Adjusted SR in RDSS

[gentz]

I am completely puzzled at times about the adjusted speed ratings in RDSS. It especially seems puzzling when dealing with high class horses. This years Derby has Nyquist a solid favorite and Exaggerator and fairly solid second choice. If you take Nyquists career best SR of 89, and scan the SR's of the rest of the field there are 12 speed figures better than Nyquists best figure. Exaggerators lifetime best was 87. While that matches up well with Nyquist, its way too low compared to other horses. I realize we are dealing with velocity figures, run style, and energy distribution, but if these speed figures in any way play into the velocity figures, all the information they are involved with is possibly not very accurate. American Pharoah was the same way. When entered in the Breeders Cup Classic last year his life time best SR was the 90 he earned in the Arkansas Derby. When scanning the figures of the rest of the horses races, there were 14 figures in the pp's of the rest of the horses higher than the triple crown winners lifetime best. Really? Two of those figures were Frosted's. Four of them belonged to Effinex who AP beat handily. Even though the paceless race helped AP immensely, a horse still has to be able to run fast enough to use the advantage. While we all knew he was fast enough, if you looked at the race for the first time without any previous knowledge of him, one could conclude he wasn't fast enough. These are just two examples of, as far as I'm concerned, terrible handicapping confusion cause by poor speed figures. I realize that SR's are not the end all of handicapping but when you find a pace advantaged horse, you have to know whether he is fast enough to take advantage of it or not.