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Well, I had some more fun with the LD numbers last night.  I was just
curious to see whether the assertion by those in the West region that
they are preventing racing on LDs by their policies did indeed have any
effect on LD ride times, as compared to the stats that I recently
compiled for the NW, where we have used the AERC BC form to judge LD BC
since long before the rides were AERC-sanctioned LD rides.  (We used the
form back when we had those "short" rides alongside sanctioned rides,
simply because we DID want to promote the taking-care-of-your-horse
aspect, FWIW...)

Here's what I found.

The W and the NW region both had 38 LD rides.  I already had stats on
all 38 of the NW rides.  However in the W region, 3 of those rides were
recent enough not to have results posted, and 11 of those rides did not
give ride times.  So I only had 24 rides in the W region to work with.

But looking at those 24 rides, I found a distribution and pattern very
much like I did in the NW region.  On four of those rides, the first
place LD riders averaged a faster speed than did the first place riders
on the 50-55 mile distance at the same ride.  On 20 of those rides they
averaged a slower speed.  Overall, the first place LD riders in the W
region averaged 1.18 mph slower than did the first place riders of the
50-55 mile distances on the same rides.  The first place LD riders in
the NW rode 1.13 mph slower on average than the first place riders in
the 50-60 mile distances.  Given the range of speeds, the .05 mph
difference is likely not statistically significant.

I also looked at the times of the 10th place horses on the LDs in the W
region, and went back and did the same thing for the NW region.  What I
found was that the 10th place riders on LD rides in the W region rode
28.1% slower than the first place finishers.  In the NW region, the
10th place riders rode 29.2% slower than the first place LD riders--a
shade slower than in the W region, but again not enough of a difference
that it is apt to be significant statistically.

So basically, whether there is an LD BC offered or not, it does not
appear that the riding pattern changes.  From this data, I'd conclude
that the idea that the LD BC will promote racing is much ado about
nothing.

Heidi


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