The best horses in this race didn\'t win because, and this has happened in the past for sure, it\'s really, really difficult to get through a 20 horse field on a track that\'s not designed for it.  And let\'s acknowledge that the jockey on the winner rode a brilliant race.  His main goal was to stay out of trouble and make one clean run.  

There\'s also no doubt that the transition to and from a synthetic track covered up the horse\'s progress that finally showed up on the dirt.  I was at Keeneland every day and can report if you look closely that there were upsets like this frequently through the short meet...given that Turfway is a feeder track for some of the horses running against what seems to be tougher company.

A guy sitting at my table had the winner and when I asked him why he made the bet, he showed me his ticket.  He bet on the favorite and 3 others with odds spacing up to the longest shot in the field.  I just looked to the sky to resolve the nutso factor that I don\'t have in my handicapping.

The early p4 is more interesting.

2: 2, 4, 7, 8
3: 1, 3, 8
4: 1, 8, 9, 10
5: 5, 10, 11

I think that most of the responses to my post about the effect of ground loss on a horse's time in a race were snarky and abusive.  That's ok because it's kind of what this board is about.

But what if my claims were well founded?  What if I really have been able to establish a useful metric for this otherwise elusive fact about racing?  What if you just suspended your disbelief to ask 'what if this guy is telling the truth?'

Curiosity should alone be enough for you to ask a few questions; to get under the claim to an understanding of what I am saying.  Maybe I can help you understand this if I put it in different terms.

There are two laws of physics at work in a horse race that tend to slow a horse down if it has to battle against them.  Without getting scientific, let me point them out.  In a straight-away a horse loses its momentum when it has to change paths to get in the clear.  Angling in or angling out have the same effect.  I've determined that the loss of time or speed is about one percent for each path that a horse has to cross to get clear in a straight-away.

In a turn there is a different force at work.  A horse has to battle against the force to keep its path and stay in line during a turn.  This is especially difficult because there is NO straight line in a turn path; the ground loss is continuous.  I've estimated that a horse loses about four percent of its time or speed if it has to race in the 2 path in a turn and another single percent for each additional path that it is forced out.

These may seem like small amounts of speed loss, but they add up.  Especially in a two turn or three turn race.  When you add the time back in to a horse's speed it tends to smooth out the wildly varying times they show for multiple races over the same distance and the same surface.  The calculation gives you a view of the horse's basic ability under a specific set of conditions.

I made a comment that this is mostly true with mature horses, because younger horses tend to improve greatly as they learn more and get stronger from race to race.  There is no hard metric that helps predict this.  But even with younger horses, this approach separates the contenders pretty well.

There is so much data available about racing that all that I've done is grapple with some of it in order to understand it better.  This is not an attack on the TG metrical base.  It's just a little bit more insight.  And it does result in the outcomes that I discussed previously. If you don't believe it, I am sorry for your loss.

I didn\'t expect anyone to leap up and congratulate me for my post and I don\'t intend to explain or defend it, but really Jerry: somebody at TG implied in your Preakness analysis that Social Inclusion was the fastest horse in the race.  That was not true then and it\'s not true now.

I had thought that Chrome had tailed off in the Preakness, visually speaking, but he did not. His SA Derby was slightly faster than his Ky Derby, adjusted for ground loss, and his Preakness was slightly faster.  If I\'m right and he\'s holding his form, he is about 2 - 3 lengths faster than the bunch he\'s running against and will likely beat them in NY.

Tied in a tight group for second behind him are Samraat, Intense Holiday and Commanding Curve.  Slightly behind them is Ride on Curlin and tied for sixth slightly behind him are Social Inclusion and Tonalist.

Like the Derby and the Preakness this race isn\'t worth betting unless you toss the favorite and hope.  That\'s fine if you\'re desperate to bet it, but it\'s not a strategy.  Somewhere on some card at a major track is a 30- 1 shot who looks impossible due to recent races in which it lost ground substantially, but actually has the top figure in the race.  I have had more than my share of them since I got serious with this last August.

Good hunting.

I've spent the last two years developing a metric to measure the effort-impact of ground loss on horses in races.  I've determined that the impact of ground loss in a turn is significantly greater than ground loss in a straightaway by a factor of about 2-1; not precisely, but close.

Useful discoveries that I made include:
1.   Mature horses run about the same number for all their races on the same surface at similar distances WHEN ADJUSTED FOR GROUND LOSS.
2.   When I can clearly segment runners in a race (3 or 4 standouts with much better figures than all others in the race) I will pick the winner about 90% of the time in horizontal betting, exactas about 40% of the time and trifectas about 20% of the time.
But this is not about my betting.  Let's talk the Triple Crown races.

My adjusted ground loss numbers for Orb last year were 108 going into his Derby (slightly the top in the field) and 117 for his run in the Derby.  He then crashed and burned; the jump was extreme and the bounce was in.

My adjusted numbers for California Chrome were 114 going into his Derby (by far the top in the field) and he ran another 114 in the Derby.  There was NO way that he was going to bounce in the Preakness, but pending the number he earned there we may conclude that he is tailing off for the Belmont.  I'm not sure yet, but I'll let you know.

Adios Amigos....you missed the horse and I\'m the problem.  Right.

OK, final comment.

As I saw it those La Derby horses did have a better (homemade by Al) number than Orb and in each case they were regression candidates because the La Derby represented very large new tops for them.  Orb on the other hand had confirmed his own large new top two back with a pair-up in the Florida Derby.

Orb was far more likely to move forward in Kentucky and that\'s the way that I bet him.  The others were not likely to pair up, IMHO.  Golden Soul probably did, however, or he may even have hit a new top in the Derby (just not as big as did Orb.)  The others I am not so sure about, but I believed before the race and still believe that they are competitive with him.

Orb is a very good horse, but he is not a super-effing horse.  If he did what I think that he did in the Derby, a major new top, he will regress from that.  A competitive horse will beat him.  For what it is worth, Departing and Governor Charlie are in that category, but the Governor is very likely not to pair up or hit a new top (without serious help.)  If it is a drug free race, ha, ha, I am looking to Departing for the value play.

Someday we\'ll have a conversation about this.  Golden Soul was not a surprise to me.  Let\'s let it go for now because I can see this is going nowhere.

Jerry, I know I promised you that I wouldn\'t bring up my \'homemade\' figures again and I am not redboarding in replying to you here, but Golden Soul did not jump up according to my figures.  He actually went into the race with about a 1% better last race number than Orb.  So the way I saw it was that either Orb jumped up over him (most likely) or he had a slight setback himself.

My mind\'s eye isn\'t helping me here, but didn\'t most of the dirt races later in the day go to horses circling the field wider than usual?

Yes.  He was the slowest of the four top finishers at Fair Grounds.  But it is his race at Hawthorne that is the setup for the Preakness.  I don\'t know what his numbers were there, but they had to be a new top for the horse.  The question will be whether he can pair up or move ahead from the new level or if he will regress.  If he pairs or improves and Orb regresses, he can win.

Meanwhile, that Trakus guy included a comment from Donna Brothers in his analysis...to the effect that the rail was the place to be in the Derby.  That is so counterintuitive to me.  I\'ve been watching sealed tracks at Churchill for decades.  I know it\'s anecdotal evidence, but I can\'t remember the rail being the place to be when the track is draining down the banks, particularly in the turns.

If she looked at it about the time of the race, that\'s one thing.  If she looked at it following a maintenance, that\'s another.  This is relevant, going forward, because Revolutionary either had the easiest trip or the most compromised run.  If the latter, this guy will win the Belmont in a cakewalk.

This is a good horse...he will run well when he\'s had the time that he needs.  Even then, however, he may not be the fastest among these.  The way the Louisiana horses performed it is far more likely that one of them will win the Preakness if Orb stumbles.  And if he doesn\'t bounce, the Claiborne horse may turn out to be the best of them.  As Hermes used to say in the Morning Telegraph, he\'s likely to be fast, fit and dangerous.

toppled Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Departing is nowhere near Orb\'s league.  


Really?  Golden Soul is somewhere NEAR Orb\'s league and Departing beat him in the Louisiana Derby.

For what it is worth, Orb aside, the La Derby has to be revisited as a key race in this year\'s preps.  No?

Look this is the tightest Derby I\'ve seen in a long, long time.  The hardest part of it will be figuring who will regress the most and who will be around at the finish when that happens to them.  Horses that seem to me to be the most likely to regress (in order) are Goldencents, Will Take Charge, IMLD, Mylute, Revolutionary and Golden Soul.

The two who have had the fastest previous races in the regress category are Goldencents and IMLD.  If they don\'t drop too much they can figure in the verticals.  However, neither of them has been trained very hard, which suggests to me that their trainers are worried about tightening the screws too much.

Horses coming in on good patterns are Orb, Normandy, Overanalyze, Vyjack, and Verrazano (marginally.)  The difference between these five is VERY SLIGHT and the rest of this field just seems to be too slow to jump up over any in either of these two categories.

That\'s the way I see it.

As for the fillies, there are three that are moving in a direction that suggests to me that Dreaming of Julia won\'t have it easy.  Apart from the likelihood that she will regress, Unlimited Budget, Midnight Lucky and Close Hatches are all eligible to beat her.  If she bounces big time, she may not hit the board.

They are hardly homemade and the mile race was a lot faster, sorry.  Basically, one might conclude he is slower around two turns.  Or that he has been trained slowly (his 4f work?) because that\'s the best Plesa can do with him at this point.  It really doesn\'t matter: if you\'re right I have him in a Future Book bet and will get there anyway.  If I\'m right, he\'s not on any ticket I bet day-of.