BELMONT ONE MILE RACES

[miff]

RE: THE MET MILE

It has been reported that the run up, for one mile races at Belmont, has been reduced to five yards, from sixty yards.This would account for the slow first quarter of 23.2 in the Met.If this is true,can we assume that TGJB has taken this into account when making the figs for all one mile races at belmont.

[TGJB]

We get the run-ups for all races at major tracks, and the short answer is yes, we get it when they change. The long answer is that those who assume the relationships between distances is fixed are going to have problems, and that no matter what they do with the runups you can\'t make a fixed correction (\"60 feet = x) to your figures-- you can time the runup, but you still have to look at the horses figure histories to work out the figure for the race.

Changes in the runnup are twice as big of a problem if you are trying to analyze fractions and pace. You can\'t project pace with a reasonable degree of accuracy like you can with final time because horses rate.

I use a multi-faceted approach.

How many front runners were there and how rateable were they?

Did the frontrunners move away from the rest of the pack early or was everyone bunched up?

Were the jockies urging the frontrunners or were they wrapped up on the lead?  

If there were other races at the distance were the fractions extreme in either direction relative to the final time?

Did several horses that were on or near the lead (especially the 2nd and 3rd speeds) run lower final speed figures than expected?

I try to form an opinion based on all the evidence.

[TGJB]

Too busy to get in a long conversation about this, but a few years ago we took a look at doing pace figures, mostly because a lot of people wanted us to. The issues you raised (variable run-ups, rating) were some of the reasons we decided not to. Even aside from that, you have to wonder how meaningful pace figures are that don\'t use weight, wind, or ground loss, and the lengths behind at points of call used to be estimated by the chart caller (don\'t know if they still are). We concluded that we could probably make some that were better than anyone else\'s, but not accurate/meaningful enough to put our name on.