Going to just chime in my two cents here. One weakness in any speed or performance figure is the effect of slow pace on the overall number. I\'ve said it before, but when the lead horse goes 50 to the half and 115 to the 3/4, and the rest of the field is comfortable rating behind and trying to save ground, they can\'t make up for that by coming home the last 1/4 in 20 flat. And many European races are run with that type of race shape - Slow early, Fast late. So if you are using the final time as a gauge for the performance, the number will come back slower than it maybe could have been unless you adjust for that race shape somehow.
The way TG does their numbers by also going off the horses somewhat mitigates that. But that\'s also based on past data. So over in Europe, when many of the races are run with a slow early pace, the data will build that way race over race. So you wind up with a narrower range of figures. And that means you have to account for that when using a data set like TG. A one point edge means more, IMO.
Now one thing I\'ve wondered and I\'m not sure about this, but if you had a fairly reliable way to use TG data and somehow account or adjust for the pace of the past races based on the likely pace scenario of today\'s race - you\'d have a pretty decent edge over the crowd. The problem as I see it is that all it takes is a tough start for one early pace horse, or one or two jockeys who have different intentions, and your pace projection just went out the window. So very tough to do.
I\'ve noticed that many European Turf runners come over here and run faster than they did overseas, and not all of them get Lasix. If you go through the BC sheet archives here on this site and look at those numbers I think you will see that the data confirms this. So when looking at a Euro import, I usually adjust the TG number by 2 points faster as a rough gauge for what they may run over here. That may sound a bit arbitrary, but it seems about right.
Anyway, just my two cents. Feel free to crucify away.
