2015 Saratoga Daily Variants
 

I finished up my dirt par charts today and thought I'd give them a whirl by trying to make daily variants for opening day at Saratoga. If anyone else has done the daily variants today I'd be interested in seeing what you came up with!

There were 5 dirt sprints and 1 dirt route.

I'm kind of guessing at the route variant. Hard to say with only 1 sample.

Overall, the races generally ran slower than par at every fraction with the exception of two sprint races that were less than a 1/5 of a second fast at the first fraction.

Thoughts?

I usually leave the figure making to the experts but just wanted to make sure you knew that the track was sealed after the Schuylerville because of the tornado warning but apparently it never actually rained.

Not sure if that affected the track much at all but might be something to consider just in case :)

Godspeed with your variants! There's a bad pun in there somewhere lol

what does this mean? For sprints, are you saying the track was 2 fifths of a second slow, or 2 seconds slow?

The track was definitely slow, it appeared like the rail was dull, and the track definitely favored stalkers, closers, and outside paths, a tiring track. Last year's meet I had it favoring closers 7 days, favoring speed one day and the rest no bias.

For the Sprint variant, the 4f to finish is the final ~2f correct? and the route variant 6f to finish is the final 3f? If so how can the route variant for almost the same piece of track be one second faster the sprint?

I personally had the variant split after (I think) the first two dirt races.

My variants are in seconds. So I have the sprint daily variants 1/2 second slow at the first call, 1 second slow at the second call and 2 and 1/5 second slow at the finish, (i.e., 0.49s, 1.04s, 2.18s).

Here are the variants for each dirt race:

Code:

---

      2F      4F        6F        Final
 2. 0.32s      1.07s              0.83s  MSW Fillies 2yo state bred 5.5 furlongs
 4. 0.01f      0.21s              1.59s  STK Fillies 2yo 6 furlongs 
 6. 0.98s      1.72s              2.00s  MSW Fillies 2yo 5.5 furlongs
 8. 1.37s      2.06s              2.32s  AOC NW3 $62.5k 6 furlongs
10. 0.19f      0.13s              4.16s  Claiming $16k NW2 7 furlongs
----------------------------------------
  0.49s      1.04s              2.18s  SPRINT DAILY VARIANT
========================================

      2F      4F        6F        Final
 1.            1.28s    0.93s    1.07s  AOC NW3 $40k 9 furlongs
----------------------------------------
              ????      ????      ????  ROUTE DAILY VARIANT?
========================================

---

It looks like the sprint final time variants got slower with each race.

It isn't clear to me what the route DV should be, but it looks like it should be slower than par.

Based on what I am reading here and what Beyer did I'm going to guess is was a tough day. ;)

The route race was the first race of the day.

Someone said the track was sealed after the 2nd race.

CJ said he did a split variant.

If the track got slower as the day went on (and that seems to be the case judging from my sprint variants for races 2-10) then it makes sense that the route daily variant could be 1.00 and the sprint daily variant 2.00.

But if the track was getting slower as the day went on then it is possible that there should be separate daily variants made for each race.

There were my figures for the winners on the day pasted from Twitter. Keep in mind pace can be and often is a factor in the figures and the winner isn't necessarily the highest:

Winning Saratoga @TimeformUS Speed Figures from Fri:

Sea Raven 105
Lemon Liqueur 63
Khaleesi Kat 77
Off the Tracks 95
Kelly's Prize 84
Just Wicked 86
Bishop's Pond 110
Pulling G's 104
Mrs McDougal 116
Big Blue Talent 98

My worksheet for Daily Variants at Saratoga for Sunday, July 26 appears below.

The track appeared to be running faster today. The pace times were a touch slower than par, but 4 out of 5 the final times were faster than par.

The 6.5f MSW race for state bred fillies was the quickest. I'd watch for the winner of the race next time out to see if she can step up in company.

The July 27 variants are in the table below.

Today was a little tricky because there was only one dirt route race and it had the biggest final time variant of all the dirt races -- 2.54 seconds slow. However, the route 4 furlong variant was right in line with the sprint 4 furlong variants.

This was a card of slower horses, though... maiden claimers, fillies and state breds. So it is hard to say if the track was slow or if the horses were slow.

The Wednesday dirt races look pretty formful. My Daily Variant worksheet appears below.

The most interesting race to me was #6 -- 6.5f claiming race. The winner ran almost to par at 2f. Exceeded par by three fourths of a second at 4f and then finished the race about a fifth of a second faster than par. The winner could be worth a closer look next time out depending on where he's placed.

Race #4 was a GII handicap. The winner ran about a fifth second faster than par after running about par at the second call. That would seem to indicate a good closing ability. She ran a little slower than par at the first fraction which might explain why her final time was better than par. Still, she may be worth a look next time out.

I thought yesterday's dirt races were all a good fit with a single variant as well.

Highly unlikely we'll be so lucky today!

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Daily Variants I made at Saratoga today -- July 30.

For the Off The Turf claiming races I used par times that were two classes lower because I've always felt the claiming prices on the turf are more generous than on the dirt. It didn't make much of a difference. The running times were still much slower than par.

It looks like the first two furlongs were run about a fifth of a second faster than par, but as the horses ran farther into the race the muddy track produced an exaggerated telescoping effect. They ran about 2/5 slow at the half and by 3/4 they were running about a second behind par in routes and a 2 seconds behind in sprints. At the finish of the routes they were running a full 3 seconds slow.

The most impressive race of the day was the 3rd race -- The MSW race for 2 year old state breds. The winner almost ran to par over a presumably slow track. Definitely worth watching next time out. The second place finisher lost by a few lengths, but beat the third place finisher by 10. So the second place horse could be a good bet in the MSW next time.

[QUOTE=highnote]Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Daily Variants I made at Saratoga today -- July 30.

Hate to ask, but did the daily variant win you anything today?