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To all my peers and colleagues in the public handicapping arena who complain how synthetic tracks have changed their handicapping, and notably not for the better, I say “GET OVER IT!”
To all the trainers who say that a handicapper might as well throw darts at a program in order to pick a winner on a synthetic track, or say that synthetic tracks are changing American racing for the worse, I say “GET OVER IT!”
To racing writers and authors who use words like “vagaries,” “enigma” and “inconsistency” when referring to races run on synthetic tracks carrying brand names such as Polytrack, Cushion Track, Tapeta Footings and Pro-Ride, I say “GET OVER IT!”
Fans don’t care about such big words, because in reality there is still a winner in each and every race and tickets for them to cash. A horse is no less a champion winning a Grade 1 stakes on Polytrack as he is winning on turf or dirt. Let’s talk about something else. The fact that horses shift from turf to synthetic and synthetic to dirt and back again is now old news and we just need to live with it. We need to stop focusing on the “what if” relative to ups-and-downs in a horse’s past performances that can be attributed to a whole slew of possibilities, only one of which is a synthetic surface.
“Adapt or Die” is an evolutionary truth first proposed almost 150 years ago by Charles Darwin that is no less relevant in the handicapping and training worlds. Although I may be sorry to see some trainers and handicappers having to find other means of putting food on the table, if they can not adapt to the new ways of synthetic tracks, racing fans as a whole may be better off for their absence.
As evidenced by increased handle at most tracks since the advent of synthetic surfaces, recent shifts in the overall economy notwithstanding, the betting public likes a handicapping challenge. With more horses remaining in training throughout the year without having to lay up for weeks at a time, horses are racing a bit more often and field sizes are increased. Those factors benefit the industry as a whole in that trainers get more day money, which passes along to their employees and into the community at large. These are the kind of benefits I have dreamt about since witnessing the decline of field sizes and fan interest over the last 20 years or so.
Synthetic tracks are here to stay. Sure, there may be a moratorium on installation over the next year or two while the statistics are compiled on the various track surfaces to date, but the synthetic tracks that are in place now are here and will continue to be so. They make for a better sport, insuring the health and safety of the equine and human athlete to a degree not heretofore seen in my career of analyzing races for public consumption.
When often asked by fans about synthetic tracks and if they have changed how I handicap a race, I am reminded of a question I was asked during the second week of Keeneland’s inaugural Polytrack meeting in October, 2006. After the initial fanfare, the naysayers then arrived -- public handicappers and authors who were having trouble adapting to the nuances of the new surface and saying so publicly in an outcry of epic proportions. And so it passed that a former Chairman of the Board of Keeneland asked my opinion of Polytrack from the perspective of handicapping, knowing the pride I take in each and every selection and analysis report I write and knowing that people rely on my opinions in wagering their hard-earned or hard-won money.
It took me not an instant to answer “Everything that should be happening on the track is happening”, adding “Nothing is out of the ordinary in my opinion.”
Harking back to what my mentor, Dick Mitchell, taught me some 30 years ago, I based my answer on the theory that if a handicapper could get the winner in a group of five horses 50 percent of the time, that with a great deal of discipline and good wagering strategy they could make money at the races. Looking at my records, the winner was in my top five at least 50 percent of the time, and even though the win percentage on my top selection had dropped from 21 percent to 17 percent at the meeting, the average winning payoff was much higher. The reason for the drop in win percentage was easily attributable to the fact that there were now 20 percent more horses running in each race, that also being the reason for the higher average return on each winner, making up for the lower win percentage because each race was now a tougher handicapping puzzle, with even the favorite paying more than in previous years when it won.
Now, two years later, watching the glorious benefits that synthetic tracks have brought to American Racing, more than ever I think we all need to “GET OVER IT!” and move on to handicapping some of the greatest racing puzzles of 2008 and beyond.
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