There was not an unfair thing in any of my posts. Friedman said “we only slide our variant when the physical resiliency of the track changes, a practice that produces accurate, objective numbers”. Aside from your putting words in his mouth (and giving him a base on balls), rain does NOT equal a change in the resilience of the surface. It may CAUSE a change in resilience, but even that’s an assumption, which is one of my points. He said they change variants WHEN the resilience changes, and to do that you would have to KNOW when the resilience itself changes, which means MEASURING it. To the degree any of us measure it, it is by the performance of the horses, which is another of my points.
Once again: “Objective Criteria” are NOT things that Ragozin trackmen CAN observe (and again you have put words in Friedman’s mouth)—the Ragozin trackman could have observed the watering of the Belmont grass courses, but did not—it was observable, but not observed. Did it therefore not matter? Was it not objectively a factor? Further, there are other observable phenomena which may either not be recorded or understood to be relevant, let alone measurable (shade, and other things I detailed in “Changing Track Speeds”, 11/17/01). By Friedman’s own words this took place on Wood day ’00, and the same phenomena existed on 9/15 at Belmont—hence the issue. There are also phenomena that are NOT observable, but still relevant, like the interactions of different soil compositions with the elements.
You may have been out buying Christmas decorations, so you may have missed Friedman’s Bella Belluci post of last week. Under the circumstances, the “unfair” business is annoying, considering the history, his comments, the fact that I quoted him correctly, didn’t take him out of context, and responded directly. He is spouting tripe in an attempt to make his figures appear scientifically accurate, and to snuff out critical analysis.
I’m cutting this very short because I have a lot to do today.



TGJB