Re: Leaving 11th Street (1120 Views)
Posted by:
TGJB (IP Logged)
Date: June 18, 2002 04:34PM
I did have some arguments about making figures with Ragozin when I was there, but you have to remember that when I was there no-one else was publishing any ready to use figures, let alone ones using ground and weight, on a graph. Beyer figures in the paper were 15 years away, and Ragozin didn't even have a copy machine--the figures didn't have to be that good in order to give a tremendous edge.
When I began making my own figures I had no idea what to expect--I believed all the stuff Ragozin said about his own ability, much as the Raggies do now. After about a year it became clear the figures couldn't be as accurate as he claimed--the underlying data (ground, wind etc.) wasn't accurate enough for it to be. I had already begun to question a lot of his approaches when the famous Belmont turf course incident occurred, and that crystallized a lot of my thinking. Since then I've been much less dogmatic.
TGJB