Originally Posted by
str
Q. -Going wide in the 1st turn in a 2-turn route is bad. Is being wide in the turn during sprints equally as bad?
A. No. The clubhouse turn is simply a waste of feet run and energy. The race has not really started yet as far as the horse and rider are concerned. It is hard to win it around the clubhouse turn, other than to slow the pace way down with a solo lead, but you can definitely lose it around the first turn by being way wide, going too fast up front, checking off heels if a horse drops over on you, etc.
Around the far turn, the horse is hopefully making it's move . In a perfect world, you would never be wide but traffic, horses preferences, bias, etc. makes you do so.
Q. -When it comes to position horses and watching their replays, how do you determine what they are capable of doing in a race today?
A. You see if the race has enough different speeds to get a hopefully solid early pace, you see how many other position types are in the race. You watch replays if necessary to see which positions had good or bad trips last out to see if their racing line in the forum is better than it should have been because of a perfect trip or worse than it should have been because of a tough trip. ( If you follow the same track everyday, you will make notes while watching replays THAT day so all you have to do is check the old program for trip notes. It takes about five or six minutes if you do it that day. It can take an hour if you did not. Much easier to write notes on the program and save them for easy reference. Also, not every horse gets a good or bad trip. At least 1/2 the field gets a OK trip but nothing that helped or hurt a lot.)
Q. Like, how would you seperate them as contenders if say you thought the front running speed horses weren't capable?
A. the way I just explained. See who benefited and who was hurt from it's previous race trip if that even exists. Then, try and map out how today's race will shape up. Like rail trip, or will be parked 3-4 wide , etc. Nothing is perfect as you cannot predict exactly how every race will take shape. But you can often enough in terms of trips to find a horse that comes off a bad trip and looks to be coming into a spot that should shape up great.
Q. I saw way back that you wanted position horses to have a comfortable race as well.
A. You always hope for a good position and a comfortable one as well. But sometimes that just doesn't happen. Doing what I just said will improve the odds of a certain trip happening over the course of time. It cannot be perfect though. But nothing is.
Q. Can every horse's result in a race be explained by trips? I mean, let's say a horse had odds going back the last few races of 12-20 with results to match. Can a horse's results like this be explained by replays, or should we just think it is being placed in a class thats not appropriate?
A. No. A poorer than usual or better than usual result can most likely be explained by a easy or tough trip but nothing will always work. Sometimes they can have a perfect trip and falter just like Mr. G and T's horse did that we just talked about.
Q. -Would you say its possible for a horse to have a result, that replays just cant explain?
A. Absolutely. They could have a hundred different things happen to them or even happen to the rider that turns a perfect trip into a poor outing. They could bleed, throw a shoe, get bumped and have the wind knocked out of them, get hit with a small stone from the dirt spray, and about a hundred more. You cannot know about everything, but you can still know a lot more than most.