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Originally Posted by ultracapper
That amazes me that they can add an entire pole or more to a race by moving the gate, and do it so cavalierly, as if it's meaningless.
Nitro's example of the horses traveling at different speeds, and whether they are accelerating or decelerating, was made at the quarter pole, and made his point. But from a handicapping standpoint, that very factor at the stretch call is where it really makes a difference in the selection process, IMO. There could be many reasons a horse is accelerating or decelerating at the 1/4 pole, but at the 1/8th pole, we're all sprinting for the finish, and how the trailing horses are running in relation to the leader is all pretty much based on effort, conditioning, and/or ability.
I feel like I have put as much time into thinking about handicapping a horse race as anybody could, but there are contributors to this board that make me feel like a toddler. We have a lot of smart, capable people contributing to this forum.
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Somehow I missed your post and I think what happens during running of the first ½ mile (4 furlongs) of a race is very significant as to how it will affect its outcome. That’s why I used it in my example of what I called the “Phantom Dynamic”.
However, I see your point as it relates to the final ¼ mile of a race at any distance. In fact, now that you mention it, from a
handicapping perspective perhaps the final time is more valued for
comparison purposes than any other portion of the race.
So here’s some more food for thought when it comes trying to establish more accurate final times of the horses trailing the winner (whose time we know). After all, these are the horses which will compete either against one another again at some point or other horses that were involved in different races at perhaps even different distances.
In this example I’ll use just 3 horses using the same 6 furlong criteria that was mentioned previously:
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The Race Time: ¾ mile) - 1:12 flat (72) sec
Establishing the “Beaten Length”
If the final ¼ m is covered in 25.2 sec than the final avg velocity = 52.3 ft/sec
Dividing this velocity by a 1/5th of a second = 10.46 feet
Factual summary:
It took the leading horse an additional 25.2 seconds to reach the finish line.
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Okay so lets say that at the ¼ pole entry (B) was traveling right along side of the Winner (A). They hit the 1/16th pole and suddenly entry (B) starts falling behind. Its not that Winner (A) is accelerating away, no it’s because entry (B) is tiring and decelerating.
In the meantime, there’s another entry (C) that at the ¼ pole starts making a strong late move and is closing on the top 2 (A) & (B). This only means that its velocity is greater than 2 front runners.
So the race ends when the Winner (A) crosses the finish line in 1:12 flat. At that moment all of the trailing horses are located at specific statically measured lengths behind the Winner (A) and may in fact be traveling at velocities other than that of the Winner (52.3 ft/sec). If it turned out that both entries (B) and (C) finished 2 lengths behind the Winner (A), does anyone really believe that both their final times should be equal (No matter what time factor you’re using to equate to a beaten length).
We could of course take this a step further and do the math to establish the actual final times of entries (B) and (C) based on not only the obvious differences between their individual velocities at the end of the race, but of the Winner’s velocity as well. The point is that just because they finished the race at the same distance behind the Winner doesn’t mean that they’ll both cross the finish line at the same time. (They would have to be traveling at the identical velocity of the Winner)
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Once Again:
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Conclusion:
The actual measurement of a beaten length can vary at various fixed points in a race due to changes in the average velocities of the leading horse. However, computing the actual time of a trailing horse at any point of call should not be dependent on its beaten lengths in conjunction with the speed of the leading horse but rather on its own average velocity.
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