by Dean A. Hoffman

Dean Hoffman

Columbus, OH — Sports fans love stats. Usually, they can’t get enough of ‘em.

Most sports lend themselves very well to statistical analysis. In the end, it may not matter all that much how a batter does against right-handed pitchers vs. lefties, but this is the type of minutiae that can spark endless debates.

It’s the same way in harness racing. The traditional standard of measurement was, of course, time. A 2:00 horse was special.

No longer. It takes money to pay the bills. But comparing earnings over various decades doesn’t always mean that much. Bret Hanover earned $922,616 in his career. Lots of horses have earned far more money than that, but how many won 62 of 68 starts and were voted Horse of the Year three straight seasons? None.

I love the “Top Performers” section of the USTA Web site. It’s easy to find in the “Trackside” section on the home page. It contains a wealth of information about the top performers, equine and human, in the sport, but it really only scratches the surface of stats potential.

Look under drivers. Sure, Tim Tetrick has had a breakout year, but he’s driven in more than 4,600 races. His Universal Driver Rating is an impressive .389, but when Walter Case Jr. won 1,077 races in 1998, his UDR was a whopping .506.

Ah, but who made the most money? Tetrick, by far. He’s earned right at $18 million this year while Case’s horses banked $4.4 million in 1998.

A couple stats I’d love to see are (1) earnings per start and (2) win percentage.

If we applied those to Case in ’98 he would have averaged $1,489 in earnings per start with a 36 percent win percentage while this year Tetrick’s horses have banked $3,882 per start and Tim wins 25 percent of his drives.

You can apply the same standards to trainers, too. Which trainer has had a better year — one whose stable has earned $3 million in 400 starts or one that’s earned $4 million in 1,000 starts?

That’s pretty easy to determine. The stable with a thousand starts undoubtedly has significantly higher costs with only 33 percent more in the bank. Each time a horse races the owner incurs certain costs.

The Universal Trainer Rating can be a bit tricky. If you have primarily a stable of raceway horses, a trainer should be able to classify his horses properly to yield a high UTR. It’s simply a matter of racing horses at a level where they’re competitive.

If you have primarily a stable of stakes horses, a trainer has a tougher time achieving that magic .300 “batting average” with his horses. With stakes horses, you can’t pick your spots quite so easily. Often you have to toss them to the lions and see how they fare.

That’s why it’s amazing to me that Erv Miller sports a .435 UTR while George Teague checks in at .423. Those are stunning numbers and they tell you why these guys are so successful.

If you look closer at the trainers ranking in the Top Performers, you’ll note that Steve Elliott started horses 408 times this year and they earned more than $5 million. (Okay, I know that one horse — Donato Hanover — earned almost half of that.) Teague has started 367 times and earned $4.6 million while Scandinavians Trond Smedshammer and Jimmy Takter have each started 380 times and banked more than $3.5 million.

So when you’re evaluating horses, drivers, or trainers, don’t get carried away by the raw numbers. Play the percentages. Do your own math to calculate earnings per start or overall win percentage.

For example, if Horse of the Year were determined by which horse won the most races, the honor would fall to the 9-year-old gelding trotter Swanee, a winner 21 times this year, 10 more victories than either Donato or Snow White. But it took Swanee 40 tries to win those races and he banked $90,909, a tad less than either Donato or Snow White.

So look beyond the obvious when picking the “leaders” among horses, drivers, or trainers. Sometimes the raw stats mask some rather depressing percentages.

We’ve all heard that “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” Statistical comparisons can spark lively debates that can kindle the fires of racing fans on a cold winter day.