[mikeh]

Seems the ‘Trends’ trail is throwing up a variety of possibilities so I will post my ‘Trends’ qualifiers:
Sebadee and Deal Done.

[mikeh]

Likewise. Watched him win a bumper in IRE a few months prior to the festival when he finished like a train and was surprised at his 33/1 price at Cheltenham…but took it.
I’m no rider but he seemed to be travelling well yesterday so why was he backhanded so close to the fence surely it might have caused a lack of concentration at a crucial time?

[mikeh]

I suggest arriving at the races two hours before the first race and strolling around the course – you will soon find out which courses are stiff and which are easy.

mikeh – your figures are interesting. Fakenham is one the easiest courses in the country, so if they come out slowest, I surmise that they are racing over distances which are inaccurately measured.

I wanted to find a method of equating the different course characteristics and incorporating the result into a horses ability to run at a certain secs/furl figure. You say Fakenham is an easy course, how do you define ‘easy’, as a speed figure?, cannot be, as the median times at Fakenham are slow compared them to Hereford one of the quickest tracks in the country.

I suppose we should return to the original questio ‘How do you define Stiff?’
and can it be defined in quatative terms?

I’d never get pass the cider works walking around Hereford, one of my favourite tracks.

[mikeh]

Welcome to TRF, mikeh.

Do your calculations allow for the fact that, whilst Cheltenham is undeniably stiff, the better class of horses that run there (a horse rated 170, for instance, may run a stiff two miles in a similar time to a horse rated 140 on a sharper track) are likely to skew your results somewhat?

I didn’t want to get into the other anomilies (many I am sure to the purists) of my method and appreciate that it doesn’t cover for class etc ( but I have come across many instances where class and sec/furl is not as clear cut as one may expect) but I do take your point.
I just wanted to come up with some idea as to the differences which exist between courses in a quantitive way, it does show up that some horses just cannot handle a fast track and likewise others cannot handle a slow track.

[mikeh]

Haydock….Hmmmmm

Hi moehat

heres some of my course data….

http://www.badongo.com/pic/4597417

Found the table interesting as have been compiling similar tables for the 41 NH tracks as per follows:
Taking the average of winning times and the minimum course distance on ground described as GF or Good. Compensating where the course minimum distance is greater than 2m and calculating the secs/furl.

My fastest Hurdle tracks in order are Wincanton; Ayr; Hereford; Warwick and Musselburgh
My slowest Hudle tracks (stiffest) are Aintree; Newcastle; Wetherby; Carlisle; Hexham and slowest of all Fakenham

The main limitations to my method are
1. Only 4 yrs of data
2. A few ciourses rarely have GF or Good descriptions hence the number of observations are low
3. The number of observations is even lower when calculating for the chases.
4. I do not include class 5 or 6 races.

Some figures:
Wincanton hurdles 14.03 seconds/furlong (27 observations)
Fakenham 15.4 secs/furl. (24 observations)
Cheltenham is about 1/2 way in my table of hurdles at 14.48 secs/furl I do not discriminate between the Old and New courses as at c2m the track is amost the same.

My fastest Chase track is Stratford at 14.12 secs/furl (12 observations)and again Fakenham is the slowest for chases at 15.76 secs/furl (4 observations)

And I was going to make my first post: How do you define a ‘Sharp’ track?

[Author]

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