Quote:
Originally Posted by pandy
Speed Figures are better than raw times but it's good to be aware of raw times in certain situations. For instance, if I see a horse ran 1:09 breaking its maiden over a fast track at Belmont and has a 90 speed figure racing against a horse that broke its maiden in 1:11 over a fast track at Belmont but also has a 90 speed figure, I'm going to lean towards the horse that ran two seconds faster. The bottom line is, at that point in their careers, we have no idea if the 1:11 horse will ever be capable of running 6 furlongs in 1:09.
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We've been down this discussion road before.
I don't understand it all, but that's what I was getting at in my prior post.
I'm in a similar camp on fractions.
The fractions are clearly partially related to the aggression level of the jockeys and not just the track speed. If the riders are being more or less aggressive on a particular day or at a particular track because of the way the surface plays, the relationships between the fractions and final times will be different than usual. If you start attributing those differences to track speed instead, that leaves you open to inaccuracies about how fast those horses really ran early. In close situations, I like to look at the raw fractions to separate otherwise similar speed horses.
