Mstrlucky74 Wrote:
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> Never paid attention to trips or whether a horse
> will be wide or not. What is a horse is only 1-2
> wide and saving ground but has to reign in a
> little bit so not to clip heels but a horse 3-4
> wide has wide open space to run and not held back.
> Doesn't that make a difference as the horse
> holding back can't run as fast as he wants at
> certain points around turn?


When a horse is restrained -- there are two ways to look at that -- (a) he is being stopped from expending too much of his energy early with energy being conserved for later in the race or (b) the restraint itself is so hard that the horse squanders the energy it would otherwise conserve by fighting against the restraint.

Unfortunately, I think that sometimes (a) occurs and sometimes (b) occurs. I will say that by the end of the race, you can tell if energy was squandered or conserved -- not so helpful in the race in question, but helpful information when looking at a horse's career on the sheet. If the horse has a history of either (a) or (b) then it is a good bet it will continue with its historical practice. For horses that have shown they can rate, I would much rather be trapped inside on the turn conserving energy that being free on the outside of the turn. While it does happen, it is infrequent that a horse with conserved energy cannot find a hole or seam in the stretch through which to ply its extra energy. I will say that from my observations -- it seems that being bottled up in the stretch happens more in grass races than in dirt races. Could be that more grass horses are running at end of race than dirt horses do -- so more traffic possible?