Just to expand on this a little bit. You have to use the projection method to come up with the variant on this race, and you have to have the variant to do the figure.
The raw times for both of these races were slow. I think part of the reason for that is that there was a headwind in the stretch that was tricky to figure. The wind at Aqu is always tricky anyway. This means there was a tailwind on the backstretch which was going to speed up the 1 turn races and slow down the 2 turn races.
Another thing. There wasn\'t a ton of speed in either race. The horses that were 1, 2, 3 in early in the Excelsior more or less finished that way. Same thing in the Wood with the exception of the hopeless long shot Most Happy Fella. So I think it is safe to assume that were wasn\'t much early pace in either race, which Rem\'s pace numbers would confirm. When the early pace is slow I believe it tends to compress the final figure because horses can\'t come home in 34 seconds to make up for 113 3/4.. In the Excelsior the horses went 49.2, 113.79 and Goldsville came home in 37.48. In the Wood they went 49.21, 113.54 but ESK came home in 36.35 (and remember, this was into a headwind) and pulled away from the rest of the field. So we know his figure is going to be faster. But what do we use for a variant?
In order to come up with the variant it makes sense to look at the Excelsior. If you use Goldsville and assume he more or less paired, then when you come up with the variant and add it to the Wood ESK turns out to have made a big move forward. Problem is if you do it that way then you also have to assume that Nite Light ran his best figure in 2 years. Now that is certainly possible, but Rem didn\'t look at that way and neither did I.
Instead, if you use Nite Light and project the number from there, then you have Goldsville going backwards, which is perfectly logical considering the slow early pace and not so special come home time. And if you use that as a variant it puts ESK moving forward only slightly by a little over a point. That\'s the way Rem was looking at it, so that\'s the way I was looking at it as well. But I don\'t make figures for a living and I\'m also not trying to second guess Jerry. I am just passing on what Rem has told me and clarifying my position on this board.
This is why I said in an earlier post that I think Jerry is going to have to wrestle with this figure, and it is a very important figure.
