For international racing, figures don’t really translate

Q. I always wondered why in Daily Racing Form there are no Beyer Figures for foreign horses. It has always made me wonder if you and your staff create figures for foreign horses [for your own use] but don’t offer them to the public.

–Lenny Ficarelle, Massapequa Park, N.Y. A. I would like to say that my colleagues and I are quietly making a fortune with our Longchamp figs, but this is not the case. The Beyer Speed Figures were designed for American racing, with its relatively uniform oval dirt tracks, and I would not know how to deal with the irregular, undulating turf courses of Europe.

Nevertheless, I have always been intrigued by the idea of making figures abroad, and over the years I have tried them in Australia (with so-so results), Hong Kong (poor results), and Sweden (terrible results). In 2008 I spent month playing the horses in Argentina, where most of the sport consists of speedoriented dirt racing that isn’t so alien to an American handicapper. I devoted a full year to developing figures for the country’s three principal tracks—a massive task. It is challenging enough to create a set of figures for a new U.S. track, and in Argentina I was starting from scratch, using information in Spanish (which I don’t read). But by the time I went to Buenos Aires, I had almost as much confidence in my figures for Palermo as I do for those at Belmont Park.

The result: I didn’t make a peso. The takeout in Argentina was ridiculously high. The betting pools were too small to accommodate serious wagers. Handicapping data was inadequate. There was no betting from home computers. And there was no practical way to turn Argentine speed figures into a commercial product. My year of intense preparing had been a total waste. Even so, I can’t fully suppress the thought that either South Korea or Dubai might be fertile ground for international Beyer Speed Figures.