TGJB,

The very first book I read on horseracing long pre-dated Beyer, Ainslie, etc.. It had a speed figure time chart in it and discussed form cycles etc... It was an introductory book, but with some tweaking of the time chart it was OK.

Ray Talbot also had some interesting stuff that I believe pre-dated the modern numbers handicappers. In fact, even though it can argued that a lot of his pace and speed charts have been improved on, I think he had a lot of great insights long before the modern authors got popular. If I have any complaint about him is that he often looked for simple systems with rules for identifying live longshots.

I think there were plenty of terrific handicappers that did some really advanced stuff long ago.

People have just taken that info and used computers, race replays, etc... to improve on it. Now they also coordinate their efforts on a larger scale.



Post Edited (01-28-05 11:02)