NYRA Track Bias and Big Guy Ian
 

Just when you thought the winterized Big A main track was a slow track that was "sustained" (favoring horses that can finish), it started to get more speed favoring on January 18, with the next five racing days all speed favoring capped off with Friday, January 26, the most speed favoring, as 7 of the 8 winners went wire to wire.

But, then on Saturday, January 27, a day after the strongest speed bias of the year, the track seemed tiring, a much different track than Friday's.

But the biggest surprise of the day was $10,000 claimer Big Guy Ian... 10-1 on the morning line, in what looked a pretty competitive race, 7 year old Big Guy Ian went to the lead, set a fast pace and drew off to win by 9 lengths for trainer Rudy Rodriguez, who is having a big meet. When the speed figures come out, I believe that Big Guy Ian will have run a much better speed figure than Great Stuff, the winner of the GR3 Toboggan stakes (Race 3) which featured two GR1 winners that showed speed and tired including the Vosburgh winner Takaful, who ran third.

Big Guy Ian was second off a layoff and making second start for R Rod. Big Guy Ian was 0 for 6 last year and hadn't hit the board since Oct. 1, 2016. The horse that finished second, Big Zip, was also trained by R Rod and was claimed.

In my opinion there were two distinct changes in track speed on Saturday. I think after Friday there was probably a lot of work going on in between races. But in the end, no way do I think Big Guy Ian ran faster than the Great Stuff in the Toboggan on speed figures. The track sped up noticeably for races 5, 6, and 7, then slowed down again for races 8 and 9. These weren't small changes that were tough decisions, they literally jumped off the page.

Very interesting. I wonder why? It would make sense, because if the track variant was the same all day, Big Guy Ian ran like a GR1 sprinter. Even if the track was fast, Big Guy Ian certainly ran a huge race. It will be interesting to see where R Rod puts him next time...does he protect him, or put him back in for a tag?

One view of the speed figs: Looks like Rudy (with help of track surface) got Big Guy Ian back to his best speed figs. Something very similar to his 3 performances between 10/1/16 - 1/14/17. The 1/27/18 adjusted final time matches almost exactly to Great Stuff's adjusted final time. Of course the two had completely different trips and both were able to run their preferred style based on race set-ups. A performance fig that incorporates pace into the number will obviously impact how you compare the two performances. Between the two, Great Stuff will get a faster number on the sheets due to ground loss. That's my opinion for now, but as always I'll differ to Cj and his #'s.

Big Guy Ian did have some old numbers to run back to.

Knowing the track was changing speed is probably helpful in bias analysis also. It forces you to look at even smaller samples, but if for example you thought there was a strong bias early in the card and then suddenly the races started developing differently, maybe you weren't wrong in your initial analysis. Maybe the track changed. At the very least you can put that info in your notes.

I was not aware of this, but I heard it on Byk this week.
Thought I'd post it in case were not aware of it.

https://www.nyra.com/aqueduct/racing/track-trends