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Unfortunately, some of the racereaders are none-too-consistent in their use of the terms you’ve given as well.
As I’ve said before, EW, it is in fact very difficult to make all. You not only have to exit the stalls quickly enough to get to the front immediately, but you need to stay there for the entire race, against several rivals (usually closely matched on all-weather), without going too fast and while being in sufficiently good form and sufficiently suited to the conditions to give of your best.
It is only one way of running a race, and a pretty extreme way of running a race in some respects. There are numerous other ways of getting from a to b without being in front the whole way.
There was another example of a made all today in Buscador (9.47f, Wolverhampton). According to my sectionals he actually went a bit on the fast side, but the upshot was that he was a few lengths clear of most of his rivals 2f out and only one of them got close to closing him down.
I’d be interested in any studies for other tracks, but they would need to be in standardised races, with say 12 to 14 runners only. The phrases "held up" and "chased leaders" etc are rather too subjective and individual for my liking. In fields of 12 or 13 runners (which are the norm at Wolverhampton) you would expect the majority of winners to come from off the pace to a degree, unless the jockeys were consistently misjudging the pace.
Having had a decent run on the AW lately
Glad to hear it.:biggrin:
Even gladder to be able to say something similar myself.:biggrin: :biggrin:
Twinkle Twinkle, I’ve only just seen this.
I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what point you are trying to make.
The point I would make is that in any individual race it may be relatively easy or relatively difficult for horses to win from the front or come from behind. But that doesn’t mean that a horse can’t win "against the bias". One additional thing is that it can certainly be argued that a horse which wins a slowly-run race is showing that it has what it takes to win a slowly-run race—a turn of foot basically—at least as much as that it is significantly better than the result. Often, I reckon, it is a bit of both.
Results may, or may not, show that relatively few horses win from the front at Wolverhampton. There will be an explanation for this, but that explanation won’t be the equivalent of some sort of a curse having been placed on front-runners. More to the point, in a given circumstance the fact that relatively few horses win from the front at a course may be totally irrelevant to the race under consideration.
Mistaking general information for specific information, or applying the former when the latter is appropriate, is far too prevalent in the field of form analysis by certain so-called experts already.
TDK, it reminds me of the form versus trends argument, in that an awful lot of people favour the latter approach not because it is "better" (though they may kid themselves as much) but because it is "easier".
If you have only an hour or so a day to look at racing then there’s not a whole lot of point in going into great depth in handicapping races, coming up with speed figures, analysing races sectionally and then pricing each horse up individually. Your time will have been "up" long before you come to any conclusion.
But if you do have the time then you should do it I reckon. Those who can put in the extra graft or show the extra flair and intuition reap the rewards in this game.
Once you have established standard sectional times for a track then gathering the data and putting it onto a spreadsheet takes little time. Perhaps half an hour a meeting. Why deny yourself this aspect if it is available to you?
Like you, I do "pretty well" out of betting on the all-weather. This winter, partly because I have been busy with other things, that has been as much as anything down to sectional timing analysis. It is, in fact, tempting at times to drop any wider appraisal of matters and simply side with horses who have done well in the context of the race or against horses who have figured prominently only because of it, in the belief that the public will get it "wrong". But that’s getting back into the trends territory, whereas I am a great believer in a multi-dimensional approach rather than a one-dimensional one. Time allowing, of course.
Twinkle Twinkle, do most people who watched Miss Porcia’s race know whether the winner was flattered or grossly flattered or the degree to which the horses immediately behind her were unlucky?
At the moment even highly experienced race readers are regularly managing to misinterpret the run of a race, and the consequence is that their whole assessment of a race can be wrong. How can someone with their naked eyes tell the difference between a horse running a mile in 100 secs and 101 secs? I know I can’t for sure, and yet that is a big difference.
If some people get all the innovations they want then some of the mystery will go out of racing analysis, but only some I reckon. The one thing that technology will definitely struggle to cope with is excatly the one thing that a human racereader can have an input on: not where the horse was and when, but how well the horse is going and how clear a run it is getting etc.
I think obvious pace handicapping is in danger of being overbet, but there is a vast amount of less obvious stuff going on out there day in and day out and very few people seem to realise it.
I think the inconsistency issue at a low grade exists but is much overstated. Often it’s not the horse that is inconsistent but its trainer if you know what I mean :biggrin: .
There was also no small difficulty in getting a handle on the form of horses going into this grade having, say, been beaten comfortably in maidens previously when banded racing was first introduced. Now that it has bedded in that’s not such a big issue.
EW, <br>sectionals for leaders at 2f pole expressed as % of overall race times:<br>8f Mad 74.76+ 25.24 (24.28 optimum)<br>7f Savernake Brave 70.98+29.02 (27.94 optimum)<br>7f Averami 71.03+28.97<br>8f Grezie 75.01+24.99<br>8f Miss Porcia 75.78+24.22
In other words, oddly for Lingfield, in the first 4 of those races the runners judged on the leader spent less time in the first part of the race and more in the second than ideal: i.e. they went too quickly. In Miss Porcia’s race the leader 2f out (which was also the winner) went an almost ideal pace.
Of course, each individual horse runs the race differently: sometimes drastically so. The front runner in Grezie’s race went a daft pace (it was already coming back to the field at the sectional) but Grezie itself wasn’t far off ideal with a final sectional of 24.42%. Miss Porcia wasn’t flattered as such by her performance, but the horses who came from off the pace in that race are better than the result (and probably better than she was).
I think anyone who can read a race would come to a similar conclusion, but it is good to have it confirmed independently and it is possible, with enough data, to quantify the degree to which this was an issue too. ÂÂÂ
(Edited by Prufrock at 10:27 am on Dec. 9, 2004)
I’m not saying it’s easy, but I have an edge if I find it less difficult than others do. Something’s got to win those sorts of races after all.
At the other end of the scale I find it very difficult to outdo people on Group 1 races. Every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to know the form. It’s not often that you can catch them unawares.
Not enough data at Wolves.
Just done a draw analysis at Southwell which suggests that stalls 1 to 4 are good at 5f but that there isn’t much in it at 6f/7f (which I grouped together). I’m not entirely happy with the criteria used, however.
I specialise in 2-y-o races, twinkle, though I am prepared to bet on pretty much anything on the Flat (the worse the race the better in a way).
If you want a good example of what codswallop so-called pace bias applied to an entire track can be, today’s card at Lingfield provides a pretty good example.
In the early races horses came from further back than usual and there was talk of its being impossible to win from the front.
Well, the leaders in those races all went faster than ideal to the 2f point.
Race 6 and most of the jockeys rein their mounts back, Miss Porcia sits in second before striking for home 2f out and wins a race in which she probably shouldn’t even have been placed. Her final 2f was the fastest by a winner all day to that point.
(Edited by Prufrock at 2:42 pm on Dec. 8, 2004)
I think that was some time ago, Ultimate Nightmare.
In the equitrack era it sometimes seemed as if it was impossible to go too quickly in shorter-distance races there.
The first two races at Lingfield today saw horses coming through from the back (though not quite enough for those who backed the luckless Piquet). Rather than imagining that this was down to some sort of "track bias" I reckon that it was down to both races being strongly-run, and the clock backs that impression up.
Yes, everything you say above is true in my view. In order for a horse to come from 5 or 6 lengths plus off the pace 2f out either the horse has to be a bit of a monster or the leaders need to have gone too fast. The latter happens at Wolverhampton sometimes but only once in a blue moon at Lingfield. This may have something to do with the jockeys having had longer to get to grips with the kinds of fractions to set at the latter course, I’m not sure.
I think that a few courses are probably doing that (they don’t excatly make a song and dance about it, so it’s difficult to be sure). Most don’t need to, though, so there seems no need for it to become more widespread.
Incidentally, over the same period as the Wolverhampton figures given above, Lingfield’s polytrack has given us 16 winners out of 94 in front 2f out (17%) but only one that has come from 1 sec or more back (about 6 lengths) at that point. The average margin behind at this juncture is 1.78 lengths.
I tend to think that stuff like track biases are overstated. In any given race you can either go too quickly or not quickly enough regardless of the "bias".
I prefer to view a race on its own, and judge the likelihood of the pace playing to certain horses’s strengths, or not. That said, jockeys are often guilty of taking a while to adjust to a sudden change in conditions and continue to ride a horse too forcefully or not forcefully enough for a fair while after this has become apparent.
Some horses do just seem to be best dominating their rivals and there may be little use in trying to ride them any other way. Obviously the conditions and the presence/absence of other such runners can alert you to whether these types are likely to thrive or not.
Can’t do: only so many hours in the day!
Over the same period I have 12 of the 194 winners (6.2%) coming from 1 sec or more behind the pace (usually about 5.5 lengths) at the 2f marker.
I called the goings on 23 Oct and 30 Oct to 5 Nov inclusive "standard to slow" and the rest "standard". Bar that blip I reckon they’ve done a good job in keeping the surface pretty consistent.
I think you might be right, Twinkle Twinkle, and welcome to the forum by the way.:)
There is little difference between the secs/furlong of the new polytrack standard times and the comparable ones (slightly different distances allowing) on the fibresand. In other words, although I have little doubt that the new surface is a superior one, it slows horses down to a similar degree as fibresand at the same track did.
Incidentally, I have 38 of the winners of 194 races (19.6%) on the new surface at Wolverhampton in the lead 2f out, and the average distance behind the leader at that point for all races is 1.2 lengths. Don’t know whether that bears out your impression of its favouring horses from off the pace or not.
(Edited by Prufrock at 11:27 pm on Dec. 7, 2004)
