Molly Morgan notwithstanding...

[joemama]

Friday\'s Oaks review alone was worth the price of admission.

[Sandreadis]

I heard a lot of mentions of Thorograph on TVG. Mike Joyce gave a great on-air plug for the Seminar.

[sekrah]

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How did a rocket ship like Private Zone barely
> outrun Dame Dorothy by only 13/100ths, same 7f
> distance, only 90+ minutes later?


Island Town, a $75k Optional Claimer, outran both of those G1 animals at 11am.  Hell there were 6 horses in that race that were faster than Nate\'s Mineshaft and Pants On Fire.

Any figure maker who doesn\'t use a trending variant on that card is going to get mauled.

[TGJB]

On raw time. And on figures that start with the assumption that tracks don\'t ever change speed during the day except for \"rain, freeze, or thaw\" (Ragozin quote from his book, co-written by Friedman. Where Len says he \"knows\" this).

So if they posted figures for all of Derby day either a) their guys would see entire fields of horses get crazy bad and crazy good figures, or b) they would see that Friedman/Jake decided the track changed speed. Which latter would mean they are hypocrites, and that decades of figures were based on an assumption which was false (and has absolutely no basis in science, as I discuss in Changing Track Speeds, in the Archives).

So they won\'t be posting Derby day sheets except for the Derby.

[miff]

JB,

What is interesting is Beyer gave Private Zone only 95 and Dame Dorothy 93, obviously using the 13/100 raw as the sole differnce between the two races.Beyer did not have the track changing speed between the time the two 7f races were run.

..weird.

Mike

[FrankD.]

Yeah Mike and they will swear they don\'t use par times anymore!

[Fairmount1]

After the first race, I went to look at the track.  I was on the first turn.  The area closest to the rail where I was standing up close and personal was hard and wet, similar to sand on the beach where the waves just washed it down flat as could be.  You could see the dark brown wetness.  From that point at the outter rail over to the inner rail, the surface was progressively more light and fluffier in appearance.  But my thought was that just below that initial layer of \"lighter\" material was a hard surface the horses were running on in that first race just like what I was seeing on the far outter area.

They ran the tractors over it right away after that first race.  I didn\'t follow as closely all day but they played with the water and tractors all day long.  

That first race was a super highway I declared to my friends (watching on the tv) which led me to go look closer right then.  

I thought it changed throughout the day.  That final Derby time still has me perplexed.

[miff]

Frank,

Been busting chops with a Beyer guy since Sat.He said Nate\'s Mineshaft dragged the fig down for Private Zone once Bayern, Pants on Fire and even Cee Zee ran off races.Tough to figure the 2 7f races coincidentally come up exact off raw clock...dunno about that.

Beyer definitely had the track slowing down. Watching the replay carefully(surface not horses) you can see a cloud of dust kicking up indicating a dried out surface.

It is highly unlikely, unless the surface slowed from earlier,that no derby horse could break 25.61 the last quarter, which was run by Materiality.


Mike

[FrankD.]

Mike,

We could debate why\'s why not\'s and figs for this group for weeks. Many were coming in with chinks in their armor and the draw killed a few as well.

There is no doubt in my mind the track slowed throughout the day. Still have to really look deep into this bunch turning the Derby into a boat race, 1,2,3 all the way around?

[miff]

Frank,

A reasonable explanation by two respected fig makers was that the pace was much faster than thought given how much the track slowed.Two numbers off a  solid variant system says the derby was run like minus +1.69 in total or adusted to 2.01.33, plausible.

Lotta offs and X\'s for sure and top three finishers broke the Beyer 100 mark which is rare for the derby according to them.

Interested to see how JB has derby.AP adjusted for ground comes up like TG -2.75 if JB agrees with Beyer.

Mike

[bellsbendboy]

Mike do not want to get long winded but Churchill under extended blue skies and limited humidity gets very cuppy.  Even twenty thousand gallons of water a day does little to help.  When the track is cuppy, it breaks away from the pressure caused when trying to push off with the hoof (shoe), causing horses to tire dramatically.

Late fractions in both the Oaks and Derby remarkably slow; a figure makers nightmare.  bbb

[sekrah]

I\'m in agreement that the track definitely slowed down throughout the day, but I want to add another opinion of these two races.

Because of the pace setup, Dame Dorothy had an opportunity to utilize nearly perfect energy distribution. She ran 23.6/23.2/23.6 and was able to kick home in 12.4.

Private Zone, on a slightly slower, slightly more tiring track, ran a 22.4/22.2.  Private Zone\'s performance was significantly stronger than DD\'s.

[beazley]

I\'m fully own board with changing track speeds. Data is conclusive.

Honest question:  For the slow derby time, how can you differentiate between the track speed and the fact that many of the horses can\'t get 10F at the same speed as they can get 9F.  Do internal fractions come into play?  The mile fraction looked legit. It was only the last 1/4 that they slowed to a crawl. And does Mubtaahij past races help since he has run a bit farther twice?

Thanks for the great work

[aceriley]

Maybe an X on Oaks day is appropriate, but it sure also looked to me like the rail was not the place to be in the Derby. There was no closing on the rail, by some proven closers.

[T Severini]

beazley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I\'m fully own board with changing track speeds.
> Data is conclusive.
>
> Honest question:  For the slow derby time, how can
> you differentiate between the track speed and the
> fact that many of the horses can\'t get 10F at the
> same speed as they can get 9F.  Do internal
> fractions come into play?  The mile fraction
> looked legit. It was only the last 1/4 that they
> slowed to a crawl. And does Mubtaahij past races
> help since he has run a bit farther twice?
>
> Thanks for the great work


The track may have slowed down but if it did, it retained it\'s character.  My belief is that you saw some relatively mediocre efforts based upon problems with the distance. At the end the top 3 were gassed, but there were only three other horses in the race and 2 were out of the picture on trouble.  

Sure they\'ll be numbers, but