Watchmaker -- Breeders Cup piece

[miff]

Jerry,

You missed the point!! The paying customers are the ones who need to \"debate\" and try to find out who got Borrego \"WRONG, someone did. The difference of 8 lengths is monumental and speaks volumes when you pay for data you expect to be fairly accurate.

[TGJB]

Miff-- I absolutely agree that the customers should be trying to figure out who got the Borrego race wrong, but that\'s what YOU have decided to make the question now. The point I was making is simple and much more general-- in trying to compare horses that run over different tracks, or on different days, or in different eras, the right way to do it is to use performance (speed) figures. THAT\'S WHAT THEY ARE FOR.

But a couple of other points need to be made.

1-- Ragozin\'s definition of a figure being \"correct\" has nothing to do with it being correct. \"Giving them what they ran\", to Ragozin and Friedman, means dogmatically running the data through a specific series of steps, based on a whole bunch of unwarranted assumptions and extrapolations, with the result being considered \"correct\" whether it makes sense or not. Hence The Daddy getting a better figure than Borrego, and the next five in that mediocre Super Derby getting figures that would have beaten Suave and the rest of the Gold Cup field.

2-- Using figures to compare horses from different generations (or circuits) does not work if you use pars, which by definition drive the figures to be equal-- i.e., 25 claimers will continue to go in 10s whether they do or not. Beyer and Ragozin both did this for a long time-- Friedman and I had a discussion about this on their board a few years ago where he defended the practice, and I showed him the problems with it. The relationship between their figures and ours, which had changed dramatically over the previous 15 years, has stayed pretty constant since that conversation-- and he said at the Expo they no longer use pars.

Beyer also says he does not use pars. I have reason to think otherwise, but I\'m not going to get into it-- there are a number of DRF guys reading this site.

My first post on Borrego and The Daddy generated 18 posts on the Rag site the first day, 4 or 5 more the next. It will be interesting to see what this does.

http://www.drf.com/news/article/69381.html

[elkurzhal]

Thanks CH. I stand corrected.

[TGJB]

So let me see if I can follow this:

There is a fued between several of the sheiks and Coolmore, in which Tabor is a partner, involving the breeding business.

Tabor is Biancone\'s main customer. He is also by all accounts a very tough customer (ex-bookmaker).

Coolmore (Tabor) stands Giant\'s Causeway, sire of First Samurai.

Biancone tells Stevens to go 21.3 if necessary to make the lead with Henny Hughes, when going further than the horse ever has before. This information is only revealed because Gary spoke up.

Darley fires Biancone.

Hard to see why.