Quote:
Originally Posted by f2tornado
This is why I'm careful taking speed figures hook, line, and sinker. I recall scratching my head at the 108 BSF Materiality got in one of the slowest Florida Derby renewals in history. The horse didn't so squat thereafter.
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GP is my home track, when awesome figs are issued for slow-by-the-clock races they almost never hold up based on what those horses ever do again. Year after year after year. I think Thorograph uses the CYA caveat that the effort cooked the horse for good, but why don't fast times with fast figs cook all of these horses at GP and SA all the time?
Ouality Road was a fast horse, with very fast figs, and he never ran slow in his life. His time in the FL derby was fast enough to say, based on the Justify/Materiality defense, that GP must have been playing 2-3 seconds faster that day, but not a peep, and his body of work confirms his time. He had bad feet, but he never ran slow, spit the bit maybe, but never ran slow.
Game on Dude amassed 6-7 years worth of fast times and insulting figs, and year in, year out, Santa Anita was dismissed as never being even a par with what it had been before or after he ran there. Game on Dude was apparently the luckiest horse ever to live, Santa Anita never changed in 6 years, was illusorally fast for 6 years. But now it is slower than some pokey, never been fast track.
Has it become significantly deeper? Surely, Beyer, Thorograph, Timeform have enough pull to find out exactly how much deeper they've made it. If it isn't deeper, how in the world did it lose 3 seconds? Why hasn't there been a rash of bowed tendons, which accompanies horses that trained on shallow tracks as 2yos, but race on deep tracks as 3yos?
I mean no disrespect and these figs and the argument Santa Anita has slowed by 2-3 seconds may prove spot on, but the only objective measure of speed is time, when time is questioned, the burden always lies with the one saying 2+2=10.
Do we believe Spectacular Bid was running on a track 2-3 seconds faster than his time indicates in the Strub? Do we believe Secretariat was running on a track 2-3 seconds faster than his time indicates in the Belmont? Do we believe that Dr. Fager's mile record is bunk because he was running on a track 2-3 seconds faster than his time indicates? Or do you look at their amassed times over the course of their careers and say, their times look legit? Which is impossible with a 3yo, esp one that debuted in soring.
I admit Baffert winning is getting boring (I'm sure Euros feel the sam about O'Brian), but I have no problem being wrong and withvJustify proving to be the fastest slow poke that ever graced a track and being castigated for doubting that a track has slowed by 2-3 seconds, 1 second, 1.5 seconds, but 15 lengths?
