Beyer Pars

[joeydb]

Steve, I have a question about "Beyer Pars" as are listed in the Daily Racing Form's Formulator PP's.

Is that number a computation based on the particular horses in a given race, or a number statistically arrived at from past runnings of the race at the same track, event type, surface and distance, or something altogether different?

The reason I ask is if the Beyer Par is an estimate of how fast today's race will be, how do I factor in the scratch of a particular horse in terms of how it affects that par?

Example: Horse A has the fastest Beyer times and Horse B has the second fastest Beyer times (peak, average, whatever). The Beyer Par for today's race is 90 as printed, assuming no scratches. If Horse A is scratched, Horse B is now the fastest, but is he still expected to have the best chance of running a 90? Or is that 90 now irrelevant because presumably Horse A most contributed to the calculation of that number in the first place?

Thanks in advance everybody for any help on this.

If you could ask Andy Beyer or even Steve Crist to go over this a little next time they are on, I'd be very interested to hear what they have to say.

Joe