Quick Review - we’ve gone over the first 2 parts of shape, as follows:
- In part 1, we defined shape as being the qualities that allow a horse to do MORE than what would be expected given the circumstances that unfold in a race. We said that a horse is "in shape" when they accomplish more than we would expect. We said that they are in medium or normal shape when they are capable of doing about as expected. We said that they are in poor shape when they are performing less than expected. We took a quiz, and we all failed. So this was our introduction.

In part 2, we introduced the concept of a "shape cycle" - that shape itself is independent of a horse’s ability, and like any other athletes, horses go through various phases. They move from periods where they are out of shape, periods of normal or average shape, and periods of better than average or good shape. This is true for both the most and least talented of animals, as it is for any human athletes (hey, didn’t Chris Dudley make 5 foul shots in a row in one Knick game?). In fact, all horses will spend the majority of time in the average zone (this means the average zone for the individual horse, which might be substantially higher or lower that the average zone another horse, by the way). In fact one way to know that you aren’t doing shape right is this: if you follow a horse over the course of a whole season, say for 30 races, and you gather up your shape ratings and find that he was out of shape for 6, in medium shape for 8, and in good shape for 16, then you aren’t doing it right! Why? Because by definition, horses spend most of their time in their average, or medium state (that’s why it called average). If you came up with this conclusion for a horse, it means that you are not determining shape properly, and in particular, you are not recognizing what we call "false positives" - these are races which look better than in they are in fact are. If this were the case, I would say that you are probably under-rating the horse’s level of ability and over-rating his shape - thus, you are impressed with races which, for him, are quite average and should be expected. DO NOT CONFUSE ABILITY WITH SHAPE (this, by the way, is the best angle for handicapping young, rapidly developing horses, and why so many people find them unpredictable - often, their shape is not improving but their ability is, making their races seem more impressive. Then, at other times, they are coming into better shape, but they are reaching a plateau in their ability level).

Partly because based on the enormous volumes of email and questions, there are still a large number of you who don’t understand it -- which is okay, because you cannot learn this overnight, and even my incessant babbling is not really enough unless you do some exercises yourself, with real horses, and make the discoveries by following up, as I will do with each and every one of you who want’s my attention. And we are going to do this, after each week, starting after this article.

And there are other reasons why I keep repeating these things over and over.

One reason why you absolutely MUST be able to distinguish the horse’s shape from his ability is that according to my extensive studies, not only do "in-shape" horses win 9 out of every 13 harness races, but the average horse will chalk up almost 87% of his or her wins at times when they are in their own "green zone" (this was the green area on the shape cycle chart that we showed last time). So it really pays to make the shape determination, and to confine your bets on any horse to times when he is in shape. This is why SHAPE DETERMINATION is the single most important thing you can learn, besides betting.

In our Q&A piece a few weeks back, I answered a viewer question and got ahead of myself. Specifically, I addressed the situation of a horse being boxed in, and how that would and would not be interpreted in a shape context. As it turns out, I was way ahead of myself, because we had not laid the groundwork for enough people to put it in perspective - I apologize. So we have to backtrack. At the end of Part I, I mentioned the things that a horse can do to show he’s in shape, so that’s where we’re heading next, having defined shape and introduced the fact that it is not permanent, but goes in cycles.

Of course, you cannot say whether a horse did better than, worse than or as expected, unless you know what to expect. And as we said at the end of the last shape session, there are basically 3 things horses do, before the stretch, to put themselves in position to win races. We all know these, and this might seem elementary to many of you, but (and please trust me on this) it pays to take the small amount of time to go back and review the basics.

This is so basic, but I can tell that many of you are not doing it.....in trying to find out what I expect, I ask myself 3 questions, IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE:

1) What did the horse do, prior to the stretch, to improve his position or otherwise put himself into a position to win the race?
2) For how long did the horse do whatever it was, ‘it’ being whatever answer I came up with for question 1.
3) How fast, IN RELATIVE TERMS, was he going when he did it?

For each of these, the are certain angles which you can focus in on as well.

Simple questions, right? Well based on my viewer input, I think we need to talk about them. For those of you who use the right side of your brain and need a picture, here is a little chart - and today we will talk about the blinking part:

What Did The Horse Do?
There are some differences in what a front-runner type does and what a closer does, but there are only 3 basic answers to this question, although there are some subtle variations. The 3 answers are, IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE: 1) dueling (usually for the lead), 2) racing uncovered (that is, without another horse in front of you) and 3) racing wide (away from the rail) on turns. The order of these is important to note.

"Dueling" is perhaps the most stressful thing that a horse can do. Some of them do it well, some cannot handle it at all. Dueling is when 2 or more horses race side by side, each attempting to stay ahead of the other. Dueling can occur at any point in a race, for example:
- when 2 or more horses leave for the lead, and they battle one another, with one or both being asked for more speed in order to obtain the lead. Horses also typically duel at some point in the second half of the race, when the leader is challenged. While horses react differently, I generally do not consider a horse to be dueling unless they can actively hear or see the other horse, generally a neck or less away. Horses who are, say 3/4 of a length back are not, in my view, actively dueling. Dueling is extremely stressful to most horses. I think few people truly realize just how much energy this absorbs. How many times have you seen a horse on the lead who seems to get moderate fractions in the middle of the race but fail to hold on? If this animal does these fractions with another horse right alongside of him, then it constitutes much harder usage, and a fade in the stretch can actually be expected! Contrast this with the horse who rattles off comfortable fractions on an open 1 1/2 length lead - in this case, the loss of ground in the stretch is often attributable to poor shape. You should also be aware of places other than on the front end, where a duel might take place. Take for example, the case where the field gets spread out, and one horse takes up the chase from behind - this horse might actually get caught up in a duel for third or fourth spot. Another place to observe is what happens on ‘retakes’. A retake occurs when a horse who had previously yielded, then makes another attempt at the lead. Did he breeze right by and get the lead, or did the inside horse attempt to accelerate and prevent him from doing so? Probably the most insidious form of duel takes place at the quarter on the part of a horse who, upon looking at the program, appears to have gotten a perfect 2-hole trip. A thing to look at is, how did he arrive at the pocket? Often, you will find that he was actively parking out another challenge, and in many times, he was engaged in a duel for some period prior to the quarter, and for some period after. On the program, however, it shows that he had the rail and apparently, an easy trip. Though it is impossible to say how much dueling is worth time-wise, suffice to say that any horse who duels for position for any substantial amount of time is expected to perform in a somewhat sub-par in the stretch, regardless of how fast he was going. Just how sub-par is acceptable, depends on many other factors..

A possible angle using the "dueling" aspect of shape would be as follows: Most people can understand that a horse who duels in a very fast pace is being used hard, but the contrarian angle here - focusing on the dueling - is to look for horses who where dueling for extended periods in what appear to be not-so-fast absolute fractions and faded - here, you are focusing on the dueling aspect of the usage because dueling is so stressful to the horse, often times these horses perform poorly later in a mile even though the fractions themselves don't seem to be that demanding. If these horses are already in shape, they can be worth following because, many times, the horse may be able to go much faster in a subsequent race, even in very fast fractions, if he in not involved in the duel . Just quick thinking - an example of this at the Meadowlands this past Saturday night would be Dr. Lechter Lobell, who you would think had pretty comfty fractions to the half - but faced a prolonged challenge which took it's toll.