Saturday Beyers

[cmorioles]

Originally Posted by hockey2315

Nope. . . I've never bothered to make my own figures because I have always respected the philosophy behind Beyers and the application of that philosophy into their calculations. I think there are much better places to find value in handicapping than speed figs, but I rely on them to put those other variables into context. I've only been handicapping for five years, and would never claim to be an expert in any area of the game, but I think I'm plenty intelligent enough to see that something here just doesn't make sense. More and more, we've been expected to "believe" in figs that are constantly re-adjusted and seem incongruous with logic. I know it's not easy to explain abberant figures/results--and maybe I'd run into the same problems that Beyer + Associates do if I made my own calculations--but how can we possibly believe that two horses turned in basically the exact same performances with extremely different final times without any semblance of an explanation for the abberation? Did the length of a second change for a half hour in Deleware yesterday? Like Phil said, I'd rather be given the crazy looking figs--a 115 and a 75 or whatever--and allowed to decide for myself, than to be forced to swallow a forced reconciliation made to make everything look neat and clean.

Most people would be shocked how often this is done. It only comes up in big races, but it happens a lot. The timers suck at most tracks. Run ups play a big part. The technology is there to fix these things, but the money is not.

I don't personally use Beyers, but I do make my own numbers and understand the complexities involved. I do agree about leaving obvious extreme pace scenario (fast or slow) figures alone, but Beyer doesn't so that is that. They are his figures to do what he pleases.

In this case, however, I don't think pace was even remotely an issue. It was either track maintenance or a bad clocking. It really doesn't matter which, or even if it was something else.