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Old 02-19-2013, 07:52 AM
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Calzone Lord Calzone Lord is offline
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I will start posting them tomorrow morning.

Here is an excellent demonstration because this race (The 2012 Stephen Foster) was only a +19 (104 pace, 85 final) ... thus it missed the cutoff to be a watchable race by 1 point.

Fort Larned:





As CJ's pace figures demonstrate ... Fort Larned ran a career top pace figure of 102 in the Foster. Uncomfortably fast, not only for him, but for any thoroughbred really.

More importantly, Fort Larned ran that 102 despite suffering a brutal trip through that stage of the race.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wherHDmjKZI

Fort Larned is in post #2. He gets jammed and bumps repeatedly with Wise Dan. At 12 seconds in, he has to check to avoid heels. He's forced into an inside-tracking position with Wise Dan breathing down his neck the entire opening half mile.

Obviously, the race wasn't quite a +20, but that's what we are looking for. We are looking for a horse who is badly disadvantaged by pace, which gets compounded by trouble, and ideally also pressure from a quality horse (which Wise Dan obviously is)

We don't want a horse like Nate's Mineshaft. Yes, he's running very fast, but he's getting his trip (loose lead with no pressure) ... and even if you wrongly were looking at Nate's Mineshaft, he has never ran back out of that race. That was his last race.

Wise Dan also had a poor break and was bumped around and roughed up. It was a "better than looked" race from him as well.



Genuine trouble while up close to a +19 certainly hurts even top class horses like Breeders Cup Classic winner Fort Larned and Horse of the Year Wise Dan. Notice the weak figs they ran.

However, the same kind of trouble while up close to a +30 is going to have a far more negative effect on any horse at any level. And the mission is to find those horses, wherever they might be.

This is the last example I'm doing of horses who have already run back.
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