[Bill Lyster]

The SA turf sprint distance is listed as "about 6.5 furlongs", has a right hand turn, is run partially down hill and across the "dirt" course, then straightens out for the finish.

The race is actually 64.5 feet short of 6.5 furlongs or just over 6.4 furlongs. It is my understanding that RDSS and its predecessors used 6.5furlong info to compute the various incremental numbers (but I am not totally sure that this is true, but I really don't think it matters)

It is very hard to earn an adjusted speed rating much above the mid to low 80's on this course. However, if you look at horses that are competitive on this course and the flat 6 furlong course at Hollywood you will see that the adjusted speed ratings from Hollywood are 4-6 points HIGHER than SA.

In the instance when you cannot directly compare 6f turf to 6f turf or SA 6.5t to SA 6.5t you should be aware that, for instance, an SA 82 is about equal to a Hol 87.

Other factors that cloud the decision making process are that at Hollywood it is very hard for E types to run under 23 seconds for the first quarter. 22.8 sometimes, but not so often. Whereas at SA if the first quarter is not under 22 seconds it is equally rare! Really makes matching earlies tough when all you have is info from different sprint turf races.

In a very limited (13 SA and 18 HOL) sample of wire to wire winners at both places I found that the average 1F time at SA is about 5 ticks (say 5-6 ticks) faster than Hollywood and the 2nd call time at SA is about 7 ticks faster, with end of race times about 13 ticks faster at SA (I took avg time at Hol, added 6.4 seconds and subtracted the average winning time from the SA 6.5t races to get this number)

My visual observation and the net result from this is that winning odds tend to be higher for the SA turf sprints, I think largely because of the difficulty in applying adequate conversions to the internal splits.

Merry Christmas everybody,

Bill L.