4.5 furlong races
 

When playing them I look for the horse that can get the clear
lead at the 1st call which I'm guessing the majority of the people do.

I wanted to see if anybody looks at these races in a different way,I
use the Bris pp's.

different
 

I look at them differently -- I look away

Good question. My track has a lot of these and admittedly I haven't spent time to understand them better.

Handicapping by feel, I would say the following are important:

1) Early speed, of course
2) Post position depending on where the race starts (i.e., is it a straight before the turn, does it start on the turn, etc.)
3) Gate works. A lot of these races are carded for 2 year olds so seeing a few quick gate works probably bodes well
4) Workout pace in general. The faster the better
5) Jockey proficiency with getting a horse out of the gate fast. Is this a jockey that is known for getting a lot of early speed out of his mounts?

Interested in others' thoughts as well.

these are great. :ThmbUp:

most of the rest comes down to fundamental stuff that applies to most racing

Thanks very much for the response, all make sense

One of our long-time (but now passed) professionals played nothing but 4.5 furlong races. He made a medium-sized income from racing. (Slightly under $100k.)

He said that his advantage was found in the fact that he was VERY GOOD at finding horses that go to the front.

He had proven that he was good enough at that one-dimension that it made him profitable.

He was so good at it that he eventually expanded to 5f races as well.

Isn't that true at pretty much every distance? A question for the database guys I guess.

Yes, though probably particularly potent at 4.5 furlongs.

There is little doubt that the shorter the distance, the better speed does. Here is a chart showing how often winners led at the first call as well. Possible they maybe were headed in between but for the most part these are wire-to-wire percentages. Surface has an effect, but within each surface it is clear as day speed does worse as distances get longer. No real surprise, but these are the number from 2009 through yesterday. I excluded any distances with less than 100 races.

https://i.ibb.co/Yd7NH7K/WtoW.png

Absolutely true.

He had a particular skill and figured out how to leverage it into profit.

I remember him telling me once that he'd given up trying to handicap beyond the one dimension. Everything he tried took him from winning to winning less.

So, he just played EVERY 4.5f race that came up anywhere in the US. (Not actually sure if he played turf. I expect so, as the profiles are similar: still a "run for the border" right out of the gate.)

BTW, it took him a couple of years to expand to 5f because he bought into the idea that winning is fragile.

He also said that he tried the baby races and failed miserably. Said it was because the horses did not "run to their past" since they didn't have much past. LOL

Are you able to see the ROI of 1st call leaders?

I could, and it almost assuredly be very good. But I find this of little value. The value is in predicting which horses will be first early and seeing how they do.

Loved playing the 4,5 furlong races at old Jefferson Downs in NOLA, Ricky Faul or John Herdes fighting for the lead.

They run a boatload of 4.5 F races at FL every spring (except this year) and that is usually the time I do best there. A lot of the horses just cannot go much more than 4.5 ever, so the early meet is the place to pay your feed bills.

I would love to build a model broken into two ratings "speed" and "stamina".

I want to know who is the fastest horse for around 4 furlongs and who has the most stamina.

Then I want to know whether today's conditions (distance, surface, bias, pace, competitive setup) favor one or the other and to what degree.

But stamina is a tricky thing to measure because it involves both how far the horse can run and remain competitive and the quality of the horses it can do it against. It also sometimes requires seeing how it performs in a really tough highly competitive and demanding race.

Speed can also be tricky because on turf, many horses are doing their fastest running at the end, but those last quarters are partially related to the early pace.