5/29-30 (BEL): Vagrancy (G2); NYB Stakes; Met (G1), Sands Pt. (G2)

[philcski]

Originally Posted by cmorioles

While in the end you guessed correctly, it was for the wrong reason. Beyer doesn't use the standard one turn mile chart for races at Belmont. He has not for the whole meet. I'm pretty sure he didn't last year either but I don't remember 100%, so don't quote me on that. He adds about 8 points to the standard chart.

So, if using the regular one turn speed chart, the difference between Quality Road and Driven by Success should be about 12 points, not 16 or 17. But with the different chart in use for Belmont, the figure is actually about 20 points higher. Do you honestly believe the race figure should be 124? I know that I don't. Given that the Met was run in isolation from other dirt races, I think using the horses in the Met is much more accurate than using the other races on the card when you have to decide between the two.

To further befuddle people, the first race was split from the others as well, but I think this is a bad mistake by Hopkins/Beyer. The pace was very fast and the winner still went wire to wire. They gave the race a 77...poor work on that one in my opinion. It is probably a good approximation of the winner, but it makes the ones behind him look better than they actually ran by 10 or 11 points.

Thanks CJ for the excellent info.

About adding 8 points to the Belmont miles, I didn't know that and I have no idea why. If there were ONE place where a 7F time can be compared to a 1 turn mile at face value it's there, since the runups are equal. If anything, compared to say CD (which has virtually no runup at a mile), I would think that you would want to SUBTRACT something.

As for splitting the variants, I would have left it as is on all of them. If he ran a 121 or 124 or whatever on paper, leave it as such and let the bettor decide whether the horses can repeat that number. Maybe that's just me, but I don't try to make the numbers "fit" what I think the horses can do, but what they actually did. If there's a real reason I think something is wrong (like for example the timer ch on the Withers I was sure of) then I'll take liberties but otherwise I think the more you tinker the more you end up putting your own opinions into the number. Trip and pace were NOT supposed to be a part of the Beyer equation. Seems like the guy who does the CD numbers agrees with me (for the most part) whereas Hopkins doesn't.

[cmorioles]

I agree it is a tough call of when to split and not. However, when a race is isolated and surrounded by turf races on both sides like the Met, more times than not if the horses in the race indicate the track changed speeds it probably did. I'm not saying every time, since there really isn't a way to know until later. But most times, Beyer does a good job in those spots.

On the raw figures, I have them as 120 and 132, but it is done using a computer. The Beyer charts I've seen published tend to go awry as times get extremely fast or slow. I agree about Hopkins, he is probably the worst of the group.