Effort within a Non-Effort

[TreadHead]

Was just looking thru the Derby and Preakness data again, and had a question I wanted to see if anyone would comment on.  In a race like the Derby where the figure is based on 10 furlongs, do you consider the figure differently if the horse ran a significantly different/better race at say 8 furlongs than the final 10 furlong time might indicate?

Here\'s what I\'m getting at, effort and patterns are the name of the game here, right?  Now, granted that if the race were only 8 or 8.5F it might have been run differently (or maybe in the case of the Derby it might not have been, other than some of the back horses moving a little sooner), but let\'s take a look at Oxbow and the amount of effort he put in for 8F.  At the end of a mile he is in 2nd place and has put forth quite an effort to get there.

If the race had only been 8F, might he have gotten a figure more like a 2 or 3? Or maybe even a 1?  If so, would this cause you to consider his pattern differently, moving forward off a previous 5 with 1s to run back to, instead of pairing 5s in clearly off efforts?

Contrast this with someone like Goldencents who was already 15th by a mile and the race is a clear non-effort no matter how you slice it.  Just curious if anyone else looks at longer races in this kind of light, where they would have gotten a pretty decent figure if the race had been just a bit shorter, relative to what they got after slowing down at the end.

[bellsbendboy]

This is one of the dilemmas of integer based handicapping.  Changes in distance and surface are the responsibility of the handicapper; not the speed figure creator.

A case in point that was much written about here was the Maker claim from Keeneland who came right back and airmailed in NY.  From memory the Keeneland figure was a 12 and the NY win was a 1.

Many here were up in arms.  In reality, the 12 may have been the right number but even a cursory examination would reveal the layoff, longer trip and wrong surface had to make that score highly questionable.  The horse was favored and won clear.

bbb