You have to love Friedman's debating style.

Those of you that saw his post about Pleasantly Perfect are probably expecting an exhaustive reply from me, but it would be overkill. As I've already pointed out, while the horse was not a bet on the day, he was a use (one of four I used in the race, didn't hit it), in part because a lot of Eastern horses were not running, as I warned they might not. PP did look good enough to be one of only 2 future book bets I made on the BC (the field in the Classic was the other).

But let's keep it simple. Those of you who still have the Ragozin sheets for the BC (or just remember how unbelievably slow PP was) can go to the Race Of The Week section of our site and look at our BC sheets with the numbers they ran. You will see how the horses (including PP) looked going in, and how the numbers they ran fit with how they looked going in, and how they fit relative to each other. Ragozin has his BC numbers available on his site as well, so you can compare on all counts, although it would be easier if they posted full sheets, as they used to (can't imagine why they stopped).

As an aside, take a look at the Sneak Preview of our trainer stats for PP, who was second off a layoff. You will notice that Mandella gets a figure at least matching the horses previous top 2/3 of the time in that situation, and a new top an astounding 40% of the time.

I would also add this, regarding Len's comments that our patterns are "flat and unreadable"-- note how the BC numbers matched up with the previous figures of the horses, especially in the Classic (older horses, lots of figures). Those of you who have actually made figures will quickly recognize that this tightness not only confirms the figures assigned for the day, but the previous figure histories as well. Which means the patterns are pretty readable.

End of discussion. Or not.



TGJB