Betting Synthetic Surfaces by Bill Finley
 

Might be worth a read before the Breeders Cup. Review link courtesy of user "karlskorner" on the PA board:

www.lowellsun.com/sports/ci_10565028

This MIGHT be good IF, and this is a HUGE IF, if these new surfaces were ANYTHING alike.

Did you know that there are about 4 different Polytrack formulas? Elite, Classic, Basic etc.? Each is different and requires completely different care? Then there is Pro-ride, Tapeta and Cushion. A friend who is very close to the the action at Woodbine kept me abreast of the troubles they had with the wax binding the particles in cooler weather, and informs me that the toughest part of these tracks is keeping them stable and even. They had to have three separate re-vampings there with the inclusion of a material called JELLY CORD in order to overcome this problem.

The Racing Post, in England, ran a big article on how it takes a FULL YEAR of racing to stabilize the all weather courses there and that is from over 20 years experience with them. His advise was to be very wary of them the entire first season as they will be horribly slow at the outset.

To somehow LUMP THEM ALL TOGETHER, knowing how very different they are, is almost laugable.


There is an informative English blog called sandracer.com where discussion about it's excentricities are discussed.

I am reading the book now, and so far, Finley has missed the mark by 180 degrees, IMHO. He is insisting that art plays more to dirt than turf, which is not anything like my results. In fact, I eliminate all dirt races if today is artificial, but use turf or artificial interchangeably.

In one his first examples of a Kee race, he thinks the heavy favorite is a throw-out because she runs early and is better on turf. Early, yes. At the time, early placed horse were only winning around 8-10%, but turf, I disagree. He did hit the winner, who had the highest Beyer on artificial ( indulge me - I know this is a PACE site!;) but he says he would never get the place horse, who had the second highest Beyer in the field, but on turf ( 1 point less than the heavy fav, but this one was a one run closer).

For the BC prep, what I am doing is seeing what tracks seem to be feeding more winners or sudden improvement, and what surfaces seem to be compatable with the Pro-ride surface. I will pay close attention to what surfaces and types of fake stuff the Europeans have run on to try to get a handle which ones prefer or move up on pro-ride. MAybe nothing will appear, but for the next month, I am watch and take notes mode. I suspect some boxcar payoffs are waiting this year to reward the homework.

The whole artificial surface seems to freak people out more than it needs too.
If you do some thinking about it all it is is a new track that we are being introduced to. Look at all your conventional dirt tracks are they all the same? do they have their own individual characteristics? Do some horses have a preference for some tracks and a dislike for others? Do they sometimes have dramatic changes in surface speed( example, Mountaineer)?

The way to treat it is just like you are playing a new conventional dirt track. Do a lot of chart work first, watch a lot of races first, get to know the track.Learn which types of runners it favors, which tracks ship well to it and which don't.

Horses when they run over a track they have their preferences as far as the hardness of the surface and the give in the surface under their feet. This is why sometimes when a horse ships from a hard surface like turf paradise to a softer surface racetrack like canterbury it takes a couple of races for them to adjust.

It all comes down to studying, the more time you take to learn, the easyier it gets.


Mike.

How do you determine ability???

By how a horse performs against the opposition at a given distance on a given surface

Curlin is determined the World's best Dirt Horse because of the above and come Breeders Cup time the above will mean little, the same as it meant little when Curlin went on turf for the first time

Dirt runs are Dirt runs , Turf runs are Turf runs, Synthetic runs are sythetic runs

I have a friend who will not bet a horse on an off track that wasn't sired by one of his off track sires. Needless to say he is frustrated a lot.

THE INDIVIDUAL, through their past performances, will direct you as to how the INDIVIDUAL handles off tracks, synthetic tracks or turf tracks. Seems to be fairly obvious to me.

From PAST Performances you estimate the probability of winning for FUTURE races.

If a horse has no runs on a particular surface you have no information from which to make a good estimation of winning probability

There are SOME inferences based upon energy distribution which often transfer to other surfaces.

Yes Tim, but you do not know which ones will transfer until they have run and you need to allow for this when estimating probability

NOT 100% but if I see an energy distribution that says sprinter and they shift to 6 on the lawn it works often. Conversely many a late runner on the dirt transfers to the lawn too.

Turf to dirt is a different animal