"Queen" Zenyatta is a big horse  who seems to gobble up the ground while lumbering ever closer to her rivals, ears up and forward, and looking like she barely bends her knees as she blows by every challenger before the finish line.

So, what exactly is "it" that allows Zenyatta to trounce every field she's raced against?  Her action and way of going has been dubbed "poetry in motion"

There are as many theories as breeders in the world of speedy horses.  In this summary of a recent study, the authors have pointed to a factor that can be noticed, studied and tested by any horseplayer.

The following excerpts are part of a wider study that examines how the degree of stride contributes to success on the race track. Of special interest is the evaluation of The Green Monkey -- conducted before his career on the racetrack even began.

High-speed video gait analysis has potential for identifying elite equine athletes early in training

-- by Kenneth L. Marcella, D.V.M.

[. . . ]Seder's data also has yielded information about high-leg-action horses and turf racing, about the lack of performance predictability when trying to use only velocity and length- of-stride measurements, and several other very technical facts about the vast differences and arrays of phases contained within the racing gait of the horse.

Seder pointed out that The Green Monkey, a Forestry colt recently purchased for $16-million at the Fasig-Tipton Calder sale of selected two-year-olds in training, had a fabulous 9.8-second workout, but high-speed film revealed that the entire work was done at a rotary gallop, a very quick gait that can produce fast times but costs more energy.

In Seder's opinion, such a gait is unlikely to be maintained for longer distances. High-speed analysis of that horse's motion leaves questions in Seder's mind and puts tremendous, maybe excessive, expectations on the horse. "Really good horses have a number of ways to run fast," Seder said. "And if they are 'correct' in their motion, they will be able to generate more power and speed without tiring out or breaking down."

Seder did not set out to ruin the careers of those horses that were deemed to have bad motion in his study, and in a bit of kill-the-messenger mentality, he said he has sometimes not been well received within the racing industry.

"Roughly 80% of horses bred for the track will have some sort of problem and never make it to an elite status," Seder said. "The history of science is that innovation is met with skepticism. I'm just taking science and playing probabilities, looking for those horses that, based on our data of gait and motion analysis, have a higher chance of making it."

Whether you use the latest in cameras, high-speed analysis, and data evaluation, or you hang near the rail to find a way of going that pleases your eye, everyone is looking for the same thing--a horse that has a good chance to make it.