[AusRace] Overwhelmingly Salubrious Icarus* and Colins numbers - a system

[Tony Moffat]

* formerly Gay Icarus

Col was an occasional racegoer in the 70's when I worked on course with Llew
and Marie (and others in the firm)

He was a BMC mechanic and could quote you part numbers, stroke lengths and
ring sizes. He believed the Marina was the best ever
His had a 'big motor and twin carbys' with a 5 speed. Regrettably it did not
sell enough, in the time allowed, to qualify for Bathurst (or something)

Now, if you, like me, consider a motor car as a contrivance solely used for
the purpose of getting from point A to B or beyond and that while sitting
down then it may be you would find Col and his conversations a bit of a
non-event. I mean after introductions his first question might be 'what do
you drive?' and regardless of your answer you got to hear the pros (there
are no cons) of the 1750cc Marina which has much better seats in the back
than the Morris 1100 (1500?), for instance, and the high beam button is easy
to find (although it is out of sight, on the floor). Strangely, early issues
of the marque did not have the dash instruments illuminated, so I am told.

What Colin had was a system, like so many others on course who subscribed to
systematic betting, and his was based on the win and place capabilities of
each and every runner in this race.

Mainly he used the win and place % for the career of the horse, and the
track win and place for the same horse. 

Then he gave the horse one more run (in his workout, and a place at that) so
that its improvement could be seen and noted. Then he gave the horse one
more run (in his workout, and unplaced at that).

So, for instance that natural win and place might be 6 starts for 3 places =
50% At the track it might be 2 starts for two places = 100%

The 'then' clauses would have this runner as (a) 7 starts for 4 places = 57%
and 7 starts for 3 places = 43%. The 'then' clauses have this 'voodoo'
associated with them, to my way of thinking, but it does provide him with 3
or more data points in which the runner has shown its ability (the ole x-y
axis of regression analysis it is said) and centres the runner on a
capability score line.

There is more but I won't divulge that here. Each data point can be ranked,
Col does that, and there are decimal points everywhere. A few work-throughs
will give you the gist of it.

The Gay Icarus connection is that Colin used this system to select that
horse when it won a few in Melbourne (4 in 6 races and short priced from
memory)

He was a good mechanic, self employed, and his garage required you to
reverse in, then up a hill and around a corner to a work area. I had the
responsibility of an International Scout (remember?) at that time and he did
some good, and appropriate, work on that for me. When the account got
massive we stopped and sold the thing. See my writing about Pontius Pilot
and the Scout earlier.

Cheers

Tony


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