Quote:
Originally Posted by mountainman
Incidentally, the trap novice, and even intermediate, players usually fall into is conflating stamina with running style. The immortal Dr Fager and his arch rival Damascus exemplified this in historic fashion. No less an authority than Tom Ainslie expressed surprise in one of his books that Dr Fager could actually get 1 and a quarter miles, but failed to observe that which of the two displayed superior "stamina" depended almost entirely on pace and flow.
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This is exactly what I'm getting at.
In terms of speed, imo there's little doubt Fager was faster than Damascus. I would argue that Damascus had more natural stamina. If they went far enough, my guess is that even controlling the pace may not have helped Fager.
They were different horses with a different balance of each. Which of them won was dependent on the distance, how the race developed, how the track was playing etc..
Another theoretical example might be Fager and Slew.
I think Fager was probably a little faster than Slew too, but we saw the kind of stamina Slew had in the JCGC where he dealt with an extreme pace, kept running, and was actually coming again at 12F. I doubt Fager could have dealt with that pace and kept going at 12F. Slew was freakish in that he a huge abundance of both.
But converting these "stamina" type questions into a number, putting it next to "speed" number, and then asking who has the better balance for today's race given the distance, how the track is playing, and how the race sets up is hard if you don't have a stamina number.
