Slower? Faster? Baltimore Sun style

[magicnight]

Pretty good story here about raw time and triple crown horses. JB, Beyer, Moss all quoted.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bs-sp-preakness-speed-20130511,0,2337623,full.story

[Rich Curtis]

Again:

Beyer made speed figures in the 1970s using the projection method. Then he discovered that his figures were shrinking at an alarming rate due to faulty projections. He \"solved\" the problem by linking all of his figures to par. Later, he decided to go public. Therefore, he wanted his figures to have historical value. So he de-linked them from par, supposedly, thus allowing groups of horses to show improved figures across generations. Two questions:

1: How did he solve the shrinking-figures problem when he de-linked?

2: How did he put the genie back in the bottle in terms of de-linking all the horses he had previously linked?

I\'ve never heard a decent answer to either of these questions, and I won\'t this time either.

[catcapper]

Hence the Copernican Revolution....

Poor Ptolemy, he kept jacking his system up to keep up. It grew unyieldingly (is that a word?) complex. Finally, Copernicus said, \"Let the earth go around the Sun\".  

Which we now believe to be true. And everything got much simpler and more usable but no one still lived happily ever after.

Please, hate me. I confess, betting turf has made me a snobby handicapper.

I shall banish myself...at least until a time closer to the Preakness...

[kekomi]

i think the word you were looking for was \"unwieldy\"

[kekomi]

interesting article thanks for the link

question for TGJB: since dirt tracks have changed a great deal in the last 40 years, could not turf horses be used as the control group? it would seem that less changes have been made to the turf over the last 40 years, than to the dirt. so if the turf horses are faster, it would support the conclusion that horses have gotten faster; if they are slower, it would support the conclusion that they have gotten slower; but if turf horses are neither faster, nor slower, it would support the conclusion that the difference in times is an aberration, and that horses are the same as they were 40 years ago.

the author didn\'t notice it, but the comparison between spitz and phelps, actually bolsters the idea that current horse race times, might not be a function of talent at all:

some of the increasing speed in swimming is the result of improved training and finessing of technique (though no current swimmer has better technique than spitz did); but much of the non-pharmaceutically achieved increases these days is due to the fact that to be competitive at the elite level, you have to be 6\'4 or taller.

taller swimmers have the same advantage moving through the water as longer keeled boats. the longer the keel, the faster the boat. mark spitz at 6\' would be between 4-6 inches shorter than most of his competitors, if he were racing today.

compare his world record time in the freestyle in 1972 of 51.22 seconds, to the current world record holder, alain bernard\'s time of 47.50--bernard is 6\'5.\"  sptiz\'s time, adjusted for height, is still rated as olympic class; but a swimmer of bernard\'s height, swimming the same time as spitz, is only rated as all american level (of course, if spitz were swimming today, he wouldn\'t be fast enough to be olympic level, but not because swimmers like bernard are better (or \"faster\") than he was; but because they are taller, so they move through the water more efficiently--their increased speed is a function of physics, not a function of talent)(which mirrors the question about horse performances in the article--is it talent, or physics?). (the difference between spitz\'s time still only being olympic level, and not world record level, when adjusted for height, is probably a function of doping, and not talent either).

you can play with height to time in swimming here: http://www.swimmingpotential.com/custom.html

here\'s an article taking about how body size impacts performance in a variety of sports: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/health/nutrition/27Best.html?_r=0

the decreasing heights of distance runners over the same period of time has had the same effect in running, as increasing height has had on swimmers. just as the ever decreasing height of female gymnasts allowed for more and more dare-devil feats, at least until the advent of wide spread steroid and testosterone use from the mid 1990s on, made them too heavy to allow them to maintain the technique required to achieve what gymnasts in the 1980s did (probably no one here is interested in watching a youtube video of gymnasts mounting the balance beam, but this youtube montage of the greatest female gymnasts of all time (from about 1978-1992) is incredible http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZdyIsk2k4

this is esp. true in comparison to the 2012 olympics--it\'s nice to know that sometimes doping doesn\'t result in improved outcomes...it\'s rare though...(what\'s crazy though is that they changed the scoring, so that a non-doped gymnast of the caliber of the girls in the video, would receive no pints for ther virtuosity--the cynic in me, can\'t help think this is just another example of a sport federation maintaining and promoting and coddling its doping culture, to the detriment of clean athetes...)

all that being said--the constant breaking of world records in almost every sport owes a lot to doping. swimming is just as dirty as cycling...it\'s just better at keeping its underbelly hidden.

if horses are faster today, but have slower times due to track surface, are they only able to maintain the times they do because of doping--i.e. not matching the best times of the 70\'s but still within the margin of the winning times of the 70s? if they weren\'t doped what would the times these days look like?

if they are slower today, what use is doping, other than to force unsound horses into as many races as possible before they break down?

i still believe that the greatest benefit of doping in horses, just as it is in humans, is in allowing naturally crap horses to be competitive with naturally elite horses (which would have profound effects on the quality of the horses being bred and foaled). without doping, maybe the auxiliary gate in the ky derby would never be needed...

sorry for such a long post

[TGJB]

None of these issues are simple. Some of the stuff in the article is covered in depth in \"Are Racehorses Getting faster\" and Changing Track Speeds\" in the Archives here.

If one is looking at just raw times one could look at grass races, EXCEPT-- a) in general track superintendents (at least in this country) are more conscious of horses breaking down, and don\'t let courses get really hard any more, and b) in this country breeding is entirely geared towards dirt horses. They have undoubtedly improvd more than grass horses-- here.

The way we tell how fast horses are is by the figures they run (which Miff and some others don\'t accept as accurate between generations). But we do believe they are, and I might be able to run the average of the top ten grass figures of 1994 vs. now, and same with dirt.

[moosepalm]

catcapper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
 It grew unyieldingly (is that a word?)


It should be, as it aptly modifies the obstructionist efforts of most of the women I dated in my formative years.

[P-Dub]

moosepalm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> catcapper Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>  It grew unyieldingly (is that a word?)
>
>
> It should be, as it aptly modifies the
> obstructionist efforts of most of the women I
> dated in my formative years.

I hope that isn\'t the reason your name is moosepalm.

[moosepalm]

P-Dub Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> moosepalm Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > catcapper Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> >  It grew unyieldingly (is that a word?)
> >
> >
> > It should be, as it aptly modifies the
> > obstructionist efforts of most of the women I
> > dated in my formative years.
>
> I hope that isn\'t the reason your name is
> moosepalm.


For moose, that would be unwieldy.