Quote:
Originally Posted by thaskalos
We aren't talking about "race shapes"...we are talking about the independent running lines of the particular horses involved in the race. The "shape" of the race in general shows one thing...but the horses' individual race-shapes show something else altogether.
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Sure, I can do it by horse too. Looking at the winners would probably be enlightening. My point was that the flow of figures takes into account the way races are generally run, that is all. If races generally went fast, slow, fast, like the race in question, the figures would be even across.
My baseline showed the normal 2nd quarter the winners runs at 7f at Belmont is usually a little fast than the opening quarter. In this case, the opening quarter was 23.16, the second quarter 24.05. That is way different than what we normally see on this track at 7f and why the 1/2 mile pace figure was so low for the race.
My figures are cumulative. The opening quarter was rated 102, the half mile 77, final time 89. This means if the fractions are rated incrementally they look like this:
1/4 102
1/4 to 1/2: 77 * 2 - 102 = 52 (that is an absolute crawl and way different the norm)
1/2 to finish: (89 * 7 - 77 *4) / 3 = 105
This really goes to show how pace often has as big an effect on the final time as the quality of the horses does. Once the 2nd quarter was allowed to be run in such a ridiculous time, there was no way to make up the lost time in the last three furlongs.
I would say this race is probably better than pace and speed figures indicate. Tactics are what made the race slow. The second quarter bunched up the field and caused a lot of the traffic problems we see in the race.
