turf par times

[proximity]

i'm not the biggest turf bettor in the world, but i was recently reading through some handicapping books by beyer and quinn where they both talked about turf races having relatively (compared to dirt) "leisurely" early paces followed by "all out" finishes.

beyer even changed his figure making to account for this by using his 6 1/2 furlong dirt charts for turf routes.

i was also reading tejas kid's thread about the retama timing errors and all this led me to some 2006 retama turf pars (from a company that hasn't increased the prices in 15 years!!) that didn't seem to gel with what beyer and quinn were saying.

for example at 6 1/2 furlongs (dirt) the par time difference between the highest and lowest classes at ret was exactly 3 seconds. at a mile on dirt it increased to 3 3/5 seconds. now according to beyer's theory the turf mile difference should be 3 seconds (like at 6 1/2 f dirt) but the par maker has it as being 3 3/5 seconds, just like on dirt.

also for the 3/4 fraction, the par maker has the difference at 1 4/5 seconds for the dirt mile. according to quinn and beyer, you'd think that the range of the fractions would be (much) tighter for the 1 mile turf, but (again) the par maker had it equal to the dirt par difference of 1 4/5 seconds.

and it seemed to be this way for alot of the tracks.

either beyer and quinn are wrong, turf racing dramatically changed since they released their books, turf stakes horses all closed from 6 lengths back while md clms all went wire to wire, or the par times are completely off????

any turf par makers care to shed some light on this??

[cj]

Sprints are pretty much the same on any surface, dirt, turf, or synthetic.

That said, I think the biggest thing you are seeing as that the people writing the books you are mentioning are talking about turf racing at the high claiming level and above. Places like Retama run very cheap turf races, so you just aren't going to see the same type races and styles as you would at places like Belmont, Gulfstream, or Hollywood.

Here is what I have for Retama, the average pace time of the WINNER in mile races for equivalent final times:

Dirt:
1:13.55
Turf:
1:14.03
Turf (Rail at 20 feet)
1:14.21

So, even for those cheaper races, they are going slower early and finishing faster by my calculations.

[proximity]

thank you cj, you raise some good points i didn't think of.

however, i think these 2006 pars are just wrong. per your suggestion, i checked the 50,000 claimers vs graded stakes pars for saratoga @ 1 1/8m and found much the same thing as in the ret pars. also in the beyer book it was a cheaper horse (daria's brother?) that he used as his example for changing his turf route chart.

[proximity]

Here is what I have for Retama, the average pace time of the WINNER in mile races for equivalent final times:

Dirt:
1:13.55
Turf:
1:14.03
Turf (Rail at 20 feet)
1:14.21

So, even for those cheaper races, they are going slower early and finishing faster by my calculations.

say for final times a second faster or slower than the one you referenced....
how do you find that the race fractions would move? what i'm asking is, theoretically on the turf, there would be more "rating" going on so the fractions for different final times would be in a tighter range on the turf than on the dirt??????

[cj]

First, I made a mistake, the dirt time is 1:13.10, not 1:13.55.
But, I can fix that and here is what you asked for:

Dirt
1:12.36 1:38.20
1:13.10 1:39.20
1:13.84 1:40.20

Turf
1:13.28 1:38.20
1:14.03 1:39.20
1:14.77 1:40.20

Turf (20 ft rail)
1:13.46 1:38.20
1:14.21 1:39.20
1:14.96 1:40.20

I think that is what you are after!

[proximity]

so i am actually wrong about the change in pace time relative to the change in final time? but beyer and quinn are finding that classwise, the turf horses run in a narrower range of final time differences, so 1/5 sec is worth more on turf (and possibly polytrack) for both pace and final figures?

so in determining the overall closer vs speed tendency of a given track/dist/surf, it would possibly be best to look at the range of final times between certain classes of horses and compare this to similar classes of horses for the same distance at other tracks???

thanks for the help and info cj!!

[proximity]

Dirt
1:12.36 1:38.20
1:13.10 1:39.20
1:13.84 1:40.20


also it's getting late and i've asked alot of questions here, but one more.

wouldn't these ret dirt pars indicate that this is a very speed favoring track with very little rating going on by the jockeys?

it seems that on a more "normal" dirt track you'd usually only see about a 1.2 second difference in the mile pace pars for a 2 second difference in final time, but the difference here is a full 1.5 seconds, which is exactly what it would be when directly comparing 6f and 1m final times!! this implies that despite the race being 1/4 mile longer, that the jockeys are hardly rating the horses any extra at all!!