I’ve been playing around in the BC archives going back through 2010 (post-SA-synth) for the non-2yo dirt races. I thought I’d post a few observations before the seminar comes out and people become concerned about divulging proprietary information.

Some caveats. Data entry was manual, so there are probably errors. I tossed horses who had prepped overseas, on synth, or on turf. The line about who to exclude was fuzzy at times (particularly when Keeneland, Del Mar, and Hollywood all had synth). In defining pre-BC tops, I went back about a year and did not follow TG’s Thoro-Pattern rules.

There were not many new tops. The average is about 5% for the races I looked at, with the two sprint races being closer to 3%. The tops also tended to be less than 3 points. The exception is the Distaff, where 4 of 6 new tops were 3 points or better (produced by Royal Delta, Beholder and Stellar Wind at age 3 and Include Me Out at age 4).

The percentage of pairs averaged about 23%. The F&M Sprint was lower, in large part because tops produced at 6f could not be reproduced at 7f.

Age did not seem to matter in the Classic, Distaff, or F&M Sprint, but in the Sprint and Dirt Mile 3yos were much more likely than their elders to pair their prior tops in the BC.

It was usually best to be coming into the BC off a Pair. Horses who had run a new Top in their last BC prep were generally unlikely to run back to it. The sample size for the latter observation is not great, but it did seem to be reproduced across races. The exception was the Dirt Mile, in which four of the six 3yos coming in off a new top managed to run a Pair. Arrogate did pair his Travers top in 2016 Classic.

Repeating something I found when analyzing the Derby archive, horses that were slower coming in were more likely to pair or improve their tops. For example, none of the six horses who ran new tops in the Distaff had run a 0 or better before the BC. Of course, the fact that fast horses are less likely to pair tops does not mean they won’t win. Gun Runner won last year while going back 2 points, and Collected ran second while running 1.5 points worse than his top.