Ramon Dominguez is the greatest. He's above criticism because he puts family first and rides the inner meet instead of moving to Florida. No other jockeys have families. It's good he put his family first.

The Borel ride was awful. He wasn't going to win anyway, but I hate burning money on a horse that isn't given a fair chance because of a retarded ride. While I'm at it, screw Castellano too for his great ride in the 8th to head bob me out of all the multi-race bets.

I don't miss many live photo calls but, I blew that one.
I thought for certain the 6 won and was hoping the 2 (the winner) got the bob for place.:zz:

Me too. I bet the 6 to win fairly heavy and skipped away from the monitor counting my money. When I saw the 2 placed up top I could've thrown a baby off a skyscraper.

we need to talk

Don't be silly honey.

From Crist's blog...

--Saving the best for last: Quality Road. His Met Mile victory, where he turned back three challenges en route to a 1:33.11 mile off a 114-day layoff, stamped him as the best male racehorse in this country since Curlin retired. Next stop: possibly the Suburban July 3, or straight to the Whitney Aug. 7, then possibly the Woodward, Jockey Club Gold Cup and Breeders' Cup Classic.

His Met clocking equalled Langfuhr's from 1997 as the second fastest ever behind Honour and Glory's 1:32.81 in 1996. It's a little tougher to be as precise about a speed figure: The Belmont track was not particularly quick earlier in the day, and then there were four straight grass races before the Met, by which time the track seemed much quicker. If you gave the race the same variant as the earlier ones on the card, the Met would get a Beyer Speed Figure of 123, which would leave runners-up Musket Man, Tizway and Convocation with implausibly high career tops. Instead, the race has been given a preliminary BSF of 114.

isn't the rest of that sentence pretty important as well?

Nice race by Quality Road. I limited my wagers and just had the 3 and 8 in tri boxes hoping for a score in case Quality Road faltered.

I thought "no way" at the time I could make much money playing Quality Road, though in retrospect the $6.10 to $1 exacta payout with Musket Man makes me say "woulda coulda shoulda."


Pretty race. Velazquez positioned QR to where he never had to look at another horse's tail during the race, and had his choice of track position the entire route.

Grip it and rip it.

Yes, because it explains the rationale of lowering the figure. However, that wasn't the discussion point- it was what the number would have been if they didn't adjust it. If you read through the posts you'll see that I said they would take it down because of the margins.

I didn't realize how much I had invested on the 6 until she lost.

As far as the Met goes, I don't think anybody needs an accurate BSF to know that QR is a monster, Musket Man and Tizway ran huge, and Borel should stick to Churchill.

I had money on the 6 too, and I honestly believe that the only point of that bob that the 2 was ahead was at the wire, a milisecond before and after it looked like the 6 was ahead to me.

While in the end you guessed correctly, it was for the wrong reason. Beyer doesn't use the standard one turn mile chart for races at Belmont. He has not for the whole meet. I'm pretty sure he didn't last year either but I don't remember 100%, so don't quote me on that. He adds about 8 points to the standard chart.

So, if using the regular one turn speed chart, the difference between Quality Road and Driven by Success should be about 12 points, not 16 or 17. But with the different chart in use for Belmont, the figure is actually about 20 points higher. Do you honestly believe the race figure should be 124? I know that I don't. Given that the Met was run in isolation from other dirt races, I think using the horses in the Met is much more accurate than using the other races on the card when you have to decide between the two.

To further befuddle people, the first race was split from the others as well, but I think this is a bad mistake by Hopkins/Beyer. The pace was very fast and the winner still went wire to wire. They gave the race a 77...poor work on that one in my opinion. It is probably a good approximation of the winner, but it makes the ones behind him look better than they actually ran by 10 or 11 points.

Thanks CJ for the excellent info.

About adding 8 points to the Belmont miles, I didn't know that and I have no idea why. If there were ONE place where a 7F time can be compared to a 1 turn mile at face value it's there, since the runups are equal. If anything, compared to say CD (which has virtually no runup at a mile), I would think that you would want to SUBTRACT something.

As for splitting the variants, I would have left it as is on all of them. If he ran a 121 or 124 or whatever on paper, leave it as such and let the bettor decide whether the horses can repeat that number. Maybe that's just me, but I don't try to make the numbers "fit" what I think the horses can do, but what they actually did. If there's a real reason I think something is wrong (like for example the timer ch on the Withers I was sure of) then I'll take liberties but otherwise I think the more you tinker the more you end up putting your own opinions into the number. Trip and pace were NOT supposed to be a part of the Beyer equation. Seems like the guy who does the CD numbers agrees with me (for the most part) whereas Hopkins doesn't.

Also, on the "raw chart" I have (excluding the Belmont adjustment), DBS' 1:21.75 = 118 and QR's 1:33.11 = 134, do you disagree with that?

I agree it is a tough call of when to split and not. However, when a race is isolated and surrounded by turf races on both sides like the Met, more times than not if the horses in the race indicate the track changed speeds it probably did. I'm not saying every time, since there really isn't a way to know until later. But most times, Beyer does a good job in those spots.

On the raw figures, I have them as 120 and 132, but it is done using a computer. The Beyer charts I've seen published tend to go awry as times get extremely fast or slow. I agree about Hopkins, he is probably the worst of the group.