By John Lindley

The number one, most predominate handicapping tool for a long time has been the development and use of speed figures. However, in addition to their use by handicappers, the use of speed figures has gone from an obscure tool that a small percentage of handicappers were using in prior to the 1970’s to affecting pretty much all facets of racing and breeding today. Stating the obvious, no other handicapping tool has even come close to affecting the sport as speed figures have done. 

Beyer Speed Figures are just trying to measure the effect of the track surface on the time of any given race/horse. Sheet figures, in addition to trying to measure the effect of the track surface on the time of any given race/horse, include ground loss, weight and the effect of wind on a horse’s effort.

 

Changing track speeds during the day, even in consistent weather is probably the biggest problem facing figure makers. Several years ago, racetracks discovered if they had more sand in their track, the surface would dry out quicker. Adding water to a sandy track can either speed up or slow down the surface, or result in no change in the speed of a surface. Even if the water trucks apply a similar amount of water between each race, the surface still can be affected differently as the day progresses in dry weather. For example, early in the racing day when it isn’t as hot, water will evaporate at a different rate than later in the day when the temperature has risen. The point of all this is years ago, without the sand, track surfaces would (or at least were more likely) to stay more consistent, even in similar weather. Nowadays, with sand a significant part of many surfaces, the track speed will most likely change throughout the day. So why does the addition of sand make speed figures potentially less accurate? The reason is more and more track surfaces are changing speed quickly, sometimes even from race to race. The person calculating a variant will have less information (in the number of races run on a similar surface in terms of speed) which makes doing a variant tougher and forces the figure maker to rely more and more on projection. 

 

The same problem is facing figure makers that are doing figures for synthetic surfaces. Those surfaces also are affected by temperature, track maintenance, and water. 

    

The key to whether or not any variant on any day is an accurate representation of the track speed can be reduced to the skill of the person calculating the variant as with more and more track surfaces changing speeds throughout the day, the person will be forced to rely on previous figures in determining a variant. This will result in days where the figure maker is confident in the accuracy of their figures and days where they are not. Thoro-graph will note when they feel their figure is unreliable, sometimes Thoro-Graph will not even calculate a figure for a race, recognizing there was no “data” to use to get a reliable figure. Obviously knowing when a figure maker is confident of his/her figures and when they are not is very valuable to anyone using those figures.

      

Handicapping is not the only area of horseracing that has been affected by speed figures. In fact, if you open any issue of the weekly breeding/racing magazine, The Blood-Horse, it is common to see an ad for a stallion saying “Earned the highest Beyer of any two-year-old that season.” or “Consistently earned triple digit Beyers.” or “Ran a “0” on the Thoro-Graph scale three times.”

 

Those speed figures, mainly the Beyer figures published in the Daily Racing Form and Sheet figures/pattern analysis (sheet figures and pattern analysis are promoted by Jerry Brown of Thoro-Graph and Len Ragozin of The Sheets) have even affected the way trainers prepare their horses and when they race their horses. In a recent interview by the Blood-Horse, Bob Baffert, discussing training for both the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and the Kentucky Derby says “….factor is the “sheet” guys have changed the whole game, people (trainers) are afraid to get a horse beat, with the bounce theory and all that, now if you run in races too close together, you are a bad trainer, you’re too hard on your horses.” 

 

Another effect of speed figures has been the ability of people to have evidence of “move up” trainers, trainers whose horses (either horses they are training or recently acquired) suddenly improve several lengths. The sudden, large improvement of a horse’s speed figure indirectly lead to complaints and suspicions, which lead to expanded testing, for example testing for increase bicarbonate levels (commonly administered as milkshakes) and/or for steroids, which led to detention barns for racing biggest days, out of competition testing and now the banning of steroids in several states.

One last question was asked, that is, with the strong influence speed figures have on bettors and the industry, should you purposely look for other methods of handicapping to gain an edge over the masses? My answer is maybe. Clearly, if you approach handicapping from a different perspective rather than evaluating speed figures and you are successful, you will have big advantage. This also can be the case if you are enhancing those speed figures with additional information, for example the performance information available from www.casetherace.com. I think even ardent speed figure users, such as myself, all see situations where the high figure horse, or high figure horses are probably going to get beat. Other times people that purposely look at things other than speed figures may be playing a horse that, under every circumstance to just too slow to win. By ignoring speed figures, these players may be giving up any advantage they might have. I think if you have this view, that is you don’t like using speed figures or see no value in them, you would be best off finding situations/races were speed figure users can’t really get a handle on and concentrate your play only on those situations.

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