PAR FILES & VARIANTS

[HIGH ROLLER]

i was just curious. i understand that cynthia publishing, HSH and just average joes make their own pars.

if everyone is working with the same data shouldn't all these pars be very similar?

and the variants?

my question is there one better than another?

[kenwoodallpromos]

Thedre are several ways to make pars, as well as variants. I think some people make their own pars to keep them up to date. Whatever race finish times used to make certain pars, they are called pars because they are based on how fast the certain times are, averaged over a long period of time.
Netcapper's Gordon Pine says now that variants are more useful if tracked on a daily bases.
I find only very general use for variants or speed ratings because the source info is not a large base of information.

[thoroughbred]

When it comes to pars and variants, we should always keep in mind how inaccurate they can be in spite of best efforts.

For example. Just suppose, on a particular day, that the horses that are racing, are in exceptional condition, and therefore are very fast. When a variant is calculated, it will be attributed to the track being fast, when in reality it was the speed of the horses that was important that day.

I know the above is an extreme example; I only used it to make a point.

Now about Pars. Here we might say, that by taking lots of data, over a long period of time, we can get good average values for par. But what happens, if just yesterday, for example, the track surface is treated in a new way. The average par value, based on past data, would not be very useful today.

Again, I'm using a hypothetical arguement to make the point.

I am not saying that variants and pars are not useful. In spite of what I just wrote, they have often been good indicators of conditions. I just wanted to point out that we have to keep their limitations in mind.

[kenwoodallpromos]

A real life example- Calder Has always been a very slow track, 4f times 47.0 and slower. 7-10 and 7-11 almost all races on dirt and turf were 44.0- 47.0. But on 7-11 the dirt 4f times varied from 46.56- 50.21, over 3 1/2 second.
Knowing not just par times but current track speed and portential horses' speeds would be very important.
an individual track's biases and stretch speed can vary critically day-to-day.