Sires for courses?

Started by TreadHead, May 12, 2011, 05:35:00 PM

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TreadHead

This was something I was thinking about recently and since someone else brought up a stats suggestion, I just wanted to throw this one out there because I think it would be much more useful that the 9f one suggested, no offense.

Will probably get flamed for this and many of you will laugh, but during the closing days of Keeneland I was watching Plonk/Caton/Newmeyer etc do the live chat at Keeneland and Plonk brought up a couple times the idea of certain sires doing very well at Keeneland.  I think Unbridled\'s Song was mentioned, and then close to the end of the meet he said something about blindly betting any Tale of the Cat 1st timers at Keeneland site unseen and sure enough one won the maiden race in question at like 9-1.

That weekend on the live feed just before the Derby trial, Jill Byrne mentioned that \"Indian Charlies and Distorted Humors just seem to really move up when the come to Churchill\" and then Machen goes out and wins the race on what some around here called a head-scratcher of a sheet.

I\'m not at all suggesting that anyone would ever make this the sole basis for a handicapping decision, but I am somewhat curious to see if there really is a statistical correlation here or not.  For instance (purely hypothetical) lets say Distorted Humors average a 12 overall.  If you only looked at CD races, perhaps the average is 10.5.  When they move to Saratoga, perhaps the average is 13.  If you get into these really difficult stakes races and need a tie breaker to throw someone out to make a ticket affordable, this might be something that helps me make that decision.

Yes, I get that in many cases there will not be much data to go on and it really isn\'t something you would be able to draw much of a conclusion from, but we do already have \"Trainer X at CD\" data on the sheets and this would just be a similar stat that may prove interesting.  Just a thought, happy to hear other opinions on this, good or bad.

mlnolan00

I believe I also heard Jill B. mention that horses by Empire Maker do very well at KEE, but perhaps its just that his progeny perform well over both turf and dirt and subsequently that form transfers to the Poly.  I\'ve also noticed that Mizzen Mast\'s get tend to run well over each and every racing surface in Kentucky, from KEE to KD...love that sire...his runners have made me a ton of $$ over the past few years.  

It might be interesting to compare sires of horses running in similar race condition levels (N1X, 25,000C) at PID and GG, or KEE, WO, and AP to see if affinity patterns develop over the various surfaces.  For instance, do Unusual Heat runners really prefer synth at GG to synth at HOL, or is it just that race conditions (or jockeys, drugs, lack of pollution/smog in the air, whatever) are the intervening factors leveling the playing field?  (Has UH even had a runner that won on synth outside of CA???)

PS-I now know waaaaay too much about synth tracks as they\'re the focus for my MBA thesis--\"Faking It: Kentucky Thoroughbred Industry Dynamics in the Synthetic Track Era\"        :-)  that title is probably not nearly as funny to others as it is to me!