First of all, as followers of this site know, I've publicly challenged Len to a handicapping contest about 10 times, including challenging both him and Andy from the stage at the DRF Expo, with the contest to be hosted by DRF on their website. Len has never responded.

As far as a purely mechanical test goes, of course there are going to be individual situations where handicappers would not just use number power (and also ones where different handicappers using the SAME data would disagree, it happens all the time). But we all agree that faster is better, and that ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL, the faster horse will win. If you get a large enough sampling, the factors you describe will even out-- there will be roughly the same number of them favoring one side or another. And doing it mechanically eliminates the human element-- one person can be a better handicapper than the other, or hot, or bring inside information to the table, etc.

So bottom line, if you did the right kind of study over a large sampling, it would be indicative. The one Jimbo proposed-- based on an idea I had put forward-- was to take the last 3 of each horse, throw out the worst one, and average the other two. That would give a general picture of how fast each horse is. There are lots of ways you could then do the study (there are some statistics guys out there, I'm sure they have ideas), and we all might learn something. Like whether a "right' figure is right.

From my point of view, I'd be going up against an outfit that thinks "right" means Borrego ran a better figure running 10th in the Classic than winning the Gold Cup by a block. I like my chances.