Keeneland going back to dirt

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by Leparoux

That is a pretty unfair way to look at it. 2006 was an outlier compared to the two previous years. Hard to say synth really hurt the handle just by looking at those numbers.

I agree. The handle numbers are not very useful unless you can control for the general trends in racing and the 2008 financial crisis and deep recession (along with other factors that might be specific to racing there).

[Leparoux]

Originally Posted by Silver florin

Are you saying Polycrap didn't hurt the handle?

Based on the evidence presented, yep.

[Valuist]

Originally Posted by Leparoux

That is a pretty unfair way to look at it. 2006 was an outlier compared to the two previous years. Hard to say synth really hurt the handle just by looking at those numbers.

Not sure why you'd say that. 2006 was bigger than '05 and '04 but not by THAT much. And there probably was a curiousity factor the first year they put Polytrack in.

[Leparoux]

Originally Posted by Valuist

Not sure why you'd say that. 2006 was bigger than '05 and '04 but not by THAT much. And there probably was a curiousity factor the first year they put Polytrack in.

05 to 06 was by far the biggest jump on that chart.

08 handle is WAY lower than any other listed but you all want to attribute that to the poly as opposed to the economy crashing

[rastajenk]

It has to be mentioned, again, that when Poly was introduced, pundits (and I mean Saint Andy Beyer, whom I hold in high regard) worried that the lack of a track bias would introduce a lifetime supply of formful racing and relegate the TB's to the lackluster nature of harness racing. Soon after, it became an unpredictable crapshoot that couldn't be bet. That's some kind of whiplash.

[affirmedny]

Originally Posted by Valuist

Not sure why you'd say that. 2006 was bigger than '05 and '04 but not by THAT much. And there probably was a curiousity factor the first year they put Polytrack in.

my recollection is they only ran on polytrack in the fall of 2006 and the spring meet was on dirt. Anybody know for sure?

[rastajenk]

In 2006 Sinister Minister won the Blue Grass; that was definitely dirt. In 2007, Dominican won the first poly Blue Grass in painfully slow fractions. So it had to be the fall meet.