Weekend Beyers: Blind Luck 104; Sidney's 100; AmLion 98

[miraja2]

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

Beyer is stuck between a rock and a hard place. His figures are 'fine' for dirt, as pace doesn't play that much of a role (at least not the primary role it does on synthetics) but they fail woefully in cases where the 'type' of races determines how 'fast' a race is run. In other words, he CAN'T RECONCILE his DIRT with his SYNTHETIC figures. And, thus, he (and his supporters) really should not be commenting on the ability of horses that run on different surfaces.

Can you guess who wrote the following in 1993:

"Racing in England and France, in particular is utterly foreign to an American; horses gallop along in a tight pack in virtual slow motion during the early stages of a race and don't accelerate in earnest until they turn into the stretch. As a result, their final times are unimportant, and speed figures would be useless as a handicapping tool."

The answer is.....Andrew Beyer (Beyer on Speed, p 149).
You make it sound as if by making speed figures for horses that run on synthetic or turf Beyer and other figure makers are engaged in some kind of deceitful fraud. I don't think that's the case. As the quotation above illustrates, Beyer has always been very open about what figures are, and - just as importantly - what they are not. If other people use speed figures as some sort of gospel truth when it comes to synthetic and turf horses, then that is on them, not him. As CJ pointed out, since the figures merely involve the final time, it strikes me that it is up to the individual horseplayer to determine if the final time (and therefore a speed figure) is important or not in a given race.