Underlying Data

[TGJB]

CH-- do you seriously think I\'m going to break out a race with a bunch of young horses trying grass for the first time, or something like that? Or even make a figure for something like Chilukki\'s first race, which had a field of first time starters running over a sealed track (first race of the day), that was unsealed after that race? (Note-- Ragozin did). Please. If I break a race out, it is with very good reason.

\"The tendency is for track speed for cluster within a pretty narrow range except where there is an event that could have changed it drastically (maintenance, weather, etc.)\".

I could have a field day with \"tendency\", \"narrow range\", or how you as someone without a team of field agents know when there are track maintenance or weather events (our guys tell us when it starts raining, before the track condition is switched). Or I could even ask you what in the world is the basis for you making that statement, since we are talking professional level figure making here.

Instead, I\'ll tell you this. I\'m working on a Delaware day (11/9) as we speak, where the track is fast all day, and I have no information of anything going on. The sprints go from minus 4 to plus 4, the routes from minus 4 to plus 2. Both do it gradually, and there ain\'t no doubt about it.

\"99% of everything I have ever annoyed you about is really related to this issue...\"

Wrong. It is not a question of content. You haven\'t done it today, so I\'m not going to go after you now. But it\'s not about your opinions, and I\'ve made that clear.

[johndrj]

and the last race required a breakout....

john

TGJB,

\"CH-- do you seriously think I\'m going to break out a race with a bunch of young horses trying grass for the first time, or something like that? \"

I know you aren\'t going to do anything crazy. But there are different degrees of complication. I\'m sure some things fall into a grey area for you too.  Those are the ones I am interested in.

\"I could have a field day with \"tendency\", \"narrow range\", or how you as someone without a team of field agents know when there are track maintenance or weather events (our guys tell us when it starts raining, before the track condition is switched).\"

I sure as hell don\'t know. Most figure makers don\'t know. They start off by making a logical track variant for each race. Based on the results, they decide whether to average them, split sprints and routes, break out individual races, slide them etc... I know you have more information to work with, so the quality has to go up.  

Regardless, some days are tighter than others. On those relatively tight days - if one race sticks out like a sore thumb, its a grey area race, and we don\'t have a logical reason for it sticking out, I don\'t see the downside of noting it.

A notation like that would give people like me a chance to review the race more carefully before betting the house. You know my thinking by now. Right or wrong I am much more sensitive to race development and its impact on final time. I know other players that are similar in their thinking.

I am a customer of one other service that gives me that info for NY racing. It\'s an immense help, because in my mind, I can explain some of those thngs.

 

[HP]

\"I am a customer of one other service that gives me that info for NY racing.\"

So Class, why don\'t you just pester that service to do more circuits instead of badgering Jerry?  

HP

[BitPlayer]

TGJB -

Is that a common pattern, in the absence of weather or maintenance, for a \"fast\" track to get quicker as the day goes on?

When you say nothing went on, does that include harrowing?

An unrelated question: You say in Changing Track Speeds that flaking resembles harrowing.  Are your trackmen able to tell them apart?

BitPlayer

[TGJB]

Bit-- \"Fast\" tracks sometimes get faster and sometimes slower without anything obvious going on, you see all combinations over time.

What I get from the trackmen varies. Litfin is very good in NY, but the ones who work full time for Equibase and only part time for us are spotty. I get watering info probably 75% of the time at the 10 or so major tracks I do myself, other maintenance info is catch as catch can-- which is another reason I am very careful about making assumptions. Since you can\'t directly correlate the variables-- or even know if you know all of them-- the right way to go is to gather the information you can, recognize that what you have is imperfect, and try to put the puzzle together, relying most heavily on the data comparing how fast the horses run compared to how they have run in the past.

That Delaware day is one where I did not have specific information as to track maintenance. And I don\'t know whether my trackmen can tell the difference between harrowing and flaking-- Litfin did give us that call once, but other than that who knows.

[Easy Goer]

\"Assuming you actually could get moisture content readings for every single race, all around the track, AND all parts of the track were the same (no chance, according to the science),\"...

The composition that I gather from this? 100% manure, and plenty deep.
Sounds like you are saying that the speed of the track not only changes circumferentially around the track, but also radially across running lanes (paths from the rail). Circumferential changes explain why you feel justified in breaking out sprints from routes. Radial changes would seem to justify breaking out the horses on the rail from those in the 2 path, etc. Why, then, are you so dogmatic in your methodology that you refuse to tweak performances within a race when the horses run over different parts of the track?

[TGJB]

Uneasy Goer-- My guess would be that this is the tenth time or so that I\'ve answered this. The problems with doing that include

a) that horses change lanes during the running

b) even if they stayed inlanes, the sample size would be too small to work with, especially given that the track may be changing during the day, AND not the same all the way around, assuming you are right.

The lanes that are run in most often are the inside ones. And we do have the computer flag potential dead rail days, which I then look at myself.

Just so we\'re clear-- I did NOT say what you said I did. From working with the data I know that there is no constant relationship between one and two turn races, and that it is a bad idea to make assumptions. I made no comment about lanes at all.