Smith in detail on the ride

[Rich Curtis]

Zenyatta is indeed very lucky that she gets to run on racetracks rather than on message boards--where someone can punch a letter here and a letter there, invent some puerile variant cause and effect, and knock her right out of the trifecta.

[P-Dub]

Rich Curtis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Zenyatta is indeed very lucky that she gets to run
> on racetracks rather than on message boards--where
> someone can punch a letter here and a letter
> there, invent some puerile variant cause and
> effect, and knock her right out of the trifecta.


Just be glad these guys wager.

To borrow a word from Miff, these ridiculous scenarios are \"BRILLIANT\"!!

Perhaps they followed me to the islands, and have gotten too much sun or something. Next time bring a hat fellas.

Speaking of....time for some beach.

[Leamas57]

Rich Curtis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Zenyatta is indeed very lucky that she gets to run
> on racetracks rather than on message boards--where
> someone can punch a letter here and a letter
> there, invent some puerile variant cause and
> effect, and knock her right out of the trifecta.

You think a slower racetrack (higher variant) is puerile? Why did Giacomo, Mine that Bird, and a host of others win one race at Churchhill then do nothing? Those races were a perfect storm of pace and or variant. The horse is fast, broadly speaking, but two major potential rivals were not right, and the speed that might have held at Monmouth or Saratoga died that did. Don\'t give me the ad hominem stuff like P-Dub--that\'s puerile.

[P-Dub]

Leamas57 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rich Curtis Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Zenyatta is indeed very lucky that she gets to
> run
> > on racetracks rather than on message
> boards--where
> > someone can punch a letter here and a letter
> > there, invent some puerile variant cause and
> > effect, and knock her right out of the
> trifecta.
>
> You think a slower racetrack (higher variant) is
> puerile? Why did Giacomo, Mine that Bird, and a
> host of others win one race at Churchhill then do
> nothing? Those races were a perfect storm of pace
> and or variant. The horse is fast, broadly
> speaking, but two major potential rivals were not
> right, and the speed that might have held at
> Monmouth or Saratoga died that did. Don\'t give me
> the ad hominem stuff like P-Dub--that\'s puerile.


She didn\'t like the track, unlike the track loving winner of the race. Interesting how you conveniently leave that out of the discussion.

Now you\'re comparing her to Giacomo and Mine That Bird. Right.

Then you say that speed would have held at 2 other tracks. So if she loses over a speed favoring track, that somehow proves that she is lucky and unworthy. Uh, right.

As opposed to being able to close from 20+ lengths back. That is conveniently discounted, because apparently only speed favoring tracks are a fair way of judging her performance.

Just how many horses won closing over that track on those 2 days??

So to sum this up:

- It doesn\'t matter that the winner was a track lover, basically a house horse.

- It doesn\'t matter that the runner-up, who didn\'t like the track, at one point was 20+ lengths behind, outrunning every other horse in the race (of course this is discounted because 2 horses \"weren\'t right\") closed to lose by a head.

- If the race was over a speed favoring track, that would have proved she was a bum and would obviously not have impacted the trifecta.

- Its completed dismissed and not even mentioned that perhaps, over these so called speed favoring tracks, she may have handled those tracks better and run down the so-called speed horses anyway. We know this wouldn\'t have happened because Leamas said so, thus it must be true.  Despite the fact she has run down every horse she has ever run against.

BRILLIANT!!

[moosepalm]

Speaking of variants, so much of this has been a variant of \"Spy vs. Spy,\" with my extrapolation of facts and data can beat up your extrapolation.  Well, once you set up your context, you can reconfigure your facts and data any way you want within that context to make a compelling case, but it\'s still limited to that context.  With all the back and forth over months and years, I don\'t know that the ball\'s been advanced very far on either side.

On the subject of Blame being a \"house horse,\" I question whether that\'s a fair label given 1) his TG tops as a 4-year old are similar at CD and the Spa, and as a 3-year old, they matched at Keeneland, CD and LaD; and 2) his overall record (operating from memory here) is something like 10 wins out of 14 starts, and 4 out of 6 at Churchill.

[Rich Curtis]

Leamas wrote:

\"You think a slower racetrack (higher variant) is puerile? Why did Giacomo, Mine that Bird, and a host of others win one race at Churchhill then do nothing? Those races were a perfect storm of pace and or variant.\"

Do I think a slower racetrack is puerile? Of course not. I think your wild-guess link, free of even an ounce of evidence, between variant and performance is puerile. You can\'t even cherrypick two examples without having Mine that Bird blow up in your face (no pun intended, but look at his sheet and tell me he did \"nothing\" after the Derby). If I start cherrypicking evidence for my side, we are going to be here for 5000 years.

Also:

William Quirin did a study of track condition and running style in his book \"Winning at the Races.\" You should look it up.

It is an easy matter to study the early races on a card, make a good estimate of the variant, and then start adjusting the figures of the horses who will run later in the card, adding lengths here and subtracting lengths there. If you think this works, then you ought to be doing it, and you ought to be rich. But of course it doesn\'t work.

If your theory is correct, then the Thoro-Graph methodology is a complete mess, and the figures that it produces are a joke--because they are not made according to your re-writing of race results.

[Leamas57]

I was only making a simple point, namely that Z benefitted (and most serious rivals were hurt) by a slow track and a fast pace. That post only concerned one race worth of performance. She\'s a deep closer and the pace helped even more. Why is that so hard to swallow? The best bets I make are when I start with performance (ability) and then look at pace and at how the track is playing.

Anybody else ever do that?

Geez!

Leamas

[Rich Curtis]

Actually, what you were doing was taking a 19/20 horse who had never missed the exacta and who had won the BC Classic the year before, and you were calling her lucky and saying she would have missed the trifecta had the variant been \"more normal,\" and then you were bringing in Mine That Bird to try to help your case, and now you are, um, narrowing your scope a little bit. But that\'s fine. You assert, with no evidence, that Zenyatta would have missed the board had the variant been smaller, thus granting me a license to assert, without evidence, that had the variant been smaller, Zenyatta would have won by 25 lengths. See where this sort of thing leads?

[Leamas57]

I said before the race that the distance and a slower track, and the absence of a top race by key competitors would help her. I was right. And on an even heavier (slower) track with the same pace pressure, assuming Blame didn\'t caught in said pace, she might have won. You can go there, though it seems that her big run was about maxed out while Blame might have had enough in the tank to hold her off over a slower track.

Leamas

[Rich Curtis]

Leamas wrote:

\"I said before the race that the distance and a slower track, and the absence of a top race by key competitors would help her. I was right.\"

 Do you have any evidence that you were right? I mean, you\'re not exactly out on  a limb with your belief that having one\'s competition fail to show up has its advantages. So I\'m disinclined to shower credit on you for that observation. And where is your evidence that the slower track helped her?

 Also, you wrote:

  \"Why did Giacomo, Mine that Bird, and a host of others win one race at Churchhill then do nothing?\"

  Have you looked at these sheets yet? They are in the \"Archives\" section of this website. Look in the BC section of the archives. I\'m interested in what you think of the figures Mine That Bird ran in his first couple of races after the Derby, and in the figure Giacomo ran two weeks after the Derby. These are the two examples you chose. I think they are worth a look, and I\'d love your thoughts.

[smalltimer]

As TGJB suggested to sekrah and myself:
(A) Either of you think this can be settled with an argument )B) Should the rest of us be subjected to this?
TGJB, does it make a difference which parties are engaged in the argument?
Just wonderin\'

[Rich Curtis]

Smalltimer wrote:

\"Either of you think this can be settled with an argument\"

 That depends on Leamas\'s propensity for coming to his senses.

  \"Should the rest of us be subjected to this?\"

  Given what the rest of you have subjected me to? Yes.

  \"TGJB, does it make a difference which parties are engaged in the argument?\"

   No way JB is in the office. That\'s why I chose the timing that I did.

[TGJB]

Enough.