Track variant

[cosmicway]

I think it's difficult to find a universal method to compute track variants of horse races. It's central to building a good system plus, if you are an owner, to judge how your horse will perform against new opposition.

I know the story with the three youngsters running on the beach and the girl winning because she runs on the boardwalk and the other two run on the sand. But that's only how the story of the track variant begins.

I went on from that to construct my own as differences from the class par.
I 'm identifying the classes from the conditions declarations as described in the old cards -as best as that can be done- and proceed to calculate the difference of the winner's time from the mean par time.

But I 'm not satisfied.
First of all I use a logistic criterion.
There exists a universal criterion whenever you try to create/use software that predicts sports events of any type (horses-football-golf-discus ...). See here:

http://predictionscience.freeforums.org/the-prediction-of-football-matches-methods-t4.html

My track variant falls short.
It's the method I found in yahoo answers, ehow but falls short - compared to what has been achieved by others, who however miss out on other things (such as change of distance, track to track shipers).

So I 'm trying to figure out what to do.

[Ted Craven]

Welcome cosmicway,

I will definitely read the article on prediction science which you cited. So that you can add to your enquiry a discussion on how TrackMaster makes their variants (and speed ratings and class ratings), here is a link to a Youtube video which describes in some depth the methodology they employ to create their numbers. RDSS and some older Sartin programs employ these variants (Daily Track and Inter-Track) to equalize final and sectional times.

All variant making is imperfect, and we seek one which is not only the least imperfect, but perhaps more importantly - good enough. I think it also pertinent to this discussion, and important, to cite a point-of-view of Dr Sartin's re variants and final times - namely that more often than not the final time of a race is highly dependent on the matchup of horses' running styles, early and mid-race pressure - often much more so than the supposed track maintenance and weather related explanations for variances in final times. (Excerpt from 'Pace Makes the Race': http://www.sartinmethodology.com/pubs/PsychologyOfWinningPMTR.pdf - ending Q & A's re variants on pages 14 and 15).

It is for this reason that - for better or worse, though consistently - later Sartin software, including RDSS, frequently employs a percentage (e.g. 50%) of the Daily Variants to modify (i.e. seeking to equalize/normalize) final and segmental times - accepting that the inter-race matchup of running styles and pressure accounts for the significant portion of all final time variances.

Hope that is interesting addition fuel for the research fires. Good luck!


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Ted