fasteddie,

I used to make projection figures, but I would make some effort to anchor them to pars in case I was making any mistakes that were leading to slowly expanding or shrinking figures.

I understand the problems with using pars to sort of anchor or double check your work. I think JB has written some great stuff on that.

However, there are also problems with not anchoring to pars unless you are perfect at making projections that lead to slowly shrinking and expanding numbers.

>I'll keep saying this: w/o Birdstone, Smarty wins by 8 in what would visually appear to be a romp, because his rate of deceleration is not as severe as the rest of the field.<

I agree, but it doesn't change my opinion of how fast he ran (which I believe is not very fast) or how well he ran (which I think is fine).