Bally Ache Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you think you can handicap on artificial
> surfaces as well as you can on dirt, then I
> suggest you're not a very good handicapper to
> begin with.
>
> If you think it doesn't matter whether a horse
> goes in 1:10 or 1:11 3/5, you're either a novice
> or you're in the wrong game.
>
> It takes a long, long time to get good at this
> game. It appears that artificial surfaces will
> tend to level the playing field. If you think
> you're good at this, why would you want that?
>
> It remains to be seen whether or not it's
> beneficial to the horses, so why the headlong
> rush?
>
> The only defense the horseplayer has in this game
> where the deck is stacked against us, is to not
> bet. I don't bet artificial surfaces. If it
> proves to be the wave of the future,then I'll have
> to either accept it or get out. For the time
> being, Santa Anita, Keeneland, Del Mar et al can
> go to hell.

I don't want to to sing the blues in public, but I very much identify with this message or rather its author's point de vue. I will go so far as to confess in public forum that I always knew, from the early sixties, to this very day off, that the racing surfaces that facilitated feeding the hungry were the ones that were hard on horses. One very significant to me reason that I was distraught about not being able to send Bear Now, was that the track was conducive to

1) Her need to clear, and her apparent on video ability to do so, as well as her winning if she did, but

2) I can't tell why I should believe she will like the track, something I didn't have to worry about for 40 years.

The key to "staying ahead of this game" has been since I was born, sending speed on surfaces that will carry it, in pace scenarios that favored it, with horses that were best and or had the best of it. I say that without fear of genuine contradiction, from anyone that has always been on the grandstand side. If you had control of a horse, trained a horse, attended to a horse's health, you can have a valid point of dispute.

D. Wayne, young Todd, Mr. Silver Charm himself, and many of the rest of us have found it more than a little disconcerting that racetracks that "eat speed for a first course" are thought de riguer. My first commonsensical answer is to come to a performance figure, something I never dreamed of doing. In accepting that, I now see the turf and other things as possible, if not as cool or CONTROLLABLE, or to my immediate liking. I am trying to take a page out of K-Mac's book; calm acceptance. It's been a learning experience, among other things to notice how much I wanted to use my spear, as opposed to the fly rod that would get Student Council, for instance, or believe that Bear Now was leveraged at the price; she had about a 50% chance from WO to a firm surface so why wasn't 8/1 a steal?

I see in front of my eyes now, the potential of staying ahead of the turf cuties,
and "booking up" on the Europeans, so as to better anticipate events here and abroad. Two years ago I was damn near suicidal about this polytrack thing at a place that gave you several plays a meet, inside/front. It was interesting to me Sunday PM, while waiting on my wife to call me back, to play the Derby workup for the race after Sinister Minister's Bluegrass. It apparently played to an audience that wasn't counted on to know that his scenario couldn't be repeated at CD, under any conditions. I put that is the same bucket as I did Jerry defending a moving variant in Vegas. I couldn't believe there could be serious discussion given how we have had to fight that, forever.

Didn't anyone ever play a drying out track? Or one that got a gust, or or...
Wow, I thought if this is news to anyone, what can they tell me that I don't know?
On television, during the 24 hours of Aug that this product was front and center, I realized how to win, without surface in your pocket, and given the fact that the money moves from event to event now, as Davidowitz noted in column this summer, you can't memorize every surface, every horse in NY, every move in the city and win. You have to take it on the road, and this fig will make sure you get home in time, if you keep your attitude right. I feel ya,
skip
I would rather have had the 8/1 in the top slot for Bear Now, than the 11/1 return that Jerry said he got for Shakespeare's win, with Kip Deville and Galantas. That's why I feel this message about the synthetics, but my response is meant to cheer the handicapper. There is hope.

The dope thing is beyond myspeak, for exactly the reasons that Richie stated at the bottom of his reasoning earlier today. I got married to this thing a long time ago, too late for a D. Vorce. I would be willing to boycott, should the brothers WITH AMMUNITION ask. I love horses, and I do have a slightly guilty conscience about SENDING them so often in my life. Not as sensitive as Jerkens, but on that page, and if I lived with them, I would starve, because I couldn't ask them up close like he has to, finally.