Archive for February, 2010
The ABC of Horse Racing 1948 Style
In 1948 a little Bantam paperback book called The ABC of Horse Racing by Dan Parker, a columnist for the New York Daily Mirror, hit the stands. The first page displayed a reprint of The Morning Telegraph, presumably the devil’s code. Flip to the next page and you’re awash in sour graphs: “Having studied simple [...]
A Simple Pace Shape
Formula: pv + wsf(pc) Pace velocity (pace of the race) + winner’s speed figure compared to par for class equals a simple pace shape that includes the pace of the race (not a particular horse) and the way the “winner” finished against the pace of the race represented by the “winner’s” speed figure relative to [...]
The Speed Spot System
In the Dec. 1948 issue of American Turf Monthly Ray Taulbot unveiled his Speed Spot System. It’s the granddaddy of pace handicapping. He focused on what happened early – at the pre-stretch call or pace call as we know it now – in the race instead of late. He had been writing about pace for [...]
1932 Kentucky Derby
The May 1932 issue of Horse and Jockey magazine did a nice spread on the Kentucky Derby for that year. Brother Joe, a handsome dark brown colt owned by Kentucky colonel E. R. Bradley, had future book odds of 300/1 but by May they dropped to 30/1 for fifth choice. Top Flight, the filly, [...]
Slow Pace & You’ll Be Sorry
If you’ve been reading this blog for long you know there’s a lot of talk about fast pace races, key pace races, etc. But it’s just as important to know if the pace was unusually slow. In his book Figure Handicapping, James Quinn wrote, “Thus, whenever the pace of the race has been unusually fast [...]
Zen and the Art of Past Performances
Is your head swirling with too much information? Trainer stats, bias ratings, trip notes, jockey/trainer combos, class appraisal, form appraisal, etc., and please give me an Excedrin. Signal-to-noise ratio is in full bloom? Well, I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s New York Times bestseller Blink in which Gladwell does a entertaining job of describing the human [...]
The Bias
and the flyboy lunaticWell, the last newsletter created a bit of a controversy. Some folks simply thought I was a fly-boy lunatic for questioning ratings such as an obvious phenomenon called a track/dirt bias. And then there were some “way to go” folks out there, too. I hit the nail squarely on the head, they [...]
