Op/Ed: The Pegasus: It Should Have Been 10 Furlongs

Arrogate & Chrome | Horsephotos

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I like the GI Pegasus World Cup. I really do. It's a bold, innovative concept and in its first go-round it accomplished something racing so rarely does: kept a couple of superstars in Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) and California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit) in training. The rematch between the top two combatants from the GI Breeders' Cup Classic never would have happened without this race, and it's a tremendous coup. Arrogate-Chrome II alone makes this race a rousing success.

But with any new concept, particularly one as “outside the box” as this one is, you're not going to get everything right right off the bat. The Stronach Group has as much as admitted that it will wipe the board clean after the inaugural running and see what they can do to make the event even better in the future. One distinct possibility is that it will head to Santa Anita next year, a facility much more suited for a big event than Gulfstream is.

There is plenty to consider as they look to the future, but nothing more important than fixing what is a major mistake that was made when planning for Saturday's running of the $12 million race. Because of a severe post position bias at Gulfstream, this never should have been scheduled at a mile-and-an-eighth. The obvious distance for the race is the sport's classic distance, a mile-and-a-quarter.

You might hear that the outside posts at Gulfstream for mile-and-an-eighth races aren't that bad and that Big Brown (Boundary) won the nine-furlong GI Florida Derby in 2008 from post 12. These are alternate facts. The truth is that horses breaking from nine on out are at a big disadvantage. Their jockeys have two choices: they can rush them out of the gate and lose a lot of ground on the first turn or they can let the rest of the field break ahead of them and then drop to the inside, essentially giving the other horses a head start.

Courtesy of Equibase, here are the post position statistics for all mile-and-an-eighth dirt races run at Gulfstream since 2006.

Post Starters Winners Winning Percentage

1 292 48 16.4

2 292 38 14.5

3 292 54 20.6

4 292 41 14.0

5 288 35 12.1

6 271 30 11.0

7 216 23 10.6

8 161 13 8.0

9 100 3 3.0

10 63 4 6.3

11 36 2 5.5

12 18 1 5.5

13 3 0 0.0

14 3 0 0.0

The same problem exists for mile-and-a-sixteenth races, which also start at the finish line, but finish at the sixteenth-pole. Here are the Equibase stats for the mile-and-a-sixteenth races since 2006:

Post Starters Winners Winning Percentage

1 368 62 16.8

2 368 57 15.4

3 368 56 15.2

4 368 46 12.5

5 362 40 11.0

6 330 48 14.5

7 269 24 8.9

8 202 16 7.9

9 127 10 7.8

10 71 5 7.0

11 40 2 5.0

12 27 2 7.4

13 9 0 0.0

14 3 0 0.0

From Trakus we have more information, albeit from a limited sample. They took the last 13 mile-and-an-eighth dirt races run at Gulfstream in which there were nine starters or more. Horses breaking from the three inside posts traveled an average of 6,024.9 feet. Horses breaking from posts 10, 11 and 12 traveled an average of 6,049.2 feet. That may not seem like a lot, but it is. It is estimated that one length equals eight feet. Therefore, the three outside posts are at a three-length disadvantage when compared to the three inside posts.

Had Arrogate and California Chrome both drawn well and had three 50-1 shots been stuck in posts 10, 11 and 12, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But the draw turned out to be the worst possible scenario as Arrogate drew the one post and California Chrome drew the 12. Arrogate has an unfair advantage over a rival that he already beat on a level playing field in the Breeders' Cup Classic. Big Brown is the only horse in history to win a mile-and-an-eighth race from the 12 post since the Gulfstream track was reconfigured. But he did it against inferior rivals. California Chrome will have to do it against one of the best horses of this generation, not to mention some other fast horses. Unless Arrogate throws in a clunker, California Chrome has almost no chance of beating him, and that's all because of the draw.

Horse racing, like life, isn't always fair. Horses get bad posts all the time. But when $12 million is up for grabs and the entire purse is coming from payments made by the stakeholders, every effort possible should have been made to ensure as fair a race as possible. By holding the race at a mile-and-an-eighth, Gulfstream didn't do that.

It's too late for this year. And if the race does move to Santa Anita a mile-and-an-eighth will be fine because that is a one-mile track. But a mile-and-an-eighth Pegasus at Gulfstream? Never again.

 

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