[blackthroatedwind]

There's so much wrong with that kind of thinking and, frankly, it is the ultimate novice kind of opinion. First of all, it assumes that the horse actually could have pulled away at will, and that the jockey was preventing that to the detriment of the horse. Neither is true. If the jockey was rating him, then the horse would have sufficient energy to put away a challenger, if in fact he also could have opened up and held that rival safe. It's as though if the horse expended energy early in the race, and thus opened up on its rivals, it still would have had the same amount of horse at the end of the race. In all likelihood, if anything, the opposite would be true, and the horse would tire more. There is little more hurtful to a horse's chances of being most successful than a premature move.

If anything, one could say that the second finisher was overaggressively ridden early, and if she had settled in third, she most likely would have won.