TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

[color=#FF0000]> On a related point-- I had a discussion with some
> people here once about whether Beyer uses pars
> (which he said at the Expo, sitting right next to
> me, that he did not). From the opening paragraph
> of the cover story of Thursday's DRF, by Dave
> Litfin: "The Beyer Speed Figure pars for
> second-level allowance races and $50,000 claimers
> are virtually identical..."[/color]

On this note, there's no reason to believe that Dave Litfin acquired sudden Alzheimer's. He was privy to Beyer Pars or he wouldn't have mentioned them. He is a very methodical guy. (Perhaps overly so) Which raises the next implication and that is "Why did Beyer fudge on his use of Pars?" It may be he didn't understand the question. It may be he does use them and didn't want the public to know. It's a speed simple game. You try to isolate a buried race that is much faster than it looks or you position yourself against a very fast looking race because you consider it slower than it appears/has been scored. If Beyer admitted his numbers are based upon Pars why would anyone need Beyer? Pars are easy to produce for one specific track or a specific circuit. They are time consuming but educational and to a certain extent fun. They are certainly revealing. So maybe Beyer uses them and lied. The other possibility is that he utilizes pars as a reference point when applying deduction off the horses. In other words he uses them as an additional weapon in his figure arsenal and doesn't consider that his final figure is based solely upon the deviation difference from Par.

If Beyer uses pars as in the last example above. Its certainly the conservative thing to do and keeps his revolver chamber loaded. A man doesn't want to get killed for lack of shooting back.

I've never understood dispensing with par. If you follow the races long enough, you can keep a "rolling par' in your mind's eye. But dispensing with it entirely has been troubling to me since I realized Par was considered a Dodo bird in some circles.