Flashback knee injury

[bellsbendboy]

In no particular order;  A grade III winner,  a colt off six months, a claimer, a horse that just broke his maiden, a state bred maiden winner and a no chance box seat horse!  bbb

[TGJB]

I haven\'t done either final figure but roughly speaking they look about the same.

[miff]

\"I haven\'t done either final figure but roughly speaking they look about the same\"

JB,

Obviously, what I was inferring because you have the Cali circuit slower than Beyer going in, has to come out the way you say.

Mike

[TGJB]

To basically shorten this nonsense:

Mike, you said exactly one right thing. Beyer has California too fast. Ragozin has the sprints too fast out there, but (as a generalization) not the routes. A good example of all this came recently when Joyful Victory ran at SA and won. Her owner, who uses Ragozin, called here scratching her head-- Beyer had given her a 107, Ragozin had given her a 9. As you know, if you translated them both to our stuff that would be a negative figure against about a 5. In fact she had run a 1-- exactly what she had run at FG-- and the California fillies in the race fit tight with her running that. Both Beyer and Ragozin had it wrong by quite a bit, in opposite directions (this time).

[miff]

JB,

Last post. Focus on the SA Derby which is rock solid TG 0 or-1/2. The 3rd and 4th horses that run in the 3-4 range were beaten by 10+lengths(like 6-7 points) How slow did the 3rd and 4th place finishers run for the Winner to only get like what 2. How does that manke any sense and realistically reflect the performance of the winner?


Mike

[TGJB]

Like I said I haven\'t finished with the SA day but a) where does it say the Wood winner ran a 2 (I just did it and he ran faster, and given the figures of the top three it was OBVIOUS he ran faster before I did it), and b) there\'s another route on the SA card to work with as well. We\'ll see.

But the larger point is-- WTF DO YOU THINK WE\'RE DOING HERE? You cherry pick a couple of horses, not working with wind, weight and ground, and want to potshot people who spend all their time on this and use computers to do track to track analysis? Without even waiting to see what we did? We\'re f---ing pros, knock it off. I have an overhead in 7 figures and work 320 days a year doing this stuff. Nobody has ever done it as well, even working at it with ALL the data, full time. There is not a single angle on this you could possibly come up with that we haven\'t thought of and checked out already-- including looking at other people\'s figures and knowing their tendencies.

[miff]

You have no idea what I know, what I use and how long I\'ve being doing this. There is NO chance you have perfected conversion data TG/RAGS/BEYER as I have.

I dont cheery pick, when I have an issue,I ask. From now on I won\'t.

[touchgold]

I have to say I have a ton of respect for what you do.....but I also do with the sheet guys....I just dont get the constant bashing of their numbers, like TG is never wrong....were all human...again not isolating a horse, but since you claim sheet west coast sprints are wrong, I recall amazombie in the 2011 BC sprint looking very strong on the sheets, and too slow in the TG seminar.....and I know I pointed a race in private that was wrong by your own admission....it just seems a waste of energy to bash their numbers as well as them yours...I like both products and neither is flawless.

[TGJB]

A) anyone can get a figure wrong, and b) any individual result can make someone look bad even if you got it right-- it\'s a game of percentages. But when you look at very large data samples certain things become clear, EVEN WITHOUT LOOKING AT OTHER DATA.

If you look at Ragozin\'s BC figures you will see right away that the horses running in sprints got a far higher percentage of tops than those that ran in routes relative to the figures they had previously earned ON RAGOZIN in all parts of the country. That was just the latest indication of a point I have made here for 10 years about their Cali sprint figures-- strictly by comparing them to other Ragozin figures. (I first noticed the problem by seeing constant differences with ours in one direction, but the way to prove it to Ragozin guys is by comparing them to other Ragozin figures, where it\'s clear if someone actually looks).

Having said that, the point of the original comment wasn\'t Ragozin, it was about Beyer\'s Cali figures, AND THAT WE KNOW WHAT\'S GOING ON. This isn\'t something we do in our spare time.

[TreadHead]

TGJB has already covered many of the points I would raise in a response.  I was expecting after the Wood results were raised and the SA results lowered (in terms of raw time to actual performance) that the results would be about even and am completely missing all the superlatives on the SA performance.  I could care less how Beyer scored the race.

Front-end victories over extremely glib surfaces are among the trickiest races to work with.  You said it was \"fast\", period.  What makes it \"fast\"?  The time? So are we saying the same thing about Governor Charlie, just because his time was fast?  To not recognize the difference in surface and conditions and those play into the raw times is apparently something many people do not think about, not sure why.

Do you think Goldencents would have run the same fractions and time were he able to put forth the same effort at AQU?  I\'m saying not even close.  Could Verrazano have run 1.48 over the Santa Anita track?  I don\'t have any reason to think he couldn\'t given the way he responded to a 45 and 109 split over a similar glib Gulfstream surface earlier this year.  What\'s different is, he\'s now run over both glib and more tiring surfaces, with different pace scenarios, and it doesn\'t matter.  

The race prior, the Santa Anita track was actually pretty deep and closers had a much fairer chance.  Goldencents responded horribly to that track type, and someone like TizAMinister looked good and got close.  TAM had no real reason to bounce last weekend, but still looked poorly.  I\'m blaming that on track bias, not performance.

And factoring in that Flashback was hurt and likely at least feeling some of the impact during the race and Super99, a horse with pretty clear distance limitations, still finishing in the money, this raises some big question marks for me as to whether or not the time was the result of the surface or a really huge effort from the horse, not to mention the overall quality of that field.  

A dominating victory over a extremely speed-favoring surface defeating a weak field does very little for me, neither here nor in the case of Governor Charlie.

[jimbo66]

Tread,

Not sure how long you have posted here, but I have for years and years.  Fast = variant adjusted fast.  Only idiots and neophytes to horse racing look at raw times.  

As for the rest of your post.  It is clear to me one of the fundamental differences we have, you don\'t seem to factor pace at all into your analysis.  You want to say track bias was the deciding factor in why Tiz a Minister ran well last time out and not this time.  And the same for Goldencents.  I won\'t call it silly, or worse, but it is short-sighted.  They went 1:09 last time, with three horses fighting for the lead.  It wasn\'t the track condition, it was the pace that led to the results of both horses, at least to a large degree.  

I don\'t know or care what Verrazano could have run Saturday at Santa ANita.  What I feel I know, and will gamble on, is that he should have run faster than 1:50.2, with the trip he got.  

As for the figures of the Wood and Santa Anita Derby, I really hope that TGJB means the ground loss adjusted figures are equal and not the figures for the winners before ground loss.  

Jim

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- You should be able to figure out what the top 3 in the Wood got within a half point without me telling you anything, just by having the sheets going in and seeing those 3 finish close together. The SA I haven\'t done yet but yes, of course I\'m talking about actual TG figures.

[TreadHead]

Thx for sharing your resume, I\'ve been here lurking since 1998.  I\'m fully aware of pace scenarios, I\'ve read Brohammer and all those ridiculous related computer programs where you pick one racing line to try to determine how the horse might run today.  I know you are not one of these people, but you would be surprised in places like the comments sections on Bloodhorse and on Twitter how many raw time ppl there are out there.  Or maybe you wouldn\'t.

At the stakes level, however, being involved in a pace duel does not mean that the front-end horses have to burn out and that a closer is going to mow them down.  Bodemesiter in the Derby last year is a perfect example of that.  With your arguments and comparison, no way he finishes in the top 4.  But he nearly won it.  That is an example of where a truly \"fast\" performance by the horse resulted in something big, not assisted by any pace scenario or glib surface.

When no horse is closing at Santa Anita all day, it is time to ask questions about the surface simply not allowing it vs. pace setups.  I\'m not saying the surface is the only reason, but denying it played some kind of a role is being naive.

Incidentally, I love that some people are going to now compare Goldencents to Bodemeister.  Not that you are.  The two don\'t compare.  

You and I are in complete agreement on Verrazano in the Wood.... If there were no wind and the track had proper moisture in it (it assuredly did not due to the sustained winds).  Under those conditions, there\'s no way this race is over 1.50 and the time is much more pleasing to the eyes of simpletons who say oooo 1.48 is so much better than 1.50.  If he had run that slowly under pristine conditions, you would have every right to bash him.  But the fact of the matter is, with that slow pace setup and no headwind coming home, all 3 of those horses are running sub12 last 8ths, and looking pretty impressive doing so, if you want to get into hypotheticals.

[ajkreider]

Concerning Bode and Goldencents, I think the former\'s best number going into the Derby was a 0, which is around what I\'d expect GC got this weekend.  So numbers wise, they look pretty close.

[ajkreider]

Mike,

If your judging GC\'s performance by what he beat (which I don\'t dispute), then you should reconsider your view on Orb\'s FLorida Derby number.

It was the slowest by the clock of the four routes. But he handled Lucky and his huge last-out fig, and demolished Bobby.

Orb was wider and heavier than Cigar Steet.  Who did he beat in the Skip Away? A horse that got a rail trip coming off a last-out 0.  And he crushed Golden Ticket off his graded-stakes placed 0.

Who did Ciao Bella easily beat?  A horse that romped a GP allowance by 17 lengths.  And CB beat the show horse by 16 - a horse that exited a win in the Sunshine Millions Distaff. (Orb also wider and heavier).

And of course, Julia thumped Live Lively who won a graded-stakes going a mile a 1/16th in 1:42.3.

All this says there were four really big efforts at GP on Florida Derby day, and Orb\'s was one of them.