Quote:
Originally Posted by cj
You know, this is one of the things that has always stuck out to me about running styles being intrinsic, the preferred position in the herd and all. Front running sprinters can often turn back and run midpack and win Pressing and even midpack sprinters will many times go wire to wire and win. Is it the horse or the humans determining running style? I know there are are headstrong horses that will try to lead at all costs, but outside of those, I tend to think it is human. Same with deep closers. Maybe it isn't a style at all. Maybe they are just too slow to keep up early?
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I think it's a little of everything.
Some horses are clearly faster than others. I'm not talking about running styles here. I'm talking about the ability to run fast over a short distance. There are closers that are really fast.
Some horses are trained to relax or go early because that's the trainer's style or because the trainer believes that's the best way to get more out of that horse.
Some of it is a conscious decision by the connections (or just the rider) to get more or less aggressive on a particular day.
Some horses are better or worse out of the gate and take a different amount of time to get into gear, but once they might be very fast.
Some horses seem more or less aggressive when it comes to horses getting ahead of them or trying to pass others.
There's a lot of things that are tough to figure out until after the fact.
I don't think it pays to say "this horse needs the lead or this horse can't do this or that". That kind of stuff comes into play sometimes between evenly matched or similar horses. But IMO, if you drop a horse down far enough, he'll win doing whatever you want.
