Winning with pace help against the grain of a surface
 

Before I go back into hiding for a while and start betting.... Here's two charts that I just love....



Synthetic routes are like something out of a bad video game.

Sidney's Candy runs the fields slowest 3rd quarter mile and slowest final 1/16th .. yet he runs the fields outright fastest 4th quarter fraction.

That's something that can't happen on dirt. Horses who lose the 3rd quarter of a dirt route are total dead ducks. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. A 24.98 3rd quarter - followed by a cyclonic 22.73 4th quarter is the type of stuff it takes for speed to win those kind of races even when they take advantage of a very easy pace.

From one chart I love - showing what it takes for a speed horse with a perfect pace scenerio to win a synthetic route race at a very closer friendly track ... to the following chart ...

This is what it often takes for a closer with the aid of a dream pace setup to just narrowly win at a dirt track that is kind to speed.



Ice Box was perfectly positioned in last early on ... but in order to score a razor thin win .. he needed to run the fields fastest 2nd quarter, fastest 3rd quarter, fastest 4th quarter, and fastest final 1/8th. That's what he did anyway. Kind of like hitting an inside straight.

It was a case of Lezcano saying 'I'll let them run the first quarter mile, I'm going to run the next 7 furlongs' He took hold, dropped back, saved ground and all the energy he could and it was just barely enough to beat a spent field in laughably slow time. Ice Box got his final 7fs in 1:24 4/5ths after snoozing the first quarter away.