Myth-busting: The Myth of the slowly-run Preakness Stakes

Simon Rowlands analyses the Preakness Stakes

Did Oxbow really set a slow pace in the Preakness Stakes? Simon Rowlands puts forward his thoughts on the matter...

Horseracing has a habit of throwing up epic stories, and the success of Oxbow in last weekend's Preakness Stakes was yet another. Ridden by 50-year-old Gary Stevens - recently out of retirement, during which he had turned his hand to acting in the film "Seabiscuit" and the TV series "Luck" - Oxbow made all and thwarted the Triple Crown aspirations of the Kentucky Derby winner Orb. Stevens "rode them to sleep" up front, setting "soft fractions" and tipping the scales massively against his main rival, who could finish only fourth. Only, rather like the scripts of Seabiscuit and Luck, not all of that is true.

The biographical stuff is correct, as is the fact that Oxbow made nearly all and that Orb could finish only fourth. But the commonly-held view of "soft fractions" and "rode them to sleep" is, at the least, an exaggeration. As is the idea that a change in the pace scenario between the Derby and the Preakness alone accounts for Orb's failure at Pimlico. 

Oxbow's sectionals of 23.94s after a quarter of a mile, 48.60s after a half of a mile and 73.26s after three-quarters of a mile were the slowest by a leader in the Preakness this century. But that should be set against a couple of important additional factors: the leader has often gone too quickly in the race and, even more crucially, the surface this year was slower than usual. 

Not only was the overall time of this year's Preakness the slowest this century, the two big supporting races on dirt (the Maryland Sprint Handicap and the Allaire Dupont Distaff) were the second-slowest such races this century. Timeform's going allowance for this year's Preakness, derived from a study of all times on the card, was 10 lbs (about 6.5 lengths at the Preakness distance) slower than the average going allowance at the course throughout 2012.

Taken in this context, the pace set by Oxbow was respectable, and certainly not slow. His finishing speed %s (the speed from the points of call to the finish expressed as a percentage of average race speed) were 99.1%, 98.7%, 97.8% and 95.7%, which is only slightly quicker than par for this little-used distance. 

So, Oxbow got a well-judged ride, but the pace should not have inconvenienced to a great degree any horse that kept tabs on him. Indeed, it did not in the case of Mylute, who came from last early to finish a good third. Oxbow won well enough to suggest he was the best horse on the day. Period.

At the same time, Orb moved onto the heels of the leaders at halfway then got outpaced before keeping on for a distant fourth. This was a very different race set-up to the Derby, in which Palace Malice had gone much too fast (and Oxbow had gone after him too soon) and Orb had come from well back to win. 

But Orb had shown greater versatility previously, notably when beating the Preakness second Itsmyluckyday by a length further than Oxbow subsequently did in a tactical Florida Derby. Perhaps there was something in the idea that Orb got stuck on slower ground up the inner in the Preakness, or perhaps he just had an off day, as horses sometimes do. 

The moral of the story is: beware the tendency to make glib observations from times not put properly in context, and beware the tendency to over-explain what may best be regarded as "one of those things". The truth can be both more complex and simpler than it first appears. 

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