Picking Contenders & Pacelines

[For The Lead]

Here’s a little exercise for everyone.

I am posting a race from the follow ups. It is not marked up in any way. The idea here is for you to look at the horses and become familiar with them.

Look at their races and try to determine which horses are the real contenders and the reason why they are real contenders. You can use any tools you have as long as you don’t use a computer. THAT would defeat the purpose.

WHAT TOOLS ARE THEY? (Ah, “the basics”!!)
Take a piece of paper and for each horse mark down if you think they are “early”, “presser” or “sustained”. If you think the horse has no discernible form, mark that down too.
Pick what you think is an appropriate paceline.
If you can calculate APV, do that.
If you can attempt to determine the 2nd call time, do that.
Look at the tracks where the horse has been running and consider the track it is running at today. Do you think it can compete at today’s track?
Try to identify the horse(s) you think will not win.
When you get done, look at what you have and try to determine how you think the race will run and which horse(s) you think have the best chance of winning.
In a couple of days I will post what the follow ups had to say about each horse along with the “marked up” version of the race as well as the results. Compare what you thought about each horse to what the follow up says. See if you could spot the winner just from this exercise. The first thing I’m posting is what the follow up said PRE-race and then the race itself.