"As for it not giving the owner a good line on if they have a Derby contender; true if you have a marginal horse, but if you own a Hard Spun or Street Sense you already know they belong."

As far as I am concerned, not a single horse in this year's Triple Crown chase has run a race good enough to win the Derby yet. I see some great prospects. I fully expect a few to develop further and get more seasoning out of their final preps. However, I see no guarantee that the develoment will occur if they have their final prep over a surface they could hate and thus get little, if anything, out of the race.

There aren't going to be poly preps with all the best prospects that we already know probably belong. There's going to be a mix.

Suppose you have a mid-level prospect and he throws in a dud on poly. Now you either don't enter the Derby or can't because you don't have enough earnings. Then weeks later you find out he made an explosive move forward but you didn't know about it because he hated poly.

Suppose you have a mid level prospect that explodes forward on poly. Now you enter him a 20 horse field on dirt and he gets buried and is never the same.

I believe you are confusing your desire for safe racing and the "possibility" that polytrack delivers all upside and very little downside in that regard, with a sound decision making process for how to best get a horse to the Derby at this point in time.

IMO, this is not the time for experimentation. The only horses I even might consider for Poly in their final prep are:

1. The rare ones that have already demonstrated they are equal on both surfaces.

2. A horse that I know is not Derby material, but that I know loves poly. I might have a chance to steal a Grade 1 prep with a mediocre horse because some of the top level dirt horses could bomb on poly or avoided it totally.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2007 11:13AM by fkach.