Kentucky Derby Beginner's Guide

[pmayjr]

thank you for the kind words....

Yeah that's the tough part. At what point am I throwing too much info at a novice audience? And with info like that, where I did mention pace of the race in a few of the write-ups, how do I phrase it where they can understand it?

[jms62]

Originally Posted by pmayjr

thank you for the kind words....

Yeah that's the tough part. At what point am I throwing too much info at a novice audience? And with info like that, where I did mention pace of the race in a few of the write-ups, how do I phrase it where they can understand it?

How about like a bike race. If you are alone on the lead you can coast and reserve your energy. If you are battling for the lead with one or more bikers you have to peddle furiously to keep up and/or get the lead. This will burn up your energy leaving you tired and vulnerable to being passed in the later stages of the race.

[pmayjr]

that's an awesome analogy. In terms of overall race times I don't mention anything about that. But I do mention slow and fast race paces. And what happens to a horse in the lead and/or coming from behind in those scenarios.

A sample- When covering Stanford:

[*]The horse has one goal, and he seems to be pretty good at it- Get the lead early, and hang on late. He will be one of the front-runners early in the Kentucky Derby. The key to his Louisiana Derby success (and his chances in the Kentucky Derby), was how he was able to settle in on the lead and slow down the pace. If you're a front-running horse, your goal is to slow the pace of the race down as much as possible, and hope to lull the field to sleep. He was so successful at doing so, he had a ton of energy left at the end of the race and almost fended off International Star. No other horse came close to passing him.

[OldDog]

I have got to say that this is first rate stuff. Well done!