'Closers' don't win very often in the USA

An interesting article (which shows how boring harness racing can be)

https://harnesslink.com/usa/feedback...back-syndrome/

Stats from 800 races this last week at every track in the United States that offered harness racing. From Sunday, October 15 through Saturday, October 21.

At the opening quarter “call,” 312 of the horses with a “1” at that first station went on to win—that’s within a “nk” of 40 percent.

Another 183 horses that were charted “2” (with some outside going for the lead) went on to win, meaning a horse that’s second at the opening quarter won about 22 percent of the time.

That means that 496 of the 800 that were first or second at the first quarter—about 62 percent—were winners.

Going back to being “3” on the chart at the first quarter, 97 went on to win, equal to less about 12 percent.

If a horse was fourth at the opening call—and there were 89 of those—the odds of winning were about 11 percent.

A total of 68 winners were fifth early on—about 8.5%—with the numbers dropping significantly after that with 46 winners coming from sixth (less than 6%), 23 winners coming from seventh (about 3%) and a “bit” less than 1% coming from eighth and 1/2 of 1% after that!