Quote:
Originally Posted by thaskalos
I don't understand. Let's say that we are handicapping a field of horses...and we are trying to do what you suggest here. Unless the horses in the field have raced against identical competition in their prior races...how is this "who-beat-whom" comparison supposed to work out? We expect a certain PRECISION in our work...NO?
That's why I often say that comments such as yours here should come equipped with some sort of "live example".
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If one horse won an average Grade 3 event with an honest trip and the other won a 10K claimer with a really tough trip (and was probably 5 lengths the best) would you be able to figure out which horse was better without any pace or speed figures?
I'll assume you'd know the Grade 3 horse was better.
You'd know the pecking order of horses well enough to know that the gap between those classes is much larger than 5 lengths worth of tough trip.
If you build a table that represents all the classes at your track and you know statistically how a win, 2nd, 3rd... at one class relates to win, 2nd, 3rd... at another class you have the basis for comparing horses without pace and speed figures.
Then you can take that to a higher level by identifying weak/strong races at a specific class designation by determining how deep and strong the race was compared to average.
Then you can start taking it to a higher level by comparing those horses based on trips they had within those races.
This is a lot tougher than looking at a number on a piece of paper that someone else calculated. However, it has the benefit of being non public information that's not hampered by things like changing track speeds, wind, run up, rail settings, sprint/route differences, figure maker error etc...
All the things that can impact time and lead to figure errors become irrelevant when you are comparing horses based on the race conditions and their trips relative to each other. (of course you introduce other problems, but that's another story)
