Are most races paceless?

[Bill Lyster]

FTL,

Several things come to mind resulting from this post.

First and foremost is the way a large percentage of maidens win their first race. If the PPs show the maiden race win it is often wire to wire or near wire to wire, so you should look to see what race position the horse adopts subsequent to the win to get a better understanding of its true running style.

In non maiden races sometimes you will see a dedicated P, SP or S reverse form and go out on an early lead, only to lose easily. This could be an experiment, but it also might have been a true paceless race - where the closest to the lead freaked and faded. I have observed that often times these races might show higher total energy than what was earned in previous off the pace races. I do not use these races unless there is a pattern that shows the horse progressively getting closer to the lead in the race leading up to that effort. I have been fooled in the past thinking that if the horse was a true Presser that it could run behind today's race pace setter a number of lengths to match the delta between today's pace and the race where the horse failed on the lead. Does not seem to work.

Somewhat similar to both of the above would be any race among veteran starters where race fractions appear slow, but where race positioning puts the horse in position at the top of the stretch. Perhaps the key here might be lower TE than normal which still results in a win.

You can always look at the energy screen in the PPs and the E/L graph to see if the horse is doing something different or if race conditions conspired to 'make the horse's day'.