[AusRace] Vincents - a system

[Tony Moffat]

Vincent Smart was very much as his surname said and not the 'slow working
dope' his Christian name alluded to.
He was in love, madly, and unrequited it seemed etc.

Vin worked on course in Melbourne and occasionally at the trots outside, as
a penciller, or the whole stand if required, if his Boss was socializing. 

His 'Truth' was full of numbers, some letters, a minus or three and some
positives as a plus sign. He worked in 'Horse Power Units' and he laid them
with us up to $400 then went across the ring to do some more trading. He
balanced his investment within his own book often. I am unsure how much, the
total, he outlaid and then it was one or two races a day only, often in
Melbourne. He spent hours at it, form study, and stopped three times a day
to exercise himself, his dogs, and to wash his cars and bikes, and to wade
thigh deep in the Bay. He looked like he didn't eat and was dressed by Myers
although his togs were subsidised by his Boss. My Boss never did that, buy
clothes, and we went with black slacks and light blue shirts and white ties
on Saturday.

"Horse Power Units" are the race distance divided by 2.75 metres multiplied
by the weight to be carried. I have standardised these but in the Vincent
era it was stones and pounds and furlongs and yards and 9 feet long horses,
mares were 8 feet, colts the same.

You needed a calculator for this and Vincent had one, a large desktop
Olivetti with a crank handle, given to him by his bank with a drawer full of
ribbons and paper rolls. He went electric later, again an Olivetti that was
all movement and noise. Afternoons at his house were a swim after golf and a
BBQ then a walk around the Peninsula with his dogs Vincas and Quaretite and
I thought they were named after him and his ex. No. It translates to Seek
and Destroy and yes there is truth in the labelling.

Anyways about the horsepower units. Vincent thought there had to be an
intrinsic expression of the energy output in a horse race so he used these
'Units'. The race distance in metres is divided by the length of the horse
(now centred on 2.75 metres) and the quotient result of that equation is
multiplied by the weight to be carried by the horse eg 1200 metres 58 kgs =
1200/2.75 = 436.36 * 58 = 25309. That 25309 is the power unit product. In
the runners form score all the recent runs, or qualifying runs, are likewise
dealt with (distance divided, quotient multiplied) so that an equivalent
horsepower unit can be seen, verified and compared with the power needed to
win the race (essentially). There can be some enormous differences between
outputs eg the effort today compared with a recent effort. Vincent zeroed
the output leaders and subtracted the differences from the 'also rans'.

There is more, of course, but I won't divulge that here. Because the Unit
construction comes from the horse length division of the race distance (a)
and this value is again improved  by being multiplied by the weight it has
to carry(b) the (a) and (b) values can be used in equations to solve future
scenarios in the race itself - there are 3 or more . Corrections can be made
for lengths lost in the finish and the multiplication value altered to
reflect this. 

Another way perhaps

Cheers

Tony


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