horses. The article you point to also seems to assume a flat surface, which means there are some differences, although I skimmed it quickly.
Those posts were amazing. In fact, ALL racetracks with turns are banked in part to deal with this phenomenon, whether for runners, horses or cars.
It may be hard for someone to imagine how this centrifugal force (c-force) thing applies to horses, but if you drive a car, I think you will see that the principles in question apply, and furthermore if you are behind the wheel you will see how ridiculous the idea is that this c-force somehow evaporates or is cancelled out in the last part of a turn when you start to straighten out. Anyone who has taken a cloverleaf highway exit too fast can tell you this is total nonsense.
Your better drivers, like me, manage to take turns in such a way as to minimize the unpleasant c-force effects for their passengets, which is essential if you, like me, drive with people who will not hesitate to let you know that you are doing a crappy job of driving.
The c-force will apply based on where you are throughout the turn and how you got there. I believe in some cases it\'s possible that the c-force will actually be stronger on the last part of the turn (like if you got progressively wider throughout - we\'ve all seen people, horses and cars \'blow\' turns as a result).
Of course, the ground is lost on the final part of the turn no matter what, but was another can \'o\' worms. HP
Mike,
We use a sophisticated computer program for \"placing\" horses on the turn(s) in races at tracks without observers. We use this model to calculate the ground loss correction in those figures.
Obviously, the raw mechanical model can\'t possibly be accurate for every horse in every race, but we have a manual checking system in place that is very efficient. We double check virtually every race for aberrations.
If this is similar to your project, perhaps you\'d like to compare notes?
banked turns do make a big difference. at 60fps, the turn would have to be banked at almost 14 degrees to offset centripetal force.
[for those interested:
degrees = arctan(v^2/(gr)) where v = horse\'s velocity in feet per second, g=32, and r=radius of the turn in feet. now you can see the change from slower horses or tighter turns]
i\'m sure you have banking information for all tracks, but from my list, the maximum is about 6 degrees and the minimum is about 3 degrees. so from this, we see that centripetal force is a factor throughout the turn, not just at the end. if someone says otherwise, they have isaac newton to contend with.
nicely nicely,
that would be interesting. i\'ve been mulling the testing issue. i should be ready to test after the 1st.