How Fast Was It?

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Immediately after the running of the Hawthorne Gold Cup, I am certain I heard the track announcer call the finishing time in 2.03 and change. I can recall thinking to myself: \"Not bad at all on that track\"

Thereafter I obtained the charts at Equibase and the final time is listed as 2.04.66, which doesn\'t appear to be especially snappy, though the track at that point was drying from a short deluge and was hard to gauge, factoring the front runners skated over it:

http://www.equibase.com/premium/eqbChartResultsDisplay.cfm?TRK=HAW&CY=USA&DATE=09/24/2005&STYLE=EQB

Heres a story from The Blood Horse quoting the 2.03.3 I swore I heard or saw:

http://news.bloodhorse.com//viewstory.asp?id=30160

Which was it? I think it may matter. Lord of the Game was bred well enough to be inclined for the distance. Halo had 2 Kentucky Derby winners and but for fate it could have been more. A.P.Indy in there too. What can you say:

http://www.pedigreequery.com/lord+of+the+game

Non Related Story upon naming a horse. Can\'t believe this guy got in trouble over this horses name:

http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=30186

[TGJB]

I was wondering whether anyone was going to catch that. They showed 2:03:3 right after the race. Equibase shows a second slower. Our guy got 2:03:3, now Ragozin will as well.

But it didn\'t matter, really. Between the rain during the card and slop, and unusual distance, you really had to go by the horses anyway, especially since they are consistent stake horses. And I defy anyone who looks at these figures to show me any other reasonable way of doing the race-- keeping in mind you would have to add or subtract from all of them.

[BitPlayer]

TGJB -

Okay, I\'ll bite.  What\'s wrong with adding a point, or maybe two?  This board is replete with posts about horses no longer being bred to get 10 furlongs (also known in some circles as marks), and yet you have the top three pairing tops earned at shorter distances.  You also have Perfect Drift running as well as he did in his last two races despite Guidry saying he didn\'t handle the track (which, admittedly, should probably be taken with a grain of salt).

Respectfully,

BitPlayer

[TGJB]

The short answer to this is that it is much more likely those horses ran to their level of ability than that all chose the same day to run exactly the same amount worse than that level. What would be the point of the projection method-- using previous figures-- if you were going to arbitrarily decide to ignore the previous figures? The perfect scenario in figure making would be to have a whole field pair up its previous figure, or their tops.

Any other way of doing the race-- which would take the WHOLE field in one way or another-- is much less likely. And I certainly would not create figures based on the theory that horses as a whole are getting worse at longer distances-- it may or may not be true overall, but it has nothing to do with a specific case, or with how you make figures-- if I did that I would be doing exactly what Miff mistakenly keeps accusing me of doing to \"make\" horses run faster.

The bigeest problem with making figures on very wet tracks is that there\'s a tendency for the margins between horses to be larger than average. That leaves you in a bind. You can either give the horses that finished up front (often just the winner) their usual figure and get stuck giving terrible figures to everyone else or you can give the winner a huge figure in order to give at least some of the rest of the field a figure that makes some sense. When it gets very bad and the margins are more than 2x average, IMO all the figures are gibberish.  

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

The thing here though is the horses that figured ran relatively close to each other and had a pretty solid history to go by. I\'m a little surprised the wide and weight factored out to a neg 1.2

If That accurately represents the actual effort Super may not be sitting on his best one for the coming race. He was dropped about a point or so on his starts after tops and this would be essentially equalling past tops.

Theres reason for optimism though. I\'m not sure he\'s been in as good of hands in the past, though I respect Milton Wolfson. The other guy I didnt\' know. On paper, he does recover well from efforts. He did look a little loose on the slop to me and he did seem to wait a bit once he headed Lord. Lastly its possible Tgraph may have gotten a little enthusiastic in calculating the Hawthorne effort. Say they did, by about a point in their enthusiasm for paying for the horse and his entire future daily rate in one race and he may have a real nice one coming up. He\'d have to carry the weight of course, but he\'s a gamer and the real McCoy.



classhandicapper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The bigeest problem with making figures on very
> wet tracks is that there\'s a tendency for the
> margins between horses to be larger than average.
> That leaves you in a bind. You can either give the
> horses that finished up front (often just the
> winner) their usual figure and get stuck giving
> terrible figures to everyone else or you can give
> the winner a huge figure in order to give at least
> some of the rest of the field a figure that makes
> some sense. When it gets very bad and the margins
> are more than 2x average, IMO all the figures are
> gibberish.

[BitPlayer]

TGJB -

Point well taken about arbitrarily adding some number to adjust for the fact that it was 10 furlongs.

The troubling part about your response is your statement that the \"perfect scenario in figure making would be to have a whole field pair up its previous figure, or their tops.\"  Going back to a point I made early in my days of posting here, my greatest doubt about your methodology is the focus on tops, rather than on some other measure of ability (some kind of median, for example).  When I made the point earlier, I was discussing handicapping with your figures, but I now see that the issue also affects your figuremaking.  To me, it\'s more likely that the entire field had an average day than that they all repeated their lifetime best.

Respectfully,

BitPlayer

[jimbo66]

Jerry,

I won\'t suggest any number that could or should be added or subtracted to the figures, because frankly, I don\'t know.

But a couple of questions.

1.  Would you agree that results are morely likely to be skewed on very sloppy tracks?  I remember you had some maiden that had run 8 losing races, running a negative 5 early this year at Keenland on a sloppy track.  It \"seems\" that sloppy tracks create disparate results, a lot of the time.

2.  If point #1 is \"true\", don\'t you find it very coincidental that the top three finishers all paired their tops and the 4th place finisher ran the exact same race as he has the previous 3 races this year?  

I know I am using the word \"seem\" again, but it seems unlikely to me that the top 4 finishers all ran their \"exact\" expected race, going 1 1/4 miles over a sloppy track.  Your horse seemed neutral at best over slop.  The second place finisher probably moves up over slop.  The third place finisher was questionable at 1 1/4 and it did not appear that Perfect Drift ran his race on Saturday.  

[TGJB]

Bit-- That \"median\"idea is what I was referring to in a post a ways back when I was talking about a range that horses run in-- if you have too many who run new tops, or too many who run \"X\"s, something is probably wrong. But you CAN\'T just have them all in a medium range-- their relative figures are fixed by lengths etc. Some run better on the day relative to their tops than others do.

But it\'s a whole different thing to give horses NEW tops than to PAIR tops, or recent good efforts. Sure, you could make a case on an individual basis that those first 6 horses would still look okay if you add a point or so. But it really is strong that all 6 ran back almost exactly to their most recent best, and it would be some coincidence if all 6 ran about a point (or some other number) off it on the same day. Why all choose the same day to be at 98.13 percent?

And by the way, in this case these are stake horses, running for 750k. With the exception of the Derby (and we could spend a lot of time on discussing that), stake horses run an awful high percentage of tops. Take a look at the stakes races this weekend, going in-- see how often those horses run at least their previous tops.

[kev]

You said it Perfect Drift didn\'t run one of his better efforts so a 0.2 for him is good to go. You have to look at Super F. other races where he earned those neg. numbers. Last year at Crc, this year at Crc, and Del. Looks like to me he should have ran the -1.2 or neg something. Desert Boom didn\'t fire his best either. I don\'t think 10F has to do anything with this. Question is now, what number will some of these run next. SF seems to have some problems running back2back big efforts and D.Boom looks like the one to run his top next out more than some of these others. Wonder where he is going next??

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- There are horses who like off tracks, and they will run better on them than they will on other tracks. There are horses who don\'t run as well, and will run worse. And there are horses who are looking for an excuse to run a bad one, and an off track will often suffice. This all leads to the phenomenon that CH was talking about, where the field gets strung out all over the world. It also used to happen on the old TP track, and happens at Kee-- horses love it or hate it. (They can burn Kee down as far as I\'m concerned, by the way. Just leave the grass course).

That horse you mention ran that race at Kee. In making that figure I looked at that race (all the horses), and the surrounding races. There have always been horses that came out of nowhere for one big one, it\'s just more glaring now because a \"big one\" is so big. But there have been lots, and they seldom get back to the figure.

As for number two-- no. If the horses did not fall into their usual ranges (let alone pair up), there would be much more of a case to be made the numbers were wrong. That so many did is strong evidence the numbers are right-- that\'s what we have to go on when we make these things. This was not a case where you had to choose between giving one horse a big one and several what they usually run, or one what he usually runs and several \"X\"s. (This is what CTC\'s \"not stringing out\" means in figure terms).

And by the way, this was not a case where I broke the race out, not that it matters, because it couldn\'t have come out any tighter. Depending on which time you use, I either added or subtracted a little over a point compared to the other off-track route, which is nothing on any day, let alone with those kind of conditions.

TGJB,

Since you have people at the track, on those very sloppy days when the horses get strung out (which was not the case in the race in question), do you have someone check how much mud some of the well beaten horses are coming back with?

 

[HP]

\"When it gets very bad and the margins are more than 2x average, IMO all the figures are gibberish.\"

As Ronald Reagan said, \"there you go again.\"

All the figures are gibberish?  Can you read?  When you see a figure and it says 15-sy, that\'s gibberish to you?  When you look at a horse\'s sheet, and you see he runs 6\'s, and then there\'s a 15-sy on there, you can\'t tell that maybe the horse didn\'t like a wet track?  When the horse runs 8\'s and then you see 4-sy, you can\'t tell that the horse LIKED the wet track?  You can\'t distinguish between the \'sy\' numbers and the numbers that aren\'t indicated with an \'sy?\'  

If you have an older horse that\'s run enough, you can see VERY CLEARLY on TG how they are likely to run in various conditions, including slop.  If they haven\'t run a lot, there are sire stats and other things you can look at.  It\'s hardly gibberish.  And I guess you don\'t see anything wrong with weighing in on someone else\'s work and calling it \"gibberish.\"  You\'re aware that that is INCREDIBLY insulting, right?  I never thought I\'d make this comparison, but Jerry is a regular Mahatma Ghandi putting up with you.

I thought you would take a break after the \"asshandicapper\" posts but you are obviously impervious to criticism.  Originally I thought that stuff was out of line, but after reading your posts, and how they are just so ROUTINELY oblivious and insulting, I guess they have their place.

HP

HP,

If I thought you had the capacity to understand the problem I was describing without insulting me 20 times on the assumption I don\'t know what I am talking about, I would get into further and you\'d learn something new.  But I don\'t think you can so you\'ll keep misinterpreting data from time to time.

[HP]

I understand it.  The resulting numbers aren\'t \"gibberish.\"  I think I have enough to digest in what you\'ve posted already.