This is something we haven\'t talked about much, but take a look at the winner of the fourth at Belmont Sunday. She was the fastest going in, off two dirt sprints, but how would she handle going long on the turf? The sire, Boundary, was mildly negative for turf-- but the other two foals out of the dam had both run significantly better on turf than dirt, and had done it going long. Check it out in the RBR.
Made a nice score on that horse. I read her breeding stats as positive turf both
dam & sire. 1st time turf for BOUNDRY connecting at 16.4%. What really caught my eye
was that she was a full sister to TONS who as a 3yo (like PLENTY) showed a jump up of 10&1/2 on
turf. The other SCADS with grass pp\'s showed a nice 6,again as a 3yo.Also Young showing 29% new top dirt to turf, 20% new top first time turf. Looking at all these %\'s she
seemed like a fair enough price at 9 to 2 never mind she had best numbers albeit dirt. Were you basing your mildly negative read comparing BOUNDRY\'s long term 16.3% dirt vs.13.1% turf? I pay more attention to 1st time turf %\'s then overall turf %\'s when analyzing 1st time grass but I know a guy who is far more into breeding then I am who claims 1st time turf percentages can be misleading; trainer intent, too many crappy horses trying turf as a last resort, etc that will skew these numbers and I\'d be better sticking with overall turf %\'s. Any thoughts?
In general I pay more attention to the overall turf stats for the sire, but look at the first time stats for the trainer. I was referring to Boundary\'s grass TGI, which is worse than that for dirt.
Boundary is a little like Skip Away, even though his turf TGI isn\'t great, it sure does seem like more than a fair share of them will really take to the turf as this Boundary did. Just my observations.