In the mid-eighties, the handicapping world was buzzing about the revival of pace handicapping which made its return using expressions like “early pace,” total energy,” “incremental velocity,” and other terms that were strange-sounding and abstract to many players. At least a couple of guru-type advocates of pace handicapping spread their philosophies of pace handicapping, selling the same concepts over and over under new names until the novelty wore off, pretty much about the time that Tom Brohamer put the ideas into simple English in Modern Pace Handicapping.
 

Early energy is a fabulous tool for handicapping turf races, and because there are far fewer races on the grass than on dirt at almost every track that cards turf races, there’s less recordkeeping and time involved in generating your own numbers, which is a must.

Start_________________2/3__________End

The NEXT day, you don’t want to be late, so you leave earlier than usual and drive slower as well, to make sure you won’t run out of gas. When you hit the 2/3 distance checkpoint, you see you have 45 gallons of gas left, so you’ll definitely make it –but you look at your watch and see that because of the way you planned your trip, even with an earlier starting time, you’ll never be able to make it to your destination until after closing time there!

First day: 66/100 = 66% early energy

Second day: 75/100 = 75% early energy

Third day: 55/100 = 55% early energy

It’s pretty much the same thing in horseracing. Imagine your 100-mile trip to be a 6-furlong race. The 2/3 checkpoint is the second call (1/2 mile in a ¾ mile race). You use fairly simple calculations [pace to second call, usually in feet per second, divided by total pace (second call pace and pace of last fraction added together)]. See Brohamer’s book if you want or need the precise mathematics.

The basic concept, broadly speaking, is to keep records for each winner for each distance, each surface, and create what I like to call a window, a range of early energy for each racing situation. It has to be a range, because horses, unlike trucks, won’t always get “a mile per gallon,” so to speak. In our truck example above, if it was horses instead of trucks, the first window might be something like 64.57 – 66.09 per cent.

Calculate the early energy for each horse in today’s race, then see if the figures fall within the range of the early energy window. In the best case scenario, you find only a couple of horses that meet the early energy requirement.

Keep in mind that I am really simplifying the process! There are other factors to be considered, such as track variants, allowing for aberrations, and so on. This is just a quick and dirty simple example.

What I’ve just described (all races, all surfaces) amounts to a LOT of work for anyone. I believe there are several computer programs that will do the work, but of course, this requires you to buy raw data from providers to use.

However, if you were to make and keep early energy figures for one or two types or distances of races, you could keep up with the figures without too much grief.

In his book, Brohamer says “Using the percentage of energy expended at the second call can be a powerful factor in the selection of winners.”

He’s right.

I used to keep figures for all distances, etc. and what I found was that in many cases, the samples for certain type races were so short that “exceptions” would pop up all the time.

I found that the type of race for which early energy figures produced small windows that were very sharply defined were turf races. Example: for races at x furlongs on the turf at a certain track, the early energy figures might range from 49.07 to 51.23. Any horse whose recent races consistently fall within that range is a serious contender. Any horse well outside the range does not.

Somewhat to my amazement, I found that distance and surface switches were often not a handicapping factor-if a horse’s early energy percentages in sprints fell with the range for the turf race he was entered in, he was a serious win contender. I know this well, because years ago, as I was just getting my feet wet into pace handicapping,while playing the winter meet at Hollywood Park, I was getting my brains beat out, until I found a maiden winner who had won on 5 furlongs on the dirt whose early energy figures showed he could handle a mile and an eighth on the turf! He was the ONLY runner whose figures were “inside the window.” He won at over 30-1, I covered my losses and bailed out of Hollywood Park! (I would imagine this particular situation is highly track-specific, however.)

In the early nineties, using only early energy on the turf, I was able to find incredibly profitable grass plays at Fair Grounds. Overwhelmingly, any horse whose early energy figs did not fall within the window was an automatic throw-out. All other handicapping factors could be safely ignored! One year, the featured race on a Saturday, the Sixty Sails Stakes, attracted twelve horses, some stabled locally and many shippers, of course, Of all the horses, only two were in my “window.” They blew past 5 horses on the turn to win and run second, with a $2 exacta returning just over $400. The next day’s feature, also on the grass, presented the same situation again with another full field---and a $2 exacta again returned over $400.

Similar situations today are not as common or frequent for a number of reasons, but are not impossible to find. Why do I give this information out so freely here? Because (1) the best “windows” are created by the individual handicapper who makes the time to do them himself, massaging factors that computers can’t make subjective judgment calls on, and (2) because this involves WORK, most players won’t want to do it, because they’re satisfied with whatever easier approach they feel works for them.

If you’re willing to learn the nuances and do the work yourself, opportunities—and profits—abound using early energy as a primary handicapping approach to turf races.