This past Saturday's Laurel card was another example of what took place last 9/15 at Belmont, where I correctly said in advance that the inflexible nature of Ragozin's figure making approach would force him to do the day completely differently, and wrong. (The Belmont day was the one where he gave Storm Flag Flying a much worse number than in her debut, despite winning a Grade 1 by a block, after breaking her maiden by a length).

There was a lot happening on the Laurel day, but I want to focus on 2 consecutive races, both 7 furlongs, both graded stakes. In the General George, My Cousin Matt won, running 1:22:12. In the next race, Xtra Heat, who can run a little bit, required 1:24:76 to cover the same distance. The difference in figure terms between the two winning times is about 11 1/2 points, and even after adjusting for ground and weight (Xtra Heat carried 125), the colt earns almost 10 points a better figure than a filly who has lots of negative numbers, and was facing a good field, IF YOU DO THE RACES AT THE SAME TRACK SPEED.

Now obviously, this is nuts-- it is extremely unlikely that the colt race went around negative 10, but it's also extremely unlikely the filly race went in a plus 10-- not just because of the winners, but because of all the other horses. For whatever reason, the track changed speed A LOT in that half hour (which presumably had something to do with the wet track). So I did the obvious thing, which is to cut the two races loose from each other (Beyer did the same thing). Here are the possible ways the Ragozin office can deal with this:

1- They can tie the two races together. Good luck betting off those figures.

2- They can cut the races loose, in which case they are completely contradicting the reasoning put forth on their site for a whole bunch of other figures over the years.
Since no one but a blind dogmatic would choose 1 it will probably be this one, and I look forward to continuing this discussion when we find out.

Anyway, I used a SEVEN point difference in variants for the two races, which as it happens is very similar to the difference on 9/15 Belmont. Take a look at the sheets for the two Laurel races with the figures the horses ran that day (above), and see if you can find a way to add to the fillies or subtract from the colts a combination of 7 points, and still come up with something workable.



TGJB