Jimbo-- per a conversation I had with Friedman on their site about 4 or 5 years ago, Ragozin was using pars (Len said it was how you knew that figures from different generations were on the same scale). As I pointed out to him, the opposite is true-- pars "freeze" the horse population, so if they are improving as a whole you won't know it. Up to that point our figures had gone from 3 points slower to about 3 points faster over 15 years or so, since then the relationship has remained basically constant, and Friedman said at the Expo that they no longer used pars.

What you describe about the relationship between us and Andy is one of the ways I know that Andy is using pars at some point in the process (another is the relationship between certain circuits, or more specifically certain types of circuits). If you use pars you will not allow horses to be getting faster.



TGJB