- This topic has 84 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 19 years, 9 months ago by
.
- Posts
Mark Nelson, who compiles the TIME TEST in the Racing and Football Outlook has given Cumin the highest speed rating for a juvenile filly this season. I don’t know how he compiles his ratings, but he has Cumin on 56 and Elhamri on 63. Maybe the Topspeed rating of 89 was pretty useful, on reflection.
I do take into account wfa and my figures are Elhamri 118 from Strategic Prince 117 among the colts and Cumin 113 top filly.
How reliable are Ascot ratings considering they are in effect racing on a new track?
The Topspeed ratings always include the WFA allowance, which as we’ve already established is at best only an average. I don’t think they are less accurate than + or – 5 or 6lbs.
Yes, I was surprised that it was a bit low. I don’t know which race Topspeed used as his ‘key’ race that day, but I suspect it was the 5f sprint won by Hollbeck Ghyll on the straight course and Road To Love on the rest of the course. Hollbeck Ghyll’s time was only just behind La Cucharacha, but they are miles apart on RPRs, so that keeps the speed ratings down for the other races. Otherwise Topspeed, bound by the formula used, would have to award Hollbeck Ghyll a very big rating, far too big really – and this would mean that Hollbeck Ghyll’s RPR would have to be upped to match it.
Hollbeck Ghyll was rated 88 by Topspeed (Cumin 89), so the 2yo was faster. If he’d rated Cumin at 109, say, Hollbeck Ghyll would have to be 108. If that horse runs well in the Nunthorpe, then Topspeed will know he got it wrong.
Did you rate any of the sprints on the Thursday, EC?
(Edited by Artemis at 7:29 pm on Aug. 9, 2006)
EC,
I think there are fundamental differences between the RP standards and those of time followers who use median/means or class pars. Most of these we’ve already discussed, so no point going there again. Subsequent events are a good way to look back and see if ratings were justified, although this can only be circumstantial evidence.
What you say about differentials is logical, but the differences at Goodwood between 5f, 6f, and 7f seem reasonable enough given the configuration of the course.
The 5f standard of 57.80 is one of the fastest in the country because it is largely downhill. At 6f, 13.0 secs is allowed for the extra furlong and at 7f racing round a bend, 13.6 secs for the extra furlong. I haven’t any access to any other standard times to compare to the RP, but I cannot imagine the differentials would be much ‘different’.
Again, I have to say that RP standards are not gleaned from averages. If they were, they would be noticeably higher at every distance.
- Total Posts 17716
I seem to recall, from the dim and distant past, that RP standard times were formed from the average of the 10 best times, over the past 10 years, for each particular distance.<br> If that is still the case, then the standard times would  reflect the average class level of the better races over each distance, which in Goodwood’s case would mean that the 7f standard would be harder to attain than the 5f standard, as generally speaking, the former would attract higher class horses than the latter.
(Edited by reet hard at 7:07 pm on Aug. 10, 2006)
The best times, adjusted for the horse’s RPR rating and weight carried, seems to be how the standard is set. You should be able to deduce the standard from a set of low grade(truly run) races by making the adjustments for RPR, and weight carried – even Weight For Age correction included. I don’t think it matters too much about the grade of horses because the standard can be adjusted to match the grade.
I’m in the process of building a database to calculate standard times on a rolling basis. The database has every race time for the last 5 years. These have been standardised to 9 stone using the same scale as the Racing Post (as provided by Artemis) and WFA.
Using only races where the official going was Good or Good to Firm produces the following averages for Goodwood.
Standardised times<br>5f 58.71<br>6f 72.45<br>7f 87.20
Racing Post standards<br>5f 57.8<br>6f 70.8<br>7f 84.4
It is difficult to reconcile the RP standards when you look at lots of course/distance combos and in some cases the RP time has not been achieved by any horse in the last 5 years. I find this a bit alarming especially as the difference between the standardised time and the RP times is not consistent. <br>
EC
I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say.
Once you have arrived at a standard time for a particular distance on good ground(and I don’t know exactly how this is done), you should be able to make predictions or deductions about the times you might expect from horses of different class and age with minor adjustments for weight carried, given a fairly run race.
You can also work in the other direction and deduce an estimate of the standard time given any race time(fairly run) and the age, class and weight carried by the winner.
You also need a table for comparing time, weight and distance, and WFA tables.
For example, at 5f(1sec =22lbs) in August(WFA 2yo 17lbs, 3yo 2lbs)
If a standard of 57.80(RPR 100 at 9st, good) has been established, you can estimate the time for a race with a form value(at 9st) of RPR 60, no wfa. It should be 40lbs slower than standard, or 1.81secs slower than 57.80 i.e 59.61 secs.
You can take every race time over 5f on good ground over the last 5 years and work back to a standardised time, as Wallace has done, and you should get a fair estimate of what the standard should be. The fly in the ointment is that if you take every time, you inevitably include races that are falsely run and these will make your standard higher than it should be.
Granted, there shouldn’t be too many 5f/6f races that are not run at a fair pace, but at 7f+, only the most competitive races are almost guaranteed to be truly run.
The relationship between class, age, weight and distances used by the RP, Timeform and others is long established. It was used by Phil Bull, who founded Timeform, to great effect about 40 years ago, in conjunction with Dick Whitford, the pioneer of ratings -based modern handicapping methods, and has been used successfully by many successful professionals over the years. The RP follows the same methods as Bull, Whitford and many others who have followed in their footsteps. Hardly cowboys, EC.
It would be interesting to see Wallace’s standardised times using only the best times(best 10,say).
Good post Artemis.
After all the times have been adjusted to take into account weight carried compared to wfa, ability of horses, putative ground conditions etc, you certainly don’t want to be taking averages as certain circumstances/distances lead to more truly run races than others. I was taught to use SD sets.
Timeform has actually been around for about 60 years, BTW.
Some of you will know that I am, cough, no great fan of Mordin. But he did write something a year or two back in which he said that a valid way to deal with standard times is to get some reasonably accurate ones in the first place and then just keep fine-tuning them and tweaking them by applying them to real events until you are happy.
My own experience is that there is something to be said for this approach (in the right hands), not least because it cuts through a mountain of maths.
I was taught to use SD sets
Excuse my ignorance but what are SD sets and how do they work?
Standard deviation sets.
It is a way of addressing the fact that the distribution of times is not necessarily consistent. We keep being told that most races on the Polytrack at Lingfield are not truly run. If that is so, why would we use simple averages or medians? Similarly, the proportion of truly run races at, say, 5f is likely to be significantly different to the proportion of truly run races at 16f. An average or median is likely to represent something different in one than the other.
I don’t work at Timeform, by the way.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.