Derby views from a Ragozin user

[Silver Charm]

Lets see now:

Hard Spun works too fast.
Scat Daddy wearing bar shoes.
Curlin has no two year old foundation.
Street Sense is not bred for a distance.
Any Given Saturday bearing out in the Wood.
Circular Quay is light on breeding and racing.

Who is left???

Maybe Zanjero is a play after all........

[toppled]

You\'ve misinterpreted the data.  The cutoff is 9.00, not 10.00.  Therefore the only horses that are non qualifiers are Scat Daddy & Street Sense.  The closer you are to 10, the better chance of lasting 10f. Any Given Saturday is weak on his female side according to Mr. Veitch\'s analysis, but when he presented the analysis he defended his overall 9.30 as good enough to win the Derby if the horse is up to the task. However, anyone who does not combined with the horse\'s ability & pace of the race into their analysis is missing the picture.  It\'s like a year or two ago when he rated a horse very high for 10f, but he was a dead front runner in a race jammed with speed and in spite of his pedigree, in that race he stood no chance.  The #s are only one part of a complex puzzle. If the game was easy, none of us would be on our way to work this morning.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Ok,

I dont know what his theory is, but I\'m assuming the figures represent distance acheived in some manner. So he\'s got Scat rated just over a mile when he\'s already won Grade I\'s at 9 poles. Which isn\'t inconsistent with his theory that a horse can go an additional pole past his number. Doesn\'t look like he\'s got any qualifying Belmont winners, but I\'m sure he thinks that race is an exception.

Would you not agree that if Street Sense wins or runs a good race Saturday his numbers are meaningless. Heck, he\'s qualified the whole field except for one (or two depending upon your view) of the big chance horses.

-------------------------------------------------------
> You\'ve misinterpreted the data.  The cutoff is
> 9.00, not 10.00.  Therefore the only horses that
> are non qualifiers are Scat Daddy & Street Sense.
> The closer you are to 10, the better chance of
> lasting 10f. Any Given Saturday is weak on his
> female side according to Mr. Veitch\'s analysis,
> but when he presented the analysis he defended his
> overall 9.30 as good enough to win the Derby if
> the horse is up to the task. However, anyone who
> does not combined with the horse\'s ability & pace
> of the race into their analysis is missing the
> picture.  It\'s like a year or two ago when he
> rated a horse very high for 10f, but he was a dead
> front runner in a race jammed with speed and in
> spite of his pedigree, in that race he stood no
> chance.  The #s are only one part of a complex
> puzzle. If the game was easy, none of us would be
> on our way to work this morning.

[BitPlayer]

TGJB -

This is probably a conversation for a less hectic time, but I\'m surprised TG and other figure makers don\'t alter the beaten lengths-to-points conversion in a very slow paced race.  Admittedly the result would, of necessity, be somewhat arbitrary, but expecting a field to spread out as much as they would in a normally run race at the same distance seems obviously wrong.

[ajkreider]

Here\'s Pletcher\'s take on the bar shoes:

\"He won\'t run in them, but he has trained in them,\" Pletcher said. \"It\'s not something new. He\'s had bar shoes, or similar shoes, since July. I\'d say that in the last year, for 10 months he\'s trained in bar shoes. He might not need them any more, but I\'m not going to take a chance now.\"

Thanks to \"HoofBlog\" for the heads-up!

Kinda strange no one\'s noticed them (apparently) until now.

[TGJB]

Surprisingly enough, someone on the other board called Friedman on the Bluegrass numbers, and more surprisingly he responded, which almost certainly means he didn\'t see my comments (above, this string), because he would have known not to stick his neck out. Here\'s what he said:

\"The whole point of making a slow pace correction is to adjust what number the horse would have earned using the actual time of the race, to compensate for the unrealistic early slow fractions. Horses can only accelerate up to a point and there was certainly nothing the horses in the Bluegrass could have done in the last quarter of a mile to earn any kind of relevant figure using the final time\".

Exactly. So here\'s the question-- how did you decide that 3 of the 7 horses that ran in the Bluegrass WOULD HAVE run big new lifetime tops?

[Silver Charm]

Robes wrote,

to adjust what number the horse would have earned

No question it was a tough race to do the figures, the only thing worse is to try and handicap the Derby off them.

The way I read the above comment is the numbers that were written in the program or on the form BEFORE the race were the ones they ended up using after the race because in both cases you are purely guessing.........

[TGJB]

Posted by Eric on the Ragozin board:

\"Race 7 was adjusted for pace as was the last race on the card. We felt if we gave the horses in race 7 better numbers then we would have to give the horses in the BG better numbers also\".

To the degree that statement is decipherable, it looks like, as I originally said, that they tied together two (at least) \"S. Pace\" races, which is completely nuts-- the whole point, as I said before, is that you can\'t use the final time on either. They are completely independent events, each requiring their own adjustments.

Eric, when you get a chance, try to explain yourself, in detail. What\'s out there right now is ridiculous on the face of it. As are the numbers you gave out for the BG-- you really think it\'s right to throw out the final time AND assign 3 big tops in a 7 horse field?