Beyer Speed Question

[BenDiesel26]

Are Maiden races containing mostly first-time starters used in calculating the Beyer Variant for a particular day, specifically two-year olds? I just got home from Delaware Park. In the fifth race, a first-time starter two-year old, Cash's Girl (a fillie from Northern Afleet-same as Afleet Alex) just covered 5.5 F in 1:04 3/5. I don't have the exact Beyer Chart for Delaware Park but this would be somewhere around 93 with no variant I believe. And she was under absolutely no urging at all, I don't even think the jockey pulled the whip out. She stalked the pace with ease and passed the leading horse on the turn and won by at least 10 lengths. I had bet the 3 with the 3 in the next race for a daily double just for some action because I noticed it had been hammered down on the board and the 3 was not even the favorite or second favorite. She set the pace and got absolutely smashed by Cash's Girl and finished second.

The reason I am asking is because I have studied Beyer Variants in the past for Delaware Park. Every once in a while I would come across a maiden race with an exceptually fast looking time and the variant would be a huge negative number, I suppose because the time was exceptionally fast for that level and it threw off the variant for that day. Well often times looking to the right of these races I would notice that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers all went on to win their next race. I would think if they are included then the race I saw today will pull down the Beyer's for the day substantially. When looking at the variants they were nowhere near consistent, for example for all of the six furlong races I looked at they varied from +11 to -24, which is a 35 point difference for the same exact time.

[cj]

It is highly unlikely the race would be used to calculate the daily variant. Most times, the other races are used to create a figure for the maiden race.

This is precisely why Beyer doesn't do figures for the 4.5f races at Kee. They are run by mostly all first timers, and they are run on a different part of the track. BRIS and Ragozin do create figures for these races, but they can be nothing but a guess.

[kenwoodallpromos]

9 races, 5 maidens and 3-$5k claimers.
I can see why you are worried about the variant being thrown off by 1 fast pace race! If your race was included it might make the others look even slower! LOL!

[BenDiesel26]

Good point, but I'm actually a lot more interesting in seeing what kind of Beyer they give to Cash's Girl.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by BenDiesel26

Good point, but I'm actually a lot more interesting in seeing what kind of Beyer they give to Cash's Girl.

I can give you two insights.

1. I agree with the others that said that Beyer (or whoever is making the figures for that track) would tend to not include the variant for any maiden race with mostly first time starters. They might even tend to exclude other races with a lot of lightly raced younger horses because their prior figures are often not a reliable guide to subsequent efforts. Younger lightly raced horses tend to improve more than older heavily raced ones.

2. Some tracks give the horses a longer run up from the gate at shorter distances like 4.5F - 5.5F because the races start so close to the turn. They want to give the outside posts a better chance to not get hung out wide. That tends to make those races faster than the standard time chart would suggest. If the figure maker is observant about things like that, he might make a seperate variant for 4.5F - 5.5F races to account for the run up. Otherwise, all his short race figures will come up too fast.