Research study, part V: Some final notes about behinders

One pattern with the "behind" winners was so pronounced that I detected it even though I wasn't formally charting it. I decided to go back and capture the information after the fact, which is that large payoffs are a staple of the "behind" firster winner.

In part II I spoke of my control group of 238 non-state-bred dirt sprint maiden special weights for 2-year-olds or 3-year-olds only, covering mid 2007 to mid 2008 (there were some other minor requirements; see part II). The median winner in that dataset went off at odds of 3.20-1; by comparison, the 50% mark of the "behind" winners was 8.05-1. 13.9% of the control-group winners went off at 10-1 or more; 40.7% of the "behind" winners did. For 20-1+, the percentages were 6.3% and 16.3%; for 40-1+, 1.3% (3 for 238) and 4.7% (4 for 86). The biggest longshot winner among the behinders was 1998 Gotham winner Wasatch, who took his Santa Anita debut after running 12th early at 108-1.

Well-bet, first-out behind-winners also occur with some frequency; 8.1% were even-money or less (although this includes one winner who was coupled), and 30.2% were less than 3-1. The corresponding percentages of winners in the control group, though, were 12.2% and 45.8%.

Since the control group consisted of all maiden special weights, and my study only of ones won by first-time starters, someone might say that I am looking at the difference in mutuel support between winners who have run before and those who have not, but I am positive that is at least 80% untrue. I didn't keep the results, but 15 years ago I studied how first-time starters did vs. how they were bet, and as a group, they run formfully. Well-bet first-out winners easily outnumber overlooked ones. If I had the odds distributions for the first-out winners representing the other styles, I would be able to prove this, but as I said, I did not collect odds initially, so settled for the control group of maiden special winners as an alternative.


As we know by scanning the odds board before many a maiden special weight, bettors make very strong determinations about the chances of various first-time starters, and these determinations are by and large accurate. But they seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to horses who will be coming from off the pace. How this can be is at first curious; after all, the style category of a first-time starter is undeclared and undiscussed.

It seems a good assumption, however, that first-time starters who win showing early speed in fact have more early speed than first-time starters who win from behind. If training rated highly leads to mutuel support, then the type of AM performance suggestive of early speed is more likely to be interpreted in those terms than the type of morning performance suggestive of another type of quality. Indeed, the lukewarm support for off-the-pace debut winners must mean that the indications of it are largely overlooked in training.

This could be a result of first-quarter dullness not leading to impressive workout times, and fans therefore overlooking the the potential “behinder” winner, or it could mean that trainers and horse people themselves are fooled by the different presentation in training given by the behinder. Trainers, for example, might miss that they have a good chance to win with their behinder, and not talk the horse up beforehand.

If this is true, perhaps the nature of workouts simply does not give trainers an opportunity to gauge some qualities that will be very important on race day. Or perhaps they could do a much better job of projecting and looking past early speed. In any event, the horse who can run but can’t run so much early often goes under the radar.

Another theory for the “behinder” longshot mystery is that, for whatever reason, trainers pick certain horses to be ones they try to win first time out with, and certain horses to be ones they will give a race. Trying to win first time out means having the horse in position early to win. (My statistics in Part II show this is a smart move.) Betting on firsters is indicative of trainer intentions as much as ability of horse, this theory says. When the behinder wins, he overcomes a deficit in preparation that is reflected in the odds.


If this theory were true, however, “behinders” should be superior to debut winners employing other styles. But the evidence suggests more uniformity in future performance relative to debut style than behinder dominance.

Additionally, being behind early in the debut would seem to be all about trainer intention and not about the horse’s inclination. Yet reviewing the well-known “behinders” on my list, my impression is they were by and large known as closers for their entire careers. If their trainers recognized that coming from well off the pace would put them at a consistent disadvantage, they wouldn’t have allowed the style to endure, if they had an alternative (meaning that the horse had more natural speed).

One theory that occurred to me about why come-from-behind winners end up doing well, despite their high odds in their maiden scores, and their narrow margins of victory, is that they may have overcome a problem at the start. How does a horse end up at the back of the pack? Sometimes, through tactics, often through lack of speed, but often because he or she didn't break well. This is particularly true of first-time starters, as any racing fan knows. And winning after a bad start might be a sign of a good horse. The lengths lost at the start might compensate for the small margin over the runner-up at the wire.

When I was going back and collecting the odds data on the "behind" winners, I also noted whether the horse was noted in the short comment ending the horse's row in the Equibase chart to have broken poorly or had a bad start. By my coding, twenty-eight of the 86 "behind" winners (32.6%) incurred difficulty at the start. While some eventual winners begin poorly and recover position quickly enough to be mid-pack or better by the first call, I am certain the count of troubled starts would have been lower for the other style categories, particularly for "led" and "pressed."

Nine of the 28 "behind" winners (32.1%) who had trouble at the start went on to be graded stakes winners, a good percentage. However, the "behind" winners who started cleanly went on to be graded stakes winners 25.9% of the time themselves, a higher rate than seen for the other styles. So "bad starts" does not explain the ultimate competitiveness of the "behind" winners.