A Ragozin customer (who has earned the right not to be called a Raggie) asked Friedman why they didn’t post the last race on the Preakness card. Not surprisingly, Len danced the limbo to avoid posting it, trying to shift the focus—-and, not surprisingly, several low-expectation Raggies went right along with his lead. Point is, they CAN’T post it—-if they do, it will be instantly clear to anyone who has followed the discussion here or has any knowledge AT ALL of figure making that the Emperor has no clothes.
Despite there being no weather event (other than the drying that was going on all day), the track was RADICALLY slower for the last race than it was for the previous race. If you download our Preakness Day sheets (still available in ROTW) you will see that the figures we assigned for that race are solid—-in a field of relatively light raced horses, 2 ran small new tops, several ran right around what they were running, and a few ran a few points worse than they were running. To get to that figure I had to use a variant eight (8) points slower than the previous race, which happened to be the Preakness.
Keep in mind the following: Ragozin and I did the same thing with the Preakness (their numbers run a couple of points higher), and they have a stated position of tying the variant for one race to others on the day (and other days, but that’s another conversation). This is how they came up with the terribly slow figures they assigned the race prior to the Preakness (the Schaefer)—-they tied it to the Preakness variant. They’ve also done it on several occasions I’ve pointed out here before—-the ’01 Breeder’s Cup, and two Wood Memorials, for example.
If they post the race, here’s what happens:

1- If they are consistent with their avowed methodology, the figures will come up ridiculously slow—-see what happens if you add 8 points to the race—and it becomes instantly obvious to anyone watching that the theory (dogma) is a joke.

2- If they do what I did to get to correct figures, they know I will jump all over them as hypocrites—-pointing out that this means their reasoning in giving 3 other races that day painfully slow figures doesn’t hold up, to say nothing of the Wood Memorials, B.C., etc.

3- If they hedge and go in-between—-which is probably what they did—-they get it on both counts.

All other reasons for not posting the race are a steaming pile of @#$%& (so to speak, and that doesn’t give any of you the right to curse—-it’s my site). To prove it, let any Ragozin customer post on their site asking for the race so he can shove it up my ass. They won’t post it. Additionally, I will give the Ragozin office $1,000 cash if they post the race and leave it and the rest of the Preakness card up through the Belmont.



TGJB