Beyer for Santa Anita sprint stakes revised

The Beyer Speed Figures for Saturday’s Santa Anita Sprint Championship have been revised after two separate analyses raised questions about the official time for the race.

The official time for the six-furlong race is listed at 1:08.68, but employees of both the Beyer team and TimeformUS, which is owned by DRF, have said that an analysis of the race indicates that the time should have been approximately a half-second slower. The TimeformUS employee, Craig Milkowski, was the first to publicly raise questions about the timing.

On Wednesday, Andrew Beyer, who created the Beyer Speed Figures, said that the figures for the Sprint Championship have been revised based on the analysis, with the winner, Roy H, receiving a 106 Beyer Figure. The second-place finisher, Mr. Hinx, was assigned a 104, and the third-place finisher, American Anthem, was assigned a 99.

Roy H, the favorite, had initially been assigned a 110, Beyer said, based on the official time. Randy Moss, the handicapper and television analyst who also is an employee of Beyer and Associates, conducted the analysis of the time, Beyer said.

The figures for the Sprint Championship have significant implications for handicapping because many of the horses in the race are pointing toward the $1.5 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Nov. 4 at Del Mar.

Milkowksi said that he revised the time for the race only after doing a video analysis of all the six-furlong stakes races run at Santa Anita this year. The analysis indicated that the timer for the Sprint Championship did not start until the horses had reached a point farther from the gate than in all other six-furlong stakes races run at the track.

Michael Ciacciarelli, chief operating officer of Trakus, the company that is responsible for timing at Santa Anita and many other tracks, said that the company was aware of the concerns surrounding the official timing of the Sprint Championship, and noted that the chart of the race states that the run-up to the official start of the timer is 85 feet, rather than the normal 72 feet for races of that distance for Santa Anita.

Ciacciarelli said that the company re-timed the race but did not find conclusive evidence that the official time was significantly inaccurate either way.

“We were within 0.2 or 0.3 seconds when we re-timed it,” he said. “And with that difference in run-up, we are lacking conclusive evidence.”