SHORT NOTE ON THE SANTA ANITA SPEED BIAS Yesterday, we were once again provided a demonstration of how true frontrunners win on dirt tracks. This knowledge, once possessed by nearly everybody in the game, seems to have become passé, but it is as true today as it was 50 years ago. Ready? Heres the secret: frontrunners run fast early. I know, crazy, right? Anybody who watched the Dirt Mile saw a horse -- actually two horses -- blaze through the opening half (-14 ESR). Of course, when one of these horses -- the eventual winner Goldencents -- held on to win, the inevitable cries of speed bias could be heard chorusing throughout cyberspace. They crawl the last quarter (-11 LSR, not exactly crawling, but not flying either) and the leader holds -- SPEED BIAS, the argument goes. Uh, yeah, thats the way it works. The truly gifted frontrunners like Goldencents win by either building up an insurmountable advantage OR by forcing rivals to expend more energy to keep up early. Either way, theyre not going to record sparkling late pace numbers. If they did, THEN one could argue that the racetrack is biased. For example, when Dr. Fager set a world record in winning the Washington Park Handicap in 1968, he did so by recording a -11 ESR and a -8 LSR -- not that different from what Goldencents did yesterday, except that Goldencents went about three lengths faster (relatively speaking) early and three lengths slower (again relatively speaking) late. Its not complicated and its definitely not a speed bias.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 15:21:17 +0000