What's competetive?

[peter m]

Quite often a horse will win at decent odds. After looking at it's past form sometimes it will have run in a higher class race, I'm using prizemoney to judge class in this hypothetical example.

Just because the horse ran in the higher prizemoney/class race doesn't mean it actually belonged in that class or was even competetive. So for example a horse runs 6.5 lenghts behind winner in a $100,000 race, drops to a $30,000 race and wins at good odds.

How many lenghts from the winner would you judge to be competetive if a horse runs in a higher class of race than it usually does? Just looking for ideas.

Thanks,
Peter

[wesmip1]

The answer is unfortunately ... it depends ..

The only way you can tell for sure if it was competitive is by watching the video.

As a few guidelines 5 lengths is the norm was a competitive run but its going to depend again on where 3rd place was. A loss of 5 lengths and 3rd running in at 4.5 lengths is a competitive run but a loss of 5 lengths and 3rd running in 1 length behind the winner is not so competitive.

[peter m]

The answer is unfortunately ... it depends ..

.
Yes, I thought it might be.

Thanks for the reply wesmip, that was the kind of thing I was looking for as I didn't think the question would have a cut and dried answer.