Your absence was driving me nuts, bj.

What I was doing makes sense if you read this entire string, including the part that I inadvertently detached. This is the sentence of mine that inspired HP to repay 10 months of compliments with a bunch of idiotic insults:

"Weight will cost more lengths at longer distances, but a length is more important at 5f than it is at 10f."

This sentence is perfectly true, but HP didn't understand it. I then said the same thing in different words: "Five pounds = one point, regardless of distance. A point is worth about one length at 5f and two lengths at 10f." HP didn't understand that, either, but when JB wrote the same words, HP made the most preposterous declaration of victory in the modern era.

I got a little tired of HP's refrigerator-on-the-back garbage because the sentence that started this said the same thing: "Weight will cost more lengths at longer distances..."

HP devoted several insults to my "A length is more important at shorter distances" line. THAT is why I brought up the beaten-lengths chart. Looking at one is the easiest way to understand the concept. I could have shown the same thing with a speed chart, but I don't have a TG speed chart, and I didn't want to bring Beyer into this.

Beaten-lengths are relevant to weight carried in the sense that if all else is equal, five extra pounds will produce a one-length loss at five furlongs and a two-length loss at 10f, this despite five pounds equaling one point at all distances. This point was central to HP's confusion, and my discussion of beaten lengths was an attempt to end it.

Welcome back.