Screwy is the word, all right.

In general I have been giving out more boxes (not assigning a figure) than ever before. In part this is due to something you might not think of-- smaller field size. As the fields have gotten smaller, the amount of data I have to work with has decreased, and with it the ability to make figures for certain races with confidence.

In many (most) cases, you can supplement your information with that from the surrounding races-- if the races are similar (one or two turns, dirt) and the track is staying at one speed. If that were not true, there would never be a way to make figures for lightly raced (let alone unraced) 2yos early in the year. But at Laurel, some really crazy stuff has been taking place since they changed the track layout, where the relationships between several distances that would normally be constant has not stayed so. Specifically, the 5 and 5 1/2 vs. the other sprints. And since many of those races are also for 2yos, that can be a problem.

On the day in question, that race was the first of the day, and was followed by 6 routes,3 turf races, and only one other sprint, a 7f race run more than 2 hours after the 5 1/2 race, so it wouldn't be safe to make assumptions either about the relatiuonship between distances, or the track speed staying the same. The race was a maiden 2yo 10k claimer, with the winner winning by 7, and the second horse 9 clear of the rest, making it very likely there were new tops involved. So I couldn't tie it to anything, and didn't want to guess.