Jimbo--
1-- You characterized my comments correctly, but there are some interrelated issues here. First, I do believe that pace (and certainly extremely slow ones) can affect final time, and if you don\'t adjust for it, affect the figures you assign. For me that issue comes up pretty often in turf races, but not nearly so often as it does for Time-Form in making figures for Europe, where most of the races have false paces followed by a sprint home. TF publishes two figures for the race, and the relevent one is NOT based purley on raw time, but on what they call \"collateral form\"-- that\'s the one you see published in the DRF. It\'s a performance figure, if you will, not a pure \"speed figure\".
I do NOT believe that the fractions run by one horse will affect the performance (final time) of another horse. I do believe that under extreme circumstances fast fractions can cause a horse not to run his race (spit it out), I do believe that very occasionally the pace can be so slow as to eliminate certain far back horses from contention simply because they are in a situation where their fastest sprint quarter can\'t catch them up (that one is pretty complicated, a discussion all it\'s own).
I believe that in the vast majority of cases, the proper use of projected pace is to try to figure out expected ground loss. If there is very little speed, closers will be faced with having to go around a bunched up field, or risk getting blocked-- and since most trainers and jockeys undervalue ground loss, it probably means ground loss. If there is a lot of speed, the field will usually string out, making things a lot easier. If you don\'t use figures that factor in ground loss, you might not be able to properly evaluate the two performances, since the RESULT of the same performance will be better in one case than the other.
I do look at lone speed, and agree with CH in that I favor speed (all other things being equal), because of ground loss and trip considerations. As many have said before me, there is a universal bias towards speed at American racetracks-- and it\'s because we have more turns than, say, major British tracks.
On this note, I suggest all go back and calmly and dispassionately look at the sheets for those 3 FG races that I posted at the top of the \"Nonsense\" string. OPM talked about an inside speed bias-- well, if you look at those figures closely, you will see that speed and paths affected results, but NOT the figures they ran. You had 3 top quality races, with 3 extremely different pace scenarios (by memory 11.80. 10.15, 13 and change), and the figures held up unbelievably well relative to each other, regardless of running style and path. And as far as pace goes, this is what Time-Form, which has been making figures since WWII, has found as well.
2-- I commented on the analysis to some degree in the \"AnalyzeThis\" post below. I don\'t know what I would have done with the Rebel if I was doing the analysis-- it would have been tough to find a play at the expected odds (your getting 5/2 head-to-head was a different story), but if you pass a race like that you can get customers awful mad. I think Nick\'s thinking was he was the most likely winner (I agree, you might too), you can use him in a double if you want, he\'s not worth a bet on his own.
I also agree that the horse was a major bounce candidate. Chris has made this point here before-- you can have a horse who is the most likely winner of a race, but still has a very high percentage chance to run a stinker and run out.
All of this and more is why we urge everybody to learn how to use the data for themselves. We do the analysis because there is a market for it, but this race and the FG bomb are examples of how those who use our data can sometimes do better than those who follow the analysis.
Good, open ended questions. I like these a whole lot better than deconstructing someone else\'s statements.
