Limited Choices

[TGJB]

Miff-- unless you think the rail was dead (pretty unlikely considering the success of the inside speed), you need to have a word with Mr. Archimedes, Mr. Pythagorus, and the other boys at the frat house.

[Kasept]

Two points re: KC Boy..

I also thought he ran better than it looked. Besides the wide run into the first turn, if you watch the replay note that when he finds his best stride at the top of the stretch, he is slightly impeded and jostled at the 16th pole and pushed a path left..

I would also suggest, based on his two visits to the Big Easy, Fair Grounds may simply not be a surface he cares for. That\'s not an unusual situation, as it has always been a notoriously difficult ship-in track.

[miff]

JB,

Eventually you will gain the necessary handicapping knowledge required to fully comprehend that wide is wide, not FAST.That  type of handicapping knowledge has nothing to do with making accurate speed figures, however.

[miff]

KASEPT,

KCB was slightly impeded at the 16th pole,while looking for a place to lay down.  I have the tape also.KCB never ran a step, never accelerated and was one of the FEW horses on the card that raced close to a modest pace and faded.FG appeared to favor inside speed on the whole.

Again, the absolute poster horse for a phony wide fig.

[P.Eckhart]

miff wrote:
> JB,
>
> Eventually you will gain the necessary handicapping knowledge
> required to fully comprehend that wide is wide, not FAST.That
> type of handicapping knowledge has nothing to do with making
> accurate speed figures, however.

Falbrav, a loser (the irony), is the only Euro to go into a BC turf race holding the top number. Juxtapose this fact against their turf record. Ground flattery is part of why though not the whole.

TGJB,

I didn\'t say there is \"no doubt\".

I said there\'s \"no doubt in MY MIND\".

When you\'ve been making pace figures for a couple of decades, studying the relationship between pace and final time for about 15 years, and observing the figures horses earn in and out of these scenarios, sometimes there is little doubt in \"your own mind\". That goes double when there are dozens of other people that have done the same thing and come to same conclusion.

I\'m sure that people that haven\'t used pace figures have lots of doubts. That\'s why there are still good prices to had.

Here\'s one for you.

Check the speed figure for Afleet Alex on 8/21/04.

Did you give that race a faster speed figure than Beyer?

Did you break that race out?

Here are pace/speed figures earned by Afleet Alex that day from 3 sources.

Beyer - F90.
Logic Dictates - P96 - F88
Pace Figures - P99 - F89

Essentially they all agreed on the final time speed figure (it was slow) and both sources of pace figures said he ran faster early than his final time despite running off the pace - which translates into \"he is better than the 88,89,90 final time figure we gave him\".

Here are pace/final figures given to the race itself (the frontrunners and winner)

Logic Dicatates -  P105 - F88
Pace Figures - P106 - F89

This race screams that the slow final time given to the race and all the horses that raced near the pace the day (by Beyer, Logic, and Pacefigures) was the result of an extremely fast early pace.

The race should not have been broken out for track variant/final time purposes. The horses \"did\" run a slow final time, but an astute pace handicapper would understand why. He would also not overrate any horses that raced well off that pace and were not impacted by the pace by breaking out the race.    

This is one application that can be very valuable in the figure maing process, but there are literally dozens every day.

One other potential use is the one I have been describing. The lightly race 3YO that dominates a weaker field and puts up a pace that is way too fast for the other horses. He wipes them out, runs his usual final time figure, and goes on to win by a much larger margin than final time figures would indicated coming in.



Post Edited (03-18-05 08:45)

miff,

There is at least some possibility that KCB didn\'t run as well as some people expected because the outside part of the track wasn\'t as good as the inside. I\'m not talking about ground loss here because his final time is easily adjusted for ground loss. I am talking about bias. To me, he was working so well coming into the LA Derby that I thought he would fire an improved race. The only reason I didn\'t play him was because of the outside post. IMO he made no real effort. He was close to that slow pace and got passed by a bunch of dogs with fleas without making any real move. If it wasn\'t bias, then maybe he\'s just heading in the wrong direction.

[BitPlayer]

Class -

I\'m interested in your theory regarding the effect of a dominating winner on the speed figure given a race.  I just read an account of Bellamy Road\'s race last Saturday.  Would that be an example of what you are talking about?

[miff]

CLASS,

My point is strictly related to the assigned final fig given by TG.The fig shows KCB \"ran well\" according to JB, figurewise!!

The reality is KCB was awful and the fig(4) is weak and misleading due to the TG formula of \"over-rewarding\" runners for being wide.In many instances, e.g. on turf, such wide buried figs have made me big scores but this is a case where a horse was totally empty and still looked, fig wise, to have ran only 3 lenghts off the winner.That\'s not buried, that\'s misleading from any common sense viewing of the race.

Why he ran poor was maybe the Blinks off, the FG surface, a bad scope,or an X.

Bit,

I didn\'t review the race you are talking about, but I describe what I am talking about (numerically) earlier in this thread in the 4th or 5th post.

Basically, if one horse is WAY better than the rest of the field, if he goes out and sets \"his\" normal pace, it will be much too fast for the other horses because they are inferior. So not only will he beat them by a lot because he is better, but he will beat them by even more than expected because his pace wipes them out.

That could confuse a speed figure maker because he won\'t know if the dominant horse won by so much because he got better or because all the other horses got worse.

The answer is \"neither\".

The dominant horse ran his usual race and so did the others. The others just ran slower final times than expected because they were used harder than usual early.

\"If\" the figure maker assigns a huge figure to that dominant winner to account for the fact that the weaker horses ran so slow, the figure is wrong and overstates the performance.

You will see this pace matchup happen among lightly raced 2YOs and 3YOs in maiden and limited allowance races once in awhile because the very top young prospects often work their way through the ranks of weak horses for a few starts and blow everyone out.  

To know if a figure is wrong or not though you need to have a good set of pace figures,  understand how to use them, and you have to know if the speed figure maker broke the race out incorrectly. That would account for a false huge figure.

[richiebee]

Why cant we leave this poor overhyped animal (KCB) alone-- he is still eligible for non winners of 2 lifetime-- and focus on the real Derby contenders, some of whom are rumored to be running this weekend?



Post Edited (03-18-05 09:57)

[BitPlayer]

Class -

I understand the theory, and it sounds logical to me.  On the other hand, lots of things that sound logical to me turn out not to be true.  That\'s why I thought it might be useful to focus on a specific example to start testing the theory.

In the allowance race I\'m talking about, Bellamy Road (Zito\'s latest Derby hopeful) hooked Dearest Mon early, then left him for dead to win by 15 lengths. Brisnet gave Bellamy Road a 106 (same as High Limit\'s Louisiana Derby), whereas Beyer gave him a pedestrian 96 (I think).

If you have occasion to look at the race at some point and formulate a view on it, I\'d be interested to read your opinion.

Bit,

I took a quick look at the race and day in question. I don\'t have accurate pace tables for Gulfstream (new track), but fortunately there were 6 1M races that day. So it makes for an easier analysis of the fractions relative to final time.

My analysis of the Belamy Road race indicates that the pace of the race was approximately in line with the final time of the race (give or take a couple of Beyer points in either direction for both the 4F call and 6F call).

I am assuming by the margin of victory that Belamy Road put up an above average speed figure for that class. So that would mean he was also cutting an above average pace relative to what is typical for those other horses (since the pace figure and speed figure look to be approximately equal give or take).

So yes, based on this analysis I think it is highly likely that Dearest Mon\'s final speed figure was impacted negatively by chasing Belamy Road there.

I am less certain about some of the others because they were further off the pace and I don\'t have rock hard pace figures to work with. I would guess a couple of others could have been impacted slightly also, but to a lesser extent.  

I don\'t know anyhing about the Bris figures, but if Andy gave the race a 96, I think you can safely assume that Dearest Mon ran  better than the 61 he was given that day. He got torched early. \"All else being equal\", he will run a higher Beyer next time out if he spotted properly and avoids another duel. If you are correct about the 96 from Beyer, it does not look like he broke the race out. So the figures themselves are an accurate reflection of how fast the horses ran (to the extent of Beyer\'s skill).

There would only be a problem if someone decided to break out that race and give Belamy Road a much bigger figure than he deserved to make sense out of Dearest Mon\'s figure. That seems unlikely because it was only one horse that clearly got torched by the pace.  

I hope that makes sense.



Post Edited (03-18-05 14:01)