Okay, let's get to the next group of questions Jim asked.

"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 it your view that this happens every day and you do multiple variants every time you do a card"?

The short answer to this is, in effect, I do seperate variants for each race, but they often come out the same, give or take-- there is leeway within a point or so either way even if the track is staying basically the same, due to wind gusts, slight effects of pace on the race, slight differences in runups that effect how fast they are moving when they break the beam, etc.

A couple of points--

1-- I never tie the one turn races with the two turn races regardless, because history has shown that relationship is not solid. This is true because of several things that I brought out in the expo presentation, but way before I became aware of WHY it was true, I knew that it WAS true-- you end up making an average variant that doesn't treat either sprints or routes fairly, or treats one fairly but not the other. It doesn't matter that SOMETIMES they are at the same variant-- it is wrong to ASSUME they are. If they end up that way, fine.

2-- Lots of things can effect the time of a race, and if you are not paying attention to wind and run-ups (I don't think the Beyer people are, though I could be wrong, based on a conversation I had with Randy Moss a couple of years ago) you will have to make significant corrections to your figures AS IF you were correcting for changes in track speed, or time errors. The same thing goes for races with an extremely slow pace. In other words, if you are going to ASSUME you have all the information, you better be damn sure you have it-- for a good discussion and a great example of this, see my post "Figure Making Methodology", reposted 1/31/03 on this site.

3-- If I'm going to cut a race loose-- that is, decide that doing it with the surrounding races is wrong, and make a really significant correction, without knowing something happened to the track (or some other event that would affect time), it's going to be not just because it looks wrong, but because it is clear what the RIGHT way to treat the race is. If I move it I know what the right variant for the race is by seeing what several horses in the race did, at least to the point of knowing I have it close. I do NOT screw with the relationships within a race to make it come out right. If it looks like it could be wrong but I DON'T know what is right, I leave a box (no figure)-- this happens mostly with lightly raced horses (like with Chilukki's debut effort). And yes, if I give a figure but the decision is really tough, I mark the race and go back to look at it about 6 weeks later-- there are about two a week of these all tracks combined, and I end up changing about 20% of them, usually around 2 points.

Days take many shapes. Sometimes the track stays the same speed all day-- I guess this happens about half the time. Sometimes there is a distinct split variant, but not that often. What you see a lot is the track getting faster or slower as the day goes along, sometimes at a uniform pace, sometimes not. Sometimes it gets faster (or slower) and levels off at some point, or stays the same for a few races, then begins to slide faster or slower. Any permutation is possible, unless you DECREE that it must stay the same speed, and use that as an assumption when making your figures. An assumption that flies in the face of both information and science.

Because, as I said in the expo presentation (still up on this site), moisture content (aside from any other factors) can be changing throughout the day. EVEN IF WEATHER IS A CONSTANT, EVEN IF THE SAME AMOUNT OF WATER IS ADDED BEFORE EVERY RACE, MOISTURE CONTENT WILL STILL ONLY STAY CONSTANT IF THE AMOUNT BEING ADDED EACH RACE IS THE SAME AS THE AMOUNT EVAPORATING BETWEEN EACH OF THE RACES. If it is not, the track will get either wetter or drier as the day goes on. And, of course, weather is not constant-- wind picks up and dies down, temperature changes, the sun comes out and goes behind clouds, humidity changes etc. And if you saw the track maintenance records in the presentation you also know that they don't add water at all tracks between all races, let alone the same amount.

A good example of what I'm talking about took place this year on Belmont day, and is detailed in "Friedman/Changing Track Speeds", recently reposted here. They had expected rain which didn't come and done a lot of work on the track overnight, then watered the track after the first six races, then stopped. The track got faster as the day went on, then levelled off. Now, I saw this in the figures and would have treated the day that way even if I didn't have the track maintenance info-- BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU SIMPLY MAKE THE ASSUMPTION THAT THERE WAS NO WEATHER, SO THE TRACK DIDN"T CHANGE, as Ragozin says he does in his book? You get it wrong, that's what. Friedman indicated in a post that they knew about the work done, so they slid the day-- but what about places where they (or anyone else) doesn't get the info?

Make as few assumptions as possible. I'll get to the questions about "bunched" figures tomorrow.



TGJB