[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Kasept

For starters, as CJ, Phil and others here that make their own figs will attest, making of the RAW numbers is 100% science and mathematical formulation. There is no nuance to the raw numbers. After the initial phase of establishing a base figure from the running times (+/- variant effect), there are nuances that each individual figure maker may utilize in their formulation. Weight, ground loss, wind effect, etc., can make up the 10% 'art' if you're allowing for the 90% science.

When Jerry Brown wrote that the Derby was relatively easy to make figures for, he means that once he established a fig for the top two finishers, the rest of the field fell in line nicely with the pattern range of their previous career efforts. That is part of the art of figure-making as well. When a race produces figures out of line with what most of the runners might have projected to run, (the Arkansas Derby is a perfect example of a race that was too 'high' on the Beyer scale for instance), you then may have to take into account an unusual circumstance that produced raw figures that don't fit with what the horses appear capable of doing. In that case, fig makers will split the variant or set the race appart (the '07 Bluegrass is an example).

Figures are never "an educated opinion", and the comments you read when people say, "I thought he deserved a 115 Beyer" are an example of those that have no idea what speed figures represent or how they are derived.

The part in bold has always been the hardest part for me to understand. I am not able to get why patterns and projections are used. For example, when horses get to the Derby, they are supposed to be 100% ready to run their peak races. Not before then. So projecting what a runner might do when he's 100% based on what he's been doing in the preps seems risky. Not only are they not at 100% in the preps but they are also facing very different circumstances than in the Derby. There are one-turn races. They aren't carrying 126 lbs. They aren't going 10f. It's different when you have horses that have established form doing certain things. Take Curlin now. We know what he can do when cranked up and going 10f so we know what kind of figures we should be able to expect. Same thing with all older horses. We knew what we could expect from Lost in the Fog when he was running because we had seen the same thing over and over. But when you are talking about horses that are still learning and developing and often facing new circumstances in each race, how can they accurately project what he's going to do facing the next new hurdle? We can accurately project what an in shape Marion Jones would run 100m in if she was running that in the Olympics tomorrow. But how could we accurately project what she would run the 400m hurdles in? For me, it's a hard thing to understand.