subject: When Handicapping Trotters Pace Makes the Breaks, So Will Yours Stay Flat Today [print this page] Staying flat means not breaking stride in a trotting race. If you want to handicap a trotting race and make money, you you have to find a horse who will not break stride. Why do horses break stride in one race, but stay flat in another? A lot of times it is because the pace is too fast and they naturally try to go faster than they are capable at that gait.
There may also be other reasons why a horse breaks stride, not just in a trot but also in a pace as well. Sometimes it is a matter of post position. Some horses have post positions they don't like. For instance, I once owned a trotter named, "Bomb Strike." She was a nice little trotter with plenty of heart, but would break stride when she was starting from the inside unless handled very delicately.
In order to keep her from jumping, as they call it, the driver had to keep her back from the gate and then time it perfectly so she was leaving just as the gate pulled away and she would shoot through into the clear with the lead on the rail. Her favorite method of winning was to come from off the pace and the middle posts, say the 4 or 5 post, were ideal on a half mile track.
If there was no early speed to her right and she could get off clean then an inside post was no problem, but I knew that if thee was a speedster right beside her, she'd break stride, a speed break, just trying to keep up and beat that one to the turn. Look at a horse that broke last out and try to determine if it hooked up with another horse and tried to go faster through a quarter than it was capable of and then look at the pace scenario for today's race.
If you can find a horse that made a speed break last time out but who is getting an easier trip this time, you could have a winner. Try to match up horses throughout the race in each quarter and see where your horse will be and who it will be contending with. In a harness race, horses are almost always trotting beside another horse and that is who they are in contention with. If you think of it, they win the race one battle at a time with each horse with a similar pace.
When Handicapping Trotters Pace Makes the Breaks, So Will Yours Stay Flat Today
