Originally Posted by Dunbar

CR, I have 2 reasons to not agree with that way of thinking. First, it is said with hindsight. Even if you are correct that he had the perfect trip, the fact is that he came close. From the information BEFOREHAND, it is enough to have been that close. You cannot take the factors going into a race and say I am not going to bet that 21-1 shot because he is going to lose by 1 length. A much better approach, IMO, is to say that the 21-1 shot isn't that much behind the favs. He almost certainly has more than a 5% chance to win the race, so I am going to bet him. (I didn't bet him, I'm speaking generally)

The 2nd problem with the way you are thinking (IMO!) is that you are thinking of these horses like machines. You are thinking that a horse running the same path is going to run the same time under all conditions. In this particular case, you are thinking that if you give Pegasus the same nice trip time after time, he will run it exactly the same way. You are not considering variables that we can never measure, that are enough to produce a 1-length difference more often than not. (I'm not talking about different times as a result of more experience; I'm talking about the inherent uncertainty of the information we are dealing with.)

A related concept is that it was entirely possible that Scat Daddy and NoBiz could have both run into just a little more trouble than they did. It wouldn't have taken much to make Pegasus the winner. So, even if you were correct in suggesting that Pegasus could not have run a better time, there are many scenarios by which Pegasus could have won that race.

--Dunbar