Quote:
Originally Posted by biggestal99
I disagree, Breaking though the gate has a negative effect. I have yet to see a horseplayer alive who said when his broke though the gate wow that increases his odds of winning.
now onto the runoff issue. How would one quantify that in a study, 20 feet, one second? said so in the chart?
if you want me to include runoffs I would need input about what constitutes a run off?
Allan
|
If you're so sure that breaking through the gate is a negative why do the study? And if you are so sure, have you considered the danger of inviting the charge of researcher bias in the form of including negative confounding data.
I never said that I believed that breaking through the gate increases his chances of winning and the fact that you never heard a horseplayer says it does is irrelevant unless you're doing a study of opinions. Just stick to the relevant facts.
I already raised the same issue of how to define a run off. This can be a problematic grey area but surely you can't count a case where a horse just breaks through and is immediately stopped or just canters a few yards before being caught, the same as one that won't stop or dumps his rider and takes off at racing speed in a game of tag with the outrider and races part of his race before it even begins. Those would be easy to separate. For in between cases, perhaps we can consider it a run off if it ran half a furlong before being caught. I'm sure we could come up with something, but anything is better than no distinction at all. Whatever distance seems reasonable to have a negative effect on energy drain. Researchers have to wrestle with these type of decisions all the time. Good research aint easy and is more than just crunching numbers. Planning studies is hard work but it's worth it if you want a valid answer to the question you're asking.
