Miff--

1-- GG has a few good numbers and several worse ones. And we already know there's something wrong with him, since he hasn't been able to get back to his top. The fact that he ran a stinker on short rest is no surprise.

2-- As I have said here before, it's generally more significant (in figure making terms) if a horse runs well, than if one runs poorly. Horses can always run an off race, but they can only run as fast as they can run.

3-- You keep focusing on a couple of horses out of a couple of races. There were a lot of horses that ran on that day, in lots of other races. One of them is the filly I mentioned-- look at her in the RBR. This is an example of 2 (above)-- ain't no way you can think she has any chance if she's off a pair of 27's, as opposed to the forward move to a level that put her at least in some range. If I hadn't split the day, she would have had to move forward 10 points or so to contend yesterday.

4-- The right way to do this is by looking at large numbers of horses from the day coming back. Here's what we'll do-- remind me of this around March 5th or so, when lots of them have run back. We'll split them into two groups (before and after where I split the day), and do a count of how many from the day have gone forward next out, and how many have gone back. Since there were 4 maiden races that day (lightly raced horses), I think it will come out that slightly more will have gone forward than back, in each group. We won't use ones that were making their first starts that day.


Len F.-- re your comment about GG: you are the master of the red-board. I notice that in your Thoroughbred Times pieces (where it calls Ragozin "the modern father of speed figures", which I guess means you could call a twentieth century president the "modern father of his country") you have even stopped talking about races in advance, and now just give out figures that stakes horses ran after the fact. This goes along with your posting of sheets for races retroactively on your site, but just occasional ones that make your product look good-- not all sheets, for all tracks, every day, like we do in the Red Board Room.

If you want to be a mensch, post sheets for last year's Jockey Club Gold Cup, and the last two dirt races from 7/27 Saratoga, with the figures the horses have run since. Then we can have a conversation. Come on, surprise me.