JB,

Having seen your presentation and listened to the various scientific evidence you gathered from experts, it isn't hard to accept the fact that the track changes during the day. Porcelli's comments about watching the times and then deciding to water the track are a bit scary, but further re-enforce this.

I have a few questions though. Have there been any studies to try and measure what the difference in running time would be between a track with say 4% moisture and then a track with 10% moisture. Is it significant or extremely marginal? Obviously, your analogy during the presentation about running on beach sand and then running next to the water where the sand is wet is extreme. Do smaller changes matter enough to warrant making changing track variants?

If we accept that the track variant CAN change during the card, my next question would be HOW OFTEN does it happen and do you need to incorporate this into your figures? Is this something you are accounting for EVERY day? Does it happen once a week, once a month? Can you give us a feel for how often you take this into account? It would seem to be this would happen infrequently where the change in moisture, wind, shade, etc would be significant enough to warrant multiple variants? Or is your view that this happens every day and you do multiple variants every time you do a card?

Last question, relating to figures being "bunched" and this being the way that every figuremaker does figures. Would you say it is an accurate statement that the Thorograph figures show more pairups and bunched figures than Len's RAgozin figures (this was the original point made by the guy I was talking to). George's reply explained why the figures are bunched, but it sounded like more of a general statement about all figures, rather than just T-Graph figures.

I understand why this has to be the way figures are calculated, but to be honest, it almost seems like a string of figures can become a self fulfilling prophesy. It almost reminds me of college, where I always felt the single most important papers I would write each class would be the first and second, because once I established with the Prof that I was an "A" student, expectations are set and all papers after that were read with that predisposition. Sorry for lousy analogy, but it does remind me of that.

It just seems that one or two mistakes, which we all make, can lead to a long string of mistakes, if you don't look at each race independently, instead of such strong reliance on previous races. The horse that immediately comes to my mind is Smarty Jones. Having watched and bet on horse races for 20 years, I will believe the world is flat before I believe that Smarty was the fastest 3 year old ever (I think both T-Graph and Ragozin came up with this).

Jim