Sprinters in a route?

[Ted Craven]

Froggy,

I rated both lines of #7 Almighty Silver - the route and the sprint, because I wanted to see how they compared. As I mentioned above, he proved he could route by his last 9f line and we know he is fit and ready to run, but because of the high beaten lengths, it makes him look slow. That will not do him any favours on final time or 3rd fraction adjusted, pace of horse-based readouts. The sprint makes him look faster, and I have some confidence in sprint to route projections.

Look at the following screenshots, showing Total Energy and Velocity measurements when you compare Pace of Race to Pace of Horse. The 2 races for this horse are much closer together in TE from a POR point of view, so we can see it ran against about (hypothetically) the same POR. Looking at POH, the sprint was much better due to being closer to about the same POR.



The only problem with the last race is that the winner drew away from the field significantly around the far turn and the stretch (fading just a bit at the finish line). Our horse actually ran a fairly consistent race last out: 5-4-4-3, but the beaten lengths make the POH slow. Look at the Result Chart from that last race:



(Note: the RDSS Result Chart browser is coming soon...) So, not wanting to penalize the horse when it actually ran a good race last, I gave myself permission (all after the fact, OK) to look at its best line, also the line tagged as a Powerline (best unadjusted POR).

Anyway, that was my rationale, and one which I believe can be consistently applied.

I'm sorry that I'm displaying some tools which you don't have yet (POR vs POH Velocities) and the Result Chart browser, or for touting the Spec mode projection formula. This is all from my point of view currently, and I fully intend to share this with everyone, so it didn't make sense to me to either not respond at all or to say something line 'you win some, you lose some...' when I definitely think I see something here. (Lots of other stuff baffles me and I try to just move on when it does).

Originally Posted by froggy

I was not aware of the projection difference between Spec and RDSS.

I presume you mean 'between Speculator and Validator'. RDSS includes both these ancestors. My personal belief is that the Spec mode of RDSS includes the best of both worlds: i.e. a better sprint to route projection formula than Val, the critical VDC readout missing from Spec, the Segments CBL not included in Val, the TS+F3 readout in the Segments IMUG 3rd panel display from Spec (Val merely duplicates the VDC ranking there), the Deceleration readout from Spec.

Folks are free to choose whichever mode they feel comfortable with (Val or Spec), or have allegience to, or neither at all if the Match Up only is their focus. This point has me in a little hot water with Doc. In his recent letters and feedback to me, he has said that he loves RDSS in general, endorses it fully, agrees it is where he might have gone if better health events and access to a different programmer had been the case. However, he has stated that he disagrees with my 'teaching style' or tendency to be inclusive of the varieties of approach which fall under the umbrella of the Sartin Methodology (e.g. Match Up, Energy, TPR, Validator - and don't get him started about Speculator...). I hope I am not misrepresenting his point of view by saying he thinks all this 'democracy' leads to too much choice, too much interpretation leeway and thus too much room for a majority of people to second-guess themselves out of a profitable 20 race cycle ROI. I believe he would rather there just be the BL/BL screen and a few support screens to aid in paceline selection and contender identification - in other words: Validator. And who can blame him for this point of view, so I don't, and we appear to have a mutual respect but difference of opinion as to what to make available to RDSS users. Last I heard, he intends to let me conduct this my way so far (democratic, inclusive - individual can make their own choices), compared to his way only ( e.g. a benevolent dictatorship: this way is the best, the past is inferior or else not for mere mortals, etc). And besides not having remotely similar personalities or skill sets, or presentation styles, who could possibly attempt to duplicate Doc's assertive, authoritative, what to speak of flamboyant style. So I won't even lose sleep by thinking of trying that. I'm just me.

So sorry Froggy, for sticking this dissertation inside a reply to your quite serious question about sprint-to-route projection. I just felt it was relevant to why there seems to be so many different ways to do things. (And maybe I will learn my lesson here, in due course, who knows...).

Anyway, your last question about a comparative study: no need for a route to sprint (extraction) study: they are identical with Val and Spec (but remember there will be a difference because beaten lengths are valued differently in each mode (Spec is uniform, Val is variable). If you wanted to do any study for yourself (or to share) do it on how fairly sprinters project to routes in each mode, i.e. whether these projections tend to show the horse matching how they ended up running today (either running well, or running poorly).



Ted

[froggy]

Ted,

I appreciate your thoughtfulness and time you have taken on this matter.
I will if at all possible in the near future conduct a 100 race study to try to resolve my own questions.
I maybe don't have the money but arthritis has given me the time.
I am open to any and all questions and suggestions on this matter.

Froggy