Beyer and Zenyatta

[Rich Curtis]

Zenyatta would have been defined differently had she finished fifth, but only as a sort of truism, since that would be part of the overall record that defines her. I think we both know Beyer was attempting something different there, as in: JB, your record of success notwithstanding, you will be defined by the performance of the NEXT horse you recommend for purchase.

  Reading Beyer\'s Zenyatta writing, with its circle-and-pounce style, I keep getting the same thought: This is like a test case of Dostoevsky\'s preoccupation: What would it be like to live in a world in which everything is permitted?

 Beyer throws out a bunch of nonsense about the way SA was playing? Oh, OK. I get to do that too, with Blame\'s tracks and Rachel\'s tracks, and EVERYTHING goes, because Beyer was so inaccurate. Beyer defines a 6YO mare by one November race? OK, my turn to define Rachel by her absence in BCs or her losses as a 4YO.

 I might be able to make this point to you by quoting you:

  JB wrote:

  \" Even if you want to say helping racing should matter, show me that Z did that. 60 Minutes? I think they had Pol Pot on there once.\"

  A witty line? Yes. But doesn\'t it seem to beg for a reply like the following? \"And wasn\'t Rachel\'s trainer on Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel? I bet that was great for racing.\"

[TGJB]

Come on. Last first, RA\'s trainer being on TV wouldn\'t be relevant UNLESS SOMEONE HAD SAID IT WAS, that it was a reason for her to get an award, (or not), as was said about Z. If someone did, show me, and I\'ll argue against them too.

The point about being defined by one start is as correct for Z as for me and anyone else-- if you have enough record of accomplishment, the one start matters less, or not at all. You think Quality Road wasn\'t defined to a large degree by the BC? On pure ability, MEASURABLE the way we measure things here, he towered over Zenyatta and everyone else this year. He won\'t be defined that way, though.

You think RA isn\'t defined to some degree by the losses this year? You think she is seen the same as if she had retired after the Woodward?

In the case of Zenyatta, \"Grade Ones\" is a deceptive term, and you know it. In her entire career, there were four races where she ran against top quality horses, and that\'s giving her the two BC starts in California, where almost all the top horses were compromised by the surface (demonstrably, by how all dirt horses ran on those two days). So yes, she was in a position where this year\'s BC mattered a lot to how she would be viewed, as I said before the race-- and she helped her legacy a lot by running well.

As far as Andy goes, if the best you have in 3 articles is exaggerating or even getting wrong how Pro-Ride was playing, and correlating it with one result, you haven\'t got much. He was even handed and reasonable as far as I\'m concerned, and gave Z her props when she deserved them. And for a guy who makes figures, he must to have had to swallow hard. As a guy who has had to listen to fans of Affirmed and Sunday Silence for years, trust me on that one.

[Rich Curtis]

JB wrote:

\"Come on. Last first, RA\'s trainer being on TV wouldn\'t be relevant UNLESS SOMEONE HAD SAID IT WAS, that it was a reason for her to get an award, (or not), as was said about Z. If someone did, show me, and I\'ll argue against them too.\"

You missed the whole point. You don\'t know about the Asmussen Real Sports show? Are you serious? It was a \"supertrainer\" thing.

 \"The point about being defined by one start is as correct for Z as for me and anyone else-- if you have enough record of accomplishment, the one start matters less, or not at all.\"

  I agree.

  \"You think Quality Road wasn\'t defined to a large degree by the BC? On pure ability, MEASURABLE the way we measure things here, he towered over Zenyatta and everyone else this year. He won\'t be defined that way, though.\"

   You have discussed figures vs. accomplishment before. I don\'t think we disagree on this--based on what you wrote last time. Alydar won the Triple Crown on Sheets.

  \"You think RA isn\'t defined to some degree by the losses this year? You think she is seen the same as if she had retired after the Woodward?\"

  Rachel\'s losses are part of the career record that ought to define her, and it\'s the same with Zenyatta. What I object to, and consider disgraceful, is Beyer chucking a BC Classic that was run on a surface he neither understands nor respects, and then setting himself up to hang Zenyatta based on one race. Instead of pulling stunts like this, what he ought to do is get busy admitting that he ruined the historical comparability of his figures by anchoring them to par. Then maybe the Blogosphere, which he keeps whining about, will finally stop making idiotic, baseless comparisons using Beyer figures. Why is Beyer silent on this subject?

 \"In the case of Zenyatta, Grade Ones is a deceptive term, and you know it. In her entire career, there were four races where she ran against top quality horses, and that\'s giving her the two BC starts in California, where almost all the top horses were compromised by the surface (demonstrably, by how all dirt horses ran on those two days).\"

 If they were giving money away in those races, you should have come and gotten it. This is the stuff of parody. Here is the parody: Let\'s set up a situation in which a bunch of horses are afraid to run against Zenyatta. Then have them go somewhere else and run against each other. Then let them claim that they deserve HOY over Zenyatta because they faced better competition, as indeed they might have.

  \"As far as Andy goes, if the best you have in 3 articles is exaggerating or even getting wrong how Pro-Ride was playing, and correlating it with one result, you haven\'t got much. He was even handed and reasonable as far as I\'m concerned,\"

  He was disgraceful as far as I\'m concerned. And I\'m just getting started. You challenged me to do this, and I\'m doing it. And of course there is no chance you will agree with me on any of this. That was always a given. You\'ll probably even defend the following sentence of Beyer\'s:

  \" In my view, it is a dubious distinction to be the poster girl for the surfaces that have robbed the sport here of its unique character.\"

  The \"unique character\" is the speed-favoring quality.

  And then Beyer on the radio:

  \"And horses with that style who come from a mile behind, you know, there\'s nothing more exciting. So she put them together, and people loved it.\"

   Yeah, great stuff. He was looking to get her on anything.

[TGJB]

1-- I did get the Asmussen thing, that\'s why I said \"or not\". And it doesn\'t make any difference either way to my point.

2-- Believe me, I wanted to find something to buy and take out to California and run against Z getting weight, but a) it involved finding one that could run on synth, and b) convincing someone ELSE it was a good idea, in an atmosphere of great hype. That the main trainer for my main client was a guy who was on record as hating the stuff made it even tougher. One that was bought FROM one of my guys was Dance To My Tune, who wasn\'t even graded level before we bought her or for us, but who immediately after we sold her ran second in a \"Grade One\" in California, to Zenyatta. Putting her right up there with Rinterval, etc.

As far as part two of that section, let\'s see:

It was pretty tough to say male horses were ducking Z, since she was running against fillies in all starts except the BC for her whole career, unless you are saying someone ducked her in the BC. So that leaves Rachel, who was \"ducking\" her by running on 2 weeks rest in the Preakness, against colts in the Haskell, and against older males in the Woodward, before being stopped on two months before the BC after an eight ( race campaign by Labor Day, by an owner and trainer who both had PREVIOUSLY taken public positions against synthetics.

(I could make some comments about who actually did some ducking-- both camps this year-- but we are getting far afield).

Anyway, I\'ve said my piece about Andy. If you want to go on about him you can, but my recollection is that the original challenge by Miff was to make a case that Z should be HOTY based on a fact set, or that there was a hole in what Andy said in THAT piece.

[jimbo66]

Rich,

I hate to detract from the main points of your essay, but a couple of questions.

You say Andy doesn\'t understand or respect synthetics and screwed up the figures.  Who do you think got the figures right for synthetics?  You can\'t believe TG did either, since Beyer went on record of \"adjusting\" his entire synthetic scale, pushing the top figs higher and the bottom figures lower.  As far as I know, TG didn\'t and the \"top\" figs for the best synthetic horses are GENERALLY faster on Beyer than TG, and it would seem your position was that Beyer understated the figures on synthetics (If I am wrong - correct me).

As for who actually \"understands or respects\" synthetics, that is a whole different story.  Put me in that group and proud to be part of it.  I believe we will look back 20 years from now and this will have been a \"stupid blip\" on the horse racing radar here that went away.

Rich, hard to believe you can credibly talk about how horses ducked Zenyatta, instead of pointing out the extremely careful handling of Zenyatta over the two years.  Even some of her most fervant fans on this board were getting frustrated with her campaign this year as she stayed out west AGAIN and even avoided a clearly sub-par Rachel going 1 1/4 at Saratoga, which should have been a race they would have drooled over.  

Just curious, are you calling the quality of Andy\'s writing disgraceful, as in the grammatical and literary quality, or are you calling the content of his opinions disgraceful.  If it is the former, probably a debate for another board (although I can certainly see THAT point).

[BB]

Don\'t really want to cut in on this dance, but ...

\"... unless you are saying someone ducked her in the BC\"

Well, I can think of one male champion who may have, and look where it got him. Second again!

[alm]

Son

You\'re flipping incredible....Jerry Brown doesn\'t need any praise from me, but I would be embarrassed to waste his time in a diatribe like yours...moreover Andy Beyer, for all his faults or strengths, is a ton more important to this business than you will ever be.  And probably more of a handicapper than 99% of the people on this board, including you and me.  You ought to worship the ground these guys tread on.

Moreover, I am now in the Zenyatta HOY camp...just to shut you up.

[Rich Curtis]

Don\'t give up on me yet, Alm. I\'m fixing to have another lobotomy and come back genuflecting.

[miff]

Male Grade 1 older horses ducked Zenyatta,why?? I\'ve heard it all now.

Mike


P.S.

Al,after reading Rich\'s rambling dance around the \"facts\" or anything that is remotely relevant to what was being debated here(except Beyers grammar perhaps)I absolutely agree that Z should be HOTY,no contest. A compelling argument has been made for her accomplishments and brilliance on the racetrack contrary to what clueless Andy Beyer wrote.

[Rich Curtis]

Miff,

 I\'m sorry. I have an awful memory, and I simply do not remember writing the things you seem to think I wrote.

[miff]

Rich,

I do not think that you have come close to making a case that anything Beyer wrote was intentionally disgraceful against Z, in any article.Z fans are super sensitive but never put up or compare race track type pertinent \"stuff\" when glorifying her.

Defending Z as a fan,is one thing, but her record/accomplishments, when picked apart,are nowhere near her overstated west coast press clippings.

Mike

[Rich Curtis]

Jimbo wrote:

  \"You say Andy doesn\'t understand or respect synthetics and screwed up the figures.\"

 I said that Beyer \"ruined the historical comparability of his figures by anchoring them to par.\" This is a point that JB has made 50 times over the years. When you anchor your database to par, as Beyer did years ago, then when it comes to horses as a group, par is what you are going to get. This makes nonsense of attempts to compare, say, Seattle Slew to Rachel Alexandra. Seattle Slew was running at a time when Beyer was having an awful problem with \"figure shrinkage.\" His figures were getting slower by the month, due to faulty projections. He \"solved\" the problem by locking his database to par, which proved to be a slowly opening can of worms. Later, according to his most-recent book, he stopped doing this. But he can\'t ring the bells backwards.

\"Rich, hard to believe you can credibly talk about how horses ducked Zenyatta, instead of pointing out the extremely careful handling of Zenyatta over the two years. Even some of her most fervant fans on this board were getting frustrated with her campaign this year as she stayed out west AGAIN and even avoided a clearly sub-par Rachel going 1 1/4 at Saratoga, which should have been a race they would have drooled over.\"

 You are talking about where I was responding to JB\'s comment about the quality of the Grade Ones that Zenyatta won in CA? My point was that Zenyatta was scaring off competition. I believe this was what JB was referring to when he wrote about his own trouble \"convincing someone ELSE it was a good idea [to go to CA and race against Zenyatta], in an atmosphere of great hype.\" Was Zenyatta handled extremely carefully, as you say? Absolutely. But she also stayed healthy and sound and ran off an incredible string of Grade Ones and ran in three BCs and ran in two BC Classics, the last one at the age of six, on her second surface. I look at the way this horse was managed, Jimbo, and I understand people\'s frustration, but what this horse accomplished was flat-out extraordinary, a record for the ages, and this happened under a particular type of real-life management. The management and the record are facts on the ground, facts from an astoundingly magnificent career. Now, the way she COULD have been managed? What would that have produced? Nobody knows for sure, but when I was watching that 6YO mare with that record run in another BC Classic against the boys, I was thinking that there were some human beings (non-cowards, if I may) behind her who had a decent sort of idea what they were doing.

  \"Just curious, are you calling the quality of Andy\'s writing disgraceful, as in the grammatical and literary quality, or are you calling the content of his opinions disgraceful. If it is the former, probably a debate for another board (although I can certainly see THAT point).\"

  I\'m talking about the content.

[jimbo66]

Rich,

Agree that what Zenyatta did was incredible in a few regards.  Probably almost nobody would disagree that at a minimum her consistency in today\'s age of horses is unheard of and incredible on its own.

Also, I can see the point that with all the adulation she has received and all the fans she has, and all the success she had, how can anybody argue with the way she was managed.  But i am stubborn and hard-headed and will forever dislike both Shirreffs and Moss.  (I am sure they won\'t lose sleep over that though).  Because I have to say I truly don\'t know how great she was and I don\'t think any of us really can know.  We can opine a lot and we can use facts/figures as TGJB and others have pointed out, and on those facts, she wasn\'t close to great.  19 out of 20 wins is great.  Wouldn\'t it have been nice to see her challenged one or two more times over the two year period, including sometime in 2009 against Rachel Alexander?  But unfortunately, the 19 out of 20 is tarnished, when it was accomplished almost exclusively in California, against lame competition and on synthetics.  And the big dirt try was a great effort, but a loss, against Blame, who is a very nice horse, but far from great.  We are left short a few facts (races) for which to measure her.

Oh well.

[TGJB]

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).

Other than the 2 to 4 (depending on how nice you want to be) races against top horses (one of which she lost), giving Z credit for winning all the others is like giving Pepper\'s Pride credit for beating all those New Mexico breds-- the races were restricted. In Z\'s case, because she did not even run against what has been a weak older male division in California (no reason she couldn\'t have tried the Big Cap, Gold Cup or Pac Classic over the last two years), she was beating truly anemic fields of fillies, on synthetics, and not by much.

You say you disagree with Andy\'s content, but so far you have not made the case. To be clear-- my opinion of Z is based on her figures (ability), which make her one of the better mares to have raced over the last few years, but not as good as Rachel or Goldikova (relative to other grass horses especially), and not close to Ghostzapper and the other top males of this era.

The HOTY debate is another story, it\'s based on accomplishment. If Z had won the Classic I could at least see a case to be made for her, even though (like last year) it would have been a case based entirely on one start. But she didn\'t, and she accomplished absolutely nothing of note in her other starts this year. As far as I\'m concerned the only question is whether Goldikova did enough to unseat Blame-- Zenyatta didn\'t do anything THIS YEAR that should get her votes, let alone match what the other two did.

PDub, Smalltimer, and the rest-- if you want to reply, don\'t just say you disagree, or it\'s a matter of opinion. Make a case.

[P-Dub]

Fact:

-The 2009 Preakness field wasn\'t very good, RA held off the closing charge of Mine That Bird, a horse that has done absolutely nothing after winning the Derby on an off track

- Beat the same group of \"stellar\" 3YO competition in the Haskell,  winning over a sloppy Monmouth surface that promoted speed, beating a bunch of 2nd rate 3YO.

- She beat Macho Again and Bullsbay in the Woodward. Macho Again is a pretty decent horse. Bullsbay was a decent horse.

The Woodward was a great performance.

Why is is that when Zenyatta wins the BC Classic, Ladies Classic, or Apple Blossom the first thing mentioned is the competition or the racetrack surface??  RA wins over a biased surface or runs against second rate horses and NOTHING is mentioned about that.  Its all...\"she beat older males, she won a GR1\" etc...

Seems like 2 different standards are being used. And before you start the \"Whats RA got to do with anything\",  I\'m making a point of how certain racehorses are perceived.

These performance figures that constantly get mentioned, how many people on this board have ripped up tickets because, on figures, this was the day she was going down??  Several. Yet, despite this figure weakness it never happened until the 2010 Classic.  A race that many people on here didn\'t give her ANY chance of even hitting the board, let alone winning, because.........she just didn\'t have the figures to do it. This is another fact.

Yeah, its a TG board. We talk about figures. When the most respected man on this board starts to compare the accomplishments of Zenyatta to Peppers Pride, we\'ve reached the point of being ridiculous.

Have at it boys, and good luck Rich. You\'re never gonna win this discussion.  

I would vote for Goldikova, she dusted the best turf milers in the world. Again.