Trainer Todd Pletcher commenting after the race . . .
http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...inking-belmont
The Dean of Handicapping Tom Ainslie explained what happened some 50 years ago, no doubt Todd
really knows the answer, maybe just didn't want to discuss it.
Here is what Ainslie wrote, in full:
Cheap Horses Know It
After the races are stretched to six furlongs, and especially after the animals have turned three, the horses with the fastest previous time at the distance is no longer a copper-riveted certainty to be the one with the fastest potential at the distance. When it faces a genuinely superior thoroughbred, it invariably loses in slower time that it has recorded in the past.
Horsemen are so accustomed to this phenomenon that they seldom even discuss it. A 5k horse able to get the half-mile in .45 and the six furlongs in 1:10 when racing with utmost courage against its own kind has not a prayer of equaling those figures against an allowance runner which may never have done better than .454/5 and 1:102/5.
Invariably and inevitably, the class horse prevails. Whether on the backstretch, on the turn, or in the homestretch, the better horse makes a run, easily overtakes the speedster, keeps pace with it for several strides and pulls ahead with little effort. During those few moments, the cheaper horse gets the message. It acknowledges its own inferiority and gives up. The better horse wins, perhaps in 1:104/5. It will not run the three quarters in the 1:091/5 of which it is capable until challenged by an animal more nearly its match.
It is unnecessary to become mystical about the ease with which a class horse trounces its inferiors, the authority with which it bullies them into running more slowly than usual, the “knowledge” they seem to display in promptly accepting defeat by a superior. Students of animal intelligence and animal psychology would not be surprised by this, and would find nothing mystical in it. Every known species of bird, fish and mammal has its own social order in which physical superiority wins privileges.
Thoroughbred horses, whose function in life is to run, evidently establish their own social order in the process of running. How? Horsemen agree that animals of higher class possess greater reservoirs of racing energy. They can turn on the speed at will, or whenever the rider asks for it and they can maintain the speed for as long as may be necessary to demonstrate the prowess that discourages a lesser rival. In most cases, it does not take long. The inferior horse hoists the white flag. Whereupon the good horse relaxes into a less taxing stride and ambles home as he pleases.
This curious physical and psychological dominance of higher-quality thoroughbreds over lower is misinterpreted by many players and more than a few horsemen. Having noticed that the good horse beats the cheap one in slower time than the cheapie has run in the past, they conclude that time is irrelevant to the handicapping of races.
They overlook the fact that the speed potential of most horses is thoroughly tested long before the end of the three-year-old season. Except for out-and-out champions, virtually all horses aged four or more have shown repeatedly what they can do in the speed department when subjected to the extremely accurate test of races against their own kind. In such races, they are obliged to run as fast as they can.
~
What was so terribly interesting in this particular case was how Always Dreaming "gave up . . . hoisted the white flag", so dramatically. Unfortunately, class and condition are subject to pace and as we all know, pace makes the race.
Lookin' forward to the Belmont Stakes!
