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Originally Posted by Felicity
Yawn.
I’ve been on nights at DFAT for the past few months after my last little spat with the owners of this website.
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Well that's probably not in the right spirit to add something constructive for a start.
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Let’s examine the statement (paraphrased) which was published in shiny covered book form and swallowed whole :-
“18% of 1200 metre races are won by horses which have had a 46+ day spell”
This gem of wisdom is based on a sample of 1300 races.
When one examines 303,347 1200 m. races then you find that ONLY 8.3% of races were won by horses with this characteristic and horses with a 46 day spell have a winning Relative Frequency of 0.87 (1993 – 2003).
It appears that the originator of the original statistics ignored 99.5% of the available races and he wrote to me that “As a matter of interest my statistics were done over a period of 10 years and not 10 years of manipulated computer analized data.”
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But this in itself is mesleading depending on your point of view.
I would hazard to guess that the author included only metropolitan tracks and not the last at Wycheproof, which really bears no resemblance to the training methods of the elite and the "setting the horse for a first up win at Flemington" and the like.
This is why my database only contains current Metropolitan data but past provincial form.
Someone like a Lee Freedman or a Tony McEvoy, sets their horses on a campaign whether it be first up or third up and depending on the Prizemoney.
By contrast the lower echelon just try and win a race!
A spell can mean a miriad of things...
The horse is ************ed and under intensive treatment for a long time.
The horse is out in the paddock with the sheep.
It's having a break but always under light work
etc etc.
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The REAL statistics say that in 1200 metre races you need to look at horses with <= 24 days since last start.
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It's the price you're able to get which is more important than the statistic.