Re: Are Racehorses Getting Faster (656 Views)
Posted by:
TGJB (IP Logged)
Date: November 17, 2004 02:23PM
I haven't got time to get into all the individual angles that have come up, but I do want to address a point CH raised, about whether other figure makers tie their figures to pars.
A few years ago (5?) I had a discussion with Friedman on the Ragozin board under an alias. He said at that time that the reason their figures could be used to compare horses from different generations is that they use claiming pars, I showed him the holes in that, we went back and forth for a while, he said he saw my point. He didn't find out it was me until a couple of years later, when I mentioned it here.
This past February, at the DRF Expo, the question came up, and this time Len said no, they didn't tie their figures to pars. This could have been just because he knew what would happen to him there if he said otherwise (as I recall I said something like "Boy, that's news to me"), or it could be because they actually changed what they were doing because of my comments on their site. I don't know, but I have noticed that over the last few years the relationship between our figures and theirs has held pretty steady, after changing quite a bit over the previous decade. So they may have changed what they are doing, albeit way too late to use for accurate comparisons of different generations. And it is worthy of note that they too have GZ as the fastest horse of all time.
Now, my impression is that on that panel Beyer said they used claiming pars. I could be wrong-- I'll watch the DVD again when I get a chance. But even if the situation is what you described, that they use pars for only some tracks, that will act as a drag on your figures (to say nothing of creating an imbalance).
TGJB