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[46zilzal]

First track I attended and actually WAGERED, was the old 4 furlong bull ring at the LA Country Fair.. A COMPLETE ROOKIE, I bet speed all program and wound up with the (regrettable) belief that I had figured out the entire game .

Lo and behold, I then attended the inaugural Oak Tree at Santa Anita using what I thought was the "secret" I had discovered at Pomona...I got wiped out financially before the 6th race cleared. Thought it was a singularly Bad day, but after repeating the same experience over and over at Oak Tree, I began to study pace in earnest

Over the ensuing years, with more experienced under my belt and the KNOWLEDGE that the Sartin energy distribution concept gave me. I kept records of the race I used to evaluated a field's winners (the early/later balance) and was able to discern where (AND MOST IMPORTANTLY WHEN....what time of year that is) various speed favoring tracks that ran almost consistently that way and kept my play associated with them.

Of course, these speed data did not fit turf racing, where the "trip" is usually far more important that almost anything else.

The late Tommy Wolski,a retried rider who had a Sovereign winning TV showing Vancouver, explained to me, from his experience riding East Coast ovals in the late Fall and Winter, that SPEED is even MORE important a factor when it got really cold and wet. "When it gets close to freezing, small amounts of ice form around small bits of the dirt on the track...If you are not OUT in front, you and your horse are subjected to a "rooster tail" of sharp sided missiles ( a hardened frozen piece of dirt encapsulated in ice) flying back at you. No horse wants to move into that barrage. Being out front on days like that insures that mount of having a clear ride with fewer mid to late moves able to catch you.