Sovereignty’s Win Was Legit, But Gulfstream’s Run-Up Distance Change Makes it Harder to Quantify

[Wandering Eyes]

Visually, there was a lot to like about Sovereignty's last-to-first score in Saturday's GII Fountain of Youth Stakes. The Godolphin homebred by Into Mischief closed with a flourish from well back after giving up four paths of real estate on the far turn. He needed to make up four lengths on an in-the-clear leader with one furlong remaining over Gulfstream's short-stretch configuration for 1 1/16-miles races (finish line at the sixteenth pole), and Junior Alvarado expertly timed this Bill Mott trainee's kick to earn a neck victory over no-quit 'TDN Rising Star' River Thames (Maclean's Music).

The win established that Sovereignty's maiden-breaking score over stakes company in his last start, the Oct. 27 GIII Street Sense Stakes at Churchill Downs, was legit. And it stamped the colt as a formidable, still-developing closer as the distances on the GI Kentucky Derby trail get longer. The Fountain of Youth tally marked the second straight race in which Sovereignty was patiently parked in last before circling the field, and in neither stakes was he scraping bottom, stamina-wise, as he accelerated under the wire.

But assessing the Fountain of Youth moving forward, other aspects of the race will be harder to quantify. That's because two days before the big Mar. 1 card that featured the middle leg of the track's prominent series of graded stakes for 3-year-olds, news broke that Gulfstream management, effective immediately, was going to be adding significant “run-up” distance to the start of two-turn races on the main track.

Run-up distances are one of those difficult-to-fathom “only in horse racing” concepts. Think of it as extra real estate added to the start of a race between where the starting gate is placed and the spot on the track where the first horse triggers the timing beam to begin the official clocking of the published distance of the race.

The well-respected Pat Cummings, who studies such peculiar nuances of the sport and has, for the better part of several decades, cogently advocated for righting a number of long-established industry practices that don't make any sense, argued as far back as 2014 in a Thoroughbred Racing Commentary piece titled “Time for a Change: Why North America Must Stop Perpetually Mistiming Races” why run-up distances are a bad idea.

“It isn't fraudulent, but without any particular malice, it is perpetually misleading,” Cummings wrote. “Basically, no track on the continent is benign to the scourge of run-up. The fact that run-up distances differ from track to track-a function of course design, safety considerations, turf rail positions, grass management, or just plain old habit (the “that's where we always put the gate” argument)-makes its presence in racing even more difficult to comprehend.”

Racing jurisdictions in other countries don't use run-up distances, Cummings wrote 11 years ago. And neither do motor sports or human running sports. Yet if North American racing absolutely must have run-up distances, why not at least make an effort to keep them consistent at each track or to simply publish the total amount of ground that will be covered from when the gates open? That's why Gulfstream's mid-season switch is difficult to understand.

Gulfstream has added 85 feet to the start of all 1 1/16-mile dirt races (on top of the previously established 80 feet, for a total new run-up of 165 feet). That equates to 55 yards between the starting gate and timing beam-exactly one quarter of one furlong.

For nine-furlong dirt races, which previously had 70 feet of run-up, 53 feet will be added, for a total of 123 feet of run-up.

In a Feb. 27 article, Daily Racing Form's Mike Welsch quoted Bill Badgett, the executive director of Florida racing operations at Gulfstream, in reporting that “the change was made at the behest of the local jockey colony as it gives horses a little longer distance to travel before they enter the clubhouse turn,” and that “safer conditions for horses and riders” was a primary concern, along with “potentially negat[ing] some of the disadvantage of drawing outside posts in races run at those distances.”

The safety reasoning is understandable. Who can argue against accident prevention? But Gulfstream reconfigured its main track from one mile to nine furlongs in 2005. After 20 years, management suddenly decided that changing the run-ups was so imperative that it needed to implement the switch even after a Grade II stakes at one of the affected distances had already been drawn?

Gulfstream is in the middle of what it bills as its “championship” meet, and waiting until the end of the current season to change the run-up distances would have at least provided consistency in comparing the internal fractions and final times of route races, especially those involving the current crop of Derby aspirants.

Although Gulfstream management did not state so, perhaps the outcome of the Jan. 25 GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes factored into the decision. In that 1 1/8-miles race, the 9-5 favorite, 'TDN Rising Star' Locked (Gun Runner) had drawn the dreaded 11 spot in the starting gate, with the Form previewing the race by noting in a headline that the colt had been “marooned” in a post position that had yielded only three winners at nine furlongs in the last 18 years.

Locked ended up being caught wide around both turns in the Pegasus, finishing second, and there was significant post-race speculation that the wide draw had cost him a better chance.

As the racing gods would have it, on Saturday, the same day that Gulfstream was running its first stakes race with the elongated run-up distances, Locked was all the way across the continent in California, demolishing the GI Santa Anita Handicap field by 8 1/2 lengths as the 7-10 favorite.

Now back to Sovereignty: It's a fair point to say that horses have no idea what the run-up distance is. The gate opens, they run, the race unfolds, and they finish wherever they finish.

But handicappers (and people who buy and sell racehorses) spend considerable time sifting through the aftermath of data trying to make sense of how to rank those performances and races.

In Sovereignty's case, you can factor in the new run-up distance-more than double what his Gulfstream peers had been dealing with-and twist it any way you want to either upgrade or downgrade his effort.

For example, you could say that without those added 55 yards tacked onto the 1 1/16-miles distance, there's no way that Sovereignty would have caught River Thames.

Or you could argue that the relatively quick internal splits into which Sovereignty closed-the first three quarters were clocked in :23.12, :23.95 and :23.61-were timing artifacts of the longer run-up. (It's expected that early fractions will be quicker in any given race with a longer run-up, because horses are moving along at a faster clip before the timing beam gets activated.)

To put those fractions into perspective, until Saturday's Fountain of Youth, out of the first 16 Derby qualifying stakes run at 1 1/16 miles in 2024-25, no race produced three opening quarter-mile splits each run in sub-24 seconds. (Although later on Saturday, the GII San Felipe Stakes was subsequently clocked with three opening quarters run in 23 seconds and change. The run-up distance for 1 1/16 miles at Santa Anita is 85 feet.)

Sovereignty's final time of 1:43.12 doesn't appear out of whack with historical norms. In fact, it's the exact same clocking that 'TDN Rising Star' and 2-year-old champ Forte ran in the Fountain of Youth two years ago.

But making Sovereignty's speed or pace figure for the effort was tricky, regardless of which brand of numbers you go by. In addition to having a new run-up distance that doesn't mesh with the previous par times, the Fountain of Youth was also the only two-turn dirt race on the card at Gulfstream on Saturday, adding another layer of complexity to dialing in the correct number. His Beyer Speed Figure came back preliminarily as a 98, a 12-point rise off his rating in the Street Sense.

If you've read this far, maybe you're wondering if it's really worth spouting off for 1,500 words about run-up distances. You'd be correct if you said there are bigger problems in the sport that need fixing right now.

But it's important to get the little things right, too. And in that sense, providing accurate measurements of very basic data points like race distance and timing matter very much.

For an alternate (and better informed) perspective, I'd point you in the direction of an insightful post authored by longtime clocker Bruno De Julio, who wrote last week in his blog, Racingwithbruno, that although “the masses are clamoring” over “the dramatic uproar over the run-up distance for the Fountain of Youth,” the run-up distance “is not the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe, nor is it going to change the course of history.”

But, as De Julio-who has more than three decades of clocking experience at major tracks-noted later in his post, the real issue worth considering is not the run-up distance itself, but whether or not the starting gate will actually get placed where the published run-up distance says it should be.

“At tracks like Gulfstream Park, where inconsistencies in gate placement and run-up distance, traditionally, have not been adequately addressed over the years, this can lead to false data that impacts both racing strategy and the betting landscape,” De Julio wrote. “Accurate timing and proper documentation are crucial to maintaining the integrity of the sport and ensuring that the data used for analysis and handicapping is trustworthy.”

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