2YO Turf Stakes Racing - Foreign Shippers
 

Anyone have good insights into how to evaluate 2yo European form relative to US form in turf stakes races?

I don't seem to have much trouble evaluating 3yos and older, but for some reason the 2yo turf racing in England, France etc.. seems weaker than the US racing even though it's the other way around for older horse. The scale I use doesn't seem to hold up with 2yos. More evidence of that is how well Wesley Ward does when he ships his 2yos over there.

We may just crank up our 2yos harder, they may debut some of their better horse later than 2, they may have later developing pedigrees, or it could be something else. I don't know. All I know is I have a tough time evaluating them relative to US horses. It's a good thing they rarely come and even rarer I bet one, but I'd still like to be able to evaluate them better.

I would assume it is because even as distances move to two turns, speed is at a premium with 2yos and local horses have the advantage in that regard.

It's probably more difficult because as a general rule the Europeans like to develop their younger horses much slower than here in the States. Their not interested in "flash in the pants" results. That's because many of their horses are in it for the long haul and greater distances. They're also prohibited from using any form of drugs on their racing stock.

I'm going to run some tests on my database to see if I can learn anything, but the sample sizes for 2yo foreign shippers isn't very large. All I can tell right now is that my "automated ratings" do not hold up well for 2yos the way they do for 3yos and older. I'm consistently overrating them.

I like to look @ BRIS Pedigree Turf rating for 2 yo on the Turf.
Not all foreign shippers have one.

I have no way to breakout foreign shippers, but general ROI:
2yo on Turf
Starts 485
Hit 12%
ROI +6.9%
(have about 22K races in my db)

Very low hit %, but had a few nice P4/P5 over the years throwing in the top pedigree # on a foreign fist time starter.

I ran a few tests where I lowered my ratings on their European 2yo form, but I got worse results. I lost a few winners and didn't pick enough from the next highest rated UD based horse to replace them. :bang: I'm going to have to keep looking at it. The biggest problem is the sample size. It's very small. So even if I find something, it's going to be hard to be confident its significant.