caught in the rain

[pete]

How do your figures account for the apparent significant difference in footing in the turf stake at AQU on Sat?  The rider is quoted thusly:

Migliore was relieved that his search for better ground on the soggy course paid off.

\"That was close,\" he said. \"I went out in search of better ground. We lost ground, but that was by design. I felt that I would find a better spot out there. I was just hoping I wouldn't run out of ground. It worked out well. The turf was very soft.\"

Will you give the very wide trip winner a VASTLY superior fig traveling over somewhat firmer ground versus the rail skimming place horse which was mired in the deeper slower footing?

My idea is that you treat all paths equally, thus diminishing the efforts of horses that get stuck on deep dead rails.  Just because you can\'t readily quantify the difference does not mean that none exists....and that hurts your figures and thus one\'s reading of the patterns.

[TGJB]

Haven\'t done the figures for the race yet, so these are general comments.

 Jockeys say stuff like that all the time. On rare occasions it might even be true. But having dealt with trainers (and jockeys second hand) for many years, I know better than to just accept a statement like that at face value. When we look for dead rails (and we do for dirt races) we look for data to back it up, not anecdotal evidence.

We have some trackmen who are very sophisticated handicappers (most notably in Chicago), and flag horses on days they believe there is a dead rail-- but then I look at them when I do the day to see how their figures are stacking up with their previous figures. We also have a program in the computer that flags horses that ran on the rail (in this case on turns only, because that is what the computer gets, for ground loss) on days that at least 2/3 of the horses that ran on the rail finish in the bottom halfs of their fields-- and again, I then go and look at the figures those horses ran relative to their histories, and decide whether to give out \"x\'s\". In fact, I just did a dead rail day yesterday at Churchill (second turn only), first one I can remember there, but I might be wrong about that.

I have never heard of a dead rail on turf before, but that doesn\'t mean it doesn\'t happen, and I\'ll take a look at this day when I do it. When I worked with Michael Dickinson he was a nut about this kind of stuff, and on occasion walked the course before Da Hoss ran (and in at least one instance had his girlfriend Joan walk the course in high heels). When I was at Ascot this Spring an amazing sight was a 30 horse field split into 15 horse groups along each rail going  down the straightaways-- the jocks feel the going is better along the fence. No idea if they are right, but certainly agree that conditions can affect one part of a track differently than others-- 1 and 2 turn split variants being an example.

There are a lot of practical problems with the idea of making different variants for different paths. First, horses seldom stay in one path all the way around, which by itself would make any relative speeds hard to quantify. Second, the number of horses running in any path is relatively small, decreasing the sample size you would be  using to make a path variant, and the track often changes speed during the day, which could in theory affect different paths differently. Third, in dealing with dead rails I have never found that anything resembling a common correction exists-- horses just quit, don\'t fire, etc.

The good news is, if there is a difference in speeds for the different paths other than the dead rails, it is relatively minor. The tightness of the data base itself indicates that-- the number of horses who pair up, run in a tight range, etc.

[jbelfior]

TGJB--

I thought that\'s why the track will move the rails out. Not sure if that was the case on Saturday, but if you remember from earlier discussions this week they moved the rails out 18 feet for the previous Saturday\'s turf stake. This is where we got into the discussion as to why the outside horses in the Knickerbocker (1 1/8m) all ran so poorly. So what happens in the Athenia---the outside posts dominate leading me to believe that since the race was 1 1/16th, they left the rails alone causing the inside runners to be stuck on softer ground.  


Joe B.

[Campbreeze]

I watched the horse all the way around because I had a \"play\" on him.  This is not exactly to your point but the horse was not as wide going around the turn as he was in the stretch.  It looked like Richie took him wider as they were entering the stretch, whether it was to find good ground or just looking for room to let him go.  It certainly took him awhile to pick the others up once he got into the stretch, so maybe he did find better ground at some point.

From previous posts, I believe TG takes into account where the horse is at 3 or 4 points around the turn and not just where they are when they enter the stretch.

Those 3 noses on the wire finishes are fun at 15-1.