Athletics video to demonstrate the virtues of even pace

(Or maybe he is .. but how would a handicapper rate him?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHid-nC45k

Watch the man in the hat.

good call Granpa, Dave Wottle from the good old days when athletes looked David Bedford ..

a lot of Olympic 800's are won like that and not often by the fastest or best runner in the race.... watch that then imagine an Arc or Derby winner running from the back of a field and cutting down the front-runners

Yeah, the 800m is always susceptible to crazy pacing cos it's such a short race and people are desperate to get a good position. This often leads to the first 200m being run in something stupid like 24 secs. The guys that keep their head have a massive advantage.

In the longer races though crazy pacing can help if you're strong.
The mens 5k in 1988 saw John Ngugi go crazy during the middle of the race and totally took the field by surprise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAt_-EsAr0o&feature=PlayList&p=819E2F4A9CD6218F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=35

Also, Zersanay Tadesse of Eritirea is a current runner who is always up for throwing in crazy surges. In the mens 10k last year he surged from 5k out and destroyed the entire field other than Bekele and won himself a Silver. If he had waited he'd have been out kicked by some of the Kenyans as he doesn't have the wheels.

Surprisingly in 800 metres it is proven that overall expenditure is unaffected by pace in the first 50 metres, i.e. you dont save anything by going off slowly compared to going at full speed

Many useful links between fitness, class, surprising results, and pace can be drawn from the two sports

Wish some jockeys and moaning punters were aware of them

The way to run 1m in optimum style at Kempton is, based on average %s of all handicaps March 2006 - May 2008 in which the winner ran a time within 5lb of its form rating, as follows:

first 1f: 14.62% of overall time
second 1f: 11.54
third 1f: 11.75
fourth 1f: 12.35
fifth 1f: 12.62
sixth 1f: 12.32
penultimate 1f: 12.13
final 1f: 12.67

The final furlong is the slowest other than the opening one. When you think about it, horses should not have significant unexpended energy at the end of a race.

I suppose the knowledge advantage at any given track would be knowing the difference between leader splits and winner splits

The above are derived from individual horse sectionals not leaders, though the former have to be engineered from the latter now that TurfTrax no longer provide electronic figures.