[ShadowRoll]

Caught the tail end of ATR today, and Tony Black made an observation that's worth repeating.

Steve noted that at the BC, closers seemed to be doing much better in sprints than in routes (e.g., Midnight Lute). Tony hypothesized that this was because riders are sometimes more eager to establish a forward position in sprints, especially in muddy conditions, when you might have a group of perennial front-runners who are not used to having muck kicked up in their faces. Consequently, a speed duel might develop much earlier, relatively speaking, in a sprint than in a route, setting up a sustained runner even over the shorter distance.

Though some on here are no doubt wise enough not to fall into this trap, my first inclination has always been to consider closers at an even bigger disadvantage in sprints than in routes, and to downgrade their chances without fully appreciating the potential effect of the pace. I guess the moral of the story is don't be too eager to discard a closer in a sprint when there's reason to believe that the early fractions will be relatively quicker than normal (such as the presence of multiple need-to-lead types, or when there's a particularly messy track).