Just got around to reading this thread.
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I remember seeing one from years ago but I don't remember the results. The toughest thing I think is defining the criteria. What do you use? Last race only, last race on surface, last race on surface at similar distance? Do you average figures?
The other problem is having access to the figures. Who is going to pay to buy PPs for all the data providers just to study the figures? You couldn't just buy a few weeks and have a real sample. I think you'd need at least a year, maybe more.
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This was done in the mid 1990-s by Sports Stats ( Jim Bayle) and it was going to be repeated around 2000 but it wasn't as (I believe) Jim was too busy gambling on sports full time.
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Ellis is partly correct - Jim Bayle initiated and oversaw a speed ratings study in 1999 (or 2000?). HDW was a part of the study, supplying Jim Cramer's speed figures to Jim Bayle every single day for 6 months. This was not a trivial task for any of the party's involved in the study. The files with the data were timestamped and it was up to each participant to post the data before the first race of the day. Likewise, it was up to Jim Bayle to retrieve the data before the first race of the day, to prevent all possibility of past posting data.
Also part of the study were Beyer, Thorograph, Ragozin Sheets and I believe the DRF style 3yb speed ratings (though there are inconsistencies in how THAT rating was made). BRIS chose not to be involved. I don't remember if Michael Pizzola was a part of the test but he may have been.
There were various metrics, like last race, best of last 3, best at surface (and other things like that) plus each vendor was allowed to supply a customized metric that could be programmed by Bayle and applied to all the different numbers. I only know that Jim Cramer did not provide any custom metric to test; I do not know what the other vendors did or did not do.
The motivation for Jim Cramer and HDW was to actually have an independent test to get the real facts. I cannot speak for the others but especially with respect to the Sheets versus Thorograph, there was certainly a rivalry (at times bitter) at play and both sides surely wanted to best the other. There were certainly bragging rights at play for everybody.
When the data study period was over (involving lots of work for 6 months for everybody involved), Jim Bayle stopped responding to calls and messages. It seemed he disappeared from the face of the earth and we were worried something might have happened to him. Several months later, a mutual acquaintance reported that Jim Bayle was alive and well in Las Vegas and had started a betting syndicate, specializing in long shots.
Jim Cramer was finally able to contact Jim Bayle and Bayle said he still had all the data but he was evasive about the elephant in the room - what the heck happened to the study and the data analysis he was going to perform and then publish? He said he was willing to provide the data to us or a third party (I don't remember which) but nothing ever came of that. It was just plain bizarre behavior, extremely disappointing and more than a little aggravating.
Jim Cramer contacted Len Ragozin to see if he would be amenable to hiring an independent third party to do the data analysis on the data Bayle had collected and Ragozin was agreeable to the idea. I still remember that conversation because Ragozin, being the good communist that he was, said it was only fair that he pay a bigger share of whatever the cost might be because he probably had more money ("From each according to their ability...").
We discussed having Barry Meadow take charge as the neutral third party and I believe I recall he was amenable to that, since Barry had published a very small speed ratings study several years earlier in his Meadow's Monthly Newsletter. However, we were never able to get access to the data so it did not matter.
The end result was no study was published by the person who set up and oversaw the study. I do not know if 1) he did the study privately and in the course of that found a longshot system from which he built a syndicate, or 2) he lost interest in the study immediately after a 6 month period of collecting the data and didn't feel the slightest obligation to contact the participants, or 3) he accidentally deleted all the data and was too embarrassed to admit it, or 4) something else.
So ended the great speed ratings shoot out.
Sigh...
Ron Tiller
HDW
