the frizette

[Michael D.]

i remember a few years back, storm flag flying ran a few seconds slower than the colts in the champagne, but there were obvious issues regarding changing track speeds that day.

this year, it\'s not so obvious. beyer gave the winner a 68, which has to be the lowest beyer ever given for a grade 1 race.

did the track change speeds this year, or did we see a grade 1 race completely collapse?

well, let\'s look at the sires of the runners:

1. service stripe
2. tale of the cat
3. touch gold
4. meadowlake
5. capote
6. unbridled\'s song
7. carson city
8. meadowlake
9. yes it\'s true
10. orientate

a few route sires there, but wow, a lot of pedigree tilted towards speed in that group (mixed on the dam side).

8 of the 10 fillies were stretching out to 1M for the first time.

the final quarter in the race was 28 + seconds.

can you do this race \"off the horses\", or do you have to do what beyer did, and make this race extremely slow?

[TGJB]

Michael, funny you mention this, because I just did the day, and then looked to see what Beyer did. If you think that Beyer was low, you should have seen what it would have been if he didn\'t break it out. As it turned out, he did the same thing I did, breaking it out and ending up with the same relationship between the two 2yo stakes. I made them both slightly faster than he did.

I don\'t know what happened with the Frizette. There was an awful lot of wind, which may have had something to do with the slow time (either with gusts or by drying the track). There was also a very hot pace, which alternatively could mean the race simply collapsed. I broke it out because if I did so I could come up with a variant that had several fillies running very close to what they had been running, others running worse, and none running new tops. If you did the race at the same variant as the Champagne, everyone would go back at least 4-5 points.

In general, my rule is you don\'t break a race out just because doing it with the day is obviously wrong-- you have to know what the right correction is, with a high degree of probability. If I don\'t I leave a box, and if I\'m not completely certain-- and I\'m not with the Frizette-- I go back and review it. I just did my weekly reviews today, and changed two races-- one at Delaware, one at Turfway.

[miff]

JB said:

\"If you did the race at the same variant as the Champagne, everyone would go back at least 4-5 points\"


Jerry,

Since that\'s what they did,(all went back 4-5 points because they were bottomed out by a blistering pace into the wind)I will never understand why you do not give them exactly what they ran with a hot pace notation.

Who says that 2yr old lightly raced fillies, faced with a terrible head wind, a blistering pace, a longer distance than their norm, cannot regress substantially from their prior efforts. Why does that not make perfect sense under the circumstances.

Mike

[TGJB]

Miff-- as I said, it\'s a possibility. And if there was not a solid alternative I would have gone that way. But if they just spat it out there would be no cohesion to the race (horses that just stop can run anything), and I found what Andy did-- that the race came out pretty tight the other way. So I\'m keeping it this way pending a review.