Why Positioning Matters More Than Beaten Lengths in Horse Racing Handicapping

Learn why positioning is more important than beaten lengths in handicapping. Master finding the patterns of running styles and analyzing race shapes.

Jan 06, 2025

Do you want to change your handicapping for the better? This one sentence will change your mentality when handicapping and get you thinking about who can win races.

Positioning is more important than beaten lengths.

Horses pass horses, not beaten lengths.

Betting on a race without knowing the race shape, how much early pressure there is, or where horses will be running from positionally is next to impossible. If you‘re not analyzing where each horse needs to be positionally to win, you’re missing a critical edge in your betting.

Just glancing through the past performances without noting where a horse needs to be positionally to win isn't going to cut it.

You have to answer these questions when going over a race; this simple process can give you the answers quickly. This will help with contender selection, betting, and finding horses that you will eliminate from win contention.

Every race is a different scenario, which means you need to have an approach to put yourself in the best position to be successful. Your goal is to visualize the race before it is run. Relying on just figures alone is not enough when it comes to handicapping and betting.

So, how can you start to make better betting decisions when handicapping?

List out the running style each horse needs to run a winning race.

Who needs to lead? Who will be coming from the back of the pack? Will will be pressing the front runners?

Determining how to categorize each horse is important to seeing the race shape and which horses truly have a chance to win.

Now that you understand why positioning is key, let’s break down the running styles of each horse. The best way is to categorize a horse as early, presser, or sustained.

Some horseplayers get caught up in labeling horses as early/pressers or sustained/pressers. Forget all that overlap and simplify it by using the three different running styles.

Identifying Early Speed When Handicapping?

Early horses are easy to identify. They fill their past performances with a lot of 1st place positions at the 1st and 2nd call of races. You also will see races where they are battling for the lead and might be in 2nd or 3rd place but within a length of the lead.

When these horses don’t get to the front, they don’t win.

A high percentage of races are won on, or near, the lead. These runners are always going to be the biggest threat to win and will always figure into every race when handicapping.

Look at when other early runners confront an early runner. When they get passed, do they lose? That is a quick way to determine that a horse needs to have the lead to win.

Nullarbor is a perfect example of a horse that needs the lead to win. The race he was entered in with these past performances was another route race.

Let’s look at his two wins. Starting with the oldest race in his past performances on October 31st, 2023, you see that he was in the lead from start to finish. Look at the next three races that were at Oaklawn Park between January 13th to March 14th.

What is the pattern you see?

He was able to grab the lead, but when confronted by other horses later in the race, he folded. That is a classic sign of a horse that needs to be in front to win.

Remember that horses that need the lead to win could show being in 2nd or 3rd place but within a length of the lead. That is true for Nullarbor on August 24th, 2024. He was able to win from 2nd place but was a half-length off the lead at the 1st call. Another sign that this horse needs to be on the pace to win.

Look at the other races where he did not set the pace throughout the race, did he ever win? No.

That means this horse cannot come from off the pace and needs to be leading to win. This is a horse you would label as “early.”

Who is Content to Sit Off The Early Pace?

Horses that look to sit forward to mid-pack and cut into the lead are pressers.

With pressers, you’ll see good positional moves 1st call to 2nd call, and 2nd call into the stretch. They are positionally in 3rd, 4th, 5th place at the 1st call. Passing horses to move up after the 1st call is what they are looking to do.

When looking through their past performances, you may see a race where they ran early or even off the pace as a closer. Overall, their presser quality will dominate the rest of their running lines.

Pressers are dangerous at all tracks when in form. They can pressure the early speed and outrun the sustained horses.

A presser that shows each quality of this running style of Huge Bigly. He was facing another route race and these were his past performances.

Starting with his oldest race on June 14th, 2023, you see that at the 1st call, he was in 3rd place, and at the 2nd call he was in 1st place. He made a positional move from 1st to 2nd call to win the race.

You will see the same pattern of positional moves to win races on February 2nd and March 21st. April 5th’s race is interesting because he lost a position 1st to 2nd call but held beaten lengths before winning.

There are two races that I want to bring to your attention. The first one is back on October 13th, 2023 at Keeneland. Remember how pressers might have a race where they controlled the pace? That is seen here. Huge Bigly took that race wire to wire to win.

Does that make him an early runner? No.

The overwhelming amount of races show that he is a presser but on that day was in a slower race he was able to get to the front and control earlier.

The other race was his last start on September 25th, 2024. Look at how he gained a position 1st call to 2nd call before fading. That is a sign of a presser. They make that move call to call. For whatever reason they weren’t able to go on to win, but even in a big loss they showed the characteristic of their preferred running style.

A horse like this should always be labeled as a “presser.” He has multiple races of making positional moves call to call and even has shown the ability to run on the pace if need be.

How to Spot Sustained Runners in Horse Racing

Sustained horses, or closers, are in the back of the pack. They hang back early and let the field run out ahead of them. They’re the opposite of early runners.

Their game is to launch a bid headed into the 2nd call.

It is important to look at the 1st call positioning and total field size to classify sustained horses. A lot of the time, they are the last or 2nd to last runner in the race.

Closers are pretty easily identifiable since you can see them coming from deep off the pace to win. Everland was entered in another route race and these were her past races.

Going back to December 30th, 2023, you see that she was well off the pace early. She broke 9th before moving up to 6th at the 1st call and continued to pass horses to win. The next time out was more of the same, coming from 7th place at the 1st call to win the race. On March 23rd, that was another race where she closed to win.

This is a horse that is more than happy to let horses get out ahead of her and try to run them all down after the 1st call.

Don’t forget, closers are always fighting against time and that is best shown in her race on August 25th at Ellis Park. Another race where Everland comes with a closing bid but just misses. Good closers will have races like this in their past performances. Betting on them will most times come down to how much value you are getting.

This horse has a sustained running style and should be labeled as such.

Pattern Recognition Is Key When Handicapping

We didn’t talk about beaten lengths once, did we?

We talked about positionally where horses run. Each running style has traits and patterns to look for.

Early horses get to the front and don’t look back. Pressers sit in the middle of the field and look to pass horses at each call. For sustained horses, it is letting everyone go early and trying to fly past them late.

Remember, horses have to beat each other, not beaten lengths.

Quit looking at how far off the pace horses are and trying to determine that when handicapping. Positionally where horses will be is the most important factor when evaluating horses and how the race will be run.

Evaluating Race Shapes to Select Contenders

Now that we have each horse classified as early, presser, or sustained, we can see the race shape.

Everything starts with the early runners in every race. A few questions we have to ask:

Is there just one early horse? That could be a lone-speed play.
Do we see multiple early runners? This is a sign of a hot pace to come and to look at the horses that will come from off the pace.
Is there no true early runner in the field? Be aware that the sustained horses shouldn’t get enough pace to close into and the forward runners are more potent in these races.

See the value of noting the early runners yet?

Remember, early runners always are a factor in the race. They set the fractions. They determine what the race shape will be. They give the ability for the pressers and closers to be a factor in a race.

What Else Can Be Gained By Assigning Running Styles?

This is the foundation for making better handicapping decisions. You now know positionally where horses need to be to win. From there you can start to look at the pacelines of where horses ran competitive races.

For early runners, you will want to note the fractions they can set. When looking at pressers, you’ll want to see the fractions they can make positional moves against. The sustained runners are more dependent on race shape but are in the same boat as the pressers. Look for the fractions they need to come flying past everyone late.

You can take this a step further and narrow down the field by comparing horses with the same running style against each other.

There can only be one leader in a race, find who that is and toss all other early runners. Compare the pressers to other pressers. Who has been running against the tougher fractions? Those are the pressers you want to make contenders and dig more into. The same process of comparing pressers against each other can be done with the sustained runners. Who has shown the best ability out of the group? That is who you want to look deeper into.

From there, you could now take the projected fractions from your early runner and see how the presser and sustained runners you’ve keyed in on stack up.

If this sounds like a lot of extra work, it can be made even easier.

We’ve touched on evaluating a horse’s form and how it is one of the fundamentals of handicapping to use in each race. Let the groundwork of grading each race in a horse’s past performances help you make quicker and smarter decisions.

Want to quickly find horses preferred running style? Look at the races where they earned a “plus” mark.

Have trouble determining which pacelines best represent a runner’s ability? Look for those “plus” races. You know they ran a competitive race, those are fractions they can handle.

What’s even better is when you look at the flip side of things. The races where a horse ran a “zero” race can give you even more information. Utilizing the running styles assigned you can see what fractions are too much for a horse to overcome to win.