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Old 11-06-2018, 08:58 PM   #121
steveb
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Originally Posted by ultracapper View Post
Off topic.

Have you quit betting just Aussie racing, or have you quit betting entirely?

If so, why?

because, i found something i enjoy more.


since late mid to late seventies it was my life, and i was actually wrong when i stated that i had not bet australia this millenium.
i should have said i had not bet my own city/state(melbourne, victoria).
I did bet one other state until a few years back.
the reason i stopped in melbourne, is because they started racing 7 days a week all year and very often more than 1 meeting a day.
it was too hard to keep up with, and i never needed the money, so i stopped.


plus there was stuff i was doing for others in other countries this millenium, without me betting on them.


maybe i am different to most players, i have never been enamoured with racing itself....to be honest it bores the crap out of me.
the jigsaw puzzle that is racing is another matter though, and i still like trying to make models and see how they go, without actually betting.
especially when not able to do the thing i now like better than racing.


plus there is one other problem these days, it's too hard to get the money on in sufficient quantities, so i stopped trying.
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Old 11-06-2018, 09:07 PM   #122
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This gets into a different debate we've had many times.

Is the goal to make figures that reflect the time of the race as accurately as possible or is the goal to make figures that reflect the abilities of the horses as accurately as possible when the figures don't make sense and you either know or don't know the explanation?

Both are worthy goals, but the figure maker has to decide which way to go.

Most public figure makers start making adjustments of some sort because they want their figures to pick more winners.

My point in all this is that once you start understanding the complexities involved with using time to try to measure which horses ran better, you start realizing the "speed figure" model of handicapping is flawed. That does not mean time doesn't matter. It just means that sometimes the time does not tell you how good the horse is or how well he ran.

i guess i am not 'most'
the speed model is just fine, your problem is thinking that guys like me think it's the be all of it.
i would use a zillion factors other than time, i just know that time is the best of them.
but much much much more than that, you can figure many things seemingly unrelated to time.
i would actually call YOU, 'figure blind' even though you may not use them, that's because you have your mind made up.
that's fine though i am not interested in trying to convert you
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Old 11-06-2018, 09:21 PM   #123
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Originally Posted by steveb View Post
i guess i am not 'most'
the speed model is just fine, your problem is thinking that guys like me think it's the be all of it.
i would use a zillion factors other than time, i just know that time is the best of them.
but much much much more than that, you can figure many things seemingly unrelated to time.
i would actually call YOU, 'figure blind' even though you may not use them, that's because you have your mind made up.
that's fine though i am not interested in trying to convert you
I try to tell people this all the time. They are one part of the puzzle. Maybe back when Beyer made figures before he went public he could blindly bet them and win, though I tend to doubt figs alone beat the game even then, but those days are long gone and any serious bettor that uses figures knows this.
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Old 11-06-2018, 09:29 PM   #124
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I try to tell people this all the time. They are one part of the puzzle. Maybe back when Beyer made figures before he went public he could blindly bet them and win, though I tend to doubt figs alone beat the game even then, but those days are long gone and any serious bettor that uses figures knows this.

it's probably not worth worrying about.
woods 2ic told me the time stuff i did for them was worth .3 of all the form factors in their models, which to me is a lot.
nevertheless, it also meant that .7 of their form factors were not about my time stuff.
and i have no idea of how much their 'form factors' accounted for, it may have been bugger all,for all i know.
but they paid me well at the time, until he died, and then some other mob paid me much much more still, for the same stuff although it had gotten a little better i guess.
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Old 11-07-2018, 01:51 PM   #125
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Originally Posted by steveb View Post
i guess i am not 'most'
the speed model is just fine, your problem is thinking that guys like me think it's the be all of it.
i would use a zillion factors other than time, i just know that time is the best of them.
but much much much more than that, you can figure many things seemingly unrelated to time.
i would actually call YOU, 'figure blind' even though you may not use them, that's because you have your mind made up.
that's fine though i am not interested in trying to convert you
I've been making, using, and studying figures decades. I know exactly what the problems are and how handicappers try to address them. I have no problem with them as a tool.

Where I differ with conventional wisdom is that most figure handicappers believe that even though there are huge variations in pace, different levels of ability and natural speed among horses within the same race, ground loss considerations, weight changes, different competitive races developments, positional considerations, variations on how tiring the track is, the wind, run up changes, maintenance crews allowing the moisture level in the surface change from race to race, etc... they can produce figures that accurately reflect performance/ability or make adjustments to them to do that.

I think that's a delusional view.

At best, you can get somewhere in the ballpark, but you will be wrong more often than appreciated and very wrong some of the time.

That does not make the information useless.

It means if you are forming very strong opinions based on the clock (even if you are making subjective adjustments for other factors), you should probably not be so confident.

My only contribution and view beyond that is that if you understand the pecking order at your track (or in a specific race), look at a field in a qualitative way, look at who beat who with what trip (especially similar trips), you can sometimes bypass many of those complexities and get to a more accurate appraisal.

Just as a simple example.

The BC Classic got a 105 Beyer figure.

I have no problem with the accuracy of that figure. However, a 105 is about the PAR for a solid Grade 2 dirt race for older males in the US. If anyone thinks that was a Grade 2 quality race and you could just throw a 107 horse into the mix with those horses and he'd win, I think you are very wrong. There were several horses in that race that put up better numbers than that going in (some even got bet) and they predictably got buried in that field - as would just about any other legit Grade 2 older horse. That was a solid Grade 1 field even though it may not have been one of the better Classics we've ever seen.
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Old 11-07-2018, 06:23 PM   #126
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I've been making, using, and studying figures decades. I know exactly what the problems are and how handicappers try to address them. I have no problem with them as a tool.

Where I differ with conventional wisdom is that most figure handicappers believe that even though there are huge variations in pace, different levels of ability and natural speed among horses within the same race, ground loss considerations, weight changes, different competitive races developments, positional considerations, variations on how tiring the track is, the wind, run up changes, maintenance crews allowing the moisture level in the surface change from race to race, etc... they can produce figures that accurately reflect performance/ability or make adjustments to them to do that.

I think that's a delusional view.

At best, you can get somewhere in the ballpark, but you will be wrong more often than appreciated and very wrong some of the time.

That does not make the information useless.

It means if you are forming very strong opinions based on the clock (even if you are making subjective adjustments for other factors), you should probably not be so confident.

My only contribution and view beyond that is that if you understand the pecking order at your track (or in a specific race), look at a field in a qualitative way, look at who beat who with what trip (especially similar trips), you can sometimes bypass many of those complexities and get to a more accurate appraisal.

Just as a simple example.

The BC Classic got a 105 Beyer figure.

I have no problem with the accuracy of that figure. However, a 105 is about the PAR for a solid Grade 2 dirt race for older males in the US. If anyone thinks that was a Grade 2 quality race and you could just throw a 107 horse into the mix with those horses and he'd win, I think you are very wrong. There were several horses in that race that put up better numbers than that going in (some even got bet) and they predictably got buried in that field - as would just about any other legit Grade 2 older horse. That was a solid Grade 1 field even though it may not have been one of the better Classics we've ever seen.
I don't know any good figure handicapper that is so overconfident that he thinks he knows it all. All one can do is start with the best indicator of a horses ability, which is a horse's speed at the distance, and try to get that as accurate as possible with adjustments for pace, ground loss etc, and then use that as an important tool in his comprehensive handicapping.
Your construction of the overconfident figure handicapper who is a slave to his figures is a straw man. Your willingness to accept Accelerates 105 figure in the BC classic is an error no good figure handicapper would make. All you have to do is adjust it for pace and all his ground loss and you see it was as good as any race he won, including the Pacific Classic with it's 115 Beyer. No good figure handicapper would make such an error. That is a straw man. No need to go into all the endless factors that you continually harp on.

You are always bring up multiple factors that influence a horse's performance, and true, there are likely dozens of them or more, but you eventually reach the point of diminishing returns and, unless you have unlimited time, you have to concentrate on the major factors. Such as speed, pace, pace patterns, ground loss, etc. Every added factor introduces the possibility of errors. Concentrate on the factors that have the highest impact values and weigh them in the most profitable combinations.

As for the "who beat who method of handicapping" it is a minefield filled with problems. To think if A beat B and B beat C then A must be better than C today is a fallacy. It rarely takes into account the current form of the horse or the horses it faced at the time and all the horses they faced. You would have to go back and handicap every race run by the horse and all the horses he faced and all the horses they faced and all their form cycles at the time, etc. It's madness. If you want to see an example of this lunacy look at the arguments on the thread on who should get the HOTY based on "who beat who". They make both Accelerate and Justify look like a couple of losers who never beat anybody. It can make even a great horse look bad by going back to every horse they faced and who they beat or lost to and who these horses beat or lost to, ad finitum. It never ends.

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Old 11-07-2018, 06:49 PM   #127
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I try to tell people this all the time. They are one part of the puzzle. Maybe back when Beyer made figures before he went public he could blindly bet them and win, though I tend to doubt figs alone beat the game even then, but those days are long gone and any serious bettor that uses figures knows this.
I think some people will never get it. They still think it's the old days before we had modern speed figures with all their adjustments for factors such as pace, ground loss, etc. They chose to ignore the impact that modern studies in exercise physiology have on pace, efficient pace patterns and energy distribution.

Most importantly, they cling to the characterization of a figure handicapper who slavishly just bets his top number. No good figure figure handicapper does that.
They must cling to the old fashion methods of incorporating multiple factors that modern speed and pace figures more accurately measure.

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Old 11-08-2018, 10:42 AM   #128
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Your construction of the overconfident figure handicapper who is a slave to his figures is a straw man. Your willingness to accept Accelerates 105 figure in the BC classic is an error no good figure handicapper would make. All you have to do is adjust it for pace and all his ground loss and you see it was as good as any race he won, including the Pacific Classic with it's 115 Beyer. No good figure handicapper would make such an error. That is a straw man. No need to go into all the endless factors that you continually harp on.
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think some people will never get it.
Actually, I think it's the other way around because I'm not very good at explaining myself. I know exactly what you guys are saying and agree. My point goes beyond that.

I agree that the pace was a factor for some of the horses in that race, but imo the track was more tiring than "average" on Saturday, it was a 10F race, and the quality of the race was much tougher than a few of those horses faced recently when they put up much faster figures than they did Saturday. That's why some of them got outrun, buried, and ran so slow. Better horses are CAPABLE of putting themselves in the right spot and handling tougher conditions.

My point would be, rather than come up with some theory (including my own that can't be proved) or a figure that understates how good some of those horses are, in this case why not just look at how they ran relative to each other given their trips and what we know about those horses. It's more accurate than pretending we can make adjustments for a very complex set of impacts and relationships.

If this were some MDN or ALW race with lightly raced horses, I might be apt to put more weight on the times because I don't know much about the quality of the horses. But we know these horses well.
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Old 11-08-2018, 04:44 PM   #129
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Worth noting ths passage from the guy who provided speed/time figures for one of the most successful handicappers of the past century.
If I'm reading this right, Steve is saying that Alan Woods main assistant ('2ic') told him that speed/time only comprised 30% of the model they were using -- which was generating tens of millions of dollars in profits per year. This strikes me as a very valuable piece of information, and one that might come as a shock to many if not most of the average horseplayers I've run across, who seem to rely much more heavily on speed figures than this -- they make it something closer to 70-80% -- thus often the complaints about 'bad figures.' As both Steve and cj have emphasized here, even the best speed figures are only a piece of the puzzle.



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Originally Posted by steveb View Post
it's probably not worth worrying about.
woods 2ic told me the time stuff i did for them was worth .3 of all the form factors in their models, which to me is a lot.
nevertheless, it also meant that .7 of their form factors were not about my time stuff.
and i have no idea of how much their 'form factors' accounted for, it may have been bugger all,for all i know.
but they paid me well at the time, until he died, and then some other mob paid me much much more still, for the same stuff although it had gotten a little better i guess.
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Old 11-08-2018, 07:23 PM   #130
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[QUOTE=classhandicapper;2393555

I agree that the pace was a factor for some of the horses in that race, but imo the track was more tiring than "average" on Saturday, it was a 10F race, and the quality of the race was much tougher than a few of those horses faced recently when they put up much faster figures than they did Saturday. That's why some of them got outrun, buried, and ran so slow. Better horses are CAPABLE of putting themselves in the right spot and handling tougher conditions.

My point would be, rather than come up with some theory (including my own that can't be proved) or a figure that understates how good some of those horses are, in this case why not just look at how they ran relative to each other given their trips and what we know about those horses. It's more accurate than pretending we can make adjustments for a very complex set of impacts and relationships.
[/QUOTE]

Yes the track was slower and more tiring that day and it was the same track they all ran on. One reason some many of the top contenders ran so poorly is the same reason so many run so poorly in the Kentucky Derby and so many races that have such large fields. There is so much trouble going on that the chart maker cannot possibly note all of it. Huge fields equal more bad trips. In the Derby in particular I excuse almost every bad performance, whether trouble is noted or not. The exceptions are those horses who I can follow clearly upon reviewing the reply.

Of course some horses just went badly off form because that is what horses sometimes do, regardless of class. The idea that horses have some mysterious pecking order, apart from their speed, where the classier horse just has to look a less classy horse in the eye and the inferior horse will just quit is strictly Hollywood stuff made for children.

Another big reason horses run more poorly when going up in class is that higher class races the pace is faster and slower horses get burnt out trying to keep up. In the BC Classic however, most of the horses have already run in high class fast paced races so that was less of a factor in that race.

What you are saying about how each horse performs and runs which times compared to the others based on what time or figure they are expected to run is the basis of all variant calculations and speed figure making. Of course one has to consider pace, how efficiently each horse distributed its energy and ground loss in evaluating how to look at what figure the horse earned.
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Old 11-08-2018, 07:32 PM   #131
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Worth noting ths passage from the guy who provided speed/time figures for one of the most successful handicappers of the past century.
If I'm reading this right, Steve is saying that Alan Woods main assistant ('2ic') told him that speed/time only comprised 30% of the model they were using -- which was generating tens of millions of dollars in profits per year. This strikes me as a very valuable piece of information, and one that might come as a shock to many if not most of the average horseplayers I've run across, who seem to rely much more heavily on speed figures than this -- they make it something closer to 70-80% -- thus often the complaints about 'bad figures.' As both Steve and cj have emphasized here, even the best speed figures are only a piece of the puzzle.
This is good information, but it's STILL missing my point because I'm not talking about consistency, trainer, jockey, post position, layoffs, workouts, surface switches, path biases, form cycle and the endless other factors and common trips that most handicappers will also consider in their handicapping.

I am talking about things that impact the times and figures the horses themselves run that are extremely difficult to identify and measure because they are surface, race development, and "quality of horse" related.

People will often say well "this horse bounced or just went off form", but it's demonstrable that you can know which of these "supposed fast horses" will disappoint beforehand very often using qualitative indications.

Going into the Classic I in another thread I basically said that McKinzie would be a total toss for me except that it was Baffert and there was some chance he could move up a lot. By implication that means I thought the same of Axelrod and gave him WAY less of chance because it wasn't Baffert.

They were 2 of the fastest horses going in on most figures. They got buried.

I also could have told you that Mind Your Biscuits didn't class up either.

You can make some very informed estimates of current actual ability by looking at who is beating who with what trips instead of just figures.

It's lightly raced horses that are difficult to put a "quality" rating on because they don't reveal they quality until they are forced to. All you have is the speed figures they have earned to date which often do not reflect what's in the tank.
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Old 11-08-2018, 08:52 PM   #132
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This is good information, but it's STILL missing my point because I'm not talking about consistency, trainer, jockey, post position, layoffs, workouts, surface switches, path biases, form cycle and the endless other factors and common trips that most handicappers will also consider in their handicapping.

I am talking about things that impact the times and figures the horses themselves run that are extremely difficult to identify and measure because they are surface, race development, and "quality of horse" related.

People will often say well "this horse bounced or just went off form", but it's demonstrable that you can know which of these "supposed fast horses" will disappoint beforehand very often using qualitative indications.

Going into the Classic I in another thread I basically said that McKinzie would be a total toss for me except that it was Baffert and there was some chance he could move up a lot. By implication that means I thought the same of Axelrod and gave him WAY less of chance because it wasn't Baffert.

They were 2 of the fastest horses going in on most figures. They got buried.

I also could have told you that Mind Your Biscuits didn't class up either.

You can make some very informed estimates of current actual ability by looking at who is beating who with what trips instead of just figures.

It's lightly raced horses that are difficult to put a "quality" rating on because they don't reveal they quality until they are forced to. All you have is the speed figures they have earned to date which often do not reflect what's in the tank.

BI don't know what you mean by saying Mind Your Biscuits did not "class up". He had been running very well in big races against some very good horses including a good 2nd to Diversify, one of the best in the country when that horse was in top form. Do you mean that he suddenly realized that "Hey, I'm in the Breeder's Cup Classic so I won't even try" He had just run a lifetime top after a long season of great campaigning and had every right to bounce.
He ran like a very tired horse. Horses don't know the class level they are racing in. They only how their speed compares to the competition and how well they are feeling that day. Anything else is anthropomorphizing.

I didn't figure West Coast would do well either. His poor figure in his last race showed he wasn't the same horse he was last year. Many people thought that it was a visually impressive performance wrote off the poor figure because it came after a layoff, but they forgot that Baffert horses usually run best after a long lay-off because he trains his horses faster and longer than other trainers.

In fact, figures are often a great indicator of when a horse will go off form. When a horse, especially an older horse, suddenly runs a big lifetime top , studies have shown that he he will often react to that effort next out. They are also excellent indicators of where a horse is in his form cycle if adjusted for pace pattern and ground loss.
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Old 11-10-2018, 12:39 PM   #133
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BI don't know what you mean by saying Mind Your Biscuits did not "class up". He had been running very well in big races against some very good horses including a good 2nd to Diversify, one of the best in the country when that horse was in top form. Do you mean that he suddenly realized that "Hey, I'm in the Breeder's Cup Classic so I won't even try" He had just run a lifetime top after a long season of great campaigning and had every right to bounce.
I'll tell you my view on Mind You Biscuits going in but you'll have to trust that I'm not red boarding and fos. If you don't, I can always post my bet on the race so you can see who I did bet.

IMO, Mind Your Biscuits is a Grade 1 caliber sprinter. The thing is, Grade 1 caliber sprints in general are not as high quality as Grade 1 caliber routes. There are exceptions, but that's the generality. They are lower quality races and even the purses reflect that.

MYB ran well in the Met Mile, but it was not a very high quality edition of it. Bee Jersey was a solid up and coming horse, but he was a Grade 3 winner at that point. The rest of that field was mostly the same type of sprint caliber stakes horses as MYB. In fact, I bet MYB in the race and thought he was best that day, but I didn't think it was strong Grade 1 race or the typical historic Met.

The Whitney this year was similarly not as strong as the typical Whitney. Diversify is a solid and fast Grade 1 horse. He basically put away all the chasers and MYB and Discreet Lover picked up the pieces within a 1/2 length of each other. Discreet Lover is a nice horse, but he's not a real Grade 1 horse.

In the Lukas Classic he looked great and put up a nice 108 Beyer figure that made him the fastest horse going in off last race Beyer. But he didn't beat anyone there.

So my view of MYB was/is that's he's a terrific horse. I would love to own him. He can be competitive with the right trip in the right field, but he's not going to beat legitimate Grade 1 caliber routers in a race like the BC Classic barring a lot of good fortune. One or more of the real Grade 1 routers was likely to show and be too good for him so he was very unlikely to run back to a 108 in a field like that.
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Old 11-10-2018, 01:47 PM   #134
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I'll tell you my view on Mind You Biscuits going in but you'll have to trust that I'm not red boarding and fos. If you don't, I can always post my bet on the race so you can see who I did bet.

IMO, Mind Your Biscuits is a Grade 1 caliber sprinter. The thing is, Grade 1 caliber sprints in general are not as high quality as Grade 1 caliber routes. There are exceptions, but that's the generality. They are lower quality races and even the purses reflect that.
I didn't really think he'd run fast enough around two turns to be a contender in the Classic. The TimeformUS Race Rating, which you know all about, was 132. These were his route races. I like the horse and was hoping after the Churchill race he had a shot, but I just didn't see it even from a figure perspective.

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Old 11-10-2018, 01:58 PM   #135
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I'll tell you my view on Mind You Biscuits going in but you'll have to trust that I'm not red boarding and fos. If you don't, I can always post my bet on the race so you can see who I did bet.

IMO, Mind Your Biscuits is a Grade 1 caliber sprinter. The thing is, Grade 1 caliber sprints in general are not as high quality as Grade 1 caliber routes. There are exceptions, but that's the generality. They are lower quality races and even the purses reflect that.

MYB ran well in the Met Mile, but it was not a very high quality edition of it. Bee Jersey was a solid up and coming horse, but he was a Grade 3 winner at that point. The rest of that field was mostly the same type of sprint caliber stakes horses as MYB. In fact, I bet MYB in the race and thought he was best that day, but I didn't think it was strong Grade 1 race or the typical historic Met.

The Whitney this year was similarly not as strong as the typical Whitney. Diversify is a solid and fast Grade 1 horse. He basically put away all the chasers and MYB and Discreet Lover picked up the pieces within a 1/2 length of each other. Discreet Lover is a nice horse, but he's not a real Grade 1 horse.

In the Lukas Classic he looked great and put up a nice 108 Beyer figure that made him the fastest horse going in off last race Beyer. But he didn't beat anyone there.

So my view of MYB was/is that's he's a terrific horse. I would love to own him. He can be competitive with the right trip in the right field, but he's not going to beat legitimate Grade 1 caliber routers in a race like the BC Classic barring a lot of good fortune. One or more of the real Grade 1 routers was likely to show and be too good for him so he was very unlikely to run back to a 108 in a field like that.
First of all MYB is the rare type of horse who is just as good a sprinter as at a distance. Even his trainer thinks that he is better at a distance. Had he duplicated his last figure he would have placed highly in the Classic. Are you presuming that he knew that he was competing in a higher class race and just quit in deference to his superiors? The main value of speed figures is that in predicting whether a horse can withstand a rise in class if he maintains his form. His loss in the Classic mos wast likely explained with his running a big top in his last after a long campaign and it's no big surprise that he bounced. His very poor finish cannot be explained by the rise in class as even a G2 winner would have finished better in the Classic if he was in form, unless there is some mysterious force which makes a slightly lower class horse not even try in a higher class race. His performance is a classic example (pun intended) of a horse that bounced utterly after a big new top after getting better and better figures. This is a common pattern seen in this these situations and the research backs it. Just look at the Thoro-Graph figure patterns. Biscuits would have run poorly if he ran in an allowance race that day.

There are 2 reasons why horses run poorly in higher class races. One is that they are running a much faster early pace, which was wasn't the case with MYB, or they have just gone off form for the reasons explained above. No need to invoke some mysterious force that horses know their place in some pecking order (not based on speed) and suddenly lose all their ability when going up in class. In addition, as cj has pointed out, his TFUS figure may have not been good enough to win anyway on figure handicapping alone.

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