Quote:
Originally Posted by lansdale
Worth noting ths passage from the guy who provided speed/time figures for one of the most successful handicappers of the past century.
If I'm reading this right, Steve is saying that Alan Woods main assistant ('2ic') told him that speed/time only comprised 30% of the model they were using -- which was generating tens of millions of dollars in profits per year. This strikes me as a very valuable piece of information, and one that might come as a shock to many if not most of the average horseplayers I've run across, who seem to rely much more heavily on speed figures than this -- they make it something closer to 70-80% -- thus often the complaints about 'bad figures.' As both Steve and cj have emphasized here, even the best speed figures are only a piece of the puzzle.
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This is good information, but it's STILL missing my point because I'm not talking about consistency, trainer, jockey, post position, layoffs, workouts, surface switches, path biases, form cycle and the endless other factors and common trips that most handicappers will also consider in their handicapping.
I am talking about things that impact the times and figures the horses themselves run that are extremely difficult to identify and measure because they are surface, race development, and "quality of horse" related.
People will often say well "this horse bounced or just went off form", but it's demonstrable that you can know which of these "supposed fast horses" will disappoint beforehand very often using qualitative indications.
Going into the Classic I in another thread I basically said that McKinzie would be a total toss for me except that it was Baffert and there was some chance he could move up a lot. By implication that means I thought the same of Axelrod and gave him WAY less of chance because it wasn't Baffert.
They were 2 of the fastest horses going in on most figures. They got buried.
I also could have told you that Mind Your Biscuits didn't class up either.
You can make some very informed estimates of current actual ability by looking at who is beating who with what trips instead of just figures.
It's lightly raced horses that are difficult to put a "quality" rating on because they don't reveal they quality until they are forced to. All you have is the speed figures they have earned to date which often do not reflect what's in the tank.
