Pace and Speed in Harness

[Ray2000]

There have been many studies / discussions on T-Bred handicapping to determine the effect of pace on speed (some are going on right now in the General Forum) and they probably apply to harness, but I would be interested in harness player's opinion on the subject.

Consider the following 3 sets of fractional times,
(Ignoring racing wide, racing with cover, battling, number of turns, etc)

Horse A) 30 30 30 30 = 120 Final Time
Horse B) 31 31 31 27 = 120
Horse C) 29 31 31 29 = 120

1.
Is there agreement that horse "B" (single brush 31-to-27) has put out the most total "horse-power"?
Followed by horse "C" (2 brushes to 29), and lastly horse "A" (no brushes)?

2.
If so (or if not), what would be a good way to express a speed rating based on those fractions/final times?


I have been using Final Time + 4thQT* and have tried Final Time + bestQT in the past, but there are other possibilities. i.e.
Final Time + (4thQ * 2)
Final Time + 4thQ + 1stQ
Final Time + Best 2 Qs

BTW
Tom Ainslie** used Final Time + 1st Half Time (assigning arbitrary points from a table)

My current numbers for the above horses would be 150, 147, 149, (lowest is best, Horse B)
Ainslie is 240, 230, 240 (highest is best, Horse A or C)

I'd be interested in any replies and would be willing to compare any promising formulas by running a large sample set of races. More on that later.

Thanks for any input.



*all times adjusted for Track, wides, cover, DTV
** Complete Guide to Harness Racing p. 179

[melman]

Ray--It's funny how we differ yet many times come up with the same horses.

I would use final time plus middle half. I love to use the middle half (2nd and 3rd q times) as I feel many people overlook them.

That would give me "Horse A" then.

I do overlook a horse however who in the 1st q raced last or next to last then make a "middle move" into oblivion.

IMHO Stanley Dancer really changed how the driving of harness horses is done. You used to see the what is still done in much of France and Sweden with there trotters. And that is go slow early then have a mad scramble in the last q to see who gets up. Dancer went fast early and said "catch me if you can". And as poster Pandy has pointed out the new bikes also made speed more important. Nowadays even with a speed duel it's tough to "come from the clouds".

[Sinner369]

I always read that if Final Times are the same.......the horse with the faster
pace to the 3/4M..........ran the better race.

That applies to both thoroughbreds and harness.

[Tom]

mel, I use the three halves - got that from a book way back when - the 70's?
Can't remember his name, Arron Bernstein?

I add the faster of the first or third half to the middle half for a rating.

[melman]

Tom==Hope your doing well with that rating. It makes a lot of sense to me. I think the one item that gets overbet quite a bit is the fast last q. Best of trips.

[harness2008]

The way that I make my figures would give Horse B a big edge, followed by Horse C, then Horse A.

Since all 3 horses ran the same identical final time, the best horse of the 3 would be the one that rang up the highest oxygen debt. However the key is finding the right calculation that can compute this.

While I enjoyed the works of Tom Ainslie and his many great handicapping books, I believe he completely missed the boat by including the harness pace chart and the expectation of cranking out decent figs for harness horses with it. He should have stuck with the T-breds.

It must be understood that the Ainslie pace calculation chart will not work for harness racing. Because of the nature of harness racing, Ainslies chart would grossly under estimate a stretch runner that was hampered by a slow early pace. Any gain such as this in a fast last half would definately be a positive for a harness horse but because Ainslies chart leans towards faster times to the half,(which for a T-bred would be good) a horse such as this one would be unjustly downgraded.

The simple reason for this is that quarter mile times in harness races are run differently than T-breds. Generally speaking the T-breds quarter times will continue to decelerate as the race lengthens while this is not so in harness racing.

I've found that a fast fraction regardless of which fraction it was in harness racing is a good sign. I don't steadfastly look at any individual quarter and include it in a calculation, I look at all quarters and assign a value to each quarter based on whether or not that fraction is above or below the race par. So therefore the faster fractions run up a higher oxygen debt and need to weighted higher than the slower fractions of a race to reflect this.

What I want to do is give credit for any frontrunners that ran into a fast early pace while giving extra credit to the closing horses that were stuck behind a slow paced race and came flying late into a fast last half or quarter. Each would be considered an above average performance.

What I essentially do is give a %value to each individual quarter based on how fast or how slow each fraction is in relation to the final time. This differs of course with every track.

Here's the math for better or worse.

For example Horse A has equivalent quarters for each of the 4 fractions of the race. Each quarter then is basically worth 25% of the total time. If you multiplied each quarter mile time by 25%, then add up all 4 quarters times 4, you get the final time which is 2:00. Each quarter had the same 25% value because all were run in the same time.

Now look at what happens when a quarter or quarters are run faster than par.

Horse B has 3 quarters which are slower than the average and the last quarter is faster than average. Each of the first 3 quarters must be worth less than 25% since they were slower than par, with the last fraction obviously worth more than 25%. Depending on the track, and this calculation is just being used as an illustration, you may for example find that each 1 second increment below or above the race average may be worth 5%. This %number is being used for example purposes only.

So for Horse B since each of the first 3 fractions are slow by 1 second, each fraction is worth a value of 20% each, while the last fraction is 3 seconds above the par so that is worth 40%. Doing the math yields an adjusted final time of 157.6

So as you can see by this calculation, whenever there is a faster than average quarter in a race. it raises the oxygen debt of a horse and is in effect worth more percentagewise than a slower than average fraction.


Now for Horse C using this same 1 second = 5% formula, (and again this % is just being used as an example) the first and last fraction would be worth 30% each while the 2nd and 3rd fraction each worth 20%. Sparing you the math this equates to an adjusted final time of 159.2


I use a method somewhat different than the one described above which includes the horses actual fractional times in conjunction with the pace of the race but I wrote what I wrote above so you can get a general idea of what I have done for many years. My God, the calculator buttons I have pushed in my lifetime.

The bottom line with these figs for me is that I upgrade a horses final time whenever he runs into the teeth of the faster fractions of the race, whether it be in the early pace, late pace, or middle pace or any fraction for that matter. After years of trying to come up with some mathematical calculation that would do this justice, this is what I have used with a degree of success.

So to answer your question, if these 3 horses met in a race all other things being equal, Horse B in my opinion would win in a romp. If anyone disagrees, please fire away.

[Hanover1]

I fell asleep reading all the theory here. the old adage of: Study long, study wrong" hold water. Thats why I look at why a horse might be chalk, and figure out who has a shot to beat them, using no complicated formula or computations. Horses are very poor at math.........

[Ray2000]

All:

Thanks for the replies so far, some diverse approaches here leading me to do some refinement and testing.

Mel:

quote "...many times come up with the same horses"
is because we both recognize speed rating is only a small part of overall handicapping.

Harness2008:
Exactly the type of reply I was looking for, thanks. I would add (as a tie-breaker) that a pp line

27 29 29 29 ...is inferior to... 29 29 29 27

because maximum effort in the 4thQ is during the highest oxygen debt (lactic acid build up).

That's what led me to using my current speed ratings, Final Time + 4thQT but I'm starting to believe this is not the best way.


Hanover1:
The game has room for different types of players. For 20 years I was a steady track patron and used the printed program/magic-marker/human contacts to do my handicapping, but now I'm stuck in a corn field in Clarion, Pa and all I have to go on is a database of numbers. I was curious to see if those numbers alone could be sufficient to produce enough profit to pay for the hobby. The answer is yes, but in my case, requires making a lot of small bets on a large number of races (Some at teeny-tiny tracks). Searching for those races, requires a good number crunching program, which I'm always trying to improve.

Good Luck with your style of 'capping.

[Tom]

Wouldn't you prefer a 27 29 29 29 on a half mile track and 29 29 29 27 on a mile?

[Ray2000]

I see your point, Tom, but I was still applying my 'ignore list' of variables.

(Ignoring racing wide, racing with cover, battling, number of turns, etc)

a lot of adjustments go into my final Speed rating for a real pp line

[harness2008]

In Steve Chaplin's book, he explained that by taking the final time and dividing by the 4 fractions, the average 1/4 mile time could be calculated for a race. It was in this way that he established his shape ratings.

Do not believe it, nothing could be farther from the truth. I did use that math as an example in my earlier post only so our forum could grasp an understanding of what I was doing with each fraction.

However doing it Chaplin's way is completely wrong. You can't just take the final time, divide by 4 and come up with the average fraction and use those to see if the pace of the race was either fast or slow at different stages.

Each racetrack is unique in its characteristics and there are different par times for different track final times.

What I did was to take the average of fractional times in all races at a particular track to come up with my figures. Thru linear regression analysis I could determine based on a particular final time, what would be the normal fractional time equivalents for any final time in question.

There were times at some tracks where a 28 second opening quarter would be the norm for a time run in 2:00. Chaplin would have had this opening quarter as lightning fast and would upgrade a horse on the lead since he would have used the average of 30 seconds. Utter nonsense.

Before one can make any judgements as to whether or not a particular fraction in a race would be determined as fast or slow, one needs to examine hundreds of races at a particular racetrack and determine the fractional equivalents of all final times.

[Charlie]

Harness2008 ... Andy Beyer in his well written book "Beyer On Speed" used the same type of analysis. This can be found on page 146. For route races, he simply determined the average 6-furlong time for various final time ranges. Then he used this data to determine how fast or slow the pace was from the average. A very similar approach to yours, but one that I really haven't tried yet. I just may start accumulating the data to use at Yonkers. Thanks to all for the input. This is a very interesting topic.

[Hanover1]

Originally Posted by Ray2000

All:

Thanks for the replies so far, some diverse approaches here leading me to do some refinement and testing.

Mel:

quote "...many times come up with the same horses"
is because we both recognize speed rating is only a small part of overall handicapping.

Harness2008:
Exactly the type of reply I was looking for, thanks. I would add (as a tie-breaker) that a pp line

27 29 29 29 ...is inferior to... 29 29 29 27

because maximum effort in the 4thQ is during the highest oxygen debt (lactic acid build up).

That's what led me to using my current speed ratings, Final Time + 4thQT but I'm starting to believe this is not the best way.


Hanover1:
The game has room for different types of players. For 20 years I was a steady track patron and used the printed program/magic-marker/human contacts to do my handicapping, but now I'm stuck in a corn field in Clarion, Pa and all I have to go on is a database of numbers. I was curious to see if those numbers alone could be sufficient to produce enough profit to pay for the hobby. The answer is yes, but in my case, requires making a lot of small bets on a large number of races (Some at teeny-tiny tracks). Searching for those races, requires a good number crunching program, which I'm always trying to improve.

Good Luck with your style of 'capping.

I have always admired you guys that had the time and inclination to make a profit at the game-kudos to you. I have always had the excuse of being a horseman, wich means study the horses, and leave the math to the owners...lol. I do look at workouts, but its usually live, and I rely on that, along with the word that gets around the backside on works, and intentions. I was never beyond a few bucks on one of my charges if I felt we had a shot, but the tough job is yours.

[harness2008]

Charlie, you are correct about the Beyer book. Analysis such as this is necessary in the T-bred game because of the deceleration of horses as the distances lengthen. You can't just take for example the time of a 6 furlong race, divide by 3 and have the average fraction. It wouldn't work because of the way horses decelerate.

However for some reason it became apparent to certain individuals writing books that an easier way in harness racing is to just take the final time, divide by 4 and Poof!!, you have the average 1/4 mile speed.

I did not write this to disparage Steve Chaplin and his harness book, but it's apparent to anyone who has had an interest in this sport that his calculations were incorrect. However I will say that reading his book even with his inaccuracies has led me in the right direction of finding a viable solution to the problem. So in a wierd sense, I'm glad to have purchased it and read it back in the day.

[am1947]

"Thru linear regression analysis "
Could you please explain this a bit more with an example?
Thank You
AM