What Does It Take To Win A Sim Race?

In the previous article of the Sim Big Data Series, I took a look at 2017 races to answer a question floating on the message board about whether speed figures increase as distances increase.  In the comments to that article, waremblem5 posed the following question: “what speeds are required to win races?”  So for Article #2 of the Sim Big Data Series, come with me on a journey as we try to provide an answer to that question.

This question was prompted by the fact that speed figures have increased significantly over the last couple of years.  Of course, there’s no blanket rule for what it takes to win.  Sure, I could tell you that running a 130 SP will result in you winning every race.  But the better question is, “if I have a horse that consistently runs a 95 SP, where should I place it in order to have the best chance to succeed”.  Is a 95 SP an allowance-level horse?  Or should it be in claimers?  Adding to the issue is that as speed figures have gone up across the board, it’s becoming even harder to win the lowest level races.  A 70 SP may have been enough to take a $2K claimer back in 2008.  But is it now?

One difference between this article and the previous one is that we’re not analyzing trends.  Therefore, there’s less overall analysis.  This is probably a good thing, because it means a “shorter” article with less reading required (writer’s note: it’s actually not much shorter).  Instead of analyzing trends, we’re looking at what the actual numbers are.  There is also a bit of data overload; there are a lot of ways to look at these numbers.  The bulk of this article will instead be my attempt to explain what each of the charts and graphs below mean, and how to read them, but ultimately this is meant more as a guide for you, the reader: it’s a choose-your-own-adventure where you get to decide how you want to read the data presented.

Also, keep in mind that this data is not the be-all-end-all.  If the data below says that a 110 SP should win that race, that doesn’t mean that it will.  The best gauge for determining if your horse is competitive in any given race is to compare your horse to the past performances of your competition.  It’s also a question of what you’re looking for – If you want to win every race, this may be more useful guide than if you’re just trying to rack up BPs/earnings or prep your horse for a particular race.

So without further ado, let’s play some more FUN WITH NUMBERS!

Methodology

Once again, the main thing to understand before we get into the actual numbers is what data is being used.  To look at the speed figures (referred to in this article as “SP”) needed to win various races, the Sim data was narrowed to only 2017 races.  Although there are multiple reasons for narrowing the races to just 2017 (and you can refer to the previous article for more of them), the main reason here is that speed figures have significantly increased over the past couple of years.  This was noted previously, but from 2005-2015, there were 66 Speed Figures over 120 in the Sim.  In 2017 ALONE, there were 103 Speed Figures over 120 in the Sim.  So considering races before 2017 wouldn’t be a very good guide for what it takes to win a race now; it doesn’t matter what it took to win a race in 2008, and that data would only lead to inaccurately lower results than what it takes to win in 2018.

Within the 2017 data, the next question was how to narrow down the information.  The first thing to do was eliminate data that would be less useful.  The following deletions were made to the 2017 data:

(1)    All 2yo races were removed

(2)    All Polytrack races were removed

(3)    All Hot Races were removed

(4)    All Local Races were removed

Polytrack races were removed as there are far fewer of them, so the data is far less reliable.  The CPU does not card polytrack races, and with the additional breakdowns (described below), the data would have been only marginally useful.  Similarly, Hot Races were removed, as they suffer from the same issues as polytrack races, as well as a much wider variance due to the smaller field sizes (a byproduct of having races carded and run within 10 minutes).  Local Races were removed for similar reasons.

The most controversial of these is likely the removal of 2 year old races.  I can certainly understand why this would be useful to know (and in fact, waremblem5 had suggested looking at 2yo races as well).  The biggest concern with 2 year old data, however, is the volatility of the results (there is a similar issue with Polytrack/Hot/Local races).  The rate of improvement of 2yos during the 2yo season is far greater than the rate of improvement of 3yos or older horse over the course of a year.  So while it would be great to know what an average SP would be to win a 2yo allowance race, the number would be largely meaningless.  A 65 SP might win an allowance in April, and a 70 SP might win a stakes.  Meanwhile, by the end of the year, it may require a 95 SP to win the same race.  Furthermore, 2yos debut throughout the course of the year in far greater numbers than 3yos or older horses.  This depresses speed figures and makes the average numbers far less reliable. As you will see below, even some of the data displayed below is not the most reliable, but as a whole there is far more data backing up the 3yo and Older races than there is the 2yo level.  Maybe looking at 2yo speed figures by month and/or by number of career races would result in better information, and that might be the topic of a future article.  For now, we will focus on the non-2yos in the Sim.

Once the complete data set is determined, the next step was to figure out what would be the most useful information to provide.  Looking at overall speed figures needed doesn’t do much good; it takes a much higher speed figure to win a Graded Stakes than it does to win a Maiden Claimer.  Likewise, speed figures across surfaces, distances, ages, and genders are different.  Therefore, we broke down races into a number of categories:

(1)    Age (Based on race restriction, not the winning horse’s actual age):

1. 3yo
2. Older (anything over 3yo, including 3yo+)

(2)    Gender (Based on race restrictions, not the winning horse’s actual gender):

1. Fillies & Mares
2. Open

(3)    Surface:

1. Turf
2. Dirt

(4)    Distance:

1. Sprint (4.5 furlongs to 7.5 furlongs)
2. Route (8 furlongs to 10 furlongs)
3. Long (10.5 furlongs to 16 furlongs)

For the purposes of the data analysis below, these individual categories were combined into two sets: Age/Sex Combination (e.g., 3yo Filly, Older Open), and Surface/Distance Combination (e.g., Dirt Sprint, Turf Route).

Once those categories were established, the last question was how to break down different race classes.  As you will see below, there were actually two different calculations made: one on a “general” set of race classes, and one on a “specific” set of race classes.  The different classes are as follows, which shows the “general” race class and then the “specific” race classes that fall within the general category:

(1) Maiden Claimer

1. Maiden Claimer Low (Claim Tag of $15,000 or less)
2. Maiden Claimer Mid (Claim Tag of $17,500-$45,000)
3. Maiden Claimer High (Claim Tag of $50,000 or greater)

(2) Maiden Special Weight

(3) Claimer

1. Conditional Claimer Low (Claim Tag of $15,000 or less; Race has a condition, such as NW1x, NW2L, NW1y, etc.)
2. Conditional Claimer Mid (Claim Tag of $17,500-$45,000 or less; Race has a condition, such as NW1x, NW2L, NW1y, etc.)
3. Conditional Claimer High (Claim Tag of $50,000 or greater; Race has a condition, such as NW1x, NW2L, NW1y, etc.)
4. Open Claimer Low (Claim Tag of $15,000 or less; Race has no conditions)
5. Open Claimer Mid (Claim Tag of $17,500-$45,000 or less; Race has no conditions)
6. Open Claimer High (Claim Tag of $50,000 or greater; Race has no conditions)

(4) Starter Allowance

1. Starter Allowance Low (Starter Tag of $15,000 or less)
2. Starter Allowance Mid (Starter Tag of $17,500-$45,000)
3. Starter Allowance High (Starter Tag of $50,000 or greater)

(5) Allowance

1. Conditional Allowance (Race has a condition, such as NW1x, NW4L, NW2s, etc.)
2. Open Allowance (Race has no conditions)

(6) Stakes (Non-Graded)

(7) Graded Stakes

1. Grade 1
2. Grade 2
3. Grade 3

All of the variables were then combined to create the data below.  In total, when it comes to “specific” race classes, there were 456 different combinations (114 for each Age/Sex combination), some of which has very few (or no) races.  Therefore, we also look at the “general” categories, of which there were a total of 168 different combinations (42 for each Age/Sex combination).  Some of the data presented below was determined by which set would be easier to show (for example, the box plots for the “specific” race classes were far too wide to fit on a single screen; so instead, you only get box plots for the “general” classes.

So with that out of the way, it’s time to take a look at some data and explanations.

Results and Analysis

1)      Average Winning SP – Specific

(click images to enlarge)

Explanation: The first set of data to look at is the Average Winning SP for specific race classes.  The numbers above that you’re looking at are pretty straightforward, but it’s worth a brief explainer to avoid confusion and understand exactly what data is being presented.  What you are looking at above is the AVERAGE WINNING SP for each race class, distance/surface combo, and age/sex combo (as described above).  As a reminder, the age/sex combination is based on the race itself, and not the age or gender of the winning horse (in other words, the winning horse in an “Older Open” race could actually be a 3yo filly, assuming the race was open to 3yo+ horses).  You can refer to the definitions of each race class and combination above under “Methodology”.  To give an example of how to read the chart above, if you wanted to know what the Average Winning SP is for a 4yo+ Open Allowance at 8 furlongs at the dirt, you would look at the “Older Open” chart, find the “Open Allowance” row and look in the “Dirt Route” column to find that the Average Winning SP is a 110.88 SP.  Similarly, if you wanted to know what the Average Winning SP is for a 3yo Filly $2,000 Maiden Claimer at 6 furlongs on the turf, you would look at the “3yo Fillies” chart, find the “Maiden Claimer Low” row and look in the “Turf Sprint” column to find that the Average Winning SP is a 70.24 SP.

But the number itself is not the only thing that the chart above shows.  You may have noticed that, in general, the colors in each of the columns are lighter at the top and darker at the bottom, and wondered “why is that?”  The colors are meant to be a quick reference for you to compare the speeds for each race class.  The lighter the square, the slower the Average Winning SP is for that race class compared to other race classes at that same surface/distance combination.  The darker the square, the faster the Average Winning SP is for that race class compared to other race classes at that same surface/distance combination.  So for example, looking at the Older Fillies and Mares chart, when it comes to Dirt Long races, the Maiden Claimer Low race class has a particularly low Average Winning SP (49.07 SP) compared to the Grade 1 Average Winning SP (109.17 SP), which is apparent by the very light color in the Maiden Claimer Low box and a very dark color in the Grade 1 box.  This may seem rather obvious to you; of course a cheap maiden claimer will require a lower SP to win than a G1!  And you’re right; it is.  But what the colors can help with is differentiating across the different ages and genders, or across different distances and surfaces.  For example, if you want to win a 3yo filly race, you’re probably going to need something close to the lowest Average Winning SP, which we can tell by the colors is an SP somewhere in the low-to-mid 70s (the lightest colors are generally in that range).  Meanwhile, for Older Fillies and Mares, you can win certain races with SPs as low as the 40s-60s.  Similarly, if you have a 3yo colt that can run a 100 SP regardless of distance or surface, the colors in the chart show you that in Turf Sprints, you have a Graded Stakes caliber horse (since the color around the 100 SP is relatively dark), whereas in Dirt Routes, it’s more middle-of-the-pack (since the 100 SP color is not as dark).  You can also see how much of a range there is in certain surface/distance combinations.  If you look at Older Open races, there is a stark difference between the Maiden Claimer and MSW Average Winning SPs and the other classes, indicating that there is a significant difference in what it takes to win those classes; meanwhile, if you look at the 3yo Open races, the colors are more evenly spread out (and if you look at the Dirt Sprint category, you can see that there is a significant outlier at the G1 level, which had a significantly higher Average Winning SP in 2017 than all of the other classes, and thus the red is generally lighter across the board in that column other than at the G1 spot).  Also, as a note, the reason the numbers tend to be lighter at the top and darker at the bottom is because the order of race classes, as presented here, generally begin with the slowest races (Maiden Claimers) at the top, and progress down to the fastest races (Grade 1s), though that is not always true (for example, a High Open Claimer will probably have a faster SP than a Low Starter Allowance).

But that’s not the only data included in the above charts.  If you noticed, to the right of each Average Winning SP, there is a horizontal bar.  Some are long (Conditional Allowance, pretty much across the board), and some are very short (most of the Graded Stakes ones are miniscule and very hard to see).  This bar indicates the number of each Race Class for that Age/Sex and Surface/Distance combo in 2017.  The bars are all relative; the longest bar is the same length regardless of exactly how many races were run in the most common Race Class, regardless of which Surface/Distance or age/sex combination you’re looking at.  But these bars are meant to give you an idea of how much data backs each Average Winning SP.  Conditional Allowances tend to be the most common race in the SIm, and thus the bar is the longest for that Race Class at each surface/distance and age/sex combination.  But you can also see that, at the 3yo levels, there are a large number of MSWs as well (more than Open Allowances generally) that make up a larger percentage of races; whereas in the Older divisions, the number of Claimers and Open Allowances tend to outweigh the MSWs.  Again, this is not a surprise, but it’s a necessary piece of information when looking at Average Winning SPs, because if an Average Winning SP is based on 1 or 2 races, the data is far less useful than if the Average Winning SP is based on 1,000 or 2,000 races.  The raw number of races, however, led to a messy chart with some data overload, so the horizontal bars were the cleanest way to present the data in a way that was useful without adding even more confusion.  These data bars also work towards demonstrating one of the most common Sim complaints: “Why aren’t there enough [RACE CLASS] type of races for [AGE/SEX COMBINATION] at [SURFACE/DISTANCE]!”  Look at how small the bars are for 3yo Fillies in Turf Routes that aren’t Conditional Allowances or MSWs.  It turns out, there just aren’t that many races for those other classes (for example, in 2017, there were 13 Open Claimers with a tag of $50K or higher for 3yo fillies in Turf Routes, and 10 of those were run in Victoria-AUS).

So now that you understand what you’re looking at, let’s take a look at some specifics in the above charts.  One thing you’ll notice, in both 3yo charts, are some “N/A” spaces (mostly in the Dirt Long and Turf Sprint columns).  The reason, if you weren’t sure, is because there were no races in that group in 2017.  So there were no G2 or G1 Turf Sprints for 3yo Fillies (in fact, there were no G1 Turf Sprints for 3yos at all).  Likewise, there are a number of race classes that were not run in the Dirt Long distances in 2017.  This is probably because the Sim has a distance limit for purchased races earlier in the year, and since dirt races longer than 10 furlongs are not that common, no one was purchasing, and the CPU wasn’t carding, certain claimers or starter allowances at those distances (there are also apparently no G2 races for 3yos in Dirt Long races).

Another thing you may notice is that the Average Winning SP for Maiden Claimers and MSWs is significantly lower for Older horses than for 3yo horses.  Your initial thought may be “why would this be, when older horses are almost uniformly faster than 3yos?”  But there is a pretty simple answer: Most horses that are still maidens by the time they are 4yos are the slowest of the slow.  Other than the few horses who debuted as a 4yo (or late in the 3yo year), these races are filled by horses that haven’t been good enough to break their maiden as either 2yos or 3yos.  So they happen to be particularly slow (based on the above, if your horse could crack a 75 SP as a 3yo, in all likelihood the horse was able to break its maiden).  In addition, the race sizes for older maiden races are significantly smaller, since again, most horses have already broken their maiden.  So even if your new 4yo is capable of running a 100 SP, if it’s running against 3 other horses that can’t crack a 50 SP, your horse isn’t going to run very fast because it doesn’t need to in order to win by daylight.

So what are some conclusions that we can draw from the above charts?  Looking at older horses, it looks like Open (non-conditioned) races (both Claimers and Allowances) are generally about 2-3 SP faster than the Conditional equivalent, though for females, Open Claimers seem to be closer to 5-6 SP faster than Conditional Claimers.  For 3yos, meanwhile, there is little, if any, difference between a Conditional race and an Open (non-conditioned) race.  This is not all that surprising, as 3yos typically have fewer races under their belt and are still in the “maturing” phase of their development, so conditions are not always as important.

Another thing we can see is that generally, for Route races the Average Winning SP is roughly 8 SP faster for Older open races than for 3yo open races, and approximately 6 SP faster for Older filly and mare races than for 3yo filly races.  Likewise, for Sprint races the Average Winning SP is roughly 9 SP faster for Older open races than for 3yo open races, and approximately 8 SP faster for Older filly and mare races than for 3yo filly races.  This is a rough estimate for the increases shown in the chart above (some jump more, some jump less, and it excludes the maiden levels).  But based on those estimates, if you want your 3yo to be competitive at the next level, you will want to see your horse’s SP increasing by roughly 6-9 SP in the jump from 3yo to 4yo year.  It also means that, if your 3yo has shown an SP increase of 6-9 SP in the second half of the year, it may already be ready to compete against older horses, instead of needing to stay in 3yo only company throughout the remainder of the season.

I won’t go into too much more analysis for this data, because it’s pretty self-explanatory.  You can take a look at the charts and make your own determinations.  For what it’s worth, I have decided to show this data first because, frankly, this will probably be the most widely used portion of this article.  So feel free to save these images so that you can refer to them whenever you want.  Or just keep coming back to this article to refer to them.  I’m not sure that these are the most useful numbers (that’s coming up next), but it’s the easiest to digest and it works pretty well.

2)      Winning SP Range – Specific

(click images to enlarge)

Explanation:  The next set of data being presented here is a certain range of Winning SPs for each race class.   This chart shows roughly the middle 68% of Winning SPs in each race class.  For example, when looking at Older Open races, 68% of Open Allowances in Dirt Sprints were won with SPs between 98.73 SP and 110.32 SP.  This is meant to give you an idea of when your horse is running in the correct race class.  Just because your horse puts up an SP that’s below average, that doesn’t mean you’re placing it incorrectly, because that SP may still be enough to win a decent number of races at that class.  Looking at that same Older Open division, the Average Winning SP in Dirt Sprint Open Allowances was a 104.52; but this range shows you that you don’t have to have a horse that breaks a 100 SP in order to have a decent chance of winning such a race, because the low end of the 68% range is a 98.73 SP.  This provides important context for the averages listed in the first set of charts: if there are 3 races run, whether the 3 winning SPs are 99, 100, and 101 or 90, 100 and 110, the average in both cases would be a 100 SP, but the 90-100-110 example means that you have a much greater chance of winning a race with a lower SP than the 99-100-101 example.

Quick statistics sidebar, to help explain the ranges above¹: Speed Figures in the sim have what’s known as a “normal distribution”.  Essentially, this means that there are a lot of winning SPs around the Average Winning SP, and then as you move farther away from the average (both higher and lower), there are fewer and fewer Winning SPs.  To understand how wide that “middle” section is, we look at what’s known as Standard Deviation.  Standard Deviation tells us how much the data as a whole differs from the average.  A low standard deviation means that all of the results are pretty close to average.  A high standard deviation means that the data can vary somewhat wildly. But standard deviation has another benefit here.  There is a rule in statistics known as the 68-95-99.7 rule. This rule says that that if you look 1 standard deviation in each direction from the average, that range will encompass 68% of the results (2 standard deviations would show 95% of the results, and 3 standard deviations would show 99.7% of the results).  The data in the chart above is designed to show where 68% of the results lie.  In other words, statistically, 2/3 of all of the Winning SPs fall into the range shown in the chart above.  So if your horse’s Speed Figures fall within that range, sure, you might not win; but at least you know that your horse belongs.

¹ Note – I am not a statistician.  These are really basic explanations to try and make the chart easier to understand.  Don’t use this as a cheat sheet for your stats exam.

One other thing you may notice in the above charts is that, in the 3yo charts, there are some “N/As” in the data.  This is a little less statistically sound, but the reason is due to a lack of data.  Obviously, if there were no races for that Race Class at that Surface/Distance combination, there’s no Standard Deviation.  But I went a little further.  A few of the combinations had 1 race run.  Technically, for those, the standard deviation is 0.  But for purposes of determining what it takes to win at that race class, a range showing just the 1 race run in 2017 is not very useful.  So I decided to turn combinations that only had 1 race in 2017 into N/As.  But that wasn’t all.  If there were 2 races at the race class, there is a legitimate Standard Deviation.  But the way I did the calculations looked at the standard deviation assuming that I had the full population of all races, instead of just a sample of the races (technically, all of 2017 is just a sample…but since speed figures have risen over time and earlier SPs may not be as compatible, it felt more accurate to treat the 2017 races as if it was a full population of all races).  So looking at the range produced for combinations that had 2 races run in 2017 would just be the slowest Winning SP to the fastest Winning SP.  That didn’t seem to be too helpful either (especially if one was particularly low or particularly high).  So I made those N/A as well.  Once you get to at least 3 races, I kept the data in the chart.  But it is important to note that when there are low numbers of total races, the data has the potential to be far less accurate (standard deviations when there are 1000 races will give you a better idea going forward than standard deviations when there are 3 races, because of the likelihood of outliers affecting the data).  So be wary of data around Graded Stakes (of which there is a lower number of races), and particularly the 3yo Long races (Turf Long and Dirt Long); other than Conditional Allowances, the number of Long distance races for 3yos is very small.

Once you understand the above, the data itself is, once again, self-explanatory, so there isn’t a lot of analysis to actually do with the data.  As you can see if you compare charts against each other, the overall ranges between Fillies & Mares and Open races cover roughly the same size, but the Filly & Mare ranges are typically shifted 2-4 SP lower than the Open ranges.  That applies to both Older races and 3yo races.  In addition, the Dirt SP ranges appear to be roughly 2-3 SP higher than the Turf SP ranges, which indicates that SPs on the turf are slower than SPs on the dirt.  So if you have a horse that can run a 90 SP at 8 furlongs on both the turf and dirt, you may want to keep them on the turf; that speed figure is more likely to win on the Turf than the Dirt.

One troubling thing to see in the above charts, however, is how high the low-end of some of the ranges actually is.  If you have an Older male horse, to even win a cheap Conditional Claimer, you likely need to be running at least a 90 SP (unless you’re running at Long distances).  If you can’t find a Conditional Claimer and need to run in an Open Claimer, even at the cheapest levels, a win in the Route range basically requires a 95 SP or above.  This seems a little ridiculous.  If you look at the ranges for High Open Claimers, regardless of the Age/Sex of the race, you need roughly the same SP as you would need to win an Open Allowance.  Why is that the case?  One would think that if you have a horse running SPs that are good enough to win Open Allowances somewhat regularly, they would be running at that level instead of the claiming level.  The result of these high ranges is that horses that have lost a step, or were never that fast to begin with, have no place in the Sim outside of Hot (or maybe Local) races.

3)     Winning SPs – General

(click images to enlarge)

Explanation: The final set of data being presented here is the Winning SPs for the “General” set of Race Classes, and it is presented in the form of what is known as a box-and-whisker plot.  A box-and-whisker plot is a way to show ranges of data based on “quartiles”.  The bottom line of the “box” is the 25^th percentile (the SP that is faster than 25% of all Winning SPs in that category).  The middle line in the box is the median (the SP where 50% were faster and 50% were slower).  The top line of the box is the 75^th percentile (the SP that is faster than 75% of all Winning SPs in that category).  Stretching out from the box are the “whiskers”.  These show the single slowest Winning SP (at the bottom) and the single fastest Winning SP (at the top) for that combination.  When you combine the “box” and the “whiskers”, you can see the full range of Winning SPs at each combination.  To give an example, let’s look at Turf Sprint Maiden Special Weights for 3yo Open races.  As you can see, the bottom of the green box is just below the 80 SP mark (78.88 SP, to be exact), and it extends all the way up to a little below the 90 SP mark (specifically, 88.43 SP).  The line in the middle is somewhere between the 80 and 90 SP lines (it’s actually at 84.08 SP).  The bottom whisker reaches all the way down to between 50 and 60 (55.19 SP), and the top whisker stretches up to just over the 100 mark (101.04 SP).  What does this mean?  It means the slowest Winning SP in a Turf Sprint MSW for 3yo Open races was a 55.19 SP and the fastest was a 101.04 SP; a Winning SP of 78.88 SP would make your horse faster than 25% of the winners, an 84.08 SP would put your horse right in the middle of what it took to win, and a Winning SP of 88.43 SP or higher would put you in the top 25% of all Winning SPs for that combination.

But once again, that’s not the only data presented in this chart.  As has been mentioned previously, the number of races is important to understanding how accurate the data is.  Therefore, a gray vertical bar has been added for each combination that shows the frequency of races at that particular combination. The higher the gray bar, the more races of that combination were run in 2017. The specific number of races is not included in this chart, but you can get a relative sense of which combinations have more races when you look at the bars against each other.  For example, looking at the 3yo Filly chart, you can see that there are a large number of Dirt Sprint and Turf Sprint Claimers, and there are significantly more Dirt Route and Turf Route Allowances than other Race Classes at Route distances.  Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, there are very few Graded Stakes races compared to the other classes.

There is one last piece of data that is included in the chart.  The blue horizontal line indicates the average Winning SP for the applicable Race Class (and that age/sex combination), across all Surface/Distance combinations.  For example, if you look at Starter Allowances for Older Open horses, you will see that the Dirt Long and Turf Long ranges tend to be in roughly the 85-100 SP range, whereas the Sprints straddle the 100 SP mark and the Routes are more in the 100-110 SP range.  The blue horizontal line is at almost exactly the 100 SP mark (99.7 SP).  That 99.7 SP is the Average Winning SP of all Starter Allowances for Older Open horses, regardless of surface and distance.  This ends up being higher than most Winning SPs in the Long distance categories; that’s because there are far more races in Starter Allowances at Route and Sprint distances than Long distances, so those faster Winning SPs pull the average up.  (Writer’s note: the blue horizontal lines were added by hand (using MS Paint), so they may not be perfect.)

The purpose of the blue horizontal lines is to offer an additional piece of analysis in chart form.  It makes it easier to compare Race Classes in a general sense as you can just follow the blue lines.  For example, at the 3yo ranks, you can see that there is very little overall increase from the MSW to the Claimer class as a whole.  In the Older divisions, you can see the size of the jump from Claimers to Allowances (which is more pronounced for fillies than for open races).  The blue lines don’t have a ton of value here (they are averages rather than medians, and it’s a little disingenuous to think of Turf Long SPs and Dirt Sprint SPs as the same thing), but it does allow for a quick and easy way to get a visual idea of where the different Classes stand.

One thing that you may have noticed in the above box plots is that there are only 7 Race Classes (Maiden Claimer, MSW, Claimer, Starter Allowance, Allowance, Stakes, Graded Stakes), whereas the previous two charts had 19 different Race Classes.  This is because for this data set, we used the general Race Classes, rather than the specific Race Classes.  The primary reason for this change was that the box plot was way too large when including all of the specific Race Classes.  The downside to this is that not all claimers are the same (think $2,000 vs. $150,000) and not all allowances are the same (think open vs. NW2L).  But there is also an added benefit – the number of races for each Race Class becomes much larger, and therefore the data becomes more reliable.

One interesting thing that can be seen in the Older horse box plots above is that as you move up in Race Class, the range of Winning SPs appears to get smaller.  Take, for example, the Older Open division in Dirt Routes. When you look at Maiden Claimers and Maiden Special Weights, the boxes showing Winning SPs are roughly 15 SP from top to bottom.  Once you move up to Claimers and Starter Allowances, the box only stretches to cover 8-8.5 SP.  The Allowance box shrinks even further, falling to 6.5 SP.  At the Stakes level, the box gets even smaller, lowering to 4.3 SP, and then the Graded Stakes box is particularly small at only 2.7 SP from top to bottom.  This means that as you move up in Race Class, there is generally a smaller window of SPs that your horse needs to fall into in order to win.  In other words, there is more variability at lower Race Classes and whatever SP your horse runs has a better chance of being a Winning SP at the lower Race Class.  If you want to win a Graded Stakes, there is a much narrower range of SPs that would be Winning SPs.  This isn’t all that surprising, of course; you’re probably not going to find the lucky Graded Stakes where a 90 SP could win the race.

One last thing that you may be wondering about is why the Winning SPs for 3yo Sprint races seem to be lower than that of Routes and Long distance races.  There isn’t as easy an explanation for this as there would be for 2yos (where there just aren’t longer races carded).  But I think that the reasoning is twofold.  At the Maiden Claimer and Maiden Special Weight classes, the significantly lower Sprint Winning SP range is likely due to the mix of horses making debuts and slower horses picking up wins as the faster horses have already graduated.  At the Claimer and Allowance classes, this is probably due to an oversaturation of races.  As there are more Claimers and Allowance races at the same distance, field sizes drop, which then allow for slower SPs to pick up wins.  You will notice that once you move into the Stakes and Graded Stakes ranks, the Winning SP ranges for Sprint races are generally in the same ballpark as their Route and Long counterparts.  Another theory explaining this could just be that because of the Triple Crown/Triple Tiara races (and the European equivalents), most “good” 3yos will spend more time running in Route races in an attempt to get into those races (or other Graded Stakes at Route distances, which are more well known than their sprinting counterparts), which thins the crop of sprinters at the 3yo level.

Conclusion

I’ve already written more than enough words, and this data itself is probably more interesting than any observations I can come up with, so I’ll wrap it up here.  But I do have one last note.  There is a concept in psychology called “Illusory Superiority”.  It’s where people overestimate their own abilities as compared to others.  A classic example of this is with driving a car.  There is a famous study where people in the US were asked whether they thought they were below-average, average, or above-average drivers.  93% of people said they were “above-average”.  That is impossible – Only 50% can be above average.  Remember that the data above is based on averages, medians, and other statistical calculations – Just because the data above says that the Average Winning SP is a 98 SP and you have a horse that runs a 96 SP, it does NOT mean that your horse cannot win.  After all, an “average” only works because 50% of SPs are below that number.  This is meant solely as a guide to help you if you’re looking for somewhere to place your horses.  As mentioned in the introduction, the best way to decide if your horse is properly placed in a race is to look at the past performances of its potential competitors.  If every other horse is running SPs around 105, and yours puts up 80s, it probably won’t win.  But if everyone else is running in the 80s as well, regardless of what this article says, you’ve got a good chance.

There are many different ways to analyze this data, and it was difficult to decide what would be the most useful in this article.  Do you have an idea for a different way of looking at things?  Do you feel like something was missing from the above?  Is there some other data or analysis that you want to see?  Leave a comment here or post on the message board.  If you’ve got your own idea and want to do your own analysis for the BTB, let me know and I’m happy to share the data behind the numbers above.

Good luck and good racing!