Hey DrugS...
 

How good did he look?

http://www1.drf.com/drfPDFChartRaces...=20111203&RN=3

I'm not Drugs, although I do take some, but he looked very good. I will say he didn't beat much, but was very impressive doing so.

Sorry I missed it... will have to see the replay.

It was a statebred race and he was bet off the board. There have been a lot of exciting maiden winners across the country the last few weeks who have got no buzz on any boards.

The Mike Stidham debuter at Fair Grounds from a week or so ago -- Table Three Ten or something like that -- she wasn't bet and was fucl<ing awesome. Great upside -- and with turf route breeding top and bottom. The Macho Rocket debut race was pretty good out West. That will be a productive race.

The Gomez firster who won the last at Hollywood yesterday is that the horse you told me about over the summer? Same sire at least.

What about the Stidham 2nd timer that opened up at 1:5 at the FG Saturday (12-3) in the 6th race. I thought it was pretty weird. He end up going off at 4:5 and running a tiring 3rd.
The weird thing was, I was expecting the Asmussen full to Student Council to take all the beating. He went off as the 5:2 2nd choice and won.

I hand-timed this race three times and here are the times I got: 1:04.03, 1:04.08 and 1:04.01. That's about 1.30 seconds off from what the track had--he got a 100 Beyer based on the incorrect time. The time was 6.5L off, which is 18 Beyer points at 5 1/2 furlongs. So he really ran an 82 if you keep the variant the same. . . assuming my math isn't off somewhere, which is entirely impossible. If they don't change it, that could be a pretty nice piece of info when he's 3-5 next out.

Trackus had the race 1:02.33 and the offical timer had the race 1:02.34

There was a run-up of over 3 seconds.

Duh. . . I'm stupid.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

Hopefully this debut winner from yesterday has a little more success than his half brother Travelin Man did when winning that type of race with that type of figure early in the GP meet last year.

Well, he did finish second in a Grade II and then win another one. . . But I hear you--he fell apart pretty badly after that.

If you were right about the 1.3 seconds it was about 8 lengths, or 22 points at 5 1/2 furlongs....not that it matters, but since you were dumping on yourself already.....

Isn't a length 1/5 of a second? Or is it .16? As you can see, I've never bothered to learn how to really make figures beyond the absolute basics--and I've never once even contemplated run-ups. I pretty much just trust the Beyers and spend my time on other places where I can find an edge. I'm barely aware of what a naked time for a given distance should be.

The old rule of thumb is that a length equals 1/5th of a second .... but to steal a line from Steve Davidowitz's book...."mathmatically speaking, a length should equal 1/5th of a second only when a horse travels a furlong in 15 seconds. The only horses who go that slow charge 10 cents a ride."

Disappointing that Trakus doesn't give us time and distance from the gate, don't you think?

i don't think so. all tracks use run up timers. trakus should be tied in to that.

So basically we get the same data twice save a few hundredths.

Trakus is programmed to know how long the run-up is and eliminate that data from the timing. That being said, there are still, and always will be differences in the timings.

Watching tracks time races is like making hot dogs (or for us guys from Philly...scrapple) - you REALLY REALLY don't want to see the process, but you absolutely salivate over the end result.

I know of one track where the beams don't work at all, and someone actually just hits a button when they think the horses pass a pole, and I wouldn't be surprised, at all, if that happens more than one place.

From an overall perspective, North Americans are once again the crazy ones, as no one else in the rest of the world uses run-ups. The timing starts when the gates open everywhere else, and they run truer distances.

Anyone can see that runup is not included in Trakus. I'm just saying it would be better to include it. Runups are really an unfortunate part of US racing as they distort the times. It isn't a huge deal, but it does have an effect. For the record though, distances in Europe are often a joke, so I wouldn't say they run truer distances. They are just wrong for different reasons not related to run up.

Some of these differences are just unexplainable, other than to say our timing systems suck. Gulfstream timing has been a running joke for years. Just look at some of the races from yesterday comparing Trakus to Equibase:

R-2, T: 1:35.15, E: 1:34.27
R-3, T: 1:43.86, E: 1:43.08
R-6, T: 1:40.39, E: 1:39.78

You have differences equating to about 4 and 5 lengths there alone. Is Gulfstream really advertising "Our system sucks, but we're putting it in the PPs anyway"? Why not just get rid of the bad timer and report Trakus times? Doesn't the chart man just report what is on the infield timer? How hard it is to switch?

Steve, you going to ask Ritvo about this stuff?