Saratoga: Pletcher, Cox, Asmussen voice track concerns
 

Excerpt:

Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher, in discussing the condition of the surface from July 14 opening day through mid-August, described it as being “the deepest Saratoga track I can recall.” The winner of a record seven Eclipse Awards as leading trainer in North America has been working at the iconic upstate New York track for more than three decades.

Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen and Brad Cox, the Eclipse winner the last two years, also said they made their displeasure known.

“It tightened up last weekend, but what took so long?” Asmussen asked. “They were adding clay (Aug. 22). If you were right to do it now, what took so long?”

Cox echoed those comments. “I do prefer a tighter racetrack to what we’ve had,” he said. “Over the last week, it’s definitely tightened up. I like what we’ve seen on the main track at Saratoga the last week. Hopefully, we’ll have the same track over the last couple of weeks until the end of the meet.”

Cox believes a going he found particularly demanding might explain why some of his richly bred 2-year-olds failed to run to lofty expectations.

“I’m a little disappointed with how some of my babies have run that trained awfully well,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the 2-year-olds that didn’t perform quite up to expectations coming back on a tighter track, whether it’s the NYRA circuit or Kentucky or wherever they might land.”

Oh
 

"but what took so long"

hubris?

i like the way they had the track. it made for my best Saratoga meet of all time, and the CAW are probably getting killed with the way it was. that track was just like printing money. just a question of how much you wanted of it!

I have metrics I use to measure and track how a surface is playing relative to the national average. If the track is deeper than usual there's no evidence it's having an impact on the results other than the typical occasional bias here or there. The metric is also almost identical to Saratoga last year.

What's interesting is that Serling gave me a hard time for pointing this out. Where is he now?

And secondly, how is it that we are now finding out about 1 Steward controlling everything? Again, Serling is the insider? Serling doesn't know what he's talking about half the time yet he comes here and belittles other people. Enough

100% accurate. Not to mention he has been *crickets* about Chad Browns case. He chimes in about anything to do with NYRA and Saratoga but a avoids the Chad Brown thread. No cojones !

you seem to know a lot about NYRA racing. when i call NYRA, i get a run around and no calls back when i try to find out about the pools that the CAW are or are not allowed in. could you please get me the correct information..

thank you very much

I honestly think he's a good analyst who does his homework. But, when he comes here like he knows what's going on half the time he's making it up to be a shill for NYRA. How else do you explain this stuff that he's supposed to know as an insider?

I think you guys need to remember Andy is in a delicate position.

He is friends with Chad, he’s an employee of NYRA. He walks a fine line. I’m surprised he comments at all.

After some of the mud I’ve seen tossed at him lately I don’t blame him for being a little prickly.

Yes he keeps his company well. He was also friends with trainer Eric Guillot. I get it. He doesn’t want to take a stance and have it come back to bite him in the future....wait he does that all the time. :lol:

I'm not friends with Eric. You're a liar.

You and Asero can bait me all you want, but when you lie about me, I draw the line. You're a bad guy.

Clearly I said “ was friends “. What are you now saying you were never friends with Eric ? Are you still friends with Chad Brown or are you going to see how that all plays out before you comment on it ?

No bait. People can check the other thread about the surface. I would have added this to it but had a hard time finding it. You were wrong and you doubled down on being wrong. And the thing is all you had to do was ask a few of the Trainers but instead you tried to trash me and a couple other people.

And this thing with Irad. You said you had no idea why the Stewards let him do what he does. Well it turns out that one Steward has a disproportionate influence when it comes to Irad. And this particular Steward is knowingly putting false race times into the system even when he has proof that they are wrong.

Please correct me if I'm inaccurate about anything I said here.

You don't actually know about my personal relationships just because you worship me on TV.

Wasn't it YOU MORONS who were wrong? Every time one of you idiots posted about NYRA doing this or NYRA doing that, it's actually the STATE STEWARD who does it...NYRA has nothing to do with it

ANDY S. HAS pointed this out to you clowns MULTIPLE TIMES on here over the years, but you still keep playing the full smooth-brain card...and then you double-down and start posting how you had no idea one steward (not the NYRA steward, mind you) has so much power.

One really has to laugh at the stupidity on display from people calling Andy (aka TLG) names.