How a horse improves by 20+ lengths in a month...
 

I know of only two such ways.

#1.) The Shifty Sheik way. This involves a trainer change to a trainer who has great juice.



Notice trainer Oscar Berrera claims the horse on Aug 19th and less than a month later he gets said horse to just miss against Horse of the Year Slew O' Gold in the Woodward after winning 3 straight races - all with a week or less of rest between starts.

#2.) The Devil May Care way. This involves everything in the world thats humanly possible going against a horse in a race like it did in her 64 Beyer double digit loss to dog biscuit closer Jody Slew in the Silverbulletday.

Exactly one month later - she returned to slay the mighty Amen Hallelujha and did so in faster time than the Florida Derby even though she was anything but professional in the stretch.

I did deep post position research on every winter track in the country and concluded that - without question - Fairgrounds route races had the only compelling post bias of any track in the country.

Post position #1 has won 62 of 265 FG dirt routes this meet. That's 23.4% wins. Post positions 8 and out are a combined 66 for 907.

According to post stats, in theory, FG is the only winter track in the country where you get truly punished for racing wide and truly rewarded for riding the rail.

Devil May Care was 5 wide on the first turn and 3 wide on the 2nd turn chasing a pace set by a horse breaking from post #1 that surprisingly earned an absolutely blistering fast pace figure.

One thing turned me off in a big way about DMC's performance. She finished 13 lengths behind the horse who set the too fast to believe pace. Albeit the pacesetter had far superior tactical position.

I concluded that DMC's race was a total throwout and drew a line through it. Her last true running line was an unimpressive 89 Beyer Grade 1 win in career start #2. I basically concluded that due to healthy progression from age 2 to 3 she was going to beat the overhyped Christine Daae but had no chance of improving 20+ lengths off her last race to beat Amen.

Looking at DMC's sneaky good performance at FG where she ran a 106 pace fig for 6fs despite going 5w, 3w before finishing up with a 64 final figure .. her final figure improved over 20 lengths next out but when all factors are baked in I'm not so sure how much she really improved.

I don't buy any of Pletcher's nonsense that her poor performance at FG was the result of her acting up in the gate.

I'm not knocking her at all.

I'm excusing her FG race for legit reasons ... not idiotic Pletcher esque reasons like "she acted up in the gate and that's why she did no running at all that day"

So Pletcher should have said she needed a race, made an ill-advised middle move at FG and was facing an overrated N1X winner, a stretched out middle distance horse and a CA shipper from a trainer who's 0 for his last 13 with horses going from synthetics to dirt in stakes races.

NT

Maybe she just had throat surgery ;) it's fillies
they often to this

I'm not so sure she needed a race .. he said she was training big going into that race and was puzzled by her performance but blamed it on her acting up in the gate.

The performance was actually big... the result wasn't.

She ran an absolutely monster race for 6f considering she was only 1 length off a torrid pace figure at that stage .. consider further that she was 5w and 3w and the pace setter was rail, rail ... she actually covered 6 lengths more of ground than the horse setting the blistering pace. Which would skyrocket her pace number to the moon .. and that's not even considering that FG is the last track in the country where you want to race wide on the turns.

A decent farrier and a positive attitude.....works magic.

The Marty Wolfson "worming" is all they need.

When Left Bank won the Whitney in 2002 .. he ran 9fs at Saratoga in 1:47 flat and equaled the track record.

That Shifty Sheik horse ran 1:47 2/5 in the mud going 9fs at Saratoga just 5 days after missing the board in a claiming race in his first start for Oscar.

The very same year - Slew O' Gold beat Track Barron in 1:48 3/5ths in the Whitney. Obviously two different days ... but damn.

When I first started following racing - Oscar was a laughably bad trainer - I mean as bad as it gets. His son is a ham and egger at Finger Lakes and he's way better than Oscar was. I always thought my father was lying to me when he'd tell me stories about Oscar's greatness.

He once tried to convince me that a lot attendant at his car lot was the greatest Jai Alai player of the 80's .. he took me to some little musem at a fronton in Miami. The guy had the same name as the lot attendant - but obviously it wasn't the same person.

Oscar would never resort to bush league tactics like claim and drop like these 30% hacks do now. All other factors were moot. Distance, class, post, jockey, time between races, etc. meaningless.
Didnt even bother to send them to the track.

I can't believe Nike hasn't gotten into the horseshoe business by now...what a wasted opportunity....Just think about how a little corporate conjecture could have dispelled this "run a muck" witch hunting... Clearly the poor guy was jonesing for a pedi and a fly set of skids

Joey???....The great Jewish cesta snd pelota slinger?

Yes ... Joey Long was the name of the guy who washed cars.

My father was obsessed with trying to convince me that Joey Long was the great Joey.

I found a Beyer article on Oscar at the time of his death.

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-04-..._oscar-barrera

There was no crowd bias for Joey or anything. :rolleyes:

Combining the starters from post 9 and out doesn't give you a realistic picture. Only 1 horse can win a race and based upon your 62/265 stat there were 265 races. Post 8 and out has won 66 of the 265 races.

With respect to post position stats, just curious, how many of those races were at 1 1/8 miles and what post position won those races?

But there were 907 starters outside. If you want to expand it, you should compare posts 1-3 vs posts 8+.

There is a very strong inside bias at 1M 40y at FG but the bias is much less at 1 1/16 and there isn't enough data at 1 1/8 to determine.

FG 1-year race stats (so slightly different from Drugs)

1 40y - Inside (Post 1 and 2) 62 winners/182 races 34%
1 40y - Outside (Outside 2 posts) 24/182 13%

1 1/16 - Inside (Post 1 and 2) 21/85 25%
1 1/16 - Outside (Outside 2 posts) 18/85 21%

1 1/8 - Inside (Post 1 and 2) 0/3 0%
1 1/8 - Outside (Outside 2 posts) 2/3 66%

Thanks for this. Confirms my suspicions about the "route" bias.

So, essentially, and a bit more succinctly, you're basically saying that you had to do a whole lot of work in order to UNDO the damage done by the figure. :rolleyes: Well done.

Did absolutely zero work at all.

1.) I would have studied post position stats for every winter track anyway. I do it every year.

2.) I would have a pace figure for that race anyway.

3.) I would have watched the race and noticed her obvious tough trip.


There was no damage done by the figure anymore than there was damage done to her naked form - because her naked form shows her losing by more than 13 lengths to Jody Slew.

You can't even attempt to quantify how much trouble she had with exactitude - but obviously the vicious pace and incredibly bad trip in tandem caused her to stop to a walk in the final 1/4 mile after running a monster race to the pace call.

I think sane handicapper draws a line through that race ... they also draw a line through her flop at SA on Pro-Ride two back ... that leaves the Frizette as the lone race on her form as a true gauge of her ability.

She won a Grade 1 with a 89 Beyer going a mile in just career start #2 - with healthy progression from age 2 to 3 .. that places her true race in the mid 90's.

In hindsight, I guess I should have taken into consideration that Pletcher's barn is red hot this year and was not red hot when she won the Frizette last year. I think the seemingly invincible Amen Hall also found that final 1/8th a struggle.

None of what I thought going in is the point. The point is that you almost never see the form of a horse improve that sharply in 30 days while possibly running no better than she ran at FG when she was crushed by inferior horses. It's not like she was sick or bothered by something in the FG race. It's not like she was juiced in the GP race.

DrugS

The horse had a horrendous trip at FG --- a trip that, basically, NO horse would've won with. Then, she gets a perfect trip at GP. Where's the need to quantify? Where's the need to explain why she ran 'faster'? Common sense dictates that she certainly ran significantly faster with the easy trip, as any horse that's run off its feet early, making a huge move early in a race where ALL the chasers collapse, would not come home very fast (certainly not as fast as it would with a better setup).

Figures will become relevant, IMO, when we match the figure with the race type and the type of trip the horse had within that type. Point me to someone doing that.

You really have no idea what you're talking about.

Go look at post stats for all the winter tracks and you'll see FG's sticks out like a sore thumb.

Post 1 66 for 265
Post 7 20 for 225
Post 8 12 for 171
Post 9 7 for 120
Post 10 7 for 87
Post 11 1 for 53

You have an obsession with trying to point out that knowing how fast a horse runs in a race from start to finish is worthless information.

I'm not even sure what you consider to be non worthless info other than the timing jocks give in their rides.

Tell me how you define what you call a wipeout?

I have no idea what I am talking about? 12 + 7 + 7 + 1 = 27 which is a hell of a lot different than 66 which you stated and I commented about.

If you get on a track bike and head over to the your local velodrome, or just to your local park and ride with the roadies, you'll realize that timing of moves is, essentially, what it's all about. Now, since Dominguez has shown that horses can be ridden like track bikes, not the way that the in-the-know types insist they should be ridden, it follows that timing is the key factor. Watch just about any race at GG (or WO, etc.) and explain to me how numbers matter when all these jocks do is collapse races. Horses that moved prematurely one week, come back to win the other with a better timed ride. If I have a way of identifying race types and what moves within them were advantageous or disadvantageous AND how a given horse runs within these types, I have a nice alternative to figures. I can see why a horse ran well or poorly, when a horse is coming into form, and, more importantly, whether a horse can run AGAINST its setup. Telling me a horse runs well late, for example, given its pace figure, is basically worthless. This is because you're not telling me whether the horse can close against the grain and not just in races that fall apart.

As for wipeouts, these are races where all the others in the race are retreating, in terms of lengths behind, relative to the winner. This is as good as it gets. Of course, most wipeouts are the result of perfect trips.

Let me try this again ....

Post 6: 19 for 251
Post 7: 20 for 225
Post 8: 12 for 171
Post 9: 7 for 120
Post 10: 7 for 87
Post 11: 1 for 53

That's a combined 66 wins.

Post 1 is 62 for 265.

Sometimes its best looking stuff up instead of going on memory all the time.

Now it makes sense and your point is well taken.

I went on memory and should have said 6 instead of 8.

The point is this that 62 for 265 is 23.4%

66 for 907 is 7.3%

23.4% is huge - 7.3% is surprisingly low.

What you're talking about is basically trip handicapping.

Oscar Berrera Jr claimed a horse named Afrikaner on March 3rd for $10,000. Then enters him into a conditioned $50,000 starters alowance race on March 20. He was eventually scratched though. Is this somewhat like what his father used to do?

No problem I would do it different as I see it as 265 events not 907 starts but it is your money.

Oscar Berrera Jr. is like a training genius compared to what his father was in his final years in the late 80's and early 90's.

If I posted stats for 20 tracks - and both sprints and routes.. you'll have 40 sets of data.

You'll notice that 39 of the 40 sets look similar - and one FG's dirt routes .. sticks out like a sore thumb with wildly skewed numbers in relation to everywhere else.

In the dirt sprints at FG - post 1 wins 16% - which is only 3 percentage points better than the next best post at 13%.

The quy earlier in this thread pointed out that the numbers are much more skewed for the quirky Mile 40...

No

That's all the more telling that saving ground into the first turn is key at FG in dirt routes because 8f and 40 yards is the shortest distance they run in dirt routes.

The further away you start from the first turn - the longer your run into it is - and the more chance you have to move closer to the rail.

Here are the stats for 8f 40y races at FG this meet:

Post 1: 51-for-181 (28.2% wins)

Posts 2 through 5: a combined 81-for-724 (11.2% wins)

Posts 6 and outward: a combined 52-for-704 (7.4% wins)

It looks more dramatic if I don't combine them .. but it also takes more time to type that sh!t up.

Yes, it's an element of trip handicapping anyway ... obviously not the whole process.

No he would have entered him in a real allowance race and won off the screen.

That last out pace setter just won the Gr 2 stakes at FG breaking from the rail a few minutes ago.

She went from 5/1 with 5 MTP to paying just $7.80

The Fat Man will note that both horses recieved nicely timed rides from just behind the lead in their Grade 2 wins ... instead of being used hard to score wicked fast pace figures.