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Originally Posted by King Glorious
The part in bold has always been the hardest part for me to understand. I am not able to get why patterns and projections are used. For example, when horses get to the Derby, they are supposed to be 100% ready to run their peak races. Not before then. So projecting what a runner might do when he's 100% based on what he's been doing in the preps seems risky. Not only are they not at 100% in the preps but they are also facing very different circumstances than in the Derby. There are one-turn races. They aren't carrying 126 lbs. They aren't going 10f. It's different when you have horses that have established form doing certain things. Take Curlin now. We know what he can do when cranked up and going 10f so we know what kind of figures we should be able to expect. Same thing with all older horses. We knew what we could expect from Lost in the Fog when he was running because we had seen the same thing over and over. But when you are talking about horses that are still learning and developing and often facing new circumstances in each race, how can they accurately project what he's going to do facing the next new hurdle? We can accurately project what an in shape Marion Jones would run 100m in if she was running that in the Olympics tomorrow. But how could we accurately project what she would run the 400m hurdles in? For me, it's a hard thing to understand.
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This is one of the assumptions that a lot of people seem to operate under that makes no sense to me whatsoever. As far as I know, most horsemen would tell you that it is almost impossible to actually get a horse to peak on one particular day. Who is to say that these horses "aren't at 100%" in the preps? Was Bellamy Road not at 100% in the Wood? Was Easy Goer weeks away from his "best" in the Gotham? etc. etc. etc.
Why do so many people assume that trainers are wizards that can magically call upon the horse's best race whenever they want it?