Andrew Beyer: Some turf figures just can't be made
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When the Skidmore Stakes is run at Saratoga Friday, handicappers looking for guidance from the Beyer Speed Figures will be disappointed. Five horses in the field of 2-year-olds, including the probable favorites, No Nay Mets and Fandom, are missing speed figures in their past-performance lines. These omissions deserve an explanation.
As many racetracks now card early-season maiden races for 2-year-olds on the turf, the task of making speed figures has been complicated. Consider the performance of trainer Wesley Ward’s colt Fandom, who beat a field of first-time starters at Keeneland by nearly seven lengths, running 5 1/2 furlongs in a fast 1:03.21. Obviously, this was a good performance. But how good?
If there had been another 5 1/2-furlong turf sprint on the Keeneland card, one for older horses with established form, we could have compared the times of the two races and made a figure for Fandom with confidence. But at Keeneland on that day, the three other turf races were run at distances between one mile and 1 1/2 miles.
In a similar situation involving dirt races, we would have had no difficulty making figures. The data in our system allows us to compare the times of races at virtually all distances. We can use the result of a 1 1/8-mile dirt race at Saratoga to help gauge the speed of the racing surface and to assign a figure to a sprint filled with first-time starters.
But grass races are different. Our colleague Randy Moss observed, “It is almost impossible to establish a consistent correlation between one-turn and two-turn races on the turf.”
The reason, in part, is that turf races often feature a very slow pace that skews the final time that is the basis of a speed figure. Moreover, turf races are complicated by differing rail settings and differing lengths of the run-up to the point where the timing of a race begins.
Our speed-figure team can sometimes make figures for turf races by using the benefit of hindsight. When we make a turf-sprint figure in which we have confidence, we will look back at the previous start of horses in the field and use that information to help us assign a figure to the earlier race. Eventually, we may have speed figures for the colts in the Skidmore Stakes. We regret that we don’t have them now.
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