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What do people think are the most reliable set of standard times available ? Racing Post ? Racing and Football Outlook, etc ?
I ask since Peter Stavers’ method for identifying fast run races in his book Seconds Into Winners is a decent enough alternative to compiling one’s own speed figures, but the method is very much dependent on a consistent set of standard times over each distance at a specific track.
blue
Incidentally, did anyone ever work out just how Mr Stavers managed to get his going allowances ? In the example races he gave it was difficult to discern any pattern to them.
Hi bluebook
Peter Stavers is a former member of this site but I think that a lot of his posts may have been culled as every now and then, cormack does a clean up of the site.
You should try the search function of the site for any postings by him, although I don’t remember him divulging any information on his methods as such.
Hope this helps.
Hi David, and thanks again.
Pity I didn’t know earlier that he posted on here as I might have been able to pick his brains. I did write to him via his publisher but never received a reply. I thought his method good, but the standard times he gave in his book, though okay, really needed to be updated each year, and I found the method involved in establishing a correct going allowance easy to understand but difficult to implement. He could’ve done with giving more examples.
Anyway, perhaps someone else on here will be able to help.
blue
I personally think taking the winning time of all age races on good, good to firm where the winner has an official BHB rating then correcting that time to 10 stone is a good way to go.
The BHB mark is generally a very good indicator of a horses true ability.
Then all you have to do is factor in pace, watering, golden highways, rail movement and wind…simple really
But do you use the OR that the winner had going into the race, or the rating they were given after the race?
I’d use the BHB rating on the day. Next run in a handicap there’s a 43% chance the horse will be lower rated and 57% it’ll be the same or higher rated so given a sufficient sample size it will even itself out anyway. One lb over a mile is less than half a second anyway.
Not an exact science granted, but at least you’d be time adjusting a race for the general ability of the actual winner and not applying some blanket class par to a handicap that in any 2 races may have winners with BHB ratings of 20 lbs between them.
raceform update, by that i mean races where the winner returned a speed rating of 110 or more go into my notebook as possible future bets,chipmunk
The Racing Post standards tied in with Racing Post ratings(RP) and Topspeed(TS) are quite structured and provide a good starting point for anyone wishing to grasp this subject.
There have been numerous discussions on the forum about the accuracy of these standards at some courses, but overall they are usually reliable and easy to understand once you master the basic ideas.
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