The Whitney on Saturday was supposed to be a small speed bump in the road to horse of the year for Palace Malice. It turned out to be a large boulder.

The race was won by  Moreno at 10-1. Naturally there were a lot of very disappointed Palace Malice followers, some even pointing out that the race wasn’t won by the best horse in the race.

This is where the rub is. Moreno was the best horse in the race if the scenario was for an easy lead with a pace that wasn’t killing. If the pace had been faster, he wasn’t a very likely winner.

This is a critical mistake that handicappers often make. It is easy to identify the fastest or most accomplished horse. But remember I wrote about the four questions you need to answer before you make a selection.

• What kind of style has been winning that type of race? Early speed? Plodders? There hadn’t been a comparable dirt route run on that day, but dirt races had been won wire to wire and come from behind. So the track looked like it was playing fairly.
• Which race do we choose to evaluate the horse? Moreno had just tried to wire a field in the Suburban and fell a little short. That race was a quarter mile longer, so the idea of Moreno wiring a field in the Whitney was not out of the question. Any of his races where he had the lead and finished well would give us a good idea of ability.
• How fast can he run? If he is too slow on his best day, you can eliminate the horse.
• Can he run a winning race today. This was the key question. If you believed Moreno would jump out to the lead (a reasonable scenario), would not be pushed hard  up front, and would be on reasonable fractions, then you had to use him on top.

The lesson of the Whitney is

HANDICAP THE HORSE AND THE RACE.

Palice Malice looked incredibly strong on paper. His connections spared no expense trying to figure out why he ran a complete clunker. So far they haven’t found a physical explanation, but I’m betting sooner or later they come up with a reason. Even with Moreno’s comfortable fractions, had Palace Malice been in top form he may have won. But that doesn’t change the strategy. You can bet both scenarios.

I’ll add one thing about the “loose on the lead” concept. Horses instinctively want to run to the front. It takes a combination of training and jockey ability to get a horse to relax and explode to the front late, just as it takes jockey ability to get a front runner to relax and not blow all his energy on the lead. There were plenty of pressing type horses in the race. The jockeys could have read the relatively slow pace and been closer to Moreno throughout, probably giving them a better chance to win. If you watch the great ones, they all had speed to spare – they just chose to use it in different ways.

So Moreno probably isn’t going to get any votes for horse of the year, but he was the horse of the Whitney at $22.