Ask Beyer: Adjusting aberrant figures at Belmont
Q. Just curious about figures at Belmont on June 18. Its All Relevant earned a 99 Beyer Speed Figure going 1 1/16 miles in 1:39.87. So Darn Hot earned a 75 Beyer figure going 1 1/16 miles in 1:41.17. That’s a difference of 1.3 seconds. On the surface it seems that their figures should be about 10 to 12 points apart. Why is there a 24-point difference?
– George Weaver
A. George, your math is good. The two final times equate to a 13-point difference in our figures. And we understand that you would feel your winning filly didn’t get the credit she deserved.
The explanation derives from the fact that Belmont can be a very changeable track. Sometimes it will speed up significantly for a single race. We can never be certain when this has happened, but we can usually deduce it if a fast final time would produce implausible figures for most of the horses in the field.
A case in point was Tap It to Win’s victory in a June 4 allowance race. Our normal calculations would have given the race a figure of 107, with the top six finishers all improving significantly upon their career-best efforts, Tap It to Win would have looked like a standout in the Belmont Stakes if we had accepted the figure. We arbitrarily assigned the race a 97, which better reflected the talent of the field. Tap It to Win’s fifth-place finish apparently confirmed that we were right to lower the figure.
The first race on June 18 was a similar situation. If we made our calculation based on the track variant that applied on the rest of the card, and which gave Its All Relevant a 99, So Darn Hot would have earned a winning Beyer Speed Figures of 86.
The filly had earned a 66 in her one previous start on the dirt. Could she have run so much better? Sure. She had been a $600,000 purchase and she would be expected to improve with experience.
If the winner ran an 86, runner-up Thankful would get a figure of 77. She had shown nothing in her debut on the turf (a fig of 60), but she had a strong pedigree and could be more effective on dirt.
Third-place Sky Queen would receive a figure of 76. She had raced twice at Aqueduct, showed speed in both starts and faded in both, earning figures of 50 and 54. Could she now improve more than 20 points? Hmm.
This was a judgment call, and not an easy one, but we thought it was unlikely that all three fillies had improved so much at the same. We assigned the race a figure of 75, which better reflects their previous form while allowing for some improvement. We might be wrong. In such cases, we monitor the subsequent performances of the horses in the field and review our initial judgment. We do not hesitate to revise our figures. If So Darn Hot comes back to run in the mid-80s, we would retroactively give her June 18 performance an upgrade.