CHAPTER FOUR
STANDARD TIMES
O
Being terrified of flying it is always a relief to kneel and kiss the tarmac at East Midlands Airport. The euphoria of still being alive is usually short lived. The realization that your holiday has ended and an English winter is about to begin can be quite sobering. However, on this occasion I was not at all depressed. In fact, quite the opposite. Having developed a strategy for the winter all weather season I could not wait to get started.
From the end of September I started to produce speed ratings for the three all weather tracks. There were only a couple of meetings a week but I wanted to get six to eight weeks figures before the turf season finished and the winter all weather took over in November. One problem that cropped up almost immediately was Lingfield Park. All weather racing in Britain first began at Lingfield in 1989. After experiencing problems in early 2001, Arena Leisure decided to lay a new polytrack surface at a cost of 2.8 million pounds. The surface had previously been equitrack and it was equitrack that my standard times were based on. That wasn’t all, a few months earlier Arena Leisure had replaced the worn out surface at Wolverhampton. It took three weeks to lay 7,000 tons of new fibresand at a cost of £300,000. A year earlier in August 2000 extensive refurbishment had also been carried out at Southwell. I realized I would have to compile new standard times for all three tracks.
At Lingfield Park the first meeting on the new polytrack surface had taken place on the 13th November 2001, and so I started my calculations from there. The first race run over 6f was won by Last Exhibit in a time of 1m12.63. This was a grade D race. The grade table shows D as 6.3, six furlongs is .75 of a mile so multiply the 6.3 by .75. This gives you 4.72 which is deducted from 1m12.63 leaving 1m07.91. This calculation was carried out for all 6f races on the new surface, and resulted in 29 figures. Five figures were lower than 1m07secs and 5 were higher than 1m08secs. These figures were discarded. This left the 19 figures below laid out from fastest to slowest.
1.07.14 / 1.07.14 / 1.07.17 / 1.07.25 / 1.07.26 / 1.07.30 / 1.07.35 / 1.07.63 / 1.07.63 / 1.07.65 / 1.07.65 / 1.07.80 / 1.07.81 / 1.07.82 / 1.07.87 / 1.07.88 / 1.07.90 / 1.07.90 / 1.07.91.
Finally add the three middle most or median figures together and divide by three. These figures are shown in red. This gives us 1m07.64. This is the standard time for a six furlong race at Lingfield. A full list of standard times can be found in the appendix.
From the end of September I started to produce speed ratings for the three all weather tracks. There were only a couple of meetings a week but I wanted to get six to eight weeks figures before the turf season finished and the winter all weather took over in November. One problem that cropped up almost immediately was Lingfield Park. All weather racing in Britain first began at Lingfield in 1989. After experiencing problems in early 2001, Arena Leisure decided to lay a new polytrack surface at a cost of 2.8 million pounds. The surface had previously been equitrack and it was equitrack that my standard times were based on. That wasn’t all, a few months earlier Arena Leisure had replaced the worn out surface at Wolverhampton. It took three weeks to lay 7,000 tons of new fibresand at a cost of £300,000. A year earlier in August 2000 extensive refurbishment had also been carried out at Southwell. I realized I would have to compile new standard times for all three tracks.
At Lingfield Park the first meeting on the new polytrack surface had taken place on the 13th November 2001, and so I started my calculations from there. The first race run over 6f was won by Last Exhibit in a time of 1m12.63. This was a grade D race. The grade table shows D as 6.3, six furlongs is .75 of a mile so multiply the 6.3 by .75. This gives you 4.72 which is deducted from 1m12.63 leaving 1m07.91. This calculation was carried out for all 6f races on the new surface, and resulted in 29 figures. Five figures were lower than 1m07secs and 5 were higher than 1m08secs. These figures were discarded. This left the 19 figures below laid out from fastest to slowest.
1.07.14 / 1.07.14 / 1.07.17 / 1.07.25 / 1.07.26 / 1.07.30 / 1.07.35 / 1.07.63 / 1.07.63 / 1.07.65 / 1.07.65 / 1.07.80 / 1.07.81 / 1.07.82 / 1.07.87 / 1.07.88 / 1.07.90 / 1.07.90 / 1.07.91.
Finally add the three middle most or median figures together and divide by three. These figures are shown in red. This gives us 1m07.64. This is the standard time for a six furlong race at Lingfield. A full list of standard times can be found in the appendix.
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