As some on this board know, a colleague of mine and I have made our pace figures for years. We have compared our numbers to everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, else that is commercially available. Over time we have often found differences between these figures, and the differences are often big enough to matter. I discussed our method on this board last year before the Kentucky Derby, which you can read here if you would like:
http://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,42753,42753#msg-42753 Anyway, based upon my experience with Pace Figures our numbers are far superior to everything else out there. I can tell you first hand it is pure folly to compare different times on different days, let alone at different tracks, or even to compare intra-fractional times at the same track on the same day - but at different distances. There are different run up times and other idiosyncrasies that just make these types of comparisons near worthless.
So I\'m not sure what merit there is in comparing an intra fractional 1 1/4 time over a sloppy Churchill strip to a very fast Belmont strip a month later, or comparing this year\'s final Belmont time to others for anything other than historical merit. In my opinion if you want to use that type of method to form opinions about the relative performances of horses you may as well put your bankroll in the toaster now.
For what it is worth, we have this year\'s Belmont as being significantly above par early even with the very fast nature of the racing strip that day. The numbers would seem to imply that this gave the front runners very little chance of hanging around at the end. There were also several horses that fired significant middle moves into the hottest part of the race. Mine That Bird made a very, very strong middle move, and to a lessor extent so did Charitable Man. They all then crawled home late in below par time.
So my read on the race is that Summer Bird more or less was gifted the lead. I\'m not trying to take anything away from him. He ran well enough to win and beat me out of my money (I played a cold $300 Tri DU / CM / MB,SB and $100 super DU / CM / MB,SB / MB,SB,FP). But if you want to look at the numbers from a pace standpoint, SB didn\'t have to do any real running in the race. He relaxed, saved ground and then loped on by a bunch of tired horses that had either fried themselves early on or moved too soon.
So in my opinion Dunkirk ran the strongest race in the Belmont. He was involved in both the early, middle and late pace while managing to hold on for second. With a more timely move Mine That Bird probably also could have won the race. His middle move was very, very strong. He\'s a legitimate horse that will have a chance in any race where he gets a pace to run at, but will probably settle for more in the money finishes than wins because of his one-run running style. Charitable Man ran reasonably well in the Belmont, but at 1 1/2 his overall race was not as strong as either Dunkirk\'s or Mine That Bird\'s. He will probably turn out to be best at distances of up to 1 1/8.
Also, in retrospect, for what it\'s worth, MTB ran an incredible late pace figure in the Kentucky Derby after not being involved at all early, which left us feeling that PON ran the strongest overall race. Too bad for me PON didn\'t fire at all in the Preakness. And speaking of the Preakness... whewwwww. The Filly ran the best overall race of any of the Triple Crown entrants. She should have been absolutely cooked by the early pace and the late runners should have been able to go by her. The fact that she ran both the early and middle runners off their feet and then kept on going without letting another horse pass her in the stretch or the gallop out to the far turn afterwards was the only special thing I saw during this entire Triple Crown Sequence. That being said, this is also an indictment of the entire 3 year old crop of males that we saw run this Triple Crown Sequence. Overall a below average crop. I will be looking for other newcomers and returning injured runners to make their mark come later in the year.
