What's competetive?
 

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

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.

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.