Quote:
|
Originally Posted by cj
The data I posted shows that speed is more important on dirt. Of course it is, everyone already knows that. But it also shows that the closer a horse is to the front on turf, the better the chances of winning. Sure, all the other positions added up together have a better chance than the leader, but the best is up front.
|
This is correct, but it's still missing the point I have been making throughout the thread.
The w2w data on turf would be worse except for the fact that the riders are slowing the paces down to a crawl to compensate for their perception that that's the best way to run turf races and give all the horses a decent shot (and trainers are training that way).
In the beginning, polytrack at KEE was a disaster in terms of w2w winners. Everyone was complaining. Then the jockey's adjusted the paces to a crawl. So the w2w% went up a bit. Looking at the new w2w% was not telling you that poly was now OK for speed. It was telling you that the jockeys compensated. (eventually they also tweaked the surface)
If people started complaining about some slug that went w2w off 6f in 117, they would be correct that he was a slug and got lucky because of the lack of aggressiveness. But asking the riders to get more aggressive again would just send us back to the opening days of the meet when everyone was whining that speed couldn't win.
The surface is the surface. The best trainers and riders try to adjust to it to give their horses a reasonable chance of winning. But within it, they make mistakes in some races. When everyone knows it's a very speed favoring surface, the mistakes tend to result from being too aggressive. In turf routes in NY, the mistakes are clustered towards not being aggressive enough.
