Class,

No one has a problem with the points you are making it is just that you make the same ones over and over again. I'm from the UK so I have a natural scepticism (the proper spelling BTW) that a 5 from Penn National is the same as 5 from Belmont.

In Europe you do relate figures to the class and the competitiveness of the race. One of the easiest pitfalls in UK racing is to fall for a horse that puts up a good performance figure in a weakly-contested maiden race and then steps up to tougher compnay. They just can't repeat the effort in the more competitive race.

I think you're making the same point - that how a figure is earned is as important as what the figure is.

But you won't get JB or either of the two Lens to agree with you - as Robespierre made clear in one of his replies to you for them the figure is the only thing that matters.

I disagree - horses aren't machines and we have no way of knowing what makes them run fast or not on a particular day.

The problem is how you quantify the factors which might affect a figure. One of the things we are aware of at TG is putting in too much information which can overwhelm people.

Effectively you were arguing that we should not give a single figure but one which also showed components so that people like you could evaluate it better.

That may have helped you but it would have confused an awful lot of other people who are looking for a relatively straightforward measure of a horse's merit.

The other thing to remember is that because Jerry breaks out races he is more likely to be correcting for situations where the race is run in abnormal fashion. Those who profess to rely on the physical resiliency of the track are much more likely to be caught out by a horse which gets a soft lead.

And don't worry about being taken to task by Janis and Indulto. They get lonely on the Ragozin site and will do anything to try and ingratiate themselves with Jerry so they'll be welcome over here. (Just kidding, lads!)

George