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Originally Posted by philcski
That is the definition of a closer. Think about this:
You have a 6F sprint, with two main contenders; a deep closer and a frontrunner.
The frontrunner goes :22, :46, 1:12 and wins by a neck.
The closer is 7 lengths at the first call, 4 at the 2nd call, and loses by the neck.
What fractions did the front runner run? :22, :24, :26.
What fractions did the closer run? approximately :23 1/5, :23 2/5, :25 2/5.
Nearly all horses decelerate on the dirt, very few can and do accelerate at the end of the race. It's an optical illusion that the "closers" are actually running faster at the end than they did at the beginning... they're just decelerating at a lesser rate.
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And the difference is that you will never see Jazil throw those sort of fractions. His best races have all been run in fractions between 24 and 25 the whole way. The mistake today was in taking him back too far early so that he was running slower than 25. It is a total oversimplication to categorize any horse who starts from deep as a closer. There are two totally different groups of horses that start near the back. The closers are the ones that have a late kick that will be better or worse depending on how fast they are forced to go early. The plodders are the horses that just run the same speed the whole way. You have late pace in your figures. You have to have seen that there are certain of your closers that have a late kick that totally varies dependant on how fast they go early and others, like Jazil, that are remarkably similar every race. Those ones actually probably have their late speed improve with added distance in your figures since finishing between 24 and 25 at 12 furlongs is much more impressive than at 6 furlongs.