To keep it as simple as possible-- pace is one of a number of things that may affect final time, and in the case of an extremely slow pace definitely does. We do a race as a whole, and when I see one that looks much better adding or subtracting a little to the whole race I do so. The change in final time could be due to pace, a wind gust, a slight change in track speed, or God knows what-- I don't have to figure out why, I have to get it right, and the right way to do that is to go by the horses, as I've discussed at great length here.

I don't give extra credit to a race or individual horses in it because of pace. There are those who do so themselves, and some of them are succesful handicappers. There are also many succesful handicappers who don't. And then there are those of us who only look at it in extreme cases...



TGJB