Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
I'm pretty sure I agree with CJ, but I'm not sure I agree with anything you are saying.
I think dirt is more tiring than grass, but it has the opposite impact of what you might intuitively expect. When all the horses are tired (as they often are on dirt), it's harder for the horses in the back to muster up the energy to get into position and close down the front runners that have more natural speed unless those horses really overdo it up front.
On turf, all the horses are fresh at the end. So even though the surface is not tiring, a superior closer can still catch an inferior but fresh front runner.
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I cleared up the misunderstanding with cj and we both agree that dirt is more tiring than grass. One only has to look at the times for dirt vs turf races, especially for the closing sectionals to see that dirt is more tiring despite the fact that the tighter turns on turf tend to slow horses down. there are several reasons why in dirt sprints there is an advantage to running faster than even pace early but the one you cite is not one of them. If the closers are too tired to catch the front runners then the leaders will be be even more tired from setting the early pace, unless the leaders are exceptional superior horses able to withstand a fast pace because they have a high cruising speed. However we are evaluating horses of similar abilities in order to compare the different surfaces.
Dirt is more tiring since on that surface their is more slippage, less traction and less energy return than on grass.
I have already posted several times the most likely reason why dirt sprints seem to violate the principle of advantage of even pace running so I will just briefly summarize by saying that the momentum generated by high early speed mitigates the tiring effect of setting a fast pace. This effect diminishes as the race distance increases.
As for the example of a superior horse overcoming the disadvantage of
having run a slow inefficient pace on grass, that just shows that running an inefficient pace (fast or slow) is a disadvantage that it takes a superior horse to overcome.
