Geez Miff,

You hijacked my turf-dirt figure discussion into another "I hate poly" thead!

Ok, I hate poly as well and agree with everything you say.


Jerry,

I hear your answer, but it isn't one of the clearest to be honest. I will try to research your old threads to see if you covered it in more detail.

It doesn't make logical sense that we are talking about one breed, the thoroughbred, and we say that the breed as a whole runs the same on turf as they do on dirt (dirt horses run as fast on dirt as turf horses run on turf), but that the fastest dirt horses are far faster, relatively speaking on their best day, then the turf horses are on their best day. Either the scale slides across the board, as I suspect it might, or the bottom of the scale is equally as skewed, meaning the slowest dirt horses are much slower than the slowest turf horses.

Turf races aren't rare enough for it to be a statistical explanation that the reason there are so many high dirt figures is that there are so many more races on dirt and you get more aberations.

As an aside, but somewhat related. You have covered many times on this board that "horses are getting faster" and at a considerably faster rate than any other major figure maker suggests. And your case is good. But I don't see that same rapid increase in turf figures over the last 5-7 year period that I see in the dirt figures. Why wouldn't turf horses be getting faster? Your figures adjust for the changing track cushion strategy on dirt surfaces, so it can't be the way track maintenance is treating either turf or dirt courses.

And one more time for you Miff, I hate poly as well.