Belmont Park Ground Loss Calculation

[Silver Charm]

I don’t do figures myself and this question is not meant as a wise guy question so bear with me.

Yesterday was opening day at Belmont Park. For hypothetical purposes can we assume that the starting gate on a 6 furlong race is placed exactly at the 6 furlong pole, another words there is no run-up distance. Lets also assume at Churchill Downs they have positioned the 6 furlong gate precisely the same--no run-up distance.

If a horse breaks from the 3 hole in our 6 furlong race and runs three wide all the around at both Belmont and Churchill doesn’t the horse who ran at Belmont actually run farther.
Maybe its only ten feet, I don’t know but how does the figure account for this subtle difference in Track Configuration.

Dazed and Confused

[asfufh]

http://horse-science.com/Distances.htm
If you want to get really confused, click the answer to question #2 on this web site. Contends there is a speed impact on a wider horse but no distance penalty impact due to the tightness of a turn. I think this means that the tighter the turn the faster the wide horse has to run to maintain its position.
Also,says that the distance penalty of a wide turn is 15 feet per path per turn regardless of the turn tightness....the 15 feet is more than is commonly accepted(I think).

[derby1592]

Those of you who were not cutting math classes to go to Aqueduct when you were younger, might remember the formula 2*pi*r (replace \"pi\" with the Greek symbol that I cannot reproduce in this post), which is the formula for the circumference (distance around the perimeter) of a circle. Pi is a constant equal to about 3 so the distance around a circle is about 6 times the radius (\"r\" stands for radius of the circle). Also note that the radius is the distance from the center to the outer edge of the circle.

If you think of the turn on a track as a semi-circle then the distance you travel along the rail in the turn would equal about 3r. the distance you would travel 1 path out from the rail would be an extra 3*(the width of a path). It does not matter what \"r\" is because the delta in distance is the same regardless.

However, if you have a tight turn (smaller \"r\"), the outside horse has to travel faster to keep pace with the rail horse because it has to make up that extra distance around the turn over a shorter total distance of ground (because the total distance around the turn is less that it would be on a more sweeping turn with a bigger \"r\").

It might help to picture a merry-go-round with a radius of about 10 ft. Very near the center (say 1 ft) you are spinning slowly because you have very little distance to travel during each revolution (think of this as the rail horse). Halfway between the center and the outside edge you are spinning faster (the 2 path) in order to keep up with the person near the center because you have to travel farther during each revolution. On the outside edge you are spinning even faster (the 3 path) to keep up with the other 2 because you are traveling even farther still during each revolution. On a small merry-go-round (r=10ft) you would be spinning much faster on the outside edge than someone 5 feet inside of you (twice as fast). On a massive merry-go-around (r=50ft), the difference in speed if you were on the outside edge and someone was 5 feet inside of you would not be nearly as great (not anywhere near twice as fast). However, in both cases you would be traveling the same \"extra distance\" of about 30 feet during each revolution.

By now your head might be spinning. The bottom line is that ground loss per path is the same regardless of how tight the turns are but tight turns and banking do affect how much faster the outside horses have to travel (and how much harder they have to work) to keep up with the inside horses.

There is a lot of physics that also complicates this but I will not venture down that path.

Chris

[Silver Charm]

I heard you were smart. I\'ll take your word on it.

Thanks

[TGJB]

Basically correct, but the relative difference between the turns at CD and Belmont (and all racetrack turns) is much less than in your merry-go-round example. And if those who build racetracks know what they are doing (?), the banking will be different for different sized turns. If you ever walk around a half mile trotter track you\'ll be stunned at how extreme the banking is.

[asfufh]

Just curious and still a little fuzzy on this, does the fig making get impacted for a wide horse on a tight turn track versus a wide horse on a \"lesser tight turn\" track assuming the banking is the same on each track?
Also, does the extra effort involved in running wide turns impact the probability of a bounce next time out?

[TGJB]

No and no. I\'m going to have more on some of this stuff later.

[Anonymous User]

Now if you believe the Pi theory and its application to tighter turn and sweeping turn tracks and incorporate it into your handicapping what result would you anticipate.

lol

CtC

[derby1592]

I doubt that this was a serious question but there is actually something you can apply in a way so I will go ahead and respond.

A lot of people say that Belmont\'s sweeping turns favor \"sweeping moves\" by closers. Ignoring the possibility of dead rails (which seem to exist often at Belmont for some reason), this is probably more of illusion than anything else.

Understanding the geometry of the turn (the \"pi\" theory as you described it) explains why it is easier for an outside horse to \"make up ground\" on the turn at Belmont (as compared to smaller tracks). The outside horse does not have to increase his speed as much to make up that lost 10-15 feet per path.

Note that Belmont is probably the only major track in the US in which this would apply because it is so much larger than the rest. The difference in geometry between a track like Churchill nad Pimlico is probably insignificant unless the banking is much different.

Cheers.

Chris

[asfufh]

TGJB, Just a reminder that you were going to have more to say on this topic at some point.

[TGJB]

It wasn\'t that interesting or germaine. In my conversation with Jerry Porcelli (NYRA track superintendent), he told me the turns at Aqu and Bel are banked at 4%, less than most other tracks. He was recently on vacation in California, and said the SoCal tracks are banked much more, and the staightaways are banked as well. He also said Fair Hill is banked 10% on the turns and 6-7% on the straights, which he said is extreme.

[HP]

Jerry,

It is germaine, but you are not making the connections.

You should review (if you can find them) Friedman\'s posts about them not using the last part of the turn in ground loss calculations. He gave a very detailed explanation of how the horse straightening out for the stretch cancels out the centrifugal force of the turn. I\'m paraphrasing, but you might find something interesting in there.

More or less banking on the turns will definitely have an impact on the outside horses (more should help), but as Chris points out above, at a track like Belmont, with less banking and longer turns, the outside horses will not have to travel as fast to keep up (though they will lose the same amount of ground).

In any case, it\'s difficult to understand how Friedman/Ragozin arrived at not using the last part of the turn to do their ground loss calculations, since the ground is lost regardless. I\'m also pretty sure that this is a marked contrast to your own ground loss calculations. HP

[alm]

This has been an enlightening discussion and is confounded in my own mind with the memory of certain horses which could win at a one turn Belmont route, and always come up short or slower when racing the same distance around two turns elsewhere.

Pleasant Tap is a great example of this...Festin was another.

Did their numbers actually show such a difference from track to track at the same or similar distances?