2nd Race Churchill Downs

[Turbulator]

I thought long and hard about which pace line to use (if any) for this horse yesterday. In the end I decided that since he was 1 for 21, hadn't previously won after a long layoff, or is first ever race, and the fact he had been off 224 days--I just wouldn't rate him. He won.

If you do decide to rate him off off his fourth, fifth or sixth race back, throwing out the fourth back because of the wet-fast track--he rates right on top. If you use the W/F line he rates second.

Did anybody else play this race? How did/would you handle this horse?

Thanks,

Steve

[tompkins]

Don't leave out layoff unless they are less than 4/1. Make it a habit since too many horses are over-raced these days. Also was this a nonwinners 2 lifetime race??

[admin]

To Richie
It took me a while I found on a sprint race were the top 5 contenders
are all non early esp

Funny thing about this race Steve your original comment

I thought long and hard about which pace line to use (if any) for this horse yesterday. In the end I decided that since he was 1 for 21, hadn't previously won after a long layoff, or is first ever race, and the fact he had been off 224 days--I just wouldn't rate him. He won.


Your comments were very similar to what I heard after the race
all around me at the Meadowlands

[socantra]

I thought long and hard about which pace line to use (if any) for this horse yesterday. In the end I decided that since he was 1 for 21, hadn't previously won after a long layoff, or is first ever race, and the fact he had been off 224 days--I just wouldn't rate him. He won.

If you do decide to rate him off off his fourth, fifth or sixth race back, throwing out the fourth back because of the wet-fast track--he rates right on top. If you use the W/F line he rates second.

Did anybody else play this race? How did/would you handle this horse?

Thanks,

Steve

I picked up on this horse because the favorite looked shaky and the rest of the field even shakier.

The horse had a good jockey, good trainer, 4 workouts in the last month with a 5 furlong work and a short one showing speed further back in the series.

The 22 races scared me, but somebody must have thought something of the horse because it didn't show a run for a claim.

The main factor though was the generous odds and the fact that it looked better than this field back when it was running with problems.

When it came through late in the stretch I felt like a brilliant handicapper. Unfortunately, there were very few other moments of brilliance during the day.

Dick...

[alydar_ David]

There are four days a year I assume every horse entered is well meant -- the trainer intends to win. No horse is a throw out based on recency.

Those are the three Triple Crown days and The Breeder's Cup.

I did a double take when I saw the Spec view of this horse as I remembered him from Val. The whole "Gestalt" of the horse is different as you can see by the image below. He doesn't even look like the same animal.

I wound up throwing this horse out, but not for recency. I won't mention why I made him a non-contender as I was obviously wrong, and you'd have to see the other entrants via Val anyway.

[alydar_ David]

The automatic paceline selector -- F6 -- prefers the last race.

[socantra]

The programs seem to handle the various lines very differently indeed. How did the 5th line back look? I used it to get the horse back to CD, since current form was not an issue anyway. Here's how the various lines looked in BL/BL from Spandx:

[alydar_ David]

Val had the fifth race back tied with the last race via F6.

[Turbulator]

I did a double take when I saw the Spec view of this horse as I remembered him from Val. The whole "Gestalt" of the horse is different as you can see by the image below. He doesn't even look like the same animal.

I have a version of Val3C I didn't think worked, but I was able to bring it up once I had some races downloaded. I was struck by the differences in speed ratings.

Same races, but the speed ratings are from another universe. Are they not coming from Trackmaster? Is Val computing them in some different way? Must be.

Thanks,

Steve

[alydar_ David]

Steve, check out these links, especially the second one.

http://bindfold.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1091

http://bindfold.com/forums/showthread.php?t=666