Saratoga oddity
 

I've been astonished by the run of dirt races carded since August 9th with projected slow early paces.

It's a random thing, obviously.

But, excluding 2yo stakes races, since Friday, only a single dirt race had a pace projected to be faster than a 3 (on an 11 point scale, from 0-to-10)

That lone race had a 6, which indicates a faster than average pace, and it was 8/11 race #3: http://www1.drf.com/drfPDFChartRaces...=20130811&RN=3

Unbelievably, the Do I Amuse You race, with a 3 (fairly favorable to front runners) was the second fastest projected pace in a non-2yo stake dirt race carded since Thursday.

Today's five dirt races, had projected paces of 0, 1, 2, 1, and 1 -- all of them slanted to race shapes favoring forwardly placed horses.

I looked at Wednesday's and Thursday's card, and nothing on dirt with a projected hot pace either day.

It's all random, this kind of thing. You can flip a coin, and 10 times in a row it might land on heads. I'm all keyed up waiting for the next dirt race to be carded with a hot early pace. They are certainly due to come.

You wait for this to bet a come from behinder? Or is a hot pace a fetish of sorts.

As forwardly placed horses continue to dominate races, riders will become more aggressive.

You see this human factor especially at cheaper tracks, but even the rate-happy Saratoga jockey colony will get more aggressive.

A race with a projected pace meltdown will eventually get carded, and they almost always live up to the projection when they come at a time when speed horses have been performing real well.

Yesterday at Emerald, for instance.

* A horse goes wire-to-wire and wins the 8th race by almost 20 lengths as the second choice in the betting.

* A horse goes wire-to-wire as the clear-cut longest shot on the board in the 9th race.

In the very next race after those two wire-jobs ... you see four different jockeys absolutely gun there horses out of the gate in the $65,000 Emerald Derby.

Going 9 furlongs on dirt, they went fractions of 21.80 and 44.91 while racing part of it around the first turn.

http://www1.drf.com/drfPDFChartRaces...20130811&RN=10

The race collapsed so badly, good horses faded off the tv screen in a race that went almost 40 seconds for the last 3 furlongs over a very fast main track.

Only two horses didn't send for the lead, and they made up a $143 exacta and were a city block in front of the rest of the field at the finish.

It's a hard thing to explain to people who don't bet ... and especially don't bet cheaper race tracks ... but the best times for expected pace meltdowns are after front running horses have had a successful recent run.

Oh I see it. Especially times when it is speed favoring and golden rail like. Even the old days of Keeneland you would see some of these meltdowns.

Yeah, even in instances where a very legit speed bias is occurring, if the jockeys and trainers start believing in the speed bias, you'll see a self-reversing prophecy and a closer will beat the bias because everyone else sending created a pace too fast to sustain even with a bias present.

i.e. The Cliff's Edge. I remember betting Lion Heart because of how well speed was doing.

Its very odd looking at the paces at Saratoga, riders there are not aggressive at all, even in the cheaper type races.

Here is a horse to watch though, Inaflash.

Sounds like they will be getting really aggressive with Moreno in the Travers..

That was a joke, right?

Perfect example.

He must have meant that she is a horse to watch get crushed as an underlay in her next few starts.

I did not see the horse ran back yesterday, sorry was busy. 3/5 is not something I would have been interested in anyway but the horse came out of the strongest pace race (or close to it) of the meet, and of course won for fun.