Who are the fastest horses in the game?

In PhotoFinish.Live who are currently the fastest, record holding horses in the game? What does it take to win a graded stakes race, or even a maiden? Let's find out.

Petrocker

5/25/20246 min read

In previous posts we have looked at Trueskill, Microsoft's pvp rating system, to try to determine who are the best horses in the game. Today we are going to use a much simpler method - using finish time by different sets of conditions to do two things. First we are going to figure out what it takes to win a graded stakes race, or at least be in the running. I hope this helps stable owners calibrate whether they think their horses can be competitive at this level of the game and therefore inform their investment in these higher fee races. Second, we are going to look at and celebrate the current record holders of each combination of distance, surface and condition and a take a sneak peak at this season's crop of juveniles to spot a future record holder that you might want to add onto your shortlist for purchase or breeding.

What does it take to win a graded race?

We have many tools to assess our horses' performance. and previously we identified that finishing time was a good metric because it hasn't been normalised. Normalised refers to the process of adjusting data so that it fits a distribution, generally to remove outliers and standardise the numbers so that we can compare across distances, surfaces and conditions.

Time is specific to distance because horses run at different speeds at different distances. We treat distances as discrete events. It's also specific to surface - as dirt is significantly slower than turf. Finally time is affected by conditions and the conditions preferences of horses. Generally Fast is quite literally a faster condition than Yielding or Sloppy, but some horses may not have their fastest time in Fast conditions due to those preferences. Long story short we are going to have to create some ugly tables to cover every combination of distance, surface and conditions. Sorry.

The highest class of racing in PFL is Grade I. The above table shows the average time of Grade I race winners by distance, surface and condition. To win an average Grade I race you need to be hitting these kind of times specific to the conditions of the race. If your horse has previously run these times, and you haven't entered it into a Grade I, you are probably leaving money on the table. As you can see at 4F, the shortest distance, Turf is around 0.7 seconds faster than Dirt. At 12F the differences are more chaotic with Sloppy showing almost no difference in time and Fast having almost a second.

If you want to test your horse at the highest level of the game, these are the times you need to win an average Grade I.

Okay so maybe your horse isn't fast enough to win a Grade I, what about the next level down, Grade II races. The above table is the same data for the average winning times for Grade II races. Overall there is very little difference in times, and in some instances like 4F Dirt Fast, the Grade II average winning time is lower. Here Back to Back ran the fastest time ever in a Grade II race. The important insight here is that there is very little difference in winning times between Grade I and Grade II. Depending on the race calendar you may find the same horses in both races.

You horse may not cut the mustard at Grades I & II but what about Grade III?

Winning times in Grade III are slightly slower overall but the gap is very small. Included alongside the winning times are the average podium times across the first three horses. This provides a threshold to profitably race horses at the Graded level. If your horses cannot achieve the Podium times then it is unlikely that they can make money running in Graded company. We need to be realistic about this because Graded races are more expensive to enter. Use that last table as a ready reckoner to determine whether you should run your horses in Graded races. If your times are not in this range, save your money.

Let's celebrate the record holders

In game there are some tables under the stats tab that show various leaderboards. However there is no celebration of which horses are the absolute fastest, so let's remedy that here.

Maybe this information will be useful to get more stud fees next season, or to boost the price on the marketplace, or to create an alert on https://www.photofinishedge.com/ just in case someone is foolish enough to enter their record breaker in a claimer.

Below is the definitive table (data up to 24th May 2024) of the record holders at every combination of distance, surface and conditions (9 x 2 x 5 = 90 separate records). How many horses do you have on this list?

Amongst the dirt preference horses, Mr Wonderful and GameDay Promotions stand out as owning the record at three different combinations of conditions. Lydian Fame, Native Monk, Heroine and Blue Norther all have two records. It's interesting to see Blue Norther hold records at both Sloppy and Fast conditions.

For turf preference horses Klick Klick Boom has three records at three different distances and conditions. Track Phantom on the other hand has the record at three different conditions at the 11F distance it dominates. Charlie Chaplin runs today (25th May 2024) in the big race, the Artemis Cup, at 10F Soft and Vladivostok is not running.

The one horse that stands out here is the juvenile Ernest Shackleton, who has run the fastest time at Turf 9F Soft as a 2 year old, the only current juvenile on either list. So who are the fastest juveniles in Season 15 I hear you ask?

This table holds all the current juveniles who have run at least a top 20 time ever in their first racing season. Some of these horses may become breeding options next year, or candidates for the talent spotters from the big stables. Either way the recently sold Mighty Spirit features twice on this list along with the ever spicy Vindaloo. Finally Rosebud Star, the S grade horse has only raced 8 times in his short career but already has the second fastest time ever at Turf 5F Good. That is a good sign for his future, and he already has 2 wins and 3 podiums from 5 Grade races.

Conclusions about horse speed

The fastest finishing time isn't the most important thing PFL, winning the big prestigious races is. Jerry Rice didn't have the fastest 40 yard dash time, but he is the best wide receiver in history. Maybe your horse is more Jerry Rice than Tyreek Hill, and you can safely ignore the ugly tables above. Maybe your horse likes to come from the back and the finish time is dictated by the front runners. I think there is signal in how fast a horse can run. It doesn't mean it will always be capable of running that time, but just being capable is reason enough to enter high quality stakes races to give yourself the shot at glory.

The first part of the post hopefully provided you with some benchmarks to help you figure out whether your horse is fast enough to make money from Graded races. The second part of today's post is for you to find your own horse and then brag to everyone else, or include it in one of those cool stud graphics next season. A bit like boxing, outside of Oleksandr Usyk, there are many horses that can claim to be the champion, so hopefully you own one of the 80+ record holders yourself, and if you do sell make sure you get the record holder premium in the deal.

Join the fun and put these insights into practice at PhotoFinish.Live and if you are considering starting your own stable please consider using my referral code: PADDOCK or just click on this link: https://signup.photofinish.live/?referralCode=PADDOCK

Please remember this is a web3 game where your spend your own money. Nothing I write about should be considered financial or investment advice.

Who are the fastest horses in the game?

What does it take to win a graded race?

Let's celebrate the record holders

Conclusions about horse speed

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