Lava Man obviously lays over this field if he runs back to his latest (unless Perfect Drift can recover his very best form from 2 years ago). From my perspective, when a fairly experienced horse gets really good like this all of a sudden, it usually doesn't hold that peak form for more than a few races (at best). I think most of us would agree that it's far from certain he's going to duplicate his last race on Sunday. That might make him a somewhat vulnerable heavy favorite.

This is my question:

Has anyone actually studied the ROI for horses like this?

I'm not sure how to define the category clearly, but let's say:

Older horses with more than 15 starts that ran a 2-3 point new top in their last start (exclude horses with a trainer change in their last start).