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Originally Posted by philcski
If you read Beyer's books, he hand wrote a lot of figures in the PP's he includes for study- for example i know General Assembly was a 134 in the Travers.
I have a sense that some of the figures are MUCH higher than what he would award now- which means he either (a) revised down his formula somewhat or ( b ) interjects more human decisionmaking into the final variant selections than before.
For example, Rockhill Native earned a 119 for his Young America win at 2. No 2YO has come even close to that in the last 15 years. My first love as a fan of the game, Devil's Bag, had several in this range as well.
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I completely agree with what you are saying and have said repeatedly that when they went public and Beyer allowed these guys to change numbers based on "what made sense" to them, that much of their validity went out the window.
Beyer's initial two books are the greatest racing books ever written, PERIOD!!
Everything you need to know about the basics is in those books, everything.
Biases, trips, how to watch races, trainer intent, etc. Its all there. Noone entering this game should read anything but those two books to start out with.
The problem I have is that they should have just kept publishing the raw numbers. Let us decide "what makes sense". The other problem is that if you read the guys who make many of these numbers, they are always talking about a figure "being in line" with what makes sense. Just post the raw number ok? You take away the ability to spot potential bounces when you keep "evening out" the numbers to "make sense".
Too much of the published figs are now a couple of guys opinions. I respect Mark Hopkins and Dick Jerardi both. Jerardi writes a column for the DRF quite often and its one of the best reads in the DRF, always entertaining. But I don't particularly want or care about what their opinions are on how fast a horse ran, just give me the raw number as determined by Beyer's formula. You know, the formula that made him successful and a pioneer in the first place?
I always have said that Summit of Speed Day at Calder in 2003 was the final straw for me, although it worked out great for me!!!!
On that day Valid Video and Shake You Down ran 6f, about one hour apart, on the same track and both ran identical times.
Shockingly, they gave them far different figs. Shake got a much higher fig.
I'm sorry, but that made no sense to me whatsoever.