Guys, I’ve been a long a long-time lurker/observer of this forum and this drafting thread has motivated me to make my maiden post. Mike and Class, your observations have been excellent but we have to make a distinction between drafting and protection from the wind. If the 2 were the same, then geese would fly in a straight line instead of the familiar V pattern. Drafting is when an object moving through space creates a turbulence wave that sucks anything slightly behind and to the side of it forward, hence the V formation. Studies with cyclists have shown that a rider drafting off another can get as much as a 15% boost relative to his competitor. This sounds like a tremendous advantage but the drafter has to be in and maintain just the right position to get this benefit. Geese in flight can do this but, as Jerry has pointed out, horses in a race do not maintain such rigid relations in relative position for any length of time. A move of just a foot or two back and forth or to the side and he’s out of the “sweet spot”. I guess that theoretically, if one films a race from an overhead blimp and measures the amount of time that a horse is in the right drafting position, he could quantify this effect, but this is obviously extremely impractical, at best. I have observed on a few occasions that horses running between and slightly behind 2 others, and is in effect getting double drafting and for an extended period of time, have finished better than would be expected from their PP’s. Obviously this happens too rarely to have any real value.
Speaking of drafting, I wonder if it and wind protection might help explain PH’s performance in the Distaff. Down the backstretch she was shielded from the wind by the front runners and when she made her move, did so from between and slightly behind 2 other horses (a double draft effect) which, combined with her already strong late move,
helped catapult her through her late run, where she left the others in the dust. Combine this with the fact that she, like every other horse in the race, was given credit for the wind adjustment, though she was shielded from it, may account for both her large winning margin and huge figure. Just a thought.

Bob