Quote:
Originally Posted by NeedForSpeed
Hi again
I am continuing through practice races trying to make selections and I have come upon a situation I would think we would see a fair amount of the time. I am selecting contenders and am not sure what to do with this one. The race is OC 40/57 N2-X. Kates Main Man is the horse. Its last race pace line is "+" so we take it right? But the conditions were SA 20/28 N2-6M. I would think that race is a step below todays. The third race same thing. "+" line but step below. Now look at the middle race pace line #2. That race seems to fit today's conditions and it ran a "0" pace line. Now look at the odds. The "+" races odds are far below today's ML. The "0" pace line race the odds are higher and closer to today's ML.
So the question to all is this. Is he a contender or not? Is there methodology I can use here to make a determination? Thanks!
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There is a lot of good responses here, so I don’t think I have to cover that same ground again, instead, I’ll look at this horse from a different point of view.
Since you were concerned with lines 1 and 3 being a step below today’s race, I will try to cover that aspect first.
The first thing I did was get rid of the races that are not comparable, such as sprint races and races on the turf.
Before I move on, I think there is some questions that need to be asked and answered.
Question: – Once a horse breaks its’ maiden, can it ever run in a maiden race again?
Answer: NO. A horse only gets to beat maidens ONCE.
Question: Once a horse beats NW2L or NW3L or NW4L, can it ever run in these races again?
Answer: NO. These conditions are referred to as “life” conditions. A horse only gets to beat each of these conditions ONCE.
Question: Once a horse beats a NW1X (non winners of a race other than) condition, can it ever run in that condition again?
Answer: NO. Once a horse has won a “non winners of ONE other than” condition, it cannot race in that condition again. It must move on to the next level. The same is true for NW2X and NW3X.
Question: If a horse beats a NW16M (non winners of a race in the last six months) or NW26M (non winners of two races in the last six months) condition, can it ever run in either of these conditions again?
Answer: YES. Any time in a horse’s career that it has gone winless, or has only won one race in the last six months, it becomes eligible to run in these conditions again. In some cases the horse doesn’t even have to go winless, as long as the win came at a lower level than today’s race. This will be stipulated in the condition.
The point is this, there are some conditions that a horse cannot revisit and there are others that it can revisit. You have to know which conditions are which.
Let’s take the horse in question as an example.
In line 3 this horse beat the NW1X condition. It is no longer eligible to run in that condition and has to move on, which generally means move up. This is not necessarily a bad thing. A bad thing would be to see a horse win and move down. In line two we see that it did, in fact, move up to the NW2X condition. More often than not, horses moving up will fail. This does not mean they aren’t capable of beating this new condition, they just don’t get the job done the first time, so I don’t discount the horse because of that effort.
In line 1 I see a terrific placement by the trainer. He put the horse in a “SA” (Starter Allowance) race where it
cannot be claimed. The condition for the race is that the horse may not have won 2 races in the last six months. It hasn’t. It has only won one race. This is a much softer spot for the horse than line 2 and we know the horse was “in shape” in line 3 and can give the horse an excuse for line2.
The ONLY race in this horses PP’s that doesn’t “fit” is line 4. I would have expected this horse to run better in a condition that was for non winners of a race in a year (NW1Y), but since then it has won 2 of 3 starts, so I’m really not concerned about line 4.
At first I thought line 1 was out of the horse’s ordinary running style, but line 10 also shows an early effort from this horse. Excluding lines 2 and 4, which I have already discussed, there are 4 comparable races for this horse. Two of these races were early type efforts and two were sustained efforts. It appears this horse can go either way.
This horse would be a contender for me in today’s race, which is to say, I would give this horse a line and then see how it matched up against the other contenders chosen. Lines 1 & 3 are considerably different in both time and running style. If you follow the guidelines, you would throw out line 1 for being on a sloppy track. You would excuse line 2 for having moved up in class, which I have already covered. Line 3, therefore, becomes the most logical line to use.