Drugs, we can do this all day.
First, you ignored the 1st race.
The third, the horse was dropping from two poor races at 10k to 4k. He is in the hands of a very poor trainer after being claimed 3 back. If you want to believe he ran back to his good races, good luck.
The 4th was a brutal pace for those cheap fillies. Of course they are going to run slower. It was 20 points faster than the speed figure.
In the fifth, it could be possible the horse improved a little more, but did you look at the horses behind him? Also, the pace was about 8 points faster than the final time, and since the winner actually led from the 1/2 call home, the 75 is probably a little better than it looks. Giving him even higher would be unrealistic.
I agree the 9th is the toughest to judge. I think the runner up is the best horse to judge for the figure. He was given a lifetime top, basically a pair up, in his 19th career start while being beaten pretty easily.
As for the general "a lot of beaten horses made big backwards moves"...all I can say is no sh!t, that is why they were beaten. I realize the horses had a headwind coming home, but even after adjusting for this the paces of the routes were honest to fast. By far the slowest was the Illinios Derby in relation to final time. This causes lots of horses to move backwards when they are beaten.
R1: Fast 11
R3: Fast 3
R4: Fast 20
R5: Fast 8
R7: Slow 6
R9: Fast 8
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