Quote:
Originally Posted by ontheoutside
but please look at replay of 4th today @ belmont
why in the world would junior swing his horse 3 wide at top instead of just saying on rail and picking a spot down lane? jesus, there was only 3 horses in the race, i swear, sometimes i think there fixed
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As I've told you before, I feel exactly the opposite. In a situation like this I would never, ever, under any circumstance want the jockey to stay inside. There are too many things that can go wrong. You lose very little ground by swinging out at the top of the stretch. If you're talking about going wide all the way around the turn, that is a different story, because you lose a lot of ground. You lose almost no ground swinging out at the top of the lane. So there is literally zero to gain by staying on the rail and hoping for an opening.
A smart jockey will always swing out at the top of the lane, especially if he has plenty of horse. It's a no-brainer. Garret Gomez would do it literally every time, and he was the leading rider in the country 4 years in a row. If he was on the inside, he would save ground around the turn but he would always try to swing to the outside at the top of the lane. Some horses don't like to come through on the rail. I have seen literally hundreds of races over the years where a horse was on the rail in the stretch and had plenty of room, yet he refused to go through the hole, even though there was plenty of room. Then the jockey finally swings out at the 1/16th pole (because the jockey senses that the horse doesn't want to go through the hole) and the horse goes right by, meaning that the only reason the horse wouldn't go by sooner was because the horse was afraid to come through on the rail.