I guess you didn't notice the qotation marks around the word "better".

1-- I don't believe it. I also don't disbelieve it. If it is true at all, I certainly don't think the difference in track speeds is extreme, or I would see it in the figures when I work with them-- as I do with dead rails.

2-- Horses don't stay in one path throughout a race. This alone makes adjusting the figures for paths a very dicey proposition.

3-- There is no more reason to believe that the relationship between paths stays constant throughout the day than that the track as a whole stays the same speed throughout the day. So even if horses were staying in the same path, you would often have to look at a sampling of one or two horses that ran in a specific path in a given race. Not enough.

4-- SO-- we only note it when it is really clear, which happens when there is a dead rail. And even then, we have found that you can't apply a set correction, since what seems to happen is that a lot of horses just don't fire. So we mark them, and let you figure out what to do with them.



TGJB