same here

would not know where to start without pacemakers

mine are all even pace horses and no pacemaker the jockey is pulling the heads off the horses as none want to lead
turns into very messy trials and il stick to what i know

You know you have a good horse, when you run with no pacemakers and the same horse wins almost every time. If I get variable results, which is common, I normally am not competitive at that distance.

If I have a horse that wins almost every time in my trials. It has, in the past, normally gone on to be a good horse in the league, and has normally won a group 1.

There's only 1 problem with that hypothesis and that's when you have 10 horses that can all run similar times then it's a bit harder to try and find a consistent winner