Meaningless (But Curious) Numbers

[Tavasco]

After winning $25.00 in the TwinSpires gimmick. I see nary a comment on the board. Not even an add on to FrankD\'s entertaining story. I felt like a fly on his shoulder watching tipsters pass through his day like ghosts. I digress I wanted to compare the The Donn and The San Antonio which could be controversial Hard Helmet On, while I prove (again) I know less about horse racing than college football.

Tomorrow, if lucky, Miff will hopefully post the preliminary Beyer\'s and we can speculate on TG #\'s. But hmm, those were some pretty fast horses that were far back from Shared Belief. Dubai, here I come.

The track record @ 1+1/8 @ GP 1:46.4 (Lea 2014) @ SA 1:45.4 (Star Spangled 1979). The difference right at 1:00 second. Constitution ran 1.49.51. Shared Belief ran 1:48.45. The difference again about a second. I know it is not a valid measure of variance but it caught my eye so I used it.

I also find races shapes interesting along with the theory of pace and final times being inversely proportional. The corresponding race fractions follow:
Donn :23.31, :47.29, 1:11.18, 1:36.61, 1:49.51
SA.... :23.65, :47.87, 1:12.49, 1:36.45, 1:48.45
I think it is noteworthy that the SA race went much slower thru six furlongs than the FL race. Yet finished a second faster. So it seems Constitution ran his competitors off their feet with only Lea making up any ground and while the final time may have suffered he impressed.

Both venues were overcast and I\'ll leave the track variants to folks who know more than me. Although, the DRF assigns a daily variant of 20 to the Donn (considerably higher than many of the other GP races) and DRF assigns a variant of 12 to the San Antonio, in line with the other SA races. So are they comparable based on final time? But, time is not so meaningful in TG land, relative performance is key.

Shared Belief routinely runs zeros. So his competitors must have all regressed some. Or... Hoppertunity and Bronzo ran their races (2\'s), CC ran 0 or better and Shared Belief finally earned a good negative number, to feed next race bounce theorists. I find it interesting that You Know I Know (@ 122/1) got edged out of the super perfecta while running back to about his 4 y.o. top or just running a 4.  So let\'s conclude SB get either a good zero or a minus 2 or better.

Then Florida, this one may have an issue of a a race variant anomaly (DRF variant) and that is beyond my simple comparison. Here we have Lea routinely running zeros (the match of Shared Belief) and Constitution\'s race being a 1. Those two are followed some 4+ lengths by a couple that either both bounced some off their recent tops or ran near those tops.  Consequently, same speculation as Ca. If Elnaawi & Prayer For Relief ran near their tops then the top two ran silly negative #\'s. (For the Bounce projectors).  However it is easy to imagine that both bounced some off their recent big efforts and the top two ran in the vicinity of zero again. I will now check the analysis to see if any bounces were forecast..... No! Prontico obviously did and no telling with East Hall as he got a ride I did not care for and I watched him all the way because he was my pick along with the analysis. Bottled up on the rail all around.

In conclusion, either a) Shared Belief is slower than most top eastern horses because he is a ZERO or b) Shared Belief and other top West Coast Horses are faster than most all of the top eastern horses because they routinely beat them to the finish line. Now I can only guess at how very hard it is to correlate FL races to SoCal Races to N.Y. races to Mid America Races. But Geeze it seems to me (and it is late and I am a little groggy) that #\'s traveling intra circuit should be re-examined. Clearly #\'s in a circuit where there is lot\'s of horse interaction hold up. But the lack of interaction between circuits and the associated smaller samples give a doubtful appearance to me.

The next big hype Constitution vs Shared Belief or California Chrome.

On a chalky day @ SA it was hard to find a Solid Wager and I didn\'t but he was in the 6th, a 68/1 winner, at Santa Anita? Bling! If Midnight Hawk can win anything is possible.

GP on Saturday was a real treat. The Fox Sports coverage wasn\'t. The Withers was great (new shooters?)

Dortmund @ 9/1 in the pool2, you can\'t be serious!

[ajkreider]

BSFs

Constitution - 113
Shared Belief - 106
Dortmund - 103

Constitution loves GP, so take that number with a grain of salt.  As an aside, I can\'t remember a crop that had so many fast runners remain in training as 4 yr olds.  It\'s 10 deep!  Should be the most interesting handicap division in a long time.

Will be interested to see Firing Line\'s number.  Think there\'s a chance he went negative, being so wide in the first turn.  That would make at least 5 (I think), 3 yr olds who have already have a negative number on their sheet - which is nuts.

[miff]

At the SPA,on Travers Day, NYRA should put up a $5 million purse and by invitation only invite:

Shared Belief

Cali Chrome

Bayern

Liam Map

Tonalist

Constitution

Wicked Strong

Lea

126 pounds @ 1 1/4 miles....would draw biggest crowd and record handle.