While it may be obvious that the horse who can run the fastest will ultimately win the race, it isn’t nearly as obvious whether a horse will run as fast today as it ran last week. That, in a nutshell, is the whole mystery of trying to pick winners by handicapping a horse race. If horses always clocked the same speed figure in each race, then simply glancing at the speed figures for their last race would tell which horse was fastest.

Form cycles are the changes that occur in a horse’s conditioning, so it must be considered when determining how fast a horse will run today. Is its form improving, peaked, or declining? That is the question the handicapper must answer about form. The biggest consideration, however, is whether the horses it is facing today are faster or slower than the field of horses it raced against last time out.

Looking at the statistics for the races run at any track and comparing races at the same distance and run over the same surface for the same age and gender of horse, we find that the higher the purse, generally speaking, the faster the times. For instance, older horses that compete in $10,000 claiming races over the 6 furlong course may average winning times of 1:11.2 while older horses racing over the same course for a higher claiming tag of $25,000 may average 1:11 flat. In other words, the classier the horse, the faster the race.

There may be aberrations, but overall, this speed/class bias holds true. That means that the speedier a horse is the higher the class it should be able to compete in, right? Not always. This is where we run into the intangible class factor. While some horses may burn up the track at a lower class, when they are put in with classier horses their speed and ability seem to vanish and they run slower times.

This may be seen as a mystery but what really happens is that internal fractions and short bursts of speed wear the runner out early and it winds up using all its energy reserves before the end of the race. While internal fractions can be measured, those mini fractions in between cannot. On the other hand, when a horse moves up in class and throws in a real clinker of a race, it may improve dramatically in its next race because it has had a taste of the higher class and will be ready to deal with the short burst of speed that the other horse’s used to keep it unsettled.

Therefore, don’t rely on speed figures alone when a horse is moving up in class to determine that it will be competitive with the other horses. Sometimes it will need a race or two to acclimate to the higher class. Its first and second races against tougher foes will sometimes be run much slower, but once it catches on, it may actually post those higher speed figures again.