Because there are so many variables in horse racing, it is often difficult to evaluate a race and come to a conclusion about the realistic chances of each horse winning. When that happens, it’s often best to skip the race and move on to the next one in your search for a winning bet. One of the most puzzling situations occurs when a young horse runs a new distance or on a new surface.

If the change is new and represents a situation the horse has not encountered in the past, the logical step is to look at your foal. A horse’s breeding often tells us if it will handle change well. But there are certain considerations that need to be made. First of all, if the situation is new to the horse, how well will it adapt inexperienced? Some bulls produce good racehorses, but which ones require multiple tries to acclimate to the new surface?

The same goes for the distance switch. If a horse is going to run a much shorter distance than it ran before, how will it handle the initial speed? Sprinters generally find much more speed early on and have to learn to shoot in front of or a few distances from the leader to stay within striking distance for most sprints, though there are a few exceptions.

The role of the jockey cannot be overlooked. Some riders will be able to get a horse out of the gate fast enough or compete in a sprint, while others just don’t have the punch. The same goes for a horse going long for the first time. Some riders may accommodate a horse so that the mid-race fractions are smooth enough to allow him to run a bit down the stretch.

If you are going to have a chance of finding good bets on horses that are experiencing a situation for the first time, whether it be the surface, the distance, or both, you need to determine which bulls have precocious offspring that can handle the situation for the first time and which jockeys can communicate well enough with a horse to get him to accept the new situation without expending too much energy.

It is not enough to say that a rider is good on grass or with young horses. With the highly competitive nature and small margins that the modern rider works with, you need to fully understand the rider and the sire and then you will be able to assess the horse’s true chances of winning.