Thanks for the info. I didn't know about the resurfacing; that's not something you run across in everyday data much less books full of hyperbole.
It's still interesting to bear in mind that
a) Man only set world/American marks at Belmont. The 2 worlds were smashers (1 over Barton's previous record). Each of his Amer's were broken by 1/5 the next year and 7 years later.
b) Man equaled the Toga track record set by Barton the year before.
Pars are made exactly to cover typical "behavior" of the track more or less as it is at the time. That is the whole point of Beyer - to equalize times by taking out the track variant question. On 1 track it's quite simple. Your $1000 claimers all basically run the same race, so those who ran in 1917 should really be running the same race in 1918, even if the slicker surface shows faster times. The average TIMES will be different, but the PAR FIGURES will be the same.
Bigger problems arise equalizing outside tracks. Beyer talks about this and from what I glanced at, looks at claiming shippers from other tracks to help get their real quality compared. Thus instead of starting w/a baseline 80 figure for every track, he'll apparently adjust the "std claimer" to reflect the relative abilities. So Saratoga might have an 80, Belmont might have an 83, and Golden Gates might have a 73 baseline in reality.
I don't think I'm going to get into that any time soon. Neither do I plan on bothering w/his "projection" method, which instead of simply comparing race time to average pars, adds in judgement in case there's a bizarre situation implied by some past race. The regular Par Method is complex enough!
