Beyerguy,

I am thrilled to death you don't believe in biases. Please promote that point of view as often as possible because IMO it would surely benefit me at the windows if everyone agreed with you.

I agree that on an unbiased surface saving ground will be an advantage for most horses.

I agree that it is difficult to be certain about a bias without knowing the horses very well (which I do not in this case). That is why I was careful to make the point that I didn't handicap the races. However, I looked at the charts for that day and the prior day and I believe there "was evidence" of a bias in the "sprints". I did not say "substantial" for the day in question. I said that in general you should be looking for "substantial" evidence.

You seem to have missed the major ideas behind my posts though.

1. Just because there's a bias, that does not mean that horses that ran against the grain can't run well or that every horse that runs with grain will win.

In fact, on many iron speed days, even when the winner wires the field, good closers will still get up for second and/or third. A superior closer might even win.

A biased track is simply a track that is impacting the results relative to normal - perhaps by as little as a few lengths (perhaps by more). I think of it like a biased roulette wheel, not like loaded dice.

2. Just because there's bias, that does not mean it will exist in both sprints and routes.

3. I know most people tend to discount the performances of favorites (rightfully). However, even when it's all favorites going wire to wire, it is worth investigating. A shrewd crowd will eventually begin betting speed horses heavily if a bias is either strong or lasts for a few days. So what looks like logical results can in fact be illogical results that were bet appropriately because of the bias.

4. When there's a speed bias, the smart jocks figure it out fairly quickly and rush their horses out harder to get position. The faster pace often offsets the speed bias or WORSE.

I'm not going to go back and handicap that card just so I know for certain how that track was playing, but one or two exceptions is not counter evidence.