Figure making is nowhere near a pure science-- there is a lot of judgement involved. There are a lot of "data bits" that can be used in forming that judgement-- the raw figures that horses within a given race ran relative to each other, relative to what those in surrounding races ran, to those run at similar and dissimilar distances (1 and 2 turns etc.), and on surrounding days. There are also other bits of information-- weather, track work-- that can be used to piece together a picture of what is going on. But in the end, all "projection style" figures are made using the figure histories of the horses, and judgement.

Obviously, the more data, the easier the decision making process. By that I mean the more apples you have to work with, the better your ability to judge one individual apple. One of the mistakes one figure maker (Ragozin) makes is to blindly use broad averages combining various types of fruit-- sprints with routes, different races on a day where the variant is changing, different days (details on this in "Figure Making Methodology", 1/31/03 this site, and other posts).

Florida Derby day was the kind of day that tests a figure maker's judgement because the amount of each fruit was very limited. The track was obviously changing speed, making it impossible (and incorrect) to narrowly correlate (tie together) races with each other. The fields were small, meaning the number of data bits within each "apple" was limited, and within the small fields were grass horses running on dirt (so their figure histories were of limited value), and young, lightly raced horses jumping to new tops (meaning thoses horses can't be used to nail down the variant).

So yes, there is more judgement involved than usual, and more chance of getting it wrong (meaning by up to a point or two-- if there is more doubt than that I leave a box instead of a figure). As it happens, the Florida Derby was the only race that was seriously in question-- the groups of routes on either side were different from each other, but pretty solid. The sixth and seventh were at minus 6, the ninth, tenth and twelfth at about minus 10. I ended up doing the eighth (Fla. Derby) at minus 7.5, and the more I've looked at it the more I think it's right.

By the way, I think that despite the sliding variant Ragozin will get this figure about right, because the track speed for that race actually ended up being close to the average one for the routes on the day. If he does things the way he usually does he will give the ones in the two preceding routes a little better than they deserve, and rob the ones in the later races a little.



TGJB