Photo by Penelope Miller/America's Best Racing

Change can be a key factor in handicapping a race, especially when an experiment fizzles.

Returning to a preferred distance or surface can often be the impetus to scratching lines through a few bad tries and pointing the way to a winning effort.

As an example, there was Silverpocketsfull. Heading into the seventh race at Churchill Downs on Nov. 21, the 3-year-old filly was coming off a pair of weak efforts on the turf. They were her first two races on turf, and she was eighth and fourth in them.

So clearly the grass was not greener for her.

Now she was returning to the main track for a non-winners-of-1 allowance race, which raised a question about how she would handle the surface switch.

For starters, if her efforts on dirt were as feeble as her turf races, then there would be little reason to back her.  

In looking over her races on the main track, she had just one win and a second in seven starts, which doesn’t sound inspiring.

Yet in taking into consideration the caliber of the horses she had faced, that record took on a different look.

Prior to her turf races, she fourth in an allowance race at Saratoga, which rates as one of the toughest places to win a race.

Before that, she was fifth on a muddy track in the Grade 2 Indiana Oaks, third in the Grade 1 Ashland Stakes at Keeneland and sixth in the Grade 2 Davona Dale.

Checking back to last fall, in her lone start on the main track at Churchill Downs, she posed a 1 ¾-length victory.

After running in a number of difficult sports as well as the turf, Silverpocketsfull seemed a reasonable proposition to rebound thanks to the class relief of returning to the main track for an allowance race.

Putting all of that together, there was no great mystery to Silverpocketsfull’s chances in the Nov. 21 race as she was tabbed a 2-1 morning-line favorite.

Yet if you backed her, those odds certainly sufficed as she cruised to a 1 ½-length victory and paid $6.40 for a $2 win bet.

THE LESSON: Changes, such as in surfaces or the level of competition, can often allow a horse to revert to its top efforts.