Ark Derby closing fractions

[johnnym]

For someone smarter than me.

The final 3/8 & 1/8 times in the Ark Derby seem a bit of a head scratcher to me.
MM final 36.47 & 11.99
Combatant 36.30 & 12.16
Solomini 36.81 & 12.20

Those are the three fastest final splits of the 100 pt prep races all coming from the same race?
Throw in Quip 37.13 & 12.33

Know you have the fifth fastest final 3/8 and the fourth fastest 1/8 in the 100pt races.

If Quip was just .02 faster for the 3/8 split then you have the four fastest closing splits all coming from this one race?

[ajkreider]

How do the opening fractions compare? 1:13.39 is crawling.

[FrankD.]

There was a pretty good tailwind down the stretch, that helped for sure.

[dsipes]

The entire stretch is slightly sloped downward

[FrankD.]

That may be the most ignorant comment ever posted on this site....
That is going some!

Dsipes for your information EVERY dirt track in the US Is banked from the outside to the rail for drainage purposes. Some are more pronounced than others like bull rings with banked turns. Pimlico May be the most dramatic example of full size tracks with a crown that falls off in both directions.

If your claim is remotely true? It rained in Hot Springs the entire month of February. I guess there was a big puddle at the the finish line that I missed....

Truly BRILLIANT

[BitPlayer]

Frank -

The downhill hypothesis is not original with dsipes. Below is an example from Ed McNamara writing on ESPN in 2003:

SIR CHEROKEE
Trainer: Michael Tomlinson
Rider: Terry Thompson

Went from last to first to pull a 55-1 shocker in the Arkansas Derby. Where did that come from? Closed strongly into the slightly downhill stretch at Oaklawn, getting the final eighth in 11 4/5 seconds. He\'d never done anything remotely as good, so my gut feeling is it was a fluke. His odds will be huge, so if you think relative unknowns Tomlinson and Thompson can win this country\'s biggest race, empty your pockets and dream on. I don\'t see that happening.

http://www.espn.com/horse/triplecrown03/s/2003/0427/1545558.html

[Gerard]

There is a shot of a flag blowing in the wind at 6:41:50 or so of the replay. It was a backstretch tailwind which is backed up by weather data. It makes the early fractions even more pedestrian.

[FrankD.]

Bit,

Downhill Oaklawn theories go back further than that. Fairmount just sent me something from Randy Moss back to  84 and Althea. Spent a lot of years in the contracting business, doing a lot of wet basement, drainage related work.
Breaking news water runs downhill.....

[ajkreider]

I agree that it seems pretty implausible.  But, a quick look at the day\'s races suggests that for 9 of the 12 races, the last fraction was quicker than the previous fraction - and in the three races that slowed down, the last fraction was 12.40, 12.58, and 6:42 respectively.

That seems very unusual for dirt races.

[FrankD.]

AJ,

You are a stats, data, internal splits etc, guy. Like myself you don’t just post for the sake of being heard?

There are 3 comments over 34 years in this thread about Oaklawn having a “slightly down hill Stretch”. So why aren’t an overwhelming majority of races at track that basically runs 3 distances all on the same dirt course abnormally faster at the end day in and day out over the past 30 some years?

I’ll stand by my previous comment of it raining almost every day in February at this just concluded meet. If the track is sloped downhill? It’s as much pure physics as ground loss, weight and wind as to where the water is going to go?
Unless they are dragging harrows at an angle for track maintenance, I ain’t seen no crooked tractor pulls?

[KeithB]

Oaklawn is my home track and I\'ve played it since 1978. Jockeys often make what is called a sling shot move where they swing wide coming out of the last turn and make a late run down the middle of the track. Whitmore\'s late move yesterday is an example of this.The turns are steeply banked and it appears to the naked eye that these horses are running down hill.I\'ve never thought that the final 1/8 was downhill.

[ajkreider]

One swallow does not a slightly declining stretch make, on that we agree.  And anything can happen for a day.  The \"theory\" at issue was news to me.  If there\'s 30 years of data on closing fractions in dirt races at Oaklawn, as compared to say GP or Aqu, I\'m happy to give it a look.  

Not all abnormal results cry out for explanation.  But, this seemed like a big outlier. A quick look at the past few weeks suggests it occurs a Oaklawn more than at other tracks, but as you say, it would show up in the long term data if there\'s something going on.

[big18741]

I don\'t know about the wind effect for the Arkansas Derby or a downhill stretch but that second fraction was really slow if the timer/chart was correct.

Magnum Moon on the front end after a 23.34 first quarter crawls 25.26 for the second.

In the past 19 Ark Derby\'s the slowest 2nd quarter for the race was 24.88 and that was by a 43-1 shot on the front end who stopped after a half and finished dead last.The fastest was 23.22.

Average second quarter was 23.88 for all nineteen races.
If you take out the fastest and slowest it averages out to 23.86

The next slowest second quarter after that 24.88 was 24.42

If the 25.26 was correct for Magnum Moon they should be able to finish fast.
They ran it like a grass race.

[TGJB]

You have too much free time.

[big18741]

In general yes,but that took less than ten minutes to pull off equibase.