Class in horseracing is tough to evaluate because there are factors that are changing hourly but just like in all sports, class must be respected.
Class in team sports is not exactly the same as class in horseracing. For the National Basketball Association and the National Football League class can revolve around the quality of the competition and what good teams do against other good teams.
The puzzling thing about class in horseracing is that there are no rules in this game and there are many styles and different ways to skin a cat.
Some horses show their class from Day One, like American Pharoah, and some are slow learners and have to grow into their skin like the great John Henry.
In recent years in the Kentucky Derby, the winners have been basically brilliant and have won on their pure talent alone.
A runner like Big Brown comes to mind as he won his only start at 2, had only 2 prep races before winning the 2008 Kentucky Derby with a 109 Beyer Speed Figure. In 2013 Orb had three races as a sophomore before his successful Kentucky Derby victory.
It changed a bit last year when Nyquist won the Kentucky Derby in his eighth start.
Class in horseracing is important but it can be a fickle mistress.
When first learning the dos and don’ts of this game as a youngster, I leaned to favoring class horses, but what I didn’t realize early on is that class is intertwined with form and speed. It’s not just whom you have been facing on the track, but what kind of shape a horse is in at this very moment.
And class in horseracing is not just about the horse, but it’s about the venue. It would be obvious to most that a runner that has been losing in cheap maiden claiming company on an inferior circuit, would be totally overmatched in a Maiden Special Weight race at a top venue like Keeneland or Saratoga.
But on the other side of the ledger just because a horse drops in class, doesn’t make him the class of the race. If said horse was just running okay at a higher level and now shows up in a much softer spot, it’s possible that he didn’t belong at the higher level.
A true class horse can usually take the heat of a speed duel and still live to tell about it while a horse that lacks class folds his tent when encountering a hot pace or even just an honest pace.
Class in horseracing can also just be about facing the toughest horses. On Saturday February 25 at Gulfstream Park Derek’s Smile was coming out of the best race, the Grade 2 Swale Stakes. He raced Saturday in the much softer $75,000 Texas Glitter Stakes and he showed his class by taking his rivals all the way home.
Also on Saturday fans took a wrong step about class in horseracing. They made Valadorna the favorite in the Grade 2 Rachel Alexandra despite just winning an optional claimer in her last race. The winner of the Rachel Alexandra, Farrell, had already won a Grade 2 race yet fans looked the other way.
Speed and class are like partners in a marriage, they have to compromise and work together in order to thrive.
Using speed figures is essential but you cannot just take a figure alone or at face value and take it to the bank. There are things that go into a top speed figure that are not easy to see all the time.
What good speed figures can do is identify the contenders and expose the pretenders. Runners that consistently fail to put up solid and steady figures are unreliable on their best day. Bettors have to resist the temptation to just go ‘one-stop’ shopping and fall on the highest speed figure in a race. They should look deeper into the event to figure out if a good speed figure was achieved because of a certain bias or a bad figure was accomplished because a runner was running against a speed bias.
Fans need to work on evaluating class, but it is a work in progress.
