Horses Getting Faster

[TGJB]

I\'m going to have to do this faster than I would like, because there is a lot going on, and I have to leave early, but my guess is there will be plenty of follow up discussion anyway.

A generation of humans is usually thought to be 25 years, and human athletes have made large strides over the last 25 years-- check out the roster of an NFL team from the 70\'s, and you will see that players now are much bigger, stronger, and faster. There are a lot of reasons for this-- nutrition, sportsmedicine, better training methods, etc. If anyone knows of studies measuring athletic improvement over the last 25 years I would love to know about it.

A generation of horses is probably about 6 or 7 years, and on top of the above mentioned factors you can throw in selective breeding, which improves things with each  generation. Also, humans have some say in what drugs are administered to them, horses don\'t. It would be shocking if horses were NOT getting better.

So, how is this reflected in the times of races?

1- Take a look at the times for the Derbies since 1995, and compare them to those before then. They have been much faster.

2- It is tougher to break track records when 1000 races have been run at the distance than when only 100 have-- more times to beat. Still, there have been quite a few track records in recent years-- Kelly Kip had a few himself, Najran the other day, etc.

3- I had conversations with Jerry Porcelli, track superintendent of NYRA, and Joe King, his predecessor. Turns out that tracks used to be mostly clay, which provided fast times when dry, much slower when wet and sticky (which goes to the whole question of races collapsing on off tracks). Over the years tracks have added a higher percentage of sand to help dry things out quicker. Porcelli used the beach analogy-- when dry, sand is slower than clay, but gets faster with moisture, like running on the wet sand near the water. This also goes to a lot of the issues that have come up here before related to tracks changing speed during a card, and horses handling wet tracks (Ragozin almost always has those races collapsing, probably because they used to). But the upshot is, \"fast\" tracks are slower than they used to be.

4- Our figures have gotten faster over the years because horses have gotten faster. Ragozin\'s did not because they locked the figures to fixed par values-- the premise was that 10k claimers etc. were the same year after year, for which there is no logic-- if horses as a group are getting faster you won\'t know it. I had a dialogue about this with Friedman on their site a few years ago under another name, and since then Ragozin\'s figures have gotten faster, which may or may not be a coincidence. In any event, as a result our figures have \"gotten faster\" while theirs have not, at least not as much. So we started out a couple of points slower, and now are a couple of points faster.

Mr. Porcelli also told me some things about banking of turns, but they don\'t apply to the question at hand.

[Moonchild]

I disagree with almost everything that you wrote above, but don\'t get mad at me yet. I do think you guys got the Derby ground much closer than your opponents. Actually, I had EM losing even more ground than you did, but I think you have head-on shots. My first question: How is it that Ragozin uses the projection method and locks to 10K claimers at the same time? And before I forget, please say hello to CB for me.

My other questions will follow--I hope.

[Anonymous User]

Jerry, I can believe that horses are getting somewhat faster than they were in years past,\"somewhat faster\". I believe the nutrition and body of training knowledge has grown somewhat and spread. But I do know they\'ve been \"jazzing\" Churchill on derby day for years. Certainly since Monarchos Derby. This year there were a rash of breakdowns around Derby time and the horsemen there are planning a meeting with the track super. I understand projection and par hooking. On days when you\'re creating numbers for a \"jazzed\" surface do you factor both in assigning your figure?

I have another theory. It\'s that the body of par times is not as reliable as it was in years past and I\'ll get into that at another time.

lol

CtC

[ilovethisgame]

horses are not getting faster, the reason humans get faster and better is they can learn, horses can\'t. They are more heavily medicated now, and technology has sped up surfaces, according to your numbers domestic dispute would have beat citation, who o by the way ran faster than this years winner, PLEASE. and as far as breeing goes,fifty years ago they bred the best to the best, now the breed any allownce horse to any mare,the last 3 derby winners have been sired by mediocre runners,who have not replicated the success in very few other runners Marias mon,OUR emblem, Distorted humor. face it you idiots would have given Secretariat a pair of 6,s going into the derby

[TGJB]

CB is presumably Chris, but from whom is the hello?

You should ask Friedman about mixing the par levels and projection method. He\'s the one who said it, on their website, so it\'s a fair question. I could probably hazard a guess, but it\'s not my place.

His original statement, about 3-4 years ago, came in the context of comparing horses from different generations, and I went back and forth with him under an alias pointing out the logical problems. By the end of it he got it, and since then their figures have gotten faster (see David Patent\'s post on the other board), which may or may not be a coincidence.

[TGJB]

CTC--

This is a pretty complicated question to begin with, but you have also added supposition into the equation-- that tracks are \"jazzed\", CD was on those days, and I \"know\" it when it happens.

We don\'t use par levels for variants (and by the way, you are right, they definitely would not be as reliable as they used to be for anyone who did use them, given the Cole Normans of the world). We used them only in the very beginning, to establish a rough data base to work with. Once you have a figure history of the horses running on a card to work with, there is no possible advantage to applying an average for the breed to each race, as opposed to looking at the individual horses who ran in it.

So when we do Derby day, or any day, we do just that-- we look at the histories of the horses who run that day, and come to a determination by them of how fast the track was that day-- the projection method. I don\'t necessarily have knowledge of what they did to the track on a given day, and even if I did, it wouldn\'t help me quantify the track speed-- if they \"jazzed\" it,is that worth 2 points? 4?

Which is not to say they have not \"jazzed\" the track-- it would be a pain in the butt, but I could go dig up the track speeds of all the Derbies, at least back to 92, when we \"computerized\" (before that everything was stored on paper). It is certainly possible they both speeded up the track AND horses are running faster independent of that.

It is also possible that as horses have gotten faster, the increased stress of running that fast has made them less sound. On top of which, as more racehorses are bought at auction (as opposed to home-bred), they become less sound-- sellers raise hot-house flowers to look good in the sales ring, and don\'t want to expose them to the rough and tumble yearlings used to get in the field.

As for the tracks themselves, what few conversations I have had with track superintendents about this subject lead my to believe that in general efforts have been made to make tracks safer, and this has resulted in slower times, if anything.

[Silver Charm]

I really can’t add too much to this topic because I’m not a speed figure calculation guy but I’m going to wade in. There are almost two questions here that are one in the same. Are the horses getting faster or are the “figures alone” just getting faster.

As far as the figures getting faster when Spend a Buck won the Derby in 1985 he was given a 3 1/4 . There really wasn’t any kind of a significant breakthrough until Monarchos in 2001, and we have seen numbers very close to his winning number in each of the last two years, though Empire Maker didn’t actually win the race but had the lowest number.  Does anyone actually believe for fifteen years there were no improvements in feed and medicine to make the breed just a little faster. What was the World Record in the Mens 100 Meter sprint in 1985 and how many times has it been improved upon since then. How about Bob Beamons long jump, it stood for along time but now several people have jumped longer.  

Regarding the track speed on Derby Day I do know this, when Spend a Buck won in 1985 the track was “very fast” but before you say ah-ha ‘fast track low number’—see. This Derby day or any Derby day you have seen in the last couple of years doesn’t even come close to the most \"souped up\" Derby Day ever and that was when Alysheba won in 1987. If you didn’t have the lead a ¼ of a mile out of the gate you simply couldn’t win. Every single race on the card for the entire day went like this. Chris McCarron, Alysheba’s rider, admitted later he became very worried because he and Van Berg had already set their strategy in the morning and it was to sit well off the pace. Wayne Lukas actually had his three horse entry of Capote, War and On the Line dueling head-to-head at the 3/8ths pole thinking the track would carry home from there. When McCarron saw Van Berg in the paddock before the race he was told “stick to the plan”. The rest as they say is history.  

I do think there is one thing that is very palpable in all this and that is—The Three Year Olds are Getting Faster Sooner.

However one final note, As Supah Blitz pointed out any Speed Figure System that says the mighty Seattle Slew could barely outrun a turtle much less some of the turds in this years Derby has really got some flaws in it.



Post Edited (05-12-03 18:17)

[ilovethisgame]

good job siver charm, one reason 2 yos could be getting faster earlier could be because the training has gotten more advanced, guys like baffert and frankel regularly bring horses of year layoffs and run holes in the wind.