Anybody else out like me that thinks racing and wagering on Polytrack is similar to NBA games.
Everything gets decided in the last 10 seconds........
Beyer appears to agree, at least as far as Keeneland is concerned.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/15/AR2007041501043.html
I\'m following the NHL play-offs , but know what you mean ... Dominican ( as an early season 3 yo ) should have bounced off the pair but didn\'t - not the biggest deal . imo - the BG result ( for most the field incl top 3 ) would have been the same - even if it had been run on dirt ...
I disagree with Beyer.
The reason that speed has been so great on traditional dirt tracks over the years is because of kickback. Who wants to handicap races trying to figure out which horses will get dirt in their faces and which ones will not? Thats not handicapping. Thats not handicapping the relative talents of the horses. Its handicapping the ability of each individual horse\'s mental makeup to be able to handle \'spray\' in their face.
The reason Beyer is wrong is that he\'s not necessarily complaining about Polytrack, he\'s complaining about change. If things were reversed and polytrack is all we knew for 100 years and all of a sudden, Keeneland went to a dirt surface, Beyer would yell and scream about speed winning all the time. He\'s be mad that whoever got the lead would win. He\'d say, \"thats not handicapping\"
Change is good. Great horseplayers adjust to change and the ones who can\'t, perish.
Handicapping is all about making adjustments on the fly. Its a great game of chess. The more \'unpredictable\' the races are, the better chance we as horseplayers have to beat this game.
If everyone knows the winners, and the game gets easy, everyone will know the results in advance and no one will be able to make big money.
Throw a monkey wrench into it, i\'m all for it.
As far as this BG result not being a valid handicapping factor for next Month\'s Derby, i believe there IS a way to use polytrack results to predict traditional dirt results. What that way is we might not know, but its there for the taking, if you can figure it out.
I love the \'mystery\' of these polytrack results and the public not knowing what the heck to do from a handicapping standpoint. I love that. The more confusion, the better. Gives me a shot to break the bank if i come up with a unique theory on things that happens to work.
Kaos rules!
Imallin:
As to the kickback on dirt surfaces discouraging horses running from off
the pace, are you saying that a single horse on the lead, who leads a race from
gate to wire, creates enough kickback to discourage ALL the other horses in the
race?
My read of Beyer\'s article was that he was not unhappy with synthetic
surfaces in general, but rather with the way the surface at Keeneland plays.
And he did point out that the handle at Keeneland has not been hurt by
Polytrack. Trainers are not afraid to run their horses on this surface, and
horseplayers have not been scared off by this new surface.
In the end if horsemen and horseplayers are happy, it doesn\'t matter what
a curmudgeonly figure maker/columnist thinks.
No, but whoever is in the back of the pack is getting sprayed by all the horses in front of him. There\'s a lot more kickback than you think, because you can\'t see it that well. That lead horse kicks back more dirt than you can imagine. A 1200lb animal\'s foot sinking into the sand and then \'exploding\' out of there a 40 mph creates sand thats traveling at a high rate of speed flying backward.
not to say that the polytrack has NO kickback, but its less than normal. Thats why closers win on the turf more than the dirt, turf runners can close because they\'re not getting showered in debris.
Marcus...stick to Ice Hockey!
Seriously tho...do you read Left at the gate? Alan is a big fan of something called the Rangers.He\'s a hell of a writer too.Unfortuneatly he has your same handicapping theories!...its a joke!
Marcus
I believe there may be more than a few people who would have read the line on Dominian more postive.
Check out the article by Haskin at bloodhorse.com and TGJB\'s similar comments.
Kentucky Derby Trail: Bye, Bye Miss American Pie
Mike
Yep...I have to go with Chuckles on this and just gamble on Turf racing at Keeneland for the rest of the meet...It\'s too tough right now to figure it out..
david - While 1st off I\'m a Devils fan - was raised in Bruins country , so calling me a NYR fan is a low blow ... it reminds me of Junior High School Cafeteria stuff ( which line for hamburgers + fries) ...
What would have been the run order for this years BG had it been run on dirt - in your view . Say for argument sake , if Street Sense wasn\'t going to need a couple races to get back to the big 2 yo number , wouldn\'t it be on Poly ? imo - The BG Racing Surface as well as Outcome is very tricky to read ...
Rich - I understand what your saying ok - that more than a few people liked him or had positive views on his pattern - and never have Said or Implied otherwise ... I passed the race myself .
My new best friend Marcus,
Sorry I wasn\'t more specific about B.G. being run on dirt.
I was contemplating the old Keeneland track w/its speed bias.
With that said ,I think the speedball whose name starts w/a \"T\" would have wired the field.
Assuming you might have common interests with Alan was an innocent mistake.
I should have considered ones committment to a certain team.
Your bookie must love you!
One last thing before I drop my dentures in the blue water;where I come from \"Junior High\" was replaced by the term \"middle school\" a quarter century ago.
Your new best friend,
Davidrex
davidrex - thanks ! your the man ... i should have let this sort itself out and just not said anything becouse i know my family and friends , like yourself , are only kidding around ... Alan is a native of new york city , he should be a rangers fan - i figure they got a chance if the goaltender can stand on his head .
funny , i can almost remember when it switched from \"junior\" to \"middle\" - over quarter century ? that went by fast . Not sure about \"T\" , but do remember when front runners off forward moving 0 X 0 type patterns would do well at the old KEE ...
Best Wishes and Good Racing Luck ,
You made an excellent point about resistence to change, but I think his complaint goes beyond that. When races get reduced to 3F sprints like the BG, winning doesn\'t often say a real lot about overall ability of the horses. It sometimes only tells you who has the best acceleration for a short period of time and who mamaged to get good postion without even having to work for it.
For example, I believe that\'s why 3YO fillies can win at 1 1/2 miles in Grade 1 races against older males on turf in Europe. Fillies CAN sprint for 3F with the best colts if all the horses gallop for the first mile or so. Typically, they can\'t finish with the best colts if all the horses are pushed every step of the way to get and keep position like in dirt routes. The fact that this theory is true is also semi-verified by the fact that fillies spint fairly well on dirt in the U.S. also (look at the BC sprint), but rarely run with the best older males going long on dirt.
I\'m not saying there isn\'t a place for European style racing, but there is a place for racing that tests speed, stamina, racing reserves etc... too.
Imallin, I disagree with your theory about kickback.
Speed does not mean pace.
Speed is when a horse gets into high gear and turns the heat up a notch or two.
Kickback does not bother good horses.
Horses that need the lead in most cases are there because they a) have no class, b) have no courage or c) were trained improperly as youngsters.
It is, in fact, easier for a horse to come from behind than to set the pace, because they can relax while a horse does the dirty work and breaks the wind (so to speak).
I tend to agree with Andy Beyer (as I usually do, except when he writes about the Arabs!).
Personally, I do not enjoy racing on the Polytrack because, with few exceptions. horses look lousy moving on the crap. Except for Octave and Silent Name, I have not seen too many beautiful movers on the stuff.
What makes a good dirt horse is one that has power, the power to run through the dirt. Turf horses, by and large, skip over the top of the stuff. Exactly what they do on Polytrack is a mystery to me.
Barry,
What is your trainers opinion of the stuff? Would be interested to hear what he has to say. I\'ve talked to a few trainers at Kee last week. It\'s either love or hate, which is what we see on this board.
NC Tony
Barry Irwin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Personally, I do not enjoy racing on the Polytrack
> because, with few exceptions. horses look lousy
> moving on the crap. Except for Octave and Silent
> Name, I have not seen too many beautiful movers on
> the stuff.
Hi Barry, did you see the Keeneland two-yr-old sale? They all looked great!
Actually not ALL of them, but it definitely made some horses look good.
Barry, i think that windbreaking is more important, for whatever reason, in harness racing. Thoroughbreds run all over the track, so even if a t-bred is racing from behind, he\'s most likely \'not covered up\'.
Jocks will quite often move closers into a path on the backstretch with the least amount of kickback if they can. I think if kickback didn\'t matter much, great trainers wouldn\'t place good horses in behind a workmate and purposely kick dirt on that good horse to get him used to it. That trainer would say, \"Well, i have a good horse so i don\'t need to train him to \'take dirt\'.
Also, for every Graded race, there are 10 \'cheaper\' races where that closer can\'t handle the kickback. I think that the horses who can handle it are horses who were taught from day one to run thru the dirt by a trainer who let them take dirt in a team drill to get them used to it.
Maybe the training of kicking dirt on good horses is a thing of the past....most top thoroughbreds are totally pampered and trainers are maybe not as willing to stick that Graded animal in behind and put him in a position to take a clump in the eye, i guess i can\'t blame them.
I think that in main track races on traditional dirt surfaces, the pace of those races is usually fast enough so that even the closers are not fully relaxed. The closer\'s, especially in sprints, are running hard and \'tiring\' at the end.
Lets take a typical sprint race in So Cal. 22, 45, 110 means the front runner, assuming he won, went 22, 23, 25. In a typical race of the same fractions where a closer wins, his individual clips may be 24 (approx 10 lengths behind), 22 (gained 5 lengths and went fast) and then came home in 24 to win in 110. So, the closer went 24, 22, 24 which means he was slowing down even though he was \'closing\'.
The polytrack is a mystery to not only Barry, but to most jocks too. They ride like they have no idea how fast or slow they need to go to ride a good race. I think a combination of the BG being a Derby prep and plytrk led to the ridiculously slow pace. I was watching the BG thinking, \"how can this frontrunner get beat?\" But then a little voice said, \"its polytrack, anyone can get beat regardless of how slow the internal pace is\"
>I was watching the BG thinking, \"how can this frontrunner get beat?\" But then a little voice said, \"its polytrack, anyone can get beat regardless of how slow the internal pace is\"<
One thing that IMO a lot of modern riders do wrong with lone speeds is to slow the pace down so much, they allow all the other contenders to get into a striking position at the top of the stretch without being used at all.
I think it is smarter to slow down the pace as much as you can but to still keep open lengths between you and the next batch of horses. Once a horse is going slow and is very relaxed, I doubt there is much incremental benefit from slowing it down even further. However, there\'s a big difference between having 4 sharp horses within a length of you and having several lengths at the top of the stretch if you are fresh in either case.
IMO, Angel Cordero rode front runners properly. When Pat Day, Julie Krone and a lot of the other \"chokers\" came along and had great success, everyone started copying that style of backing the pace up as much as possible when they had the lone speed. They blow dozens of races that way.
Great call fkach!
You can go too slow. By the time the frontrunner is \'asked the question\' the closers are up on the banked part of the track gaining momentum. If that leader would have opened up on the turn instead of keeping him under a hammerlock, it may have been a different scenario at the finish.