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Originally Posted by classhandicapper
I've looked at this kind of stuff to death as part of making class ratings. One interesting thing is that the average gap between 1st and 2nd is different than the average gap between 2nd and 3rd etc..
You also have to very careful when calculating these things to look at field size. There's a difference between finishing 5th in a 5 horse field and finishing 5th in a 14 horse field. The 5th in a 5 horse field may be a horse that was dramatically overmatched and eased once he was last whereas the 5th in 15 was probably still competing until the end for better positioning. So the average gap is different.
Ultimately, I wound up putting more weight on the finishing position than the lengths between horses because it produced better results and because the margins seem to be more dependent on the surface, how it's playing, the field size, and the race development than the finishing positions.
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Class,
I understand what you are saying about horses finishing hopelessly back and out of any purse money, but we are talking here about the difference between the top 2 finishers who are in contention for either 1st place or 2nd money. This also applies to 3 and 4 place finishers who are trying to get as much of the purse as possible.
I do agree that in many cases finish position may be of more importance than beaten lengths and you are correct in raising that issue. It is up to each handicapper to decide which measure is more important in each race situation.
