Quote:
Originally Posted by Port Conway Lane
You hit the nail on the head. The time for the derby this year was faster than 27 of the last 40 runnings. I'd love to see anyone convince a jury of laymen that horses are getting slower because their "numbers" say so. The defense would simply point out countless occasions where the numbers were changed weeks after they were assigned and days when the final times of races were identical yet the numbers were not. Insanity.
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Raw final time has nothing to do with how fast a horse runs.
If it did -- $10,000 dirt claimers at Turf Paradise would be better horses than top Grade 1 males at Saratoga.
Raw final time is a laughably worthless indicator of anything because any race track can be made extremely fast or extremely slow, by any track super, on any given day.
A variant will find how fast or slow the track was VS par.
The brilliant Tizway won the 2011 Whitney over Flat Out in 1:52.43. Quality Road won the Woodward at Saratoga in 1:50.00 -- Curlin won it in 1:49.34 and Premium Tap won it 1:50.65 before running a close 3rd to Invasor and Bernardini in the BC Classic.
Tri Jet went 1:47 flat in the '74 Whitney going 9fs at Saratoga -- and he stumbled at the start and won with a last gasp lunge in a close finish.