"PACE"

Well it sounds like your doing all the right things Brendon, but there are other factors involved, including second guessing trainers as you have already mentioned! How often do we see winners come out of left field and that going by exposed form should not have won? Or our own selection, looking on paper as it should be all over the race but does nothing?

Nowadays we have a huge amount of form info. available but the success rate of favorites hasn't improved from pre-computer days when form info. was fairly minimal by comparison. Why is this so? Better and quicker race assessment should be improving our SR and the success rate of SP favorites but it's not. Maybe too much info. rather than the right kind of info. is our problem. Maybe there is something to be said for the KISS method!

If we do not know the pace of a race and the pace of every horse in it, we can form study it to death but in the end we are betting blind or if a win is scored, it is often just luck that the race pace suited our selection. Systems aside, most punters who use extensive handicapping bet this way. If they do look at pace it is only on Sat., where that sort of info. is available in some form guides. Even then, understanding and using to advantage what is being looking at is not well understood. Ditto it's importance.

Most races today are not truly run [beyond 1100m] and knowing a horse's pace and what the race pace is likely to be, creates a huge advantage for the punter. Handicapping should start from there as it affects most other important considerations of selection.

This is only a generalized example because exceptions happen and is only a small thing of barrier position, being only one of many other handicapping considerations: An outside barrier or an inside barrier might both suit a backmarker in a truly run race [less than 2 leader in the race means it won't be] as the jockey can easily and safely slide back in the field. A mid-field barrier is generally not a good starting gate for a BM because safely sliding back in the field is not so easy.
A leader can take advantage of an inside barrier but can be trapped back in the field from an outside barrier unless quick enough to safely head the field [using up petrol]. A mid-pacer from those barriers is going to get boxed in [inside barrier] or end up at the tail of the field from an outside barrier! So we are handicapping and then betting blind most of the time without pace info. With that info., it is very hard to end up with 2 or 3 selections we can't chose between.

Non-Sat. meetings [mostly] have some juicy winners just waiting for any punters with good pace info. and know how to benefit by it.

Cheers.