Gulfstream

[Mark]

It appears that Gulfstream Park is attempting to run year round. Their single turf course can not stand up to that use and with winter turf racing is nonexistent outside Florida, other southern states and the west track management is using this racing to attract betters and horses. However, as you can see whether via ommission or intent, they
haven't made the necessary changes in starting gate and timer beam placement positons. The result is that the outer oval is probably somewhere around 100 ft longer of a race and the early fractions are much slower.
However, you don't have to be fooled in your paceline selection. The new distance has huge variants 40 -60. When you see these avoid those lines. This new distance also has second calls about 2 seconds slower than the inner surface. This will become more apparent as the same horses run over the different courses, particularly Early horses. Until a new par is established,
probably next year, for the outer oval, or the starting gate position is changed or the distance is recognoized as "about" the program will see horses off those lines off the outer course as slower.

[Ted Craven]

One possible reason Gulfstream may have for not reporting the distinction between courses is that they may view the Turf course as one wide course (just speculating) - in the same way as when a track with a wide Turf course (e.g. Woodbine) positions rails out by a large amount, they also don't consider that they then have 2 turf courses.

Perhaps those rails are of the non-permanent variety and the course can be merged, if required (future Breeders' Cup) ?

Heed Mark's warnings about reported running times on the 2 courses. However, TrackMaster IS keeping a separate Inter-Track Variant for each Turf course, and related Daily Track variant, which will show up subsequently in PPs. I think this may be the first year for calculating such variants and I would tread lightly in accepting double-digit fast or slow DTVs as reliable adjustments of running times. These variants will be recalculated in January 2014 from 2013 races run (as is done for ALL tracks). Expect this re-casting of variants to change some of the numbers reported in Charts and PPs so far this year for GP Turf races run.

Ted

[DontSayDont]

In the 3 racing dates since last post:
5 fur 1 race Rail 108 feet
7.5f 2 races Rail 36 feet
8.0f 7 races Rail 36 feet
8.5f 4 races Rail 108 feet

Rails out about 10 feet more than in Ted's post on 12/10. 5.0 and 8.5 furlongs on the outer course and 7.5 and 8.0 furlongs on the inner.

Ray