Okay. I was trying to get Friedman on the record about the figures before taking this discussion further, but I made the mistake of letting the discussion get sidetracked (again), which I'm sure Len is very happy about. I'm going to try very hard not to let that happen in the future.

1- You are correct not to use 3yo races for par levels. But once you have figure histories for the horses in those races, as we do, you definitely can use them as part of your process. In this case, those races came up very interesting, especially since one was the first race on the day, and the other was the only race after the Xtra Heat race (albeit a 2 turn race).

2- At Laurel, aside from the 1 and 2 turn split, the relationship between 6f and 7f is not constant. On the previous day (2/21) the 6-7 split was different than on 2/22, and even more extreme.

3- If you look at the day as flat, even by your method, you can see that the colt race (My Cousin Matt) is as out of line as the filly race. Once you factor in how slow the 7f races were compared to the 6f races, and make a correction, the disparity becomes even more extreme and obvious. If you do the Gen. George with the rest of the day, MCM and the horses behind him would get huge negatives, or you will be giving out awful numbers to everyone else-- unless you do a slide.

4- It rained during the card, and stopped before the two races I discussed here, after which the fog rolled in. The track was VERY slow for the first (3yo's, route), then got faster as it got wetter (this is true for the 6f, 7f, and routes independently). The fastest it got was for the MCM race. After that, the water was presumably sinking into the track, but for whatever reason, the track immediately got slower-- not only was the filly race slower, but the track for the final race (a 3yo route) was 5 points slower than for the previous route, the race right before MCM, run when the track was wetter.



TGJB