Beyer and Zenyatta

[TGJB]

Seems to me I watched almost all of them, if there are exceptions they are few. Point me to them.

[Rich Curtis]

You haven\'t seen all of Zenyatta\'s races? Do you miss Ingrid Bergman movies too?

Seriously, go to your BC archives and look at the Zenyatta groundloss showing on the sheets. Then compare it to Victory Gallop (whom I picked at random). All I know on VG is the groundloss from 3-21-98 to 11-7-98, but Zenyatta lost more ground than Victory Gallop did.

[TGJB]

Just looked it up. Average combined paths for 2 turn races is about 5, probably a little higher in places where there are big fields. She\'s slightly higher (about 5.5 for the 8 starts currently on her sheet including 2 BCs) which would be less than for most deep closers.

[TGJB]

VG riders were getting instructions. The ones not named Solis followed them.

[jimbo66]

Rich,

The \"dead horses\" comment doesn\'t seem to be supported by the facts.

I don\'t have the statistics, but I believe Michael D. or another poster put them up a few months back, this safety of the horses thing has turned out to be bullshit.  We have a similar amount of breakdowns, unfortunately.

[Footlick]

Since the US decided to use many different types of synthetics and not one, we won\'t really know because there are too many hybrids out there.  That is what is wrong with DelMar and what was wrong with Santa Anita.  They weren\'t one type of track, but they seemed to be hybrid forms of what they purported to be.  Hollywood, Arlington, Keenland and Woodbine seem to be successful with their track surfaces, as well as Turfway.  Didn\'t the Jockey Club just come out with a study supporting the statements that there are a lower percentage of fatal/catastrophic breakdowns on synthetic than on dirt?  Australia is building a permanent synthetic racing faciity.  Dubai is now synthetic.  European horsemen say that they are safe and great conditioning and training facilities.  This is not a support of them, per se, but I think we have to look at the worldwide success and the successful tracks here in NA also, not just focusing on Santa Anita and DelMar.  I certainly would call Santa Anita and DelMar not successful.  Both could return to dirt as far as I\'m concerned.  But remember, Santa Anita was never considered an East Coast friendly track when it was dirt.  And DelMar was always a quirky track, regardless of the surface.  There were many problems with both dirt courses.

[Rich Curtis]

Jimbo,

  My point, as I wrote, was that Beyer should have given the reason for the surface switch.

  The reason for the surface switch, as I wrote, was the dead horses.

 Beyer should have given the reason, as I wrote, even though there is plenty of room to argue about the results of the switch.

  Footlick mentioned a new study. I haven\'t read it. The TT wrote about it:

  \"by Frank Angst

\"Horses who raced on a dirt surface in the U.S. during the last two years had an increased chance of a fatal breakdown compared with racing on a synthetic surface based on data released Wednesday by the Jockey Club.\"

http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/national-news/2010/12/15/synthetic-surfaces-boast-fewer-catastrophic-breakdowns-than-dirt.aspx

[miff]

Excellent article. Further confirms the rush to synths little more than a knee jerk reaction by the disingenuous clueless clowns running Cali racing.The marginal benefit in fatal breakdowns vs the enormous cost and huge change to the game not justified.The article does not address the concerns of many trainers/owners regarding injuries sustained on the rug that are not prevalent on dirt.

Sadly,not a word about surfaces better protecting jockeys from ending up dead or crippled for life and what could be done to avoid that going forward.


Mike

[sekrah]

Most of these places that run synthetics are more likely to have a higher class horses that are less susceptable to breaking down.  

There\'s alot more 7+ year old geldings in their 62nd career start at Penn National than

[TGJB]

Also-- the synthetic tracks are, by definition, newer (put in more recently) than the old dirt tracks. There are some people who think the problem is with the base of these tracks, which haven\'t been changed or even worked on for years-- not true of the newer tracks. It will be interesting to see the breakdown rate on the new SA dirt. (Of course, I\'m assuming that they looked at the base while they did this, and it\'s Magna, but still...).

[Boscar Obarra]

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/videos/watch/836FE575-551B-44F5-BA56-259E03079831

Nice HD coverage of Z\'s recent appearance.

PS I don\'t see anyone asking Andy to parade around.

[Rich Curtis]

TGJB wrote:

\"First of all, just to be clear, anchoring your figures to pars is indeed a problem, but it plays out differently on different circuits. Not that I want to be giving other figure makers more help (Beyer\'s guys clearly went to school on my presentation at the 2004 DRF Expo), but in California, where they have 5 horse fields made up of lots of Cal breds,using pars will inflate your figures, not the other way around. They will come out too good relative to those at a smaller track which has big fields, a deflated claiming structure (5k bottom ranging up to 30k as opposed to 8k ranging to 62,5k in California), and a steady stream of shippers from other tracks. My guess is that is one reason why Ragozin\'s California figures have been screwed up for years (another has to do with 1 turn/2 turn stuff).\"

JB,

Leaving Ragozin out of it for just a second, I think that shrinking figures and par times have botched up Beyer\'s across-generations figure comparisons so badly that he should never even mention how a horse from, say, the 1970s compares to recent horses such as Zenyatta in terms of Beyers. In fact, I think the \"Blogosphere\'s\" (Beyer\'s word) tendency toward such comparisons poisons everything, makes people dumber, and is largely responsible for the uphill climb you have with your \"horses getting faster\" argument.

 Here is an example. Beyer wrote the following in his review of the recent Secretariat movie:

\"Years later, when my speed-figure methods had matured, I revisited the data from the day of the 1973 Belmont and tried to produce a figure that would relate to my present-day numbers. I calculated that Secretariat had earned a 139, a figure that no horse after him has ever approached.\"

  OK, Beyer gives Secretariat\'s Belmont a 139 and Zenyatta\'s 2008 Del Mar race a 108. Ragozin, on the other hand, has Zenyatta\'s 2008 Del Mar race faster than Secretariat\'s Belmont. Meanwhile, people throw these numbers around as if they ought to matter.

 Questions for you, JB:

 Should Beyer\'s or Ragozin\'s across-generations figures matter to anybody?

 Do you think Beyer knows that his old figures should not be compared to his new figures?

 How did Beyer \"go to school\" on your DRF Expo?

[TGJB]

1-- No.

2-- Don\'t know, but I have found Andy to be intellectually honest. He\'s not invested to the degree the fundamentalists/fanatics on 11th street are.

3-- They started breaking out more races, noticeably, almost immediately.

[Rich Curtis]

Beyer in his third book, published in 1983:

\"When I first encountered this problem [of shrinking figures from the projection method] my figures were shrinking so fast that I could barely compare recent races to ones that had been run two months earlier...Fortunately, the remedy for this problem is a simple one...At the end of each month, I review all the results and compare the figure of each race with the par figure for that class. If I find that the races have been run, on the average, one point slower than par, I will retroactively add one point to all my variants and figures for the month.\"

Beyer in his fourth book, published in 1993:

After explaining that he uses the projection method (as opposed to par times) to make figures, he goes on to show a list of par times based on the figures he made using the projection method (so far, so good), and then he writes:

 \"These numbers don\'t have any neat starting point...Inflation and changes in the racing economy affect the value of horses; the ability of $10,000 claimers in 1993 isn\'t exactly the same as $10,000 claimers in 1985, and we want our numbers to be useful from a historical as well as a handicapping perspective--to measure, say, how the current Kentucky Derby winner stacks up against Derby winners of the past.\"

  Doesn\'t this sound like someone who:

1: Is aware of the historical pars problem?

2: Should know better than to compare old figures to new ones?

[TGJB]

If your point is that there are problems with Beyer figures, you are right, but I\'m really not looking to use this space to help them to get better. And we are far afield.

I would much prefer this space was used for something important. Like what\'s wrong with you-know-who\'s figures...