ROTW---INDIANA DERBY

[Frost King]

With the way the track was set-up in Indiana, Saturday night, the horse that got to the lead first, came home with it, regardless of ability. The first three routes, followed that pattern, and some bombs finished first. The Indiana derby became a race of who got to the rail first, and who got the lead. Wando went ding-donging for the lead, but tired because he was wide the whole trip, besides he had been over raced. He needed a break. Excessivepleasure was the only other speed with all of the scratches that occurred. Grand Hombre closed quite nicely, but the race seemed to be too short, or he got going to late. Prado took him into mid pack, and rode like he had the best horse. He just didn\'t recognize the rail bias that night.

[beyerguy]

Hi all,

Great discussion here, not necessarily this thread.  I\'ve never really looked at the Sheets much growing up, they were out of my price range when I was younger.  I\'m trying to learn now and maybe take the plunge.  

One question I have for Mr. Brown.  Where did the 15 pounds equals 10 Beyer points come from that I saw you mention earlier in this thread?  I\'ve used homemade Beyer style pace and speed figures for a long time, and I\'ve never heard that.  In one of Mr. Beyer\'s books, he mentions adjusting for weight.  He concludes if you must adjust for weight (which I think is silly not to do), its about 5 pounds is equal to 1 length at 1 mile.  For a 1 1/8 mile race, this would equate to roughly 5 points at the most for a 15 pound swing.  Can I assume you are using the same scale you use for Thorograph Sheets weight adjustments to get that number?

Thanks in advance!

[TGJB]

5 pounds is worth one TG point. As it happens, 3 TG points is worth 10 Beyer points. I don\'t know where Andy got his estimate from, but ours is pretty damn close, pending size of the horse, which we can\'t find out.

>He concludes if you must adjust for weight (which I think is silly not to do)<

I think there are at least four theories on adjusting for weight.

1. It makes sense and is consistent with some studies of horses\' subsequent speed figures when there are shifts in weight load.

2. The impact of weight is individual so it is best to NOT put it in a formula. Simply look at the record of the individual horse and work subjectively.

3. There is little or no impact from weight shifts other than real extremes.

4. There is an impact, but betters wildly overrate it so from a value perspective you are usually better off going against the grain by betting on the horse picking up weight.

I lean to #1, #4, and to a lesser extent #2.

[P.Eckhart]

Prior apologies if you\'ve heard this before, but my memory isn\'t what it used to be. The season before last, the clocker at Raceform, who are the publishers of the official form book (UK), ran some software over their database. The upshot (which subsequently caused a bloodbath in the letters pages of their weekly newspaper) was that the data was to them so convincing that they decided to move to \'weight free\' timefigures (I say timefigures to make the distinction from performance figures). I\'m certain they did not do it lightly because anyone with half a brain could\'ve predicted the verbal abuse (and lost subscriptions) they would take.

Not now, but in the past, like a lot of people I have made my own numbers. What always troubled me (which I swept under the carpet) were amateur rider handicap races. There must be about 60 of them each season and the weights range from 9-7 up to 12-0.
Some of them turn out to be just too quick that either you have to conveniently ignore they were part of the card or you come to the conclusion that there are instances where weight just isn\'t impacting as conventional wisdom would tell us.