Quote:
Originally Posted by dnlgfnk
I would watch a horse being hard used in the earliest strides and run a quarter in :23, while a half hour later another leader with similar frontrunning ability would stride smoothly to the lead in :22-2 on its own courage.
I arrived at the conclusion that a slow naked fraction can actually represent a difficult scenario for those horses who contributed to recording it.
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I agree with this.
Each horse clearly has a different amount of natural speed even when they are of a similar class. The amount of energy used is not just related to how fast the horse ran. It's also a function of how close to its limit it was running. There seems to be a kind of exponentially growing energy use the closer you get to the horse's limit.
You see it a lot of times in a duel.
Two horses duel in fractions are are clearly fast relative to class. The winner of the duel will often go on to record a final time figure equal or at least close to its typical performance despite running very fast early. The loser will sometimes get totally buried. It's a matter of how comfortable the horse was while running fast.
I have no idea if something like that was a factor in the Brooklyn.