polytrack chaos

[sweetyjohn]

Yin without yang equals chaos
By STEVEN CRIST

NEW YORK - The announcement Thursday that the 2008 Breeders' Cup will
be run at Santa Anita over a synthetic track, coming just five days
after a bizarre running of the Blue Grass Stakes on Polytrack at
Keeneland, had to leave many a horseman and horseplayer wondering:
Will racing's championship races will be as peculiar and perplexing
as this season's final major Derby prep?

If so, racing as we know it will have changed so radically as to
become virtually unrecognizable. It is very unlikely, however, that
any of the 2008 Breeders' Cup races will look anything like the 2007
Blue Grass. The kind of racing going on at Keeneland these days is
not a necessary outcome of synthetic surfaces in general or even
Polytrack in particular. It is an unwelcome aberration that Keeneland
needs to address if it wants to retain its slogan of "Racing as it
was meant to be" while keeping a straight face.

There have been hundreds of nine-furlong Derby preps in the modern
era, but never one run in the style or fractions of last week's Blue
Grass. Dominican loped his first six furlongs in a glacial 1:17.35,
then flew home his last three furlongs in 33.98 seconds to win a four-
way photo. Teuflesberg, who "set" the pace of 1:16.65, was visibly
tired and weaving down the stretch but still managed to come home in
a blistering 34.73.

Compare Dominican's early and late fractions with those of the
winners in the five other Grade 1 or Grade 2 nine-furlong Derby preps
this year - the Lane's End at Turfway (Hard Spun), Florida Derby at
Gulfstream (Scat Daddy), Wood Memorial at Aqueduct (Nobiz Like
Shobiz), Santa Anita Derby (Tiago), and Arkansas Derby(Curlin):


Hard Spun 1:11.66 + 37.75 = 1:49.41

Scat Daddy 1:10.99 + 38.01 = 1:49.00

Nobiz Like Shobiz 1:10.90 + 38.56 = 1:49.46

Tiago 1:12.72 + 36.79 = 1:49.51

Curlin 1:12.89 + 37.20 = 1:50.09

Dominican 1:17.35 + 33.98 = 1:51.33


No wonder Carl Nafzger, the trainer of Blue Grass runner-up Street
Sense, told Daily Racing Form's Jay Privman that this Blue Grass
has "got to go down as the stupidest Grade 1 race ever."

It's tempting to think that the three-eighths marker at Keeneland is
in the wrong post-hole, but the track and independent handicappers
have verified the measurements. Some people might presume this Blue
Grass was simply run over a slow track, but it's the same surface on
which Silent Name won the seven-furlong Commonwealth in a zippy
1:21.26 the same afternoon, and over which 2-year-olds have been
setting world records in presale breezes and baby races.

Keeneland's stretch has been turned into the equivalent of a paved
highway to produce such clockings, but this is not just a matter of a
difference in quickness between the two sides of the oval. After
seeing that only two front-runners held on to win in the first 66
route races run on Keeneland's Polytrack last fall and this spring,
jockeys are understandable terrified of going to the front and
routinely restrain their horses through absurdly slow early fractions.

The one thing we've learned beyond a doubt about the new synthetic
surfaces is that they are as malleable, at the hands of both man and
nature, as dirt tracks ever have been. You can't say that Polytrack
is producing these clockings - it's whatever Keeneland is doing to
its version of Polytrack. The Lane's End was run over Turfway's
Polytrack and was completely within the normal parameters and pace
dynamics of American racing. So was most of the racing last year on
Hollywood's synthetic Cushion Track and Woodbine's version of
Polytrack.

Blinkered cheerleaders for Keeneland think the style of racing on
display in the Blue Grass is a positive development that makes the
game livelier and may somehow herald a welcome return to stamina over
speed in the sport. This is nonsense. Essentially walking horses up
to the head of the stretch and then turning them loose for three
furlongs reduces Thoroughbred races to Quarter Horse dashes. This
Blue Grass told us absolutely nothing about anyone's classic
potential or ability to sustain a reasonable rate of speed over a
meaningful distance of ground.

Early speed and late speed are the yin and yang of racing, with the
balance between them determining the outcome of races and defining
the true abilities of our very best horses. Without any yin, though,
the yang becomes meaningless in isolation.

Keeneland is an exemplary outfit and in recent years has been a truly
innovative leader in the sport, taking extraordinary steps on behalf
of horses, horsemen, and the customers. Something, however, has gone
terribly wrong with its racing surface that needs to be corrected.