Beyer adjusting Turf numbers

[TGJB]

If you do understand it on a quick read, you\'re ahead of everyone in this office. We just spent a fair amount of time arguing about what he was saying, forget whether it\'s actually right.

If you want a good laugh, take a look at the comments following the article. The first one says they should have a rabbit in every race to ensure an honest pace, and it goes downhill from there.

[miff]

\"Most classes of grass races now appear comparable in quality to their counterparts on dirt\"


.....not even close!

[Bet Twice]

That\'s what I took from it too....they feel that the top g1 horses running on turf should have the same numbers as the top g1 on dirt and on down the \"class\" ladder.

[Paolo]

Beyer: Rooted in logic and mathematics, the calculations behind the numbers have stood the test of time.

TG: I can\'t believe that after the results (and seeing the figures) of the BC anyone is still questioning the Euro figures.

Laughable indeed. Hard to tell who is who.

[TGJB]

Paolo-- Buy a clue. We have done actual studies of those Euro figures, not just for this year\'s BC, but looking at ALL the ones that have come here to run. We did it twice, a couple of years apart, and it came out right both times. You think we picked the correlation out of the air?

Miff-- exactly right. I suspect that underlying what he\'s trying to say is the misuse of pars, based on a silly assumption-- that grass and dirt horses SHOULD be the same, which market forces alone make untrue in this country. But until they clarify what they did I can\'t be sure.

One part of it seems to be they changed their beaten length correction, for both dirt and turf. They were off a little before, so that part could be correct.

[miff]

JB,

Difficult for me to understand how Beyer, Hopkins, Moss and Jerardi could have done this UNLESS it was so poorly articulated that I\'m misunderstanding what they are trying to say.

Yes, they appear to have devalued Beyer points re beaten lengths.Think they got too anal here.Pretty sure who inspired this.

Mike

[TempletonPeck]

I didn\'t take it to mean that they wanted to be able to make predictions about turf horses on dirt or vice-versa, just wanted to be better able to compare the quality of turf and dirt horses.

And isn\'t that the point of speed figures generally? To be able to compare the quality of a horse\'s performance with another\'s, possibly from different days/times/distances?

This being said, I\'m not saying he\'s done a good job.

[TempletonPeck]

Seems to me there are, at today\'s exchange rates, about $5.4mm reasons for the best turf horses in the United States to get over to France and prove you right, and none of them are trying. At the minimum, the 3yo\'s should be going right?

So why aren\'t they? Is the lasix that much of an issue?

[Paolo]

I don\'t think you pulled them out of the \'air\', any more than I think the Beyer camp pulled their corrections out of their \'air\'.

Not sure why you care so much when a customer chooses to devalue certain numbers. Oh, and the Beyer smear job sounds more than a bit Trumpish.

[TGJB]

I don\'t care what you think, I care what anyone says on my board. I get along with Andy just fine, and am friendly with both Jerardi and Randy, who make a lot of the figures. Re the Trump nonsense, I\'m not calling anyone names, other than maybe \"unclear writer\". IF they did what it looks like, it was based on a silly assumption, and if they clarify I\'ll discuss it further, though I\'m going to be away most of next week so it might have to wait.

[TGJB]

You would have to ask trainers why they don\'t go to Europe. Ward has done so with some success. And by the way, I\'m not taking a position that American turf horses are better. I\'m taking a position that the figures are accurate.

[TempletonPeck]

Sure, and to be clear, I\'m not taking the position that you\'re wrong about that. I guess it\'s as likely as anything that the answer is inertia/conventional wisdom.
(If everyone thinks that US turf horses aren\'t as good, and because of that they never go over, it\'s probably hard as a trainer to be the only guy trying to convince your owners to spend the time/money to ship over.)

[TGJB]

I also suspect that the way U.S. horses are trained (cooped up so much and trained just one way) may make them less adaptable to \"wrong way\" turns, hills, etc.