Here is an interesting race from the Breeders Cup Friday races. I admit up front that I did not play this race because of the 5 Foreign horses and a couple of other reasons I will point out as we go through. First we note the best 4-Score horse is the 10. He has the best R3 score. He is the #1 LPR horse and the #1 CPR horse. He is looking more and more like our Key horse. We note the 21 Quirin Speed Points suggesting this might be a late race. Is there Early pressure? The most Early behavioral horse is the 6 with E8 meaning he loves to be on the lead, next we have the 12 who is a P7 meaning he is a presser who likes to be up close. The 5 is an EP6 meaning he will be up close and behaviorally will take the lead if he can get it. Our arrow horse the 10 is an EP5 and will be there with the 5. All the 5 Foreign horses look to be sustained late runners. Note also that there are only 3 horses with complete 4-Scores. The presence of 5 Foreign horses could affect that but in normal races complete 4-Scores are better than only 1,2 or 3 parts of the 4-Score. Right, Tim?
We note on the BL/BL screen that our 10 horse has great energy balance is 4 meaning that his E/EP is number 3 and his L/EP is number 1 for a total of 4 which means he distributes his energy perfectly for this race. Foreign horses excepted. Note also how his late scores support his late run.
Here on the Segments screen I note the one negative for our 10 horse. It appears that he is 15.5 lengths back in the first call. Usually, horses that fall more than 10 lengths back in the first fraction can’t recover enough to win. Not also that the 11 can run a very powerful 1st fraction and the 6 horse should be about 6 lengths back. Early horse who can’t get the lead are almost always in trouble. There are questions about most of our contenders. The 10 still looks the strongest to me. With his close up front running style and 5 early speed points and great close I would still make him my Key horse.
Here is the point of this whole dialogue. On the New Pace screen, we observe when considering the totality of the horses past performances all the speed is late, including the Foreign horses. All the fast horses are late, including the Foreign horses. The 9 is the favorite and Foreign. 2nd and 3rd speed horses are the 1 and 4. They are both late. I don’t have a ton of data, but my anecdotal data says this is a fair way to evaluate Foreign horses.
How did our evaluation do?
Our Key horse won! He was up close and closed it down in the stretch as we predicted. The 1 came from way back in a huge late run. The 4 also was way back and closed for 3rd. The 5 horse another EP6 ran up close and faded a bit in the stretch. Our 11 horse with the monster 1st fraction ran on the lead early and blew up as we expected with all the speed being late.
I hope this gives you some ideas. I thought the race had some very instructive ideas. I just wish I had bet the Key horse with the fastest 3 lates and my other two arrow horses. But with too many questions I just watched. Rats!