“Life in the fast lane” – The Eagles
Quarter horses have always been a big part of the local racing product. Hall of Fame runner Cash Caravan thundered down the Canterbury stretch in the late 1980’s, and more recently Trevor’s Easy Tipper and Seis it Fast earned Horse of the Year honors for their outstanding performances in 2006 and 2010, respectively.
However, because there aren’t volumes of books written about quarter horse handicapping compared to thoroughbreds, it’s not surprising that many of us feel lost when trying to analyze these short dashes. What are the key factors to consider? As we near the halfway point of the 2015 meet, let’s look at the quarter horse race results so far this year, and draw some conclusions about what has happened and what might happen going forward.
There have been 45 quarter horse races run at Canterbury Park so far this year with the following results:
Inside 3 posts: 9/45 = 20% winners
Neutral posts: 10/45 = 22% winners
Outside 3 posts: 26/45 = 58% winners
Paddock analyst Angela Hermann has been talking about this for a while so it is nothing new, but it’s instructive to see the actual numbers. Drawing one of the outside 3 post positions in the quarter horse races has been an advantage so far. Based on this, my recommendations going forward are the following:
The easiest method is to limit your selection to one of the three outside runners in the race. As long as future results continue to favor outside runners, this will be my preferred method.
If the results change such that outside runners are no longer winning the majority of the races, you can still evaluate runners based on their post positions in prior races, giving them extra credit if they were drawn inside or less credit if they were drawn outside.
I’m going to stick with runners in the outer post positions for a while. Keep your eye on the quarter horse results and good luck the rest of the summer!
The Oracle
(The Oracle is a regular contributor to CanterburyLive and an avid handicapping contest player and three-time Canterbury Park Handicapper of the Year. His stats for the season thus far are: 62 wins / 246 races, 25.5 % winners, and $1.04 ROI )