Differing pace scenarios necessitated second look at Beyer Figures for Belmont, Brooklyn

After Mo Donegal earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 98 winning the Belmont Stakes, some readers looked at the data for the day and questioned whether that number should be higher.

Mo Donegal ran the 1 1/2 miles of the Belmont in 2:28.28. Earlier in the card, some of the best older long-distance runners in the East contested the prestigious Brooklyn Stakes, and Fearless won it in a slow 2:30.45. He received a Beyer Figure of 95. Mo Donegal ran significantly faster than Fearless; so why didn’t he get a significantly higher figure?

As we made our figures on Saturday, the speed of the racing surface appeared consistent throughout the day. Our track variant – the calculation which indicates the inherent speed of the racing strip – was the same for race 1 as it was for race 9, when Flightline won the Met Mile with a smashing figure of 112.

Applying this track variant to the Belmont Stakes produced a figure of 98, which was in line with the top finishers’ previous performances. Mo Donegal had earned figures of 96 and 96 in his two prior starts; he improved slightly in the Belmont. Nest had earned figures of 91 and 92 in her last two starts and got a 95 in the Belmont.

The Belmont figure made perfect sense. The apparent aberration on the card was the Brooklyn. If we applied our track variant to this race, the winning figure would have been 84 – which was virtually impossible.

The veteran campaigners in this field typically ran in the mid- to upper 90s. Fearless had earned figures of 96, 98, and 96 in his last three starts.

What happened? The only explanation we can conceive is that the slow early pace in the Brooklyn prevented the horses from recording a good final time. They ran the first six furlongs in 1:15.15, compared to 1:13.23 for the early fractions of the Belmont. The Brooklyn runners would have needed to accelerate dramatically to record a final time close to that of the Belmont. but they couldn’t do it.

When a slow pace creates an implausibly slow final time – a common scenario in turf races – we will arbitrarily assign the race a figure that better reflects the true ability of the horses in the field. The 95 assigned to the Brooklyn gave each of the top three finishers a figure within one point of his most recent start. We would have preferred to make figures based on a single track variant, but we are confident that 98 for Mo Donegal and 95 for Fearless are the right numbers.