Quote:
Originally Posted by gm10
Sectional times for the Diamond Jubilee reveal Black Caviar ran a final furlong of 13.70s - the third slowest of any horse in the race and almost a full second slower than the furlong before (10.84s) ( 1 hour ago)
(racingpost.com)
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Interesting. She was traveling at over 61 ft/sec in the next to the last furlong and just over 48 ft/sec in the final furlong. One newspaper reported that Nolen sat up and loosened his grip about 75 meters from the wire (~250 ft) at which point she began decelerating until he responded in the last three or four strides. At her previous rate of speed she would have covered those last 75 meters in a bit over four seconds. At her later rate of speed she would have covered them in just over 5 seconds. It's hard to believe that under normal circumstances in which she was ridden to the wire and not put in deceleration mode she couldn't have run two or three ticks faster than 5+ seconds in the last 75 meters. In addition, the force required to overcome the inertia of a 1250-pound horse being eased down in the last 250 feet is enormous . That 3-second differential between the final two furlongs is surely due to Nolen's miscue and it wouldn't be a stretch to think she could have won by at least a couple of lengths which wouldn't have been far off the difference between her rating and that of Moonlight Cloud.