There\'s been some talk here about Mike Smith tending to take outside paths, so I\'ve been taking a look at the jockey profiles, particularly the average path statistic. There really isn\'t much difference between the jockeys in this Derby (save one- his jock shows a real tendency to go wide, and he does ride one of the contenders). Given the very large data set, though, even small differences between jockeys could be significant. Some of the talk here lately refers to jockeys getting conservative as they near the end of their careers (understandably so and probably an accurate observation). So if lately the path number is getting higher, the huge number of races in this data set effectively buries any notice of this trend. It would be useful then to break out this statistic, just as TG breaks out recent trainer performance by time. Could we get a similar time-based stat for path preference? It might be a more accurate reflection of a jockeys truest racing style for the race being handicapped.
I have watched Mike Smith for a very long and very up close in his NY days.WHen riding for Phipps/SHUG, he was riding all of their Stake filly\'s at Belmont. Most of them were Champs and layovers, and he would make that motionless \"Belmont Sweep\" move and win as much the best.He began, at that time, to ride many ordinary horses the same way, with much less success. He got into this habit, got hurt, and has never broke the habit for whatever reason.I called him WIDE MIKEY years ago at the track and the name in NY has stuck.