CHAPTER 38

Beyer on Speed (20 years later)

Two decades after he had popularized speed handicapping to a degree even he

could not have imagined, after he had altered the general practice, after his beloved
figures had achieved a prominence in the past performances of first The Racing Times
and then Daily Racing Form, bestowing on their founder and explorer a deserved niche in
the history of the sport and game, Andrew Beyer returned in 1993 with ruminations as to
how figure handicapping had changed, and how his experiences with figures indeed had
changed him. An engaging attribute of Andy has always been the capacity to change his
mind. As much or more than a professional treatment of the handicapping art, Beyer on
Speed (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) unfolds as a personal journey.
Early in the exposition, speed figures still represent the most powerful tools in
handicapping, but they are no longer the way, the truth, and the light. Not only has
everyone been using them, reducing the odds on figure horses to miserly levels, but also
Beyer has come to recognize, with fervor, the more complicated relationships among the
figures and other important facets of handicapping. The most nourishing parts of his
latest book are the chapters that document in personal detail Beyer’s adjustments to the
“realities” of speed patterns, pace analysis, and especially turf racing. As usual, he has
lots to say about each topic that will be instructive and helpful.
Of the contemporary value of speed figures, Beyer relates a truly melancholy tale
of his experience at Gulfstream Park, 1990, with the miserable maiden graduate
Memorable Skater. Beyer found himself playing at the top of his form, his figures
perfectly refined, his trip observations keen, detecting track biases more astutely than
ever, and handling his money and emotions with skill and maturity, but getting nowhere.
Memorable Skater had finished out of the money nine times against maiden competition,
and now he was running against winners. Traditional handicappers, Beyer asserts, would
have tossed the horse unblinkingly.
“But his speed figures were competitive with those of his rivals, and in his last
start, he had been forced to race wide on a track with a strong rail-favoring bias.” Beyer
prepared to make a killing. “I thought Memorable Skater embodied all of the
handicapping skills I had spent a lifetime learning.” The race proceeded exactly as Beyer
had expected. Memorable Skater hugged the rail and won by six. He paid $6.20.
Beyer returned from the wintry blues of Florida to Washington, D.C., feeling low
and lost. Within months, however, he had discovered the antidote, and he relates with his
customary enthusiasm how speed figures would key his killing of Laurel’s double triple,
not once, but twice, the first for $134,161 (one of 10 tickets out of a $1.3 million pool)
and the second some five months later for $195,000. Beyer learned that figure standouts
that once were 7-1 but now were 5-2 could be the triggers to exactas, trifectas,
superfectas, pick threes, and pick sixes that would pay boxcars, and his worldview had
been righted anew. Speed figures have been the keys to the exotic vaults ever since.
Beyer’s innate skepticism of the value of figure patterns could be tested, once his
speed figures began to appear in Daily Racing Form in April 1992, and he commanded
access to the company’s computer and programmers. The last running line had always
represented for Beyer the best estimate of a horse’s current form and ability. The question
he asked was whether the closely matched contenders could repeat or exceed the most
recent race. Now he wanted to know whether other patterns of improvement and decline
that had found support in the general practice could be validated empirically.
First, Beyer asked what margin constitutes a significant advantage. The answer
was three points, but the horses produced a dollar loss of 7.5 percent. Imagining the loss
might be erased by double-figure horses (each of two speed figures higher than any other
figure in the field), Beyer discovered he could get 40 percent winners, but a dollar loss of
2 percent. Double-fig horses in sprints did better, tossing profits of 7.5 percent, but the
sample size was small and the advantage inconclusive. Beyer reasoned it would be a
waste of time to await double-figure standouts.
Aroused by the possibility of predicting the future by patterns of numbers, Beyer
turned next to figure patterns, including prominent patterns promoted by others, namely
the bounce patterns of Len Ragozin’s The Sheets. He wanted to know what happened to
horses that had run three consecutive improving figures. In a 4,518 horse sample, no less
than 71 percent declined in the next race, and 51 percent of those declined by six points
(three lengths) or more. Beyer was stunned. He christened the results as “the three-and-
out pattern.” The exceptions are younger, lightly raced, improving colts and fillies. But
older horses are highly susceptible to the three-and-out phenomenon, and can be tossed.
Of the notorious bounce pattern, Beyer reiterated his skepticism whenever horses
show a sudden towering speed figure, sticking out like a giraffe’s neck. Those figures
should always be discounted. A regression to normal heights can be expected. Of the
layoff bounce, Beyer studied a profile of the pattern he had found in my Figure
Handicapping. I wrote that a bounce is most likely to occur when a horse has experienced
an overexertion following a layoff of five months or longer, winning or finishing within a
length, if returned to competition within six weeks. Beyer examined 331 horses who fit
the profile, and compared their speed figures in the comeback races with the figures they
recorded in the subsequent race. The findings:

87 (26 percent) ran an improved figure in the subsequent start

 22 (7 percent) ran exactly the same figure
222 (67 percent) ran a worse figure
158 (48 percent) ran a figure that was worse by 10 points or more

Beyer was convinced. He concluded a stressful race at any time—not just

following a lengthy layoff—may take a heavy toll on horses and affect their next
performances. In an amusing series of anecdotes in this context, Beyer accepted the
bounce data as logical explanations of some his most humiliating public selections, as
when in 1986 he told readers of The Washington Post to mortgage their homes and hock
the family jewels so that they might make a lifetime score on Badger Land in the
Preakness, following the colt’s horrendous trip in the Kentucky Derby. “But a bedraggled
Badger Land, suffering from the effects of that stressful race in Louisville, barely picked
up his feet in Baltimore, and, indeed, he was never the same again. Nor, I suppose were
some readers of the Post.”