Thanksgiving Handicap and F. W. Gaudin almost indistinguishable

I think the point of view that we can't conclude that, because A beat B in one race and B beat C in aother, A would beat C in a future race is the right one, for the simple reason that horses run differently on different days (as someone I know said). These last couple of stakes sprints for older horses at the Fair Grounds fly in the face of this, implying almost uniformity from race to race. From an eight-horse field in the Thanksgiving Handicap, Gantry beat Cash Refund a nose with Joe Hollywood 3rd by 4 1/4, and Mambo Galliano 5th by 5 1/4. Those four ran back today in the F. W. Gaudin, joined by just Smokethruakeyhole, to make a five-horse field. Gantry was again the winner by a nose, with Cash Refund again 2nd, and Joe Hollywood again 3rd. Joe Hollywood did move back a length from Gantry this time. Mambo Galliano was 4th by 5 1/2, compared to 5th by 5 1/4 in the Thanksgiving. In both races, the eventual first three were 1-2-3 early, but in the reverse order of how they came in. The margins among them in the early calls were very close in both races. Pretty amazing, huh?

Joe Hollywood was the favorite in both races. Ever since he took an August nw1x allowance at Monmouth by 10 1/4 lengths, he's had flashy looking past performances. Some of his stature was recovered after the Thanksgiving Handicap loss by a 5-length, 99 Beyer score in an allowance the day after Christmas. Still, the gap in price among the three horses was cut substantially for the Gaudin. Gantry and Cash Refund were 4th and 5th choices, respectively, in the Thanksgiving, while none of the three started above 2-1 in the Thanksgiving.

Given the virtual repeat of the race from two months ago, I wondered if the weights remained the same. There was some change there. While in the Thanksgiving, Gantry had received 3 lbs. from Cash Refund, in the Gaudin he gave Cash Refund 6 lbs. So score one for Steve Crist's view of weight, that it just doesn't matter at the spreads we see it. On the other hand, Joe Hollywood picked up 4 lbs. from the Thanksgiving, and since Cash Refund beat him by another length today, this is consistent with the weight change.

Basically, if you think weight does matter, you have to conclude that the horses did not run quite as closely in the two races at it appears. That's likely, given that I don't seriously think the horses repeated their races from the Thanksgiving exactly.

I also think this race was quite a bit faster than the 93 Beyer assigned for the Thanksgiving. It will be odd, however, if all of the first four pick up a good 5 Beyer points or so from their race that day, particularly when they faced basically no outside competition today to cement the quality of the race. It seems likely to me that the difference in relative time (or figures) has no basis in reality, and is just a result of human or random error, than improvement in performance I guess I'm contradicting myself, though: did the horses end up in the same spots through a combination of approximate repetition and coincidence, or because they really had a mass and eery duplication of their performances?