Pattern Recognition - Router in a sprint

[Capcondo]

About a week ago, PeteC put up a nice race for 5K claimers paying a purse of $7,100 from Emerald Downs. It's available in the matcher forum if you'd like to look at it.

I totally missed the race.

The winner of the race was a router (he had one sprint in his ten PP lines). This is a pattern I have seen repeat itself many times.

All the routes for this horse were at TuP. The line I looked at was the fourth line back. The fractions were 23.3 46.4 1:12.1. The horse was in 3rd position 1 length back at the first call and second call and in 2nd position .5 lengths back at the six furlong call. If we use the Hat's method of subtracting 2/5 of a second to get a sprint time for the half mile and six furlong time and make an appropriate quarter mile time, we end up with a 22.4 46.2 1:11.4 for the router.

The race actually went 21.4 44.1 56.3 1:09.1 There was a great deal of early speed in the race. Also, EMD just might be the fastest track in North America; faster still than Turf Paradise if you can believe that. Still, the quarter time puts the router about 5 lengths off the lead which is where he was at the first call. The other fractions don't match up quite so well. I believe this is due to the speed of the race tracks involved.

The horse paid 6:1 winning from off the pace.

Here are a few characteristics I have observed about these types:

1. They need to run very close to a fast route pace through six furlongs.
2. If they show that they need the lead, a judgment needs to be made if they can run without the lead.
3. Sometimes these horses run from off the lead in sprints. Other times, they can run close to a slow sprint pace.

There was a race from Hollywood on the grass on Sunday 7/1 that fit this pattern. Race #7 at six furlong where the 2 won at 7:1. The 2 had run in a mile route on the grass 3 back that went 22.2 45 1:08.3 where he sat 3rd 3.5L back at the first call, 4th 3.5 lengths back at the second call, and 2nd 2.5 lengths back at the 6 furlong call.

These routers frequently pay well and come up much more often than you might think.


Tim