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Old 08-25-2020, 11:00 AM   #46
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Originally Posted by Spalding No! View Post
One thing to note comparing these different era horses is the overwhelming lack of consistency amongst today's horses.

Notice how many of the horses on the all-time Beyer list appear multiple times and also won races in bunches.

How do the records of the recent horses cited for comparison hold up:

Frosted? Shancelot? American Pharoah? Arrogate?

Rather than "great" or "dominant" horses, I see a list of one hit wonders (on the Beyer scale) or horses that couldn't make more than 10 lifetime starts or both.

Arrogate is the closest thing to a horse from prior decades but he clearly couldn't handle much racing even with several weeks between starts.
I think that is true for sure. I also think races are ridden differently these days too. The explosion of turf racing along with the synthetic era (mostly dead now) have changed the way races are run even on dirt. You aren't going to get many really fast races without really fast paces and that doesn't happen much any more. It also makes it hard for horses to win by big margins which certainly is a factor in the really big numbers.

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Old 08-25-2020, 11:05 AM   #47
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It seemed to me that the crux of your argument was that the horses of past decades had their Beyers artificially inflated or the horses of recent times have had their Beyers artificially lowered.

Your evidence was the claim that those past horses (listed above) did not dominate in the races where they registered high Beyers.

In fact, those first four races at the top alone had an average winning distance of something like 6 or 7 lengths.
I'm talking about all the evidence including averages.

If you run in the 120s, you are typically going to win big, but those horses didn't dominate by as much.

Frosted annihilated a Met field by 14 1/4 lengths, Arrogate/California Chrome crushed the rest of the BC Classic field by 11 1/4 and 10 3/4 lengths respectively, Arrogate demolished a Travers field by 13 1/2 lengths, and even Shancelot decimated a Kings Bishop by 12 1/2 in a sprint. The only that didn't win that big was American Pharoah who won a BC Classic comfortably with another fairly big gap to 3rd for a 120. None of them ran as fast as a lot of horses on that list.

We are talking about a slow decline to around 6 Beyer points that then leveled off .

The counter argument is that if anything MSW and NW1/NW2 ALW races are actually a little faster now than they used to be. So you need a theory to explain both coexisting, but there are reasonable possibilities to explain it.
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:08 AM   #48
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Interesting that all of those figures came on the east coast save Ghostzapper at Lone Star. There were obviously some very, very good west coast horses that didn't run those same figures out west.
Another interesting thing is that many on that list ran on the west coast either successfully (Gentlemen, Skip Away, Sunday Silence, Bertrando) or relatively unsuccessfully (Artax, Formal Gold, Ghostzapper, Midnight Lute-ignoring a BC win).

Is there an issue inherent in the par times that were used establish the Beyer scale?

For example, are CA tracks simply too fast in general for a horse to really break out with a strong figure?
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:16 AM   #49
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Originally Posted by Spalding No! View Post
One thing to note comparing these different era horses is the overwhelming lack of consistency amongst today's horses.

Notice how many of the horses on the all-time Beyer list appear multiple times and also won races in bunches.

How do the records of the recent horses cited for comparison hold up:

Frosted? Shancelot? American Pharoah? Arrogate?

Rather than "great" or "dominant" horses, I see a list of one hit wonders (on the Beyer scale) or horses that couldn't make more than 10 lifetime starts or both.

Arrogate is the closest thing to a horse from prior decades but he clearly couldn't handle much racing even with several weeks between starts.
Personally, I think that may argue even more in favor of the current figures not being reflective of the ability of the horses. You are saying even when one of them does pop a good figure it was more of a fluke. That means all these horses are either not very good or their figures lower than their ability.

When I look at the PPs of some of the run of the mill Grade 1 winners from the 90s, their figures would make them total monsters today. When I look at some Grade 1 winners now, I remember Classified ALW races where those Grade 1 winners would be overmatched.

I just can't buy it, especially when Thorograph was saying horses were getting much faster and Ragozon has the horses more level during the same period. Something is amiss.
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:20 AM   #50
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The only that didn't win that big was American Pharoah who won a BC Classic comfortably with another fairly big gap to 3rd for a 120.
Ironically, American Pharoah is probably the only recent horse that was poised to emulate the horses of the past.

None of those horses on the all-time list outside of uber-horse Easy Goer (a 120+ Beyer regular) and his nemesis Sunday Silence were 3yos, so I think it's likely that maturity is another requirement in order to produce 120+ BSF performances.

American Pharoah's BC Classic was a anti-climatic merry-go-round, but it did serve notice that he might have achieved Spectacular Bid-like heights if he came out as a 4yo. Certainly had the class, consistency, and constitution to be an all-timer.

Maybe if he had been owned by someone who was actually solvent we would have been able to witness something truly remarkable...
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:32 AM   #51
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Originally Posted by Spalding No! View Post
Another interesting thing is that many on that list ran on the west coast either successfully (Gentlemen, Skip Away, Sunday Silence, Bertrando) or relatively unsuccessfully (Artax, Formal Gold, Ghostzapper, Midnight Lute-ignoring a BC win).

Is there an issue inherent in the par times that were used establish the Beyer scale?

For example, are CA tracks simply too fast in general for a horse to really break out with a strong figure?
IMO, it could have something to do with the surfaces.

The cushions are deeper now (for safety) and we've seen how synthetic figures and turf figured tended to be compressed from the top to the bottom. So the surface can do some strange things to figures.

That might be a partial explanation for why MSW and NW1 ALW races at the major tracks tend to be faster these days but the Grade 1 stakes slower. The scale may have been compressed due to the different surfaces and the way the races develop.

Also, I don't have hard data to prove this, but I've seen enough examples to be pretty sure I'm right. On days when the track is lighting fast and carrying speed a little better than usual, you'll see some surprisingly big figures that are then not duplicated. Those might be rarer days now that were more common place years ago.
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:33 AM   #52
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Originally Posted by Spalding No! View Post
Ironically, American Pharoah is probably the only recent horse that was poised to emulate the horses of the past.

None of those horses on the all-time list outside of uber-horse Easy Goer (a 120+ Beyer regular) and his nemesis Sunday Silence were 3yos, so I think it's likely that maturity is another requirement in order to produce 120+ BSF performances.

American Pharoah's BC Classic was a anti-climatic merry-go-round, but it did serve notice that he might have achieved Spectacular Bid-like heights if he came out as a 4yo. Certainly had the class, consistency, and constitution to be an all-timer.

Maybe if he had been owned by someone who was actually solvent we would have been able to witness something truly remarkable...
100% agree.
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:36 AM   #53
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Personally, I think that may argue even more in favor of the current figures not being reflective of the ability of the horses. You are saying even when one of them does pop a good figure it was more of a fluke. That means all these horses are either not very good or their figures lower than their ability.
It could also mean that today's horses aren't allowed to progress into peak performance levels because they are overtrained, rushed early in their careers, loaded with novel medications that keep them a float for a couple of more races in lieu of rest, campaigned non-competitively, and protected for stud careers after a single stellar performance.

If the top horses actually ran against one another when they are all in peak form, you might see some higher figures with more regularity.

But when even a horse of Tacitus' caliber is allowed to rest on his laurels from a Grade 2 win this is the kind of fan-unfriendly landscape set up.

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When I look at the PPs of some of the run of the mill Grade 1 winners from the 90s, their figures would make them total monsters today. When I look at some Grade 1 winners now, I remember Classified ALW races where those Grade 1 winners would be overmatched.
Not sure what horses you are thinking of, but another factor is simply the lack of specific top level races. There are, what, 4 annual Grade 1races for older horses run at 10 furlongs across the country total?

The stakes schedules at and the competition between the top-tier tracks nowadays are woefully not conducive to any sort of logical campaigning of a good older horse.

Witness the joke of a campaign from Tom's d'Etat. His trainer said he would run in the Pegasus, Saudi, Dubai, New Orleans, Oaklawn Handicap, Hollywood Gold Cup, Blame, etc. etc. He showed up for none even though he was in training and in form.

A horse in the 90s conceivably could have run in all those (save the Middle East races).
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Old 08-25-2020, 11:49 AM   #54
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Personally, I think that may argue even more in favor of the current figures not being reflective of the ability of the horses. You are saying even when one of them does pop a good figure it was more of a fluke. That means all these horses are either not very good or their figures lower than their ability.

When I look at the PPs of some of the run of the mill Grade 1 winners from the 90s, their figures would make them total monsters today. When I look at some Grade 1 winners now, I remember Classified ALW races where those Grade 1 winners would be overmatched.

I just can't buy it, especially when Thorograph was saying horses were getting much faster and Ragozon has the horses more level during the same period. Something is amiss.
There may just be too many variables at work for speed figures to work at all for comparisons across generations.

Here's an example- it has always been the case that turf racing is more "scrunched up" than dirt racing. Margins of victory are lower, more blanket finishes. As a result a beaten lengths chart for dirt races doesn't work on grass, and a horse that might get beat 25 lengths on dirt may only be beaten 6 lengths on grass.

But what does that tell you? It tells you that a racing surface can reduce or increase the margin between horses of different ability. And there have been enormous changes in the composition of racing surfaces over time. That might also explain the California point that people are making- there are different surfaces in different parts of the country as well.

We all have to keep in mind that a speed figure was never meant for comparisons across generations. We can't do these comparisons well in other sports either. You can't compare Cy Young's statistics pitching far more innings and far more often, to Clayton Kershaw's, or Sammy Baugh's passing in an era of run oriented offenses to Tom Brady's. There's almost certainly no definitive answer as to whether horses are faster or slower now.
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Old 08-25-2020, 03:28 PM   #55
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Provocative!

If you don't think Secretariat would utterly smoke this field or Forego would ultimately carry weight like a freight train, you need to rewind to 1973
Secretariat did 107 in the post parade!
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Old 08-25-2020, 04:36 PM   #56
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Secretariat did 107 in the post parade!
And Forego was pretty fired up when they wouldn't let him race after he led the post parade with Kelso for the 1983 Jockey Club Gold Cup won by Slew O' Gold (over John Henry).

He's not on the screen for much of this piece because he was fighting to go to the gate with the rest of the entrants.

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Old 08-25-2020, 05:45 PM   #57
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It could also mean that today's horses aren't allowed to progress into peak performance levels
You are probably correct that since some horses are more lightly raced and retire sooner, we aren't getting to see their peak performances (with American Pharoah again being the perfect example).

That makes me a little uncomfortable though.

It doesn't really explain why MSW and NW1 ALW horses at major tracks tend to be faster now even though Grade 1 winners tend to be slower.

If the trainers are cranking them up faster and sooner, you'd think they'd also peak sooner.
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Old 08-25-2020, 06:03 PM   #58
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"The stakes schedules at and the competition between the top-tier tracks nowadays are woefully not conducive to any sort of logical campaigning of a good older horse."

Too much money at stake for breeding sheds, and even pinhookers, for them to support longer racing careers. The horse racing business is all about barn 'inventory' turnover.
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Old 08-25-2020, 08:46 PM   #59
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If the trainers are cranking them up faster and sooner, you'd think they'd also peak sooner.
That would actually explain why the MSW and NW1 ALW horses nowadays are faster. However, a relative lack of conditioned allowance races for young horses is a big part of the problem. A conscientious trainer couldn't put a young horse through his paces progressively even if he wanted to.

Another explanation for would be that most allowance races now are both optional claimers and open to older horses early in the year. Thus a young horse not only has to face its elders when it's at a physiologic disadvantage but also in some cases has to take on some salty claiming types that own multiple wins.

They might peak sooner being rushed and overtrained, but that doesn't mean they reach their true potential, which again is at least partially dependent on physical maturation. Cranking them up early only exposes them to more injury and wear-and-tear than is necessary which in turn leads to early retirement, wastage, and descent into the claiming ranks. Couple this with the concentration of talent into the barns of only a handful of trainers and you have a pretty good recipe for not being able to fill races.
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Old 08-26-2020, 09:00 AM   #60
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Good article on the subject from 2011:
https://www.drf.com/news/jerardi-top...res-thing-past

"What I found out was the Beyer Figures by the top stakes horses were relatively similar from 1992 to 2005. And then it all started to slow down. With a few exceptions that don't last long (Uncle Mo), the best horses just keep getting slower on the Beyer scale."
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