Eskendereya

[covelj70]

guys,

haven\'t been able to follow everything on the board for the past few days as I have the family in Disney.

Richiebee, the little man is tearing up magic kingdom worse than than Equestris if that\'s possible.

Anyway, I digress.

I saw where folks were questioning what kind of number that Esk ran in the Wood.

I went ahead and ordered up the sheet and while I won\'t ever give away Jerry\'s data for free, I think he would be ok if I went ahead and said the number is bigger than anyone here has speculated.

His last figure is in a different zip code that what everyone else has run so far.

So, the debate will be if/how hard he will bounce off the number and can he bounce and still win.

This looks EXACTLY like the Big Brown setup.  

one would have had to expect Big Brown to bounce huge to lose the DErby.  I played it that way and lost big.

one\'s going to have to make the same assumption about Esk in order to beat him on Derby Day.

Jerry has to make him the most likely winner of the race off of this number even if he isn\'t the bet, just as he accurately did with Big Brown.

[Uncle Buck]

In Big Brown\'s case, Dutro publicly stated the horse was on the juice days or weeks prior to the Derby or perhaps even during the Derby - I can\'t remember the exact time line. That has to be figured when comparing the two provided Esky will be thoroughly tested prior to the Derby. Or will he?

[miff]

x

[covelj70]

Buck,

They were all on steriods then, they were legal.  Dutrow wasn\'t cheating with steriods so from that standpoint, they were all on the same playing field

[Silver Charm]

Another \"juiced\" Wood winner.

Well of course......

[mjellish]

Ok.  So I just downloaded the sheet for ESK myself.  I didn\'t know what Jerry was going to do with the fig.  I didn\'t have the Wood that fast.  Looks like I was wrong according to TG.

Just wanted to say that.

[rhagood]

Rags had him pairing his last per TAP:

By Mike Welsch of DRF
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Todd Pletcher reports that Eskendereya is doing very well after his eye-catching performance in last Saturday\'s Grade 1 Wood Memorial and is back galloping over his winter base at the Palm Meadows training center.

\"Visually, it sure looked like the race wouldn\'t have taken anything out of him, but sometimes you never can tell how a race like that might affect a horse,\" Pletcher said Thursday. \"But so far everything seems good.\"

Pletcher said Eskendereya, who won the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth here in similar fashion six weeks earlier, paired up career-best numbers of 2 3/4 on the Ragozin Sheets. He earned a 109 Beyer Speed Figure for the Wood, 3 points better than the 106 he received in the Fountain of Youth.

Pletcher said Eskendereya would have two more workouts prior to the Derby. The first is scheduled for Sunday, April 18, at Palm Meadows and the last, weather permitting, the following Sunday at Churchill Downs. Eskendereya will depart south Florida for Kentucky on April 20.

[Silver Charm]

rhagood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rags had him pairing his last per TAP:
>
> By Mike Welsch of DRF
> HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Todd Pletcher
> reports that Eskendereya is doing very well after
> his eye-catching performance in last Saturday\'s
> Grade 1 Wood Memorial and is back galloping over
> his winter base at the Palm Meadows training
> center.
>
> \"Visually, it sure looked like the race wouldn\'t
> have taken anything out of him, but sometimes you
> never can tell how a race like that might affect a
> horse,\" Pletcher said Thursday. \"But so far
> everything seems good.\"
>
> Pletcher said Eskendereya, who won the Grade 2
> Fountain of Youth here in similar fashion six
> weeks earlier, paired up career-best numbers of 2
> 3/4 on the Ragozin Sheets. He earned a 109 Beyer
> Speed Figure for the Wood, 3 points better than
> the 106 he received in the Fountain of Youth.
>
> Pletcher said Eskendereya would have two more
> workouts prior to the Derby. The first is
> scheduled for Sunday, April 18, at Palm Meadows
> and the last, weather permitting, the following
> Sunday at Churchill Downs. Eskendereya will depart
> south Florida for Kentucky on April 20.

Then he paired or thereabouts on TG. These other posts are headfakes.

Cove??
Jellish??

[mjellish]

Well,


I dunno what to tell you.  Rem and I had ESK with a slight new top in the Wood.  TG has him with a pretty big move forward.  Beyer says 3pts better than his last.  And if this article is true, Rags more or less has him pairing.

The problem is there were only 2 races at 1 1/8th.

[miff]

Whats new??

Beyer has Escy forging

Rags has Escy paired

TG has Escy with a new neg top


Should make for great interpretation of Escy\'s upcoming derby performance depending on what you believe.


Mike

[mjellish]

Just to expand on this a little bit.  You have to use the projection method to come up with the variant on this race, and you have to have the variant to do the figure.  

The raw times for both of these races were slow.  I think part of the reason for that is that there was a headwind in the stretch that was tricky to figure.  The wind at Aqu is always tricky anyway.  This means there was a tailwind on the backstretch which was going to speed up the 1 turn races and slow down the 2 turn races.

Another thing.  There wasn\'t a ton of speed in either race.  The horses that were 1, 2, 3 in early in the Excelsior more or less finished that way.  Same thing in the Wood with the exception of the hopeless long shot Most Happy Fella.  So I think it is safe to assume that were wasn\'t much early pace in either race, which Rem\'s pace numbers would confirm.  When the early pace is slow I believe it tends to compress the final figure because horses can\'t come home in 34 seconds to make up for 113 3/4..  In the Excelsior the horses went 49.2, 113.79 and Goldsville came home in 37.48.  In the Wood they went 49.21, 113.54 but ESK came home in 36.35 (and remember, this was into a headwind) and pulled away from the rest of the field.  So we know his figure is going to be faster.  But what do we use for a variant?

In order to come up with the variant it makes sense to look at the Excelsior.  If you use Goldsville and assume he more or less paired, then when you come up with the variant and add it to the Wood ESK turns out to have made a big move forward.  Problem is if you do it that way then you also have to assume that Nite Light ran his best figure in 2 years.  Now that is certainly possible, but Rem didn\'t look at that way and neither did I.  

Instead, if you use Nite Light and project the number from there, then you have Goldsville going backwards, which is perfectly logical considering the slow early pace and not so special come home time. And if you use that as a variant it puts ESK moving forward only slightly by a little over a point.  That\'s the way Rem was looking at it, so that\'s the way I was looking at it as well.  But I don\'t make figures for a living and I\'m also not trying to second guess Jerry.  I am just passing on what Rem has told me and clarifying my position on this board.

This is why I said in an earlier post that I think Jerry is going to have to wrestle with this figure, and it is a very important figure.

[Michael D.]

Michael,

Would headwinds and tailwinds have much of an impact on the final times of 6f and 9f races at Aqu? It\'s about the same distance both ways.

[BitPlayer]

Mjellish -

Interesting points about the wind and the pace.

I don\'t think that TGJB has the Nite Light problem you are referring to.  On TG\'s figures, both Goldsville and Nite Light were coming into the Excelsior off a last-race 2.5, which was a career top for Goldsville, but 4 points off Nite Light\'s career top (which he ran two years ago as a 4yo).  I think Nite Light gets a slightly worse figure than Goldsville for the Excelsior.  The extra weight carried by Nite Light offsets his margin of defeat, but Goldsville lost more ground.

I guess this serves to emphasize the point that TGJB has made frequently:  if you use the projection method to make figures, the quality of your current figures depends on the quality of your past figures.

[BitPlayer]

Michael D. -

Because drag is a function of airspeed squared, a headwind hurts more than a tailwind helps.  For a horse running 40 mph, a 10-mph tailwind decreases his airspeed from 40 mph to 30 mph.  A 10-mph headwind increases his airspeed from 40 mph to 50 mph. The difference between 50^2 and 40^2 is greater than the difference between 40^2 and 30^2.

[Michael D.]

Excellent. Thanks bit.

From past discussions, I thought they were making that difference negligible.