Miff-- there were four routes on the day, including a cheap claimer, a nw1x alw, and a starter handicap. There was no way you could do them the same-- the first two (races 1 and 3) came up minus 4 and minus 6 (corrections by me to the mechanical variant). If you did the stake with them, SNS would have gotten around negative 10, as I said at the time, and the next seven horses would also have gone negative-- not real likely. So that race had to be cut loose, the only question being what variant to do it at. The track got slower again for the other route (last race), but not nearly to the degree it was early in the card.

Chicago tracks have always featured a lot of split variants, and years ago, when I started seeing them, it shook me up. Now I expect them, and am not surprised.
I also try to get what info I can, though I don't depend on it. This day, for example, they didn't water the track until the fifth race.

My guess is that somebody (not Beyer, who is not dogmatic, especially since my Expo presentation) tried to put this day together based on an average variant for the day. This will result in getting the stake too fast, the first two way too slow, and the last race about right.