Help creating sectional time based pars for individual runners
 

Hello Pace Advantage members.

I'm trying to create sectional time based pars for individual runners in the distance blocks that are possible based on my data. Any help on what I should base the par off would be appreciated. Average or median time maybe? Average or median time of all runners who broke par for the overall race time? Or use the race pars?

I have race based sectional time pars based on the leader and race time grouped by track, distance, track condition and class.

But going about individual runners I'm really unsure of what's best. Although using race based sectional time pars based on the leader and race time seems reasonable. Just calculate how the individual horse measured up against these

What do you think? Any help much appreciated.

You will want to calculate sectional variants. Using the variant for the track and day without looking separately at the track segments will miss a lot.

IMO medians are always preferred for 'pars', too many incorrect timings to skew things otherwise. What I did when I used time was to think in terms of par fractions for any final time at the track/dist/surface combination. This makes track surface variants completely irrelevant for assessing pace because the 'par' sectionals (internal fractions) come from the final time. The relevant variant for the sectionals is wind, not surface speed.

Also, IMO, the order of execution is, wind variant to adjust the sectionals first, followed by a new but faster final time that accounts for inefficient energy distribution as indicated by those sectionals. Last but not least you can then bring the 'daily' track variant into the calculation.

IMO, modes are more reliable for pars, as those outside the "mode" I'll consider as outliers and need to be vetted for surface changes, wind and sometimes class of horse(subset)....The outliers is where timing mistakes are made OR hidden value is found.

Here's a video I made to help people understand pars and using them. Probably won't tell you everything you need but will give you a leg up.

http://pacemakestherace.com/using-pa...ratings-video/

Also, if you'd like a short (free) consult, reach out to me and we can schedule a time.


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

Yes, I believe you are right. I am doing this with my race time, leader to sectionals, and closing sectionals.

I collect median and mean and then again with a dataset that I removed the outliers. I might look at mode as well, thankyou.

So you ignored sectional pars and focused on final time but calculated sectional based efficiency to make adjustments?

I will watch when I have the time, thankyou.

All very helpful and informative replies but my actual question was not answered, probably from poor phrasing from my part.

I have two data sets.

One is based on race time, leader to 400m, leader to 800m, final 400m, ect.

The other is the same but for individual horses. How fast the individual horse ran to the 400m, 800m, final 400m, ect.

When dealing with the second dataset of individual horses should I base the pars off the first dataset which is based on race time, leader to X, finishing time. Or is there merit in calculating some sort of median, mean or mode based on all the individual horse sectionals?

You want to know how fast the track is so you want to use horses who are trying to go fast; those would be the leaders.

I watched the video. There were a few interesting this I picked up, thankyou.

However, the way the pace of horse ratings are constructed is alien to me because I have the actual split times not the distance.

To calculate similar ratings for the 4f pace of horse rating with the actual time would there be any adjustments to

Par / horse split, the same way you would create the pace of race figure?

Thanks, that's probably best and simplest.

I've been looking into uk style timeform efficiency ratings.

Similar to this https://www.drawbias.com/paceanalysis.html

So the standard for this is completely different.

I'm saying if you know the track's par fractions for let's say 100 horses running 6f distance on dirt look like 22.0, 45.0, 1:10.0 then for any final time of 1:10 you already know what par pace is for 1:10, it's 22.0, 23.0, 25.0 -- doesn't matter if the track is running 2 seconds fast or slow on that day, doesn't matter if it's a stakes race or maiden claimer, the final time gives you the par sectionals looking backwards from it, the class pars for sectionals then mean nothing (at this stage). If some horse went 21.0, 44.0, 1:10, assuming no crazy wind conditions we know they went fast early for the time, may not have been fast for the class of race, that's another question entirely which can be answered later on in the process using the daily track variant, class pars etc. Good luck, there's a lot of work involved to get the answers to these questions but it's interesting stuff.

I'm a bit confused.
If you don't have the distance, how will you measure the speed?


Also, you might want to study up on a pace approach called Simulated Pace. It was first mentioned in a book called Scientific Handicapping back in the '60s.

The concept is based upon the PACE OF RACE is whatever the winner ran. Thus, if the winner ran (say) a "90" speed rating, then the pace of race was a 90.

Thus, a horse that was (say) 5 lengths back at any call would get an "85."

This makes it very simple to base the ratings on just beaten lengths.

I recently did a large international project. Outside of N. America, the horses do not typically run fast paces. This creates ridiculously slow pace times and makes the velocity-based numbers pretty worthless.

Simulated pace did a much improved job, despite its obvious lack of "time reality."


Dave