Jerry,

I bought the K-Derby special and was amazed at some of the figures I saw. You mentioned earlier this week on this board, you might post the Ark Derby and/or Blugrass figures here, so I assume you are OK with me discussing them here. If not, delete my post. I will try not to be too specific on quoting the numbers, as you are selling a product to others.

I just don't get the figure you gave Bandini. I submit I have never made my own figures, have never studied the process, and have no legitimate grounds to attack anybody's figures, and I don't want to do that here. I just want to try and understand how you can come up with some of these. When I looked at the charts after the BlueGrass, the track looked a little slow to me that day, but not terribly so. I thought Bandini ran a nice race but my suspicion was that the race fell apart a little bit. Consolidator didn't pick up his feet, Sun King looked like he ran back to the Tampa race and High Limit was finished on the turn, hitting the inner rail in the stretch and still holding second. 1:50 on that track on that day, looked pretty average to me, based on my review of the charts. I guess the Beyer boys agreed, giving the horse a 103, one of the slowest Bluegrass races in years. I knew your figure would be a little better because BAndini was wide on both turns, but you have him as fast as SMarty Jones' fastest race last year!! High Limit pairing up? Didn't look like it. Sun King improved off the Tampa Race? Didn't look like it.

The Bluegrass was more disturbing to me, but if you look at all of the "last round" of preps, the Illinois Derby, Wood, BlueGrass and Arkansas Derby, you have HUGE jump ups for all the winners. Obviously they all ran big races but did all of these horses get 6 + points better at the same time?

Somebody on this board commented a while back that the figures in "blowout" races get distorted. I believe it was in criticism of High Limit before the LA Derby. I didn't understand or agree with the comment, but I guess I can see that argument now. Jerry, if the "science" part of the figure making doesn't lead you to what you feel is a logical conclusion, do you assume some kind of variant change to make the figures fit? For example, did you not buy into High Limit regressing, Consolidator regressing and Sun King running back to his Tampa Race, so you gave Bandini a huge figure, so you could "pair up" High Limit and make it look more logical? I know you expected big races out of Consolidator and High Limit based on the ROTW, so you were inclined to not give them both X's?

Without giving away any trade secrets, can you shed some light on the process? I will be honest, I don't feel comfortable with any of the T-Graph figures for these last round of Triple Crown preps, with the possible exception of Bellamy Road, since that race figured to come back with a huge figure. (and it did!)

Thanks,

Jim