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Using Speed Figures to Track Possible Cheaters

When it comes to figuring out which trainers are taking an illegal edge it usually comes down to guesswork and innuendo, hardly the best way to police the sport. That's why The Jockey Club put Jerry Brown of Thoro-Graph and consultants McKinsey & Company to work and asked them to formulate an algorithm that uses speed-figure data to identify trainers that may be using performance-enhancing drugs.

The program, which was announced at the recent Jockey Club Round Table, is being made available to tracks through The Jockey Club's In Compass database.

When it comes to identifying possible cheaters, speed figures, a way to measure a horse's performance, are a good place to start. Horses have good days and bad days and can improve or decline from race to race. But when horses from a certain trainer repeatedly show dramatic improvement, particularly when making their first start for a new barn, that's a sign that there could be a problem.

Whether they use speed figures or not, handicappers are often the first to know when a trainer is likely using something stronger than hay, oats and water.

“Horseplayers are more aware of what's going on than anybody else and that's because we are actually handicapping these races in much more detail than trainers, owners or racetrack management,” Brown said. “We know who the guys are that you have to be concerned about. This is something that, way back, horseplayers were seeing and getting frantic about it. It used to be that there were just two guys you had to worry about and then over time, it became more and more. We were able to spot them.”

From his own numbers, Brown was able to see when a trainer was having results that he thought defied normal explanation, but he realized that his own suspicions carried only so much weight. That's where McKinsey came in.

“I knew that The Jockey Club was serious about this problem,” Brown said. “We've been trying for a while to find a way to use our data to help solve this problem. This program now is a natural outgrowth of that cause. You'll have a 5-year-old with established form jump up in the figures and the same trainers are getting a number of those. That's a problem. But The Jockey Club wanted to find some way to standardize it so it wasn't just Jerry Brown saying 'Watch this guy.' They brought McKinsey in to develop algorithms for which trainers they should be keeping an eye on. My part of it was to supply the data and to sit down with McKinsey to explain how our data worked.”

To avoid a “garbage in, garbage out” scenario, McKinsey had to know what mattered and what didn't. The program generally doesn't look at 2-year-olds since rapid improvement in such young horses is not out of the ordinary. They also had to understand the relevance of such things as surface changes, in particular that a move to the grass could be the reason why a horse improved.

The idea was to look at horses with established form, come up with a baseline number for their typical performance, and then flag instances where a horse, based on the Thoro-Graph numbers, far exceeded that baseline. Rather than just looking at when a horse made its first start for a new trainer, they looked at every race in the Thoro-Graph database over a four-year period.

The program flags a result whenever a horse runs a Thoro-Graph figure that is two or more points lower than its previous top. With the Thoro-Graph numbers, the lower the figure the faster the race. During the study that ran from 2016 to 2019, 5.5% of all starts met the criteria for being flagged. A full 17% of all trainers had statistically high rates of “exceptional” performances.

“After going through our data and working on the algorithms, they presented me with a list of people who jumped up as being people who needed to be watched,” Brown said. “It was really good. Out of 10 they listed there was only one that I hadn't had any doubts about, but they might have been right about that guy, too.”

Of course, a trainer can't be suspended just because a computer program shows they have a high rate of horses running exceptionally fast races that are hard to explain. The question then becomes how can a track use the data to help clean up the sport? There are no doubt some track managers who, used to looking the other way, won't pay any attention to it all. But there are ways to put the McKinsey numbers to use. For instance, a track may want to increase the rate of out-of-competition tests for a trainer who has been flagged and conduct post-race test on their horses no matter where they finish in a race. Putting surveillance cameras in the barns of trainers who made the list is another option. When, and if, the United States Anti-Doping Agency takes over the policing of the sport, there's no doubt that the agency will put the numbers to good use.

“The Jockey Club hired a detective agency to keep an eye on certain individuals,” Brown said, referring to the investigation that led to the indictments of Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and others. “I imagine that's one of the things they may want to do again now that they have this data.”

The Thoro-Graph-McKinsey collaboration is not going to solve the sport's problem with illegal drugs, but if used properly it could be a valuable tool.

“Horseplayers are always the first to know what is going on,” Brown said. “Now there's an algorithm out there that mirrors what horseplayers think and know. That can only help.”

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Letter to the Editor: Jerry Brown

First off, let me say that I have been fighting against the use of performance enhancers in racing longer than anyone reading this. When The Jockey Club took up the fight in 2008 I was one of the people they talked to, for that very reason. So, I'm not very happy being told that if I oppose a misguided piece of legislation, I'm somehow pro-drug (link to Bill Finley's Mar. 17 Op Ed).

I disagree with Victoria Keith's Op-Ed (link) on one point– horseplayers, not owners, fund purses, which ultimately fund everything in our industry, directly or indirectly. But I do agree with a lot of what she wrote. And while I don't believe the body given authority should be strictly made up of owners, they are at least industry stakeholders. If you tried, you couldn't come up with a worse idea than having a governing body that a) is not allowed by law to contain people from the industry; b) is not elected and can't be voted ou; c) but gets to decide how it gets funded.

The technical term for that last part is taxation without representation (see: Tea Party, Boston), and if there is any attempt to raise takeout to pay for this nonsense, I can promise you will see a full-scale rebellion, because I will be the guy out in front of it. But I'm not really worried about that, because I know the commercial breeders who are gung ho for this Frankenstein will be volunteering to fund it out of stud fees and yearling sales.

Owners and those of us who make a living in racing, including HPBA members, understand the relationship between handle and purses, and purses and everything else, and how our industry works as a business. The only people who want to see cheaters get away with it are the ones cheating, while the rest of us are all for good-faith, serious attempts to stop it.

A couple more points. First, the elephant in the room here is obviously Lasix, and the concern of many of us that an unaccountable body could make an uninformed, politically correct decision that could wreak havoc on the tenuous financial well-being of the industry where we make our living. It's already clear to those of us paying attention that a higher-than-usual percentage of horses running without Lasix in graded stakes are not running their races, though without scoping and the results being made public, it's hard to establish cause and effect. But as I have pointed out in these pages before, anything that makes racing less predictable and increases the value of inside information decreases bettor confidence, which hurts us all.

Finally, this: Most of you reading this are blissfully unaware that the industry is dealing with cancer (batch betting), and is about to get run over by a bus (legal sports betting). Batch bettors with electronic access are siphoning huge amounts out of the pools, and have made an already tough game unplayable by effectively raising the takeout for everyone else. And sports betting is giving cynical, disillusioned horseplayers a very viable, easy-to-play, low-takeout alternative, on games they grew up with–there's no learning curve. If the industry doesn't get its act together quickly, those who don't understand the importance of horseplayers to our financial health are about to learn a hard, and probably irreversible, lesson. The last thing we need is to make things worse.

Jerry Brown, Thoro-Graph Founder

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Letter to the Editor: Jerry Brown’s Opening Statement in KHRC Lasix Hearing

Editor’s Note: Tuesday, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission will hold a hearing before the Joint Committee on Licensing, Occupations, regarding the proposed amended regulation which would partially ban the use of Lasix at Kentucky tracks. The proposed ban would include all 2-year-old horses racing in Kentucky this year and be extended to stakes races in 2021, and is being advanced by a national coalition of racetracks and other racing organizations that includes all of Kentucky’s racetrack operators. On June 1, Franklin (Ky) Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate denied a motion by the Kentucky Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (KHBPA) that sought a temporary injunction that would have kept Churchill Downs and Keeneland from running Lasix-free 2-year-old races, ruling that the KHBPA had no standing in the case. He later vacated that ruling to give the organization time to address the issue of standing. Jerry Brown, the president of Thoro-Graph, will be called as one of the witnesses by the KHBPA to represent the interest of bettors. Brown provided the TDN with the opening statement he plans to make.

Mr. Chairman and other distinguished members of this Committee, thank you for the opportunity to address you in opposition to the proposed amendments to 810 KAR 8:010 Section 6 partially banning the use of furosemide (commonly called “Lasix”). I am the President of Thoro-Graph Inc., which publishes proprietary data used by high-end horseplayers and horsemen around the country. We currently have about 3,000 active customers who bet several times the national average. I personally bet seven figures annually, and some of our customers wager through a joint pari-mutuel venture we have with the New York Racing Association that will handle $25 million this year.

The first thing I need to make clear is that I am not pro-drug; in fact, just the opposite. No one has been fighting longer or harder than I have to stop the use of performance-enhancing drugs in our industry. That’s why The Jockey Club invited me to assist them when they took on the issue with their Safety and Integrity Committee back in 2008, and in the next few weeks will be announcing a new project using our data to identify potential drug cheaters.

Having said that: being pro-Lasix is not being pro-drug. Legal use of Lasix is an entirely separate issue from illegal use of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). There is no serious claim that Lasix causes unsoundness or other damage to racehorses, in fact, to the contrary, it helps the ones who need it stay healthy. There is also not, to my knowledge, even any claim of a benefit to the business of racing that would come from banning Lasix, let alone any evidence that would back up that claim.

The idea seems to be that they race without Lasix in Europe, so we should. Well, American dirt racing is much different than the grass racing they have over there. In those races they gallop along early and only run full out the last part of the race. Here, on dirt, they are going close to full blast the whole way–every horse in dirt races is tired and decelerating in the stretch, even the ones that make up ground. Running that way causes far more stress on the horses, and horsemen will tell you that bleeding is caused by stress.

The reason racing works as a business is because of wagering. Bettors pay directly for the purses the horses race for, and thus indirectly for the paychecks of everyone in the industry, including ultimately commercial breeders, who only have a market for their products because buyers have an opportunity to race for those purses. And the reason racing is so heavily regulated is those bettors have to be protected, so that they can have confidence the game they are playing is fair and will continue to provide the revenue stream for our industry.

If Lasix is banned, more horses will bleed during races, and it will cause them not to be able to run to their ability. That’s a fact that nobody even disputes. As a result, there will be no way anyone handicapping races will have any idea when that will happen, or to which horses. And they also won’t know whether a horse that ran poorly last time did so because he bled, unless he did so visibly, so there will be no way to know how that horse will run today. And there are only two possibilities–he will run again untreated for bleeding, which is bad not only for the horse but for the betting public, or he will be treated with something else, legal or illegal. But unlike with Lasix, which is listed in the program, the public won’t know the horse’s status, or how to evaluate him, in either case.

Do you know who will? There are people who pay for information like that, and bet accordingly. They will effectively be insider trading–which is exactly the kind of thing regulation of racing is meant to avoid, and instead we will be creating a market for it. Get ready for horses coming off a terrible performance and listed at 20-1 getting bet down to 2-1, and winning by 10 lengths. And get ready for the backlash when honest bettors get upset about it, and take their money elsewhere, to games where they think they get a fair shake.

When Lasix was first used to treat bleeders, those were the kind of jump-ups and betting coups we saw, and it’s the reason Lasix quickly became the only drug listed in the program. For bettors, that’s the Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval–it tells them the horse will get every chance to run up to its natural level of ability that day. And that is why I have never heard a horseplayer say they will bet more if Lasix is banned–and many, like me, will bet less. As in business, uncertainty hinders investment–and in this case, that investment is wagering.

A point about “optics”: Some people apparently think that banning Lasix will make our game look better to the public, and to PETA. Those people have never seen a horse bleed badly, like Demons Begone did on national TV in the 1987 Derby, when he came back to be unsaddled with blood all over him. If you saw it, you won’t forget it. And in today’s environment, all it takes is that happening once, at any track, on any day, if someone with a cell phone is nearby to take a picture. The photo would quickly be on the PETA calendar. And what happens if the horse in front in the Derby bleeds, chokes and stops, with 19 horses right behind him, on national TV? PETA won’t be calling for the return of Lasix. They will be calling for a ban of racing.

Finally, I would like to say that the Lasix issue is being presented as a false choice–either everyone gets to race on it, or it gets banned. The goal should be to let the horses who need medicine have it, and to not have the others race on it. This can be done by having the state vets examine horses to certify they really are bleeders and therefore eligible for Lasix, which was the original rule, and by taking away the incentive to use Lasix if you don’t need it, by having those that do use it carry a weight penalty. If this issue is dealt with sensibly, within a couple of years you can have the vast majority of horses racing without Lasix.

Jerry Brown

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Indiana Derby Favorite Winning Impression A ‘Dallas Stewart Prototype’

West Point Thoroughbreds president Terry Finley was asked how much he is thinking about the delayed Kentucky Derby with his partnership's 3-year-old gelding Winning Impression, the 3-1 favorite in Wednesday's $300,000, Grade 3 Indiana Derby at Indiana Grand Racing & Casino.

“Sure, yeah, we are,” Finley said of the Arkansas Derby fourth-place finisher. “Especially with Dallas Stewart at the helm and the repertoire he has with these kinds of horses.”

That would be distance-thriving horses who come running late to pick up a good part of the pieces while speedier rivals stagger home. Prime examples: Commanding Curve, second in the 2014 Kentucky Derby at 37-1; Golden Soul, second in the 2013 Kentucky Derby at 34-1; Tale of Verve, second in the 2015 Preakness at 28-1. West Point campaigned Commanding Curve, as well as the Stewart-trained Macho Again, second in the 2008 Preakness at 39-1.

“He reminds us a lot of Commanding Curve — just kind of getting there, getting there,” Finley said.

If Winning Impression wins the 1 1/8-mile Indiana Derby, he'll claim one credential that Commanding Curve never achieved: being a stakes-winner. One thing that helps is Winning Impression has more versatility to stay near the early lead if needed, while Commanding Curve was dependent on a fast pace to set up his closing kick.

“Ever since he went two turns, he's been a very consistent horse — and run with the best,” said Jeff Lifson, West Point's executive vice president for Midwest Operations. “He is a Dallas Stewart prototype: Gets better and better and better. He was never a flashy 2-year-old. As soon as he went two turns, it was like, 'This is what I was meant to do.'

“The fun part is looking at the Thoro-Graph (handicapping) sheets. He has a pattern very similar to Commanding Curve. If the sheets are at all predictive, he's going to run massively big at Indiana — if he's getting better, and he seems to be getting better.”

West Point was a minority partner in Always Dreaming, the Todd Pletcher-trained colt who got really good early in his 3-year-old season, carrying his speed to four impressive victories to start off 2017, capped by the Florida Derby and Kentucky Derby. He was never the same horse after that.

By contrast, Winning Impression is an example of a horse benefiting from the coronavirus forcing the Kentucky Derby to be postponed from May 2 until Sept. 5.

After a pair of fifth-place finishes sprinting last November, Winning Impression promptly won a 1 1/16-mile maiden race in New Orleans. That was followed by a second and third at the Fair Grounds and a disqualification from first to fifth for interference in an Oaklawn Park allowance race. But his team had seen enough to take the next step.

Winning Impression's stakes debut came on May 2 in the Arkansas Derby, in which he finished fourth by a total of nine lengths at 20-1 odds. The first- and third-place finishers that day, Charlatan and Gouverneur Morris are on the shelf and runner-up Basin is going in Keeneland's Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday.

“He's a nice horse,” said the Louisville-based Stewart. “He ran great at Oaklawn — won and got disqualified but he ran terrific. He ran great in the Arkansas Derby, has trained very consistent and this race will tell us a lot where we're at. He's doing well and he needs to run. We'll see where we're at in September, but right now we're just focused on this race. I think he fits real well in there, and we'll take it from there.”

Julien Leparoux, who rode Winning Impression in the Arkansas Derby and once in New Orleans, has the mount. Winning Impression drew post 9 in the field of ten 3-year-olds.

“It's a good race, it's a legitimate race,” Finley said. “There are no superstars in there. But the horses who figure to run well in here are very, very similar to what we are at this point in their careers. If we run well, we'll have a little stronger circle around the first Saturday in September.”

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