[The Indomitable DrugS]

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

If you get on a track bike and head over to the your local velodrome, or just to your local park and ride with the roadies, you'll realize that timing of moves is, essentially, what it's all about. Now, since Dominguez has shown that horses can be ridden like track bikes, not the way that the in-the-know types insist they should be ridden, it follows that timing is the key factor. Watch just about any race at GG (or WO, etc.) and explain to me how numbers matter when all these jocks do is collapse races. Horses that moved prematurely one week, come back to win the other with a better timed ride. If I have a way of identifying race types and what moves within them were advantageous or disadvantageous AND how a given horse runs within these types, I have a nice alternative to figures. I can see why a horse ran well or poorly, when a horse is coming into form, and, more importantly, whether a horse can run AGAINST its setup. Telling me a horse runs well late, for example, given its pace figure, is basically worthless. This is because you're not telling me whether the horse can close against the grain and not just in races that fall apart.

What you're talking about is basically trip handicapping.