Quote:
Originally Posted by bobphilo
You have a point there. Beyer uses what seems to be a common sensical explanation in his books where he compares beaten lengths in horse racing to losing margins in human track and field. He points out that someone running the 100 meter dash by one second slower than an Olympic champion would barely win a high school meet while someone running the Marathon 1 second slower than an Olympic champion would be considered one of the world's best runners. The only problem is he cites the difference between 100 meter dashes and the Marathon, where the longer distance is thousands of times longer, compared to horse races where route races are less than twice as long as sprints. We do see much larger margins in 12 furlong races, like the Belmont Stakes, than in 6 furlong sprints but that is mainly because American horses are not bred for stamina and the also-rans quit long before the finish.
Pace and the way the race is run seems to be more of a factor in beaten lengths and Beyer seems to have realized this to some extent since he now applies the same value to beaten lengths to grass route races as dirt sprints since grass races are typically run like sprints in the last 2 or 3 furlongs.
This has been a very informative thread.
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i missed this first time around.
as regards your bit in bold...
i have no idea how beyer does it now.
i just have those books that he wrote in the long ago, that got me interested it time, when i was naysayer.
but i don't think you need to treat them(surfaces) differently, because.......
margins on dirt will be magnified more than turf and i can so no reason why the same would not be the case in your country.
thus the proportions would be the same.
it's no different to say fast turf one day, and heavy turf the next where the margins would be magnified.
you just need to keep the ratios right.
regarding the margin chart in 'picking winners' on pages 146 and 147 is basically where it is all wrong.....for several reasons.
beaten 6 lengths over 6f he says to deduct 15 speed points, over 1.5 miles the same 6 length you deduct 7 points(half as much), which is plainly silly.
but worse than that.....you deduct 15 points regardless of the race time, be it 69 or 74 seconds
ditto with the mile and half.
that is plainly wrong.
if one knew the conversion factor used at the track, then you would be better converting margin back to time and using that simple formula i posted earleir.
or if lucky enough to have the individual times, then forget margin and use the times.
as for turf and dirt races being paced differently, where it may be correct, it will be because dirt tires them faster than turf, and the proportions may well be different because of that.
but i don't think that is an overall time issue, you would just have differing optimums for pace, so it's more like a section issue in my point of view.
that's certainly how i would handle it anyway.
