There’s different types of wide. There’s wide running hard to make position and there’s wide running a paced race while the front runners are burning each other up. There’s not always a correlation between wide trips and lengths lost at the finish. Which is not to say the wide horse would not have been X lengths closer but for the wide trip. But there are other variables besides wide which influence winning or beaten lengths. In other words it’s a tool but to say two lengths were lost to a winner at the finish because a horse went two paths wider than a rival is just not accurate. All that one can say is he covered two lengths more ground.