An Infatuation With Speed Figures

Like many horseplayers in the 1970s, Robert Sinn was fascinated by the idea of using speed figures to understand the game.

He analyzed the relationship of race times to distances. He devised a formula to express this relationship. He programmed a computer to apply his formula and create a figure that neatly expresses a horse’s ability.

Such obsessive speed handicappers are frequenty viewed as madmen by other members of the racing community, but none has ever taken an infatuation with his figures quite so far as Sinn has. He made them the basis of a new racing newspaper, and set out to challenge the well-entrenched Daily Racing Form. The publication, FIGS Form, made its nationabl debut in the spring, and was introduced in Maryland when Laurel opened this month. It has many virtues, but the odds against Sinn might have been shorter if he had challenged Mike Tyson to a barroom fight instead of taking on the Racing Form.

No speed handicapper has ever made such a big, audacious bet.

Sinn has a proven track record in the business world. He founded a company that manufactures microwave semiconductors; he headed a biotechnology firm and a stock-brokerage company. Amid these serious pursuits, he enjoyed racing as a hobby. He loved tinkering with his figures, and while he said he wasn’t a hard-core player, he would spend every August betting at Saratoga.

What distinguished Sinn’s figures was not the way he calculated them -- they’re not radically different from other good speed figures -- but the way he computerized the calculations. He even programmed the computer to spot aberrations in the figures that can normally be detected only by human analysis.

Because of his computer expertise, Sinn knew it would be relatively easy and cheap to publish a newspaper incorporating those speed figures: “The technology now is such that it was feasible to set up a beautiful system for a couple of million dollars; a few years ago we couldn’t have touched what we did for $20 million or $30 million.” And so FIGS Form was born.

The tabloid-sized paper sells for $2.50 and looks good typographically, with color photos and good-quality newsprint. But horseplayers don’t spend $2.50 a day for esthetics; they want information. The past performances in FIGS Form don’t look at all like the Racing Form’s but they do contain information that the established newspaper lacks. They show when a horse has been treated with Lasix or Butazolidin in his previous starts. They indicated when a horse has worn bandages in previous starts. But the main focus of the past performances is on Sinn’s speed figures.

Each race contains a Figoscope plotting all of the horses’ performances during the past year. Each horse’s record contains a graph plotting the speed figures he has earned throughout his career. They look intriguing, yet the chief failing of FIGS Form may be these graphics. The whole idea of graphics is to make data more easily graspable, and yet a reader who examines the charts and graphs in the newspaper has to labor to find the horse with the best recent speed figure.

But maybe the reason that the FIGS Form past performances are so hard for readers is that they are so ... different. Horseplayers are creatures of habit. When the Morning Telegraph was shut down and supplanted by the almost-identical Daily Racing Form, bettors were ready to riot because the typography was slightly different.

And that’s why the FIGS Form seller at racetracks sometimes looks as lonely as the Maytag repairman in the television ads. Sinn claims a national paid circulation of “close to 10,000 a day” and says “we think we can break even on 25,000 to 30,000.” But he knows what he’s up against. “Our big plus is that we’ve got great information,” he said. “Our great minus is that it’s tough to change reader habits, and we don’t look like the Daily Racing Form.”