Those Bloody Horses

[WORKFORCE]

Hi,

Was just wondering does anyone come across horses who are running very well in decent class races without posting anything remotely like the speed figure required to finish where they are.

Is it just a case of that, all good horses will run a fast time eventually it's just amtter of when, so if their running well in high class races without producing the figure then they have to be kept on the right side off?

[Overlay]

By "kept on the right side of", are you asking whether the horse should be considered (from a handicapping/betting standpoint) to be a candidate for continued good performance or improvement, even though its speed figures don't correspond to the "typical" figure for the class level at which the horse has been racing?

If so, it would depend for me on how the horse compares to any given field against which it is entered in terms of form, demonstrated speed, and class, and (especially if I would be uncertain about whether the horse was capable of running a significantly better figure than it had shown previously) whether its odds make it worth the risk of a bet under those circumstances.

[Robert Fischer]

Hi,

Was just wondering does anyone come across

horses who are running very well in decent class races without posting anything remotely like the speed figure ...

just like horses and races that produce questionable HIGH sfs

the same happens with races and LOW sfs

A good example was the Sunland Derby. The top 3 finishers were under-rated going into the race. The race was of about a Grade2 quality. The general consensus was that race's quality was poor and most handicappers underrated the race. The speed figure was conservatively low, given the qualtiy of the race and the quality of the top3 runners.
Challenge- actually seeing all that with confidence takes a big amount of skill that most horseplayers don't have. In effect you are saying that you recognized more about the race than the figure makers.
For the Sunland Derby, Ruler on Ice got an 86 beyer. RoI charged home in that race, in an effort that if the race had been credited as being good, would have been OVERRATED(because he benefited from the dynamics of the race and was the most visually impressive)
The best horse in the SD, Astrology ran 2nd while a bit against the flow and was about the 3rd most visually impressive horse. Astrology is a fine horse, he ran competitively in the Preakness(a race were Shackleford ran his A race, and Animal Kingdom ran very big). The winner of the Sunland Derby Twice the Appeal (who was third best in the Sunland derby) ran as good as most of the horses in Kentucky Derby although he did not match the top runners physically.
After the race the consensus online could be paraphrased as "None of these horses will play a role in the 3yo season..."

so... that wordy example was meant to illustrate times when speed figures can be conservatively LOW.
If you aren't a handicapping ace, you can still do the same thing by looking at how the horses from the SLOW SPEED FIG RACE have run since that time. -- this is not as easy as it sounds either... You can still be fooled when horses go with or against any type of bias!
(Using Ruler on Ice's Tesio race[next after SunlandDerby] R.O.I finished 2nd to Concealed Identity., C.I. finishd 14th in the preakness - however ROI is not only a better horse than Concealed Identity, but more importantly- C.I. figured to stink up the preakness, while Ruler on Ice figured to be much more competitive in the Belmont Stakes because of each horses individual strengths and weaknesses)