>As I have said, I don't buy the logic of the pace one horse runs at affecting the final time of a different horse running at a slower pace<

I never said that. That's the confusion.

Let's forget horses and think humans. It might make it easier for me to tranlate into English.

Assume we are racing and you have the lead. You run average/slow early and I am behind you. I make a middle move trying to catch up. I will have to use myself real hard to catch up because you will still be fresh as a result of not exerting yourself too much early. At some point after using myself to catch up, we will engage in a ferocious battle for awhile before one of us wins.

In this sceanrio, there was obviously a point in the race where I as running at close to my limit trying to catch up and battle you for the lead. That taxed me and used up energy not available very late.

Now let's assume another race where I run the same style, but there's a third runner that duels you early and really hard. I will again make my same style middle move, but this time when I engage you, you will already be tired and slowing down as a result of your extreme efforts early. So my personal effort in trying to catch up and pass you will NOT be as taxing on me.

In the second scenario you will run slower because you used yourself harder early and I will run faster because I used myself less in the middle to catch up and pass you.

>I certainly don't think horses would put in the same performance every time if they ran the same fractions. <

No doubt about that.

>In terms of helping a horse WIN (as opposed to earn a better figure) a fast pace helps closers because it strings out the field, helping closers avoid major ground loss ("looping the field"), which could result in a 2-3 length difference at the wire. But remember, ground loss is factored into the figure, so the TG number will be the same either way.<

Agreed.

>It would be more constructive if these discussions took place before the fact-- if a situation comes up where pace considerations lead you to conclusions contrary to those expressed in ROTW or elsewhere here, speak up, guys. Red- boarding "this was caused by this not that" has limited productivity.<

I would be happy to from time to time. One problem we could have with a discussion like that is that I generally look at multiple sets of figures - Beyer, Logic Dictates and your figures (all mostly for stakes). So
there's lots of other subjective things that could come up that would cloud the pace issue. So it might be best to talk about the really extreme pace scenarios.