Re: Derby views from a Ragozin user (861 Views)
Posted by:
TGJB (IP Logged)
Date: April 30, 2007 01:59PM
There are some interesting "differences" between TG and Rags on the Derby horses, and if I get some time I'll address them. But on the Blue Grass and Miff's point-- it looks like they did the opposite of what Miff thought they did, and it's crazy.
What they basically did was to declare (correctly) that it was what we call an "S. Pace", a race where the pace is so slow that the final time is affected-- they just can't make up the lost time, and the final time is slower than it should have been. In those cases you have to throw out the time and just do the race off the horses figure histories and their relationship at the wire, after taking into account lengths beaten, ground, and weight. That's how all the serious figure makers (TG, Beyer, TimeForm) do it.
But here's the thing. After declaring the race "S. Pace", Ragozin gave two of the horses in the race-- Teuflesberg and Dominican-- big new tops.
How does that work, exactly? You decide the race would have gone faster, so you don't use the final time and do it off the horses, but you give 30% of the horses in the race (or more, I only have the ones coming back in the Derby) big new tops? Huh?
What they did, it looks like, was to both declare it S. Pace AND tie it to the next race, which was the one that featured an even crazier pace (1:18:23 6f), which meant you had to adjust it even more. They tied two S. Pace races together, which is completely nuts. The whole point of those S. Paces is that you CAN'T use the final time.
Having said all that a couple of points. First, given the circumstances of the Blue Grass, when it comes to Street Sense, I wouldn't take his figure seriously unless it had been terrible, or huge, for which he would have had to win by ten, which was pretty much impossible under the circumstances. I think it's basically irrelevant to reading him whether it's a forward move, backward move, or pair.
Second, despite the differences in our figures and Len's, it looks like users of both data will be playing mostly the same group of horses, unfortunately. At least I would be-- from the comments of some posters here I'm wondering if they are looking at the same sheets I'm looking at for the seminar.