Quote:
Originally Posted by thaskalos
I can't imagine how traveling an extra 93 feet in a race can be considered to be anything else but a great disadvantage.
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I think it was actually 72 feet further than the horse that saved the most ground and 46 feet further than Gun Runner, but my math may be off a little due to Trakus issues.
To begin with, I didn't say ground loss is not a disadvantage. I said imo it's often not as much of a disadvantage at the literal extra feet traveled.
IMO, the impact of ground loss has a lot of variables, but primarily I think adjusting speed figures for ground loss is faulty because speed figures aren't measuring what a horse has in the tank at the end (along with accuracy issues). What we really want to know is how much extra energy the horse expended because he was wider and see how/where he finished against what quality of horse. I suspect we aren't going to agree on this subject, so I'll move on to other things.
At some tracks on some days (at some tracks fairly often), horses seem to do almost as well running in the outside paths as the inside paths unless they are WAY outside. Whether that's due to less inertia when you run wider, the turn banking being more significant away from the rail, greater comfort being outside horses, or track maintenance that makes the outside paths a little faster than the rail (without the rail actually being dead), is a problem for the physics guys.
I just watch races and describe what I am seeing on the turns and put it into my notes. My notes and bias ratings are often different than conventional wisdom on this subject.
